THE EVOLVING ROLE OF E-LEARNING IN CORPORATE TRAINING

THE QUOTE:

“The future of e-Learning is wide open! Learning doesn’t just happen during business hours in the office or in the classroom. It happens everywhere through a number of different channels.” – Eric Schuermann (From ourinterview with him)

“When training is done well, doors open, skills develop, and performance excellence yields personal and organizational rewards. People grow in ability, confidence, motivation and happiness.” – Michael Allen

THE JOURNEY:

After publishing our post ‘E-Learning Forecasts & Trends for 2014’ a couple of months ago, we received a thought-provoking question from one of our readers, “How is e-learning faring in corporate trainings around the world with respect to ‘effectiveness’?” To get answers for this question and a few others, we embarked on a quick ‘exploration’ journey to get insights on the following:

• What are the additional benefits e-learning offers to the Learning and Development (L&D) departments in today’s changed scenario? What are some of the success stories?

• What kind of objections (and misconceptions) do we hear about online training? And, how do corporates address these challenges?

• How will e-learning evolve in coming years? What does its future look like?

• Can we access any resources that can throw light on this topic?

OUR FINDINGS:

We found a few relevant resources that, we thought, could be of interest to you. Here they are:

Infographics

• Why E-Learning: This infographic by Will Holand graphically depicts facts and figures from some reliable sources such as the Brandon Hall Group and Bersin & Associates. It helps us understand why e-learning is the most effective method to train employees.

• Top 10 E-Learning Trends For 2015: This infographic by TalentLMS demonstrates the top ten e-learning trends to follow in the coming year. They include big data, gamification, corporate MOOCs and mobile learning, along with a brief explanation and an example against each of them.

• What People Love & Hate About E-Learning: This incredible infographic by Articulate (based on a survey it conducted among 500+ people) shows learners’ take on taking online courses – what motivates them, what frustrates them, and how they would like to be assessed.

• 14 E-Learning Statistics You Need To Know for 2014: This infographic by Aurion Learning beautifully summarises statistics collated from 14 different sources on the most significant happenings in the e-learning industry this year.

e-Books

• E-Learning 101 – Concepts, Trends, Applications: This e-book from TalentLMS provides an introductory level overview of the e-learning field. The topic on ‘E-Learning in Education vis-a-vis Corporate Sector’ explains the fundamental differences between e-learning designed for the corporate sector and that which is conceived for the education field.

Videos

• What is E-Learning?: This animated video by GIZ EAcademy explains in a simple but interesting way, how e-learning can engage, teach, and enhance understanding.

• The Big Mistake in E-Learning: This video by Cathy Moore is a brilliant take on the sad state of present day e-learning. But, alongside, it also shows Cathy proposing a few invaluable suggestions on how corporate e-learning can be made more effective.

Articles/Posts

• 10 Surprising Statistics About E-Learning: This post by Divyaa Pratap of CommLab India presents some interesting statistics on how e-learning is deployed as a great performance support tool, thereby enabling an effective workplace learning.

•  18 Mind-Blowing E-Learning Statistics You Need To Know: Check out this post by Karla Gutierrez of SHIFT eLearning carrying a good compilation of statistics on e-learning.

• E-Learning For Learning, Performance Support For Performance: This post by Isha of Knowledge Synonyms Consulting Pvt. Ltd. takes a quick look at why organizations are not ready to extend performance support to achieve better performance levels.

• E-Learning – Are We Missing The Point?: In this interesting guest post he penned for TalentLMS, the author CK McKay explains why he thinks e-learning doesn’t work.

• Benefits of E-Learning to Large Organisations: This post by Elcom CMS analyses how an enterprise or government organisation can benefit from deploying an e-learning program on their Learning Management System (LMS).

• E-Learning for Corporate Skill-building – The Challenges: This post by Shafali Anand of Creative Agni takes a quick look at some of the challenges managements face in implementing corporate e-learning programs and proposes ways to address them.

• The Mindful Approach to E-Learning: This post by Andrea Park, a former intern at the Chief Learning Officer magazine, explains why learning leaders must handle technology ‘mindfully’.

• Advantages of Green Learning: Check out this interesting post by Caitlin McGrath of Digitec Interactive for its unique perspective on adopting ‘green learning’ and thereby helping the environment.

• Six Benefits of eLearning for Sales Training: This post by Karla Gutierrez of SHIFT eLearning lists the benefits companies can reap out of using e-learning as the solution for its sales training needs.

• Algorithmically Generated Content – The Future of E-Learning?: In this post, the author Nikos Andriotis of eFront Learning explores an interesting aspect of content development – automating content generation using the concept of ‘algorithmically (or computer) generated content’.

• Learning and Development at Workplace – Changing Paradigms, Emerging Trends: As per the report quoted in this post (which is the result of the joint efforts of Grant Thornton India, 24×7 Learning, and the Indian Institute of Management – Kozhikode), ‘84% believe that e-learning is an efficient and cost effective tool for organizational learning and its popularity continues to grow in India’. Interestingly, the report also states that ‘this tool for L&D is still in its nascent stages of growth in Indiawhen compared to how it is faring in developed nations such as the US and UK’.

OUR LEARNINGS:

As we came to the end of our search, we had the following learnings as our key ‘take-aways’:

• As we know, e-learning is / can be a powerful tool if we use it appropriately and play to its strengths. A couple of them could be:
  • Its ability to offer personalised (individualised) instructions based on each person’s strengths, weaknesses and preferences

• The freedom it allows for learners to fail any number of times and the opportunities it gives them to learn from their failures at their own pace

• We are committed to ensuring ‘quality’ in the programs that we develop for our clients and partners.

• We are convinced that e-learning will take quantum leaps in the coming years, disrupting the way corporations deliver training and just-in-time performance support solutions to their employees. Organizations will start designing and delivering their own Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) tailor-made for their target audience. We look forward to witnessing major breakthroughs in automated content generation, freeing us from the mundane tasks involved in the development process, and thereby allowing us to focus on the more innovative aspects of learning design.

What are the other benefits you think e-learning is offering the corporate L&D? Do you have any inspiring success stories you can share with us?

We would love to hear from you.

Written by Santhosh Kumar

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Published on 30-Nov-2014