In our previous blog on eLearning, Four trends taking eLearning to the next level, we wrote about the learning benefits of simulation, social learning, personalization, and bite-sized learning. This time, we are going to take a broader look at the state of modern eLearning.
First of all, what do we mean by modern eLearning?
Well, let’s define it from two perspectives: The first is that of the recipient of the learning. This could be a company employee, or some other organizational stakeholder. For them, modern eLearning needs four main characteristics to be effective. It must be:
- Creative – it should engage them and enthuse them to learn.
- Pedagogically structured – the learning content should be designed so that learning outcomes are clear and easy to understand
- Mobile-friendly and responsive – learners increasingly expect and demand to be able to consume learning content without being tied to a desk or company workstation
- Personalized – by the employee’s role or experience, for example. The days of generic, one-size-fits-all solutions to learning are over, as content is now so easily personalized.
The other perspective is that of the buyer – the company that wants to deliver information and knowledge to employees and, increasingly, to stakeholder groups both inside and outside the organization. After all, a company’s training needs aren’t necessarily restricted to internal stakeholders – they can extend to external groups as well, such as customers, partners, and vendors.
For them, modern eLearning must be:
- A versatile form of learning – it must deliver successful learning outcomes for a wide variety of topics and content on everything from induction to branding.
- Rich in content – it should be full of rich content that enhances learning and, critically, supports the brand image of the employer.
- Accessible to all – it should provide the same learning outcome regardless of location, language, or culture.
- Measurable – it should allow you to track participation, completion rates, and learning outcomes, not only as part of the learning development with the company, but also as a basis for justifying investment.
It sometimes seems that many people’s conception of eLearning is based on a less-than-satisfactory formative experience that happened some time ago. Maybe they took an eLearning course at work that was just static text content and multiple-choice tests, or just linear video recordings and PDFs of the generic training content.
Today, eLearning is trusted by countless organizations around the world to effectively and efficiently deliver training content to varied stakeholder groups, regardless of language or culture.
So, what changed?
- Elearning content creation tools have made huge advances, enabling the production of responsive, mobile-friendly solutions. Likewise, devices’ memory capacity and internet speeds have increased, allowing the use of rich, dynamic content for everyone, anywhere and anytime.
- Learning needs have evolved, pushing the focus onto interactive content that engages students and which is easily customized and personalized to allow them to learn at their own pace.
- The quality of learning has become more and more important, and companies and eLearning buyers are looking for better, more effective training methods with a clear return on investment.
Here at Acolad, we help global and local companies not only to produce high-quality eLearning content, but also to realize its potential. In addition to codes of conduct, induction training, and other obligatory training, there are many other ways to utilize eLearning:
- Make your salespeople familiar with your latest products, services, and innovations without the need to organize costly physical get-togethers.
- Strengthen your brand through consumer engagement with visually appealing, gamified, and interactive learning content about your company’s mission, vision, and values.
- Train remote partners and vendors in your systems in a way that fosters cooperation and collaboration.
In order to realize the benefits of any modern eLearning content, we believe that it must be built on three principles:
- Creativity, both in terms of overall design and the quality of the scriptwriting
- Pedagogically structured content that makes the learning objectives clear and the learning outcomes obtainable
- Designed with localization and translation in mind, in order to avoid unnecessary costs during the life cycle of the content.
We will continue this series of blogs on eLearning by looking more closely at the kinds of rich content that modern eLearning uses. We will show you how we create engaging content for different needs.
If you would like to hear more about how we design and produce eLearning for organizations like yours, or to hear about our reference cases, please contact us!
Want to know how you can deliver engaging content for your users?
If you can't wait for our next eLearning blog, then you can already download our completely free eBook on modern eLearning.
In it, you will learn about:
- The benefits of measurable learning outcomes
- The types of exercises and other content being used today
- Three case studies that show how eLearning can be applied in practice