With a growing need to foster effective learning, organisations worldwide are banking on Learning Management Systems (LMS) to establish a robust platform for corporate training and cater to the training needs of a wide learner demographic. In this article, we outline what an LMS can do to improve learning and what are the benefits of Learning Management System for the organisation.
What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application that can administer, regulate, track, and deliver learning. While LMSs are equipped with features that enable to deliver fully automated online training, they also support hybrid training models such as blended learning and flipped classroom approach. They are a one-stop solution that delivers training material to learners, administers tests and assignments, tracks the learners’ progress, manages record-keeping and offers continuous support.
What can a Learning Management System do to improve learning?
Tracking the Learning: Fostering continuous employee development and sustaining Compliance are prime focus areas for every organisation. A Learning Management System helps to achieve this by keeping track of who has taken the training and how well they performed.
Prompting for Retraining: An LMS can inform you when the last training was undertaken and when it must be retaken to promote continuous improvement and/or ensure the employee’s knowledge is up to date.
Real-Time Audit Reporting: A Learning Management System can accurately track the learners’ progress and provide detailed reports in real time.
Learning on Demand: An LMS grants the learners access to training material 24/7, so they can learn when THEY want to and revisit the courses if they feel the need to reinforce learning.
Learning Anytime, Anywhere: The growing buzz on mLearning or Mobile Learning is prompting organisations to deliver their training on Laptops, Smartphones and Tablets. A device-responsive LMS can support adoption of mLearning by delivering eLearning (in the form of mobile apps, videos, and other formats) to mobile devices, paving way for learning anytime, anywhere.
What are the benefits of Learning Management System for the organisation?
Boost in Employee Performance: With eLearning courses available in the LMS on demand, any immediate training needs can be met quickly and effectively, thus laying a foundation for performance improvement.
Accelerated Compliance Training: With a Learning Management System in place, induction of new recruits is much easier, regulated and faster. The sooner they align to your organisation’s vision, mission and goals, the sooner they will start delivering high-quality services to both, customers and the business.
Reduced Training Costs: ROI models have shown that using an LMS and delivering eLearning courses significantly cuts down the cost of training, as opposed to organising and conducting traditional, face-to-face trainings.
Regulated Multiple Sites Deployment: A Learning Management System makes it easy for deploying the training in multiple sites by ensuring uniformity in learning and consistency in the message delivered across all locations.
Nobody Misses the Training: Learners have the flexibility to schedule learning at their convenience and fit learning into a busy work schedule – this has shown to significantly improve the training uptake. Using the LMS to deliver the learning in small chunks makes it convenient for the learner to schedule their own training such that their workflow is not hampered due to the time consumed in training. On the other hand, managers can keep track of those who have taken the training and those who have not and accordingly encourage/remind them to take the training.
Learning Aligned to Organisation’s Needs: The Learning Management System is a powerful tool that dynamically aligns the learning to your organisation’s needs. Trainings for new initiatives such as product launches and introduction of new processes can be rolled out quickly, effectively and consistently, and the impact of learning can be readily measured.
Modern Learning Management Systems feature UIs that are built in alignment with the latest trends in eLearning, such as:
With all these features, you can deliver a highly engaging user experience and enhance the impact of your training.
Need more?
Want more insight into the benefits of Learning Management System and how to maximise the usage of your existing LMS platform to improve the ROI of your training spend?
We at EI Design have a rich 15 years of experience in handling the world’s leading LMS platforms. Check out our LMS Expertise page or schedule a call with our Solution Architecting Team.
Informal learning is self-directed learning that is driven by learner’s passion and motivation. In this article, I outline the differences between formal and informal learning and show how you can leverage on informal learning in the workplace.
Informal Learning In The Workplace: 8 Benefits
Before getting into how you can leverage on informal learning in your workplace, it is important to understand the key differences between formal and informal learning.
While the jury is divided on the benefits and the impact of informal training, I believe that instead of having a formal vs. informal training debate, the right approach is to encourage a blend of both at workplace. This judicious blend can meet your organization’s training needs and learning outcomes, and more significantly, help create a culture that promotes “learning as a continuum”.
What Is Formal Learning?
Formal learning is structured learning delivered through programs that could be online, face-to face (Instructor Led Training or ILT), or blended.
Based on Training Needs Analysis (TNA), learning outcomes are identified, and specific training programs are designed to meet them. These could be facilitated (ILT), online (eLearning or mLearning), or blended.
Creating formal training programs requires specialized expertise and access to varied talent pool, comprising Subject Matter Experts, Instructional Designers, Visual Designers, technology experts, and so on. This is associated with high costs and longer lead time to develop and deploy.
L&D teams, in conjunction with business units, define how the formal training needs to be delivered, tracked, and consumed. The learner doesn’t have a say in any of these aspects, though.
What Is Informal Learning?
Informal learning, on the other hand, gives control to the learners to choose the learning content from various sources, based on their interest, preferences, and relevance. These can be consumed at the learner’s pace.
Informal learning need not happen from structured content alone. It can happen any time during the day including interactions with colleagues, seniors, or coaches.
As a logical extension, informal learning will not have any set methodology, which is always associated with formal learning.
You will note that informal learning allows us to satisfy our curiosity and, in the process, helps to improve our knowledge base, pick up a new technique, or hone an existing skill.
It is spontaneous and can happen any time the learner sees something that piques their curiosity or will add value to their job.
It is worthwhile to note here that successful usage of informal learning rests on the learners. The profile of a learner who invests in informal learning is typically an individual who is goal-oriented and is always on the lookout to explore, experiment, and learn.
What Are The Benefits Of Informal Learning?
As children, we are naturally tuned to learning informally. In our formative years, it is informal learning that keeps us revved and mentally active and helps us learn, often without even realizing it, as new vistas of knowledge unfold.
Having this hunger for learning and investing time on this can keep us ahead of the curve both in life and particularly at work.
Benefits Of Informal Learning For The Learners
Let us see what specific benefits informal learning brings in for the learners:
Learning is more focused, as it is fully driven by the learner.
Learning is more fulfilling –As adult learners, we want autonomy and control. With informal learning, we are in full control of what we are exploring and learning.
Unlike formal learning, which can often become a bitter pill, iInformal learning is more fun and happens at our pace, based on our interest.
We can begin without any significant learning plan. Today, we have access to so much information, particularly online, that can be used to continuously acquire new learning.
Without the pressure of having to clear a test, get a decent score, and perform (show its application on the job), we find it easier to dive into and sustain the momentum of Informal learning.
On the other hand, a colleague or a mentor would also find it a lot easier to participate in an impromptu discussion of knowledge share. In the case of formal training, they will need to prepare in advance, schedule the session, ensure the target profile turns up, and so on.
Benefits Of Informal Learning For The Organization
From an organizational perspective, informal learning:
Facilitates creation of the blueprint for a “learning organization”.
Provides avenues for collaboration between employees.
What Are The Ways In Which Informal Learning Can Happen In A Workplace?
Without realizing, we are continuously learning informally at work too (over coffee, in discussions before scheduled meetings begin, or as you step out for breaks).
You can possibly identify some of the following situations:
Sharing a tip by sharing the highlight of a “deal” closed by you and what you did differently to beat the competition (as you were waiting for the Sales team review meeting to begin).
Sharing a best practice that helped you cut down the time of a file you produced.
Showing a new inductee how to use the in-house Project Management tool (as you notice him struggling with it in the morning).
Sharing the newsletter you received as you logged in (this resonated with the challenge you had discussed in the monthly review the previous day).
Checking online for tips that help you manage new team members.
Organizations can certainly foster this approach by providing:
Flexibility for learners to share inputs (for a specific mandate).
Informal learning can also be integrated to support formal learning programs. You can have pre/post sessions that haveinformal learning avenues for employees to exchange ideas, thoughts, tips, and best practices.
I hope this article provides cues to see the benefits and the value of informal learning at your workplace. I truly believe in its power to promote continuous learning. If you have any feedback or suggestions, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.
One in every six online courses we develop is for compliance. As a result, our focus has consistently been on how to enrich the learning experience for the learners as well as meet the corporate compliance mandate. We pride ourselves in creating compliance courses that truly engage the learners and instill the spirit of “why comply”. Besides engaging learning designs, we have successfully used Performance Support Tools in innovative design formats to supplement and complement several compliance initiatives globally.
How Performance Support Tools Can Supplement Compliance Courses
In this article, I will share 3 examples that illustrate how Performance Support Tools supplement Compliance courses.
What are Performance Support Tools and where exactly do they fit in an organization’s learning strategy?
Performance Support Tools (PSTs) provide employees with on-the-job tools that make their work a lot easier. Unlike training, these tools are available to support and guide employees as they actually do their jobs. These tools are very easy to find, often directly embedded into the learners’ workflow (Learning Hub) and offer active guidance.
These solutions enable organizations to provide the right amount of task guidance, support, and productivity benefits to learners precisely at the moment of need.
How do Performance Support Tools help learners?
Performance Support Tools provide an option for employees to learn and work at the same time. They can help an organization to reduce the cost of training while increasing productivity and performance.
How can you enhance the impact of your compliance initiatives with Performance Support Tools intervention?
I quote again from my article Performance Support Tools: Top 5 Things Your Boss Wants To Know. The real solution lies in creating “learning as a continuum”. A good way to do this is to identify the areas for formal training and use Performance Support Tool intervention to reinforce it shortly after the formal session.
You can then create a “learning path” that has interventions like this during the year. A combination of reinforcement as well as new assets that push application of knowledge on-the-job will help you create a high degree of knowledge recall, retention, and application.
We have successfully integrated Performance Support Tool intervention into compliance mandates by creating a learning path (rather than just the formal training that happens a finite number of times in a year).
Let me share 3 examples that illustrate how we leveraged the power of Performance Support Tools to create awareness or reinforcement of the compliance mandate.
Example 1: Performance Support Tool to reinforce message on conflict management.
Innovation: We have used whiteboard animation as the design approach here. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops.
Focus of the Performance Support Tool: This is one of my favorite approaches and the example featured here showcases its effectiveness in complementing a compliance course (on conflict management). Simple illustrations (that use real-life scenarios) and concise audio drive the message very effectively. The Performance Support Tool outlines that conflicts always exist and outlines how you can recognize them and ascertain ways and means to mitigate them.
Example 2: Performance Support Tool as a prequel to a compliance course – to create awareness on whistleblowing.
Innovation: We have used an Adobe After Effects-based design approach here. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops.
Focus of the Performance Support Tool: Often, whistleblowing is perceived to be negative but as we all know, when this is done in good faith, it is the right approach. To meet this precise challenge, we designed this Performance Support Tool as a prequel to the main eLearning course. It helps learners understand the value of the whistleblowing concept and uses a scenario to reinforce when learner action is necessary.
Example 3: Performance Support Tool to reinforce best practices on Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE).
Innovation: We have used a combination of animations, subtle music and typography to highlight the message. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops.
Focus of the Performance Support Tool: This Performance Support Tool supplements the primary eLearning course and provides a recap of the best practices pertaining to Health, Safety, and Environment aspects. It also features a scenario to reinforce the required learner action.
I hope you will find the article and the featured examples useful in creating an effective compliance roll-out for your organization. If you need any specific support on how you can enrich the compliance courses, do contact me.
Today, outsourcing content development is a fairly well established practice for several organizations. However, what works for one organization and helps them leverage on an offshore partner may not work for another. So, how can you determine if you should evaluate eLearning content development outsourcing? The answer lies in looking at the pros of content development outsourcing and comparing them against the triggers of your outsourcing need. In this article I will outline the pros of content development outsourcing and how you can use these pointers and arrive at the right strategy to outsource and create a successful partnership that you can leverage on.
The Advantages Of eLearning Content Development Outsourcing
As head of an organization that has been a trusted offshore eLearning content developmentpartner for several global organizations, I will dip into my own experience to outline the pros of eLearning content development outsourcing.
The Triggers For eLearning Content Development Outsourcing
Scaling (to handle higher volumes).
Reducing the time to market.
Reduction in cost.
Access to talent that you do not have.
Addition of more innovative solutions to your portfolio.
Having clarity on why you want to outsource and what gains you seek from each of them is vital in creating an effective outsourcing strategy.
Top 6 Benefits Of eLearning Content Development Outsourcing
Reduction in costs.
This is certainly the first and the probably the biggest benefit of outsourcing. Through outsourcing, you can get access to large talent pools that map exactly to your requirement and yet pay a fraction of the cost that you would incur if you were to hire them in-house.
Flexibility to scale the team up and down. eLearning content development outsourcing offers you greater flexibility by allowing you to rapidly scale up and down the required team exactly as per your business dynamics.
Access to new skill sets and more varied talent in a given domain.
With rapidly changing learner expectations, tools and technologies it is not possible to have all combinations of skills that you or your customers may require. Outsourcing offsets this challenge and offers you the flexibility to have more than one partner to be able to address varied solutions.
Reduction in development time leading to a faster turnaround time.
Typically, an outsourcing partner will have a dedicated team addressing your requirement including focus on shorter development cycles. This gives you a significant edge in managing a quicker turnaround time for your projects particularly when your internal teams may not be available.
Access to best practices leading to optimization of your development practices.
Remember your partner will be servicing needs of several organizations and therefore, is more likely to have development practices that are optimized for globally distributed development. You can use these cues to enhance your own development practices further.
Additionally, you will get the following business gains:
Addition of more innovative solutions to your portfolio. You can leverage on your partner’s skills to enhance your portfolio to service more varied or more complex needs.
Enhanced focus on your customers.
Leveraging on the partner’s development strengths enables you to bring higher focus on customer interfacing activities rather than day to day execution. Besides creating better customer satisfaction, this may enable you to address new opportunities.
I hope this article was useful in reinforcing the pros of eLearning content development outsourcing. Remember to tie these gains back to your triggers or needs to outsource and you will arrive at the right decision.
Interactive videos can be used to create high-impact corporate training (for both formal training as well as for performance support). In this article, I showcase 5 killer examples of interactive videos for corporate training.
Interactive Videos For Corporate Training: How Is An Interactive Video Different From Traditional Training Videos?
Although using videos for training has been an established practice for several years, they fall short when the run lengths are long, as it gets difficult to retain the learner’s attention till the end. The passivity or lack of engagement becomes a drawback when cognition levels are higher and the learners are required to analyze and apply the learning.
This is exactly where interactive videos fit in.
Today’s technologies enable us to provide levels of engagement and interaction on videos that are typically part of any eLearning or mobile learning course.
As a result, we can leverage on the power of video and enhance the learning experience through a series of interactions that interactive videos provide.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Interactive Videos?
Besides providing a better learning experience through interactions, some of the other benefits of interactive videos are as follows:
High impact. You can enhance the impact of classic videos by up to 10X through interactive videos.
High learner engagement. Varied interactions and personalization will resonate better with your learners.
Meet the required cognition level. Interaction cues allow tremendous control to push cognition levels to analysis and application.
Appeal to varied learner profiles. Interactive videos are not intended for Millennials alone. In fact, they appeal to all learner profiles.
Enhance the impact of your mLearning or mobile learning solutions and leverage on the current trends. Today, interactive videos or learning experience.
How Can You Use Interactive Videos In Corporate Training?
When we look at the 70-20-10 model of learning, we see that usage of interactive videos maps to formal training as well as for Performance Support Tools. They can also be used to enhance your blended training delivery.
As formal training, they are a great fit for typical corporate training needs, including:
Compliance.
Soft Skills.
Leadership training.
Product training.
Sales training.
Behavioral change.
Change management.
They find a great fit as Performance Support Tools (PSTs). By providing interactive video-based learning aids within the learner’s workflow, you will see the application of the formal learning increase.
In the examples that I have shortlisted to show how you can use interactive videos for corporate training, I have picked instances that map to these three ways to deploy them.
Before I move on to the 5 examples of interactive videos for corporate training, let me outline the key facets of an interactive video framework.
Highlights Of Our Interactive Video Framework
We at EI Design use a customizable interactive video framework to introduce interaction levels similar to the interactions that learners typically experience in a traditional eLearning or an mLearning course.
Unlike other online solutions offering interactive videos, our interactive framework:
Offers the flexibility of further customization based on the learning needs.
Offers multi-device compatibility: The videos work across multiple platforms such as Desktops, Tablets, and Smartphones (iOS and Android).
Enables you to include branching within a single video or multiple videos.
Allows inclusion of Gamification elements.
Provides room to include videos from online sources, like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Is compatible with AICC, SCORM 1.2, 2004, and TinCan. It can be hosted on LMS/LRS or can be run as a standalone piece on a web server.
Comes with SCORM-related features such as completion time, resume, and scoring in LMS/LRS.
Interaction points for learners: The framework is designed to break the monotony of the learning experience. This is reflected in the various interactivity types that the framework offers, which include:
Hotspots.
Button click.
Fill in the blanks.
Carousel.
Single-choice assessments.
Multiple-choice assessments.
Drag and drop.
5 Killer Examples Of Interactive Videos For Corporate Training – Created In Our Interactive Videos Framework
Here’s a short video that highlights the benefits of interactive videos with 5 examples on how they can be used to boost the impact of learning.
Example 1 – Application Simulation Video Made Interactive
This video showcases how we brought in engaging interactivities to an application simulation course of Microsoft Word application with the interactive video approach. The video (containing narration) features how to use Microsoft Word.
We’ve jazzed up the learning with interactivities such as click and learn, some review questions, and the summary of learning, which appear on the video as overlay popups.
Example 2 – Interactive Video For Compliance Training
This video nugget features high-impact, contextual imagery and recaps the basic aspects of a Health, Safety, and Compliance (HSE) compliance course. We brought in inline checks at the end of each feature explained in the video and created a trackable asset (the Interactive Video is SCORM compatible).
This solution is an example of how you can multiply the impact of your existing compliance-related videos and convert them into rich and interactive formats adhering to SCORM or AICC standards.
Example 3 – Interactive Video For Corporate Training On Managing Customer Expectations
This interactive video showcases how we have transformed a scenario-based video into an engaging, interactive experience.
The video is on Managing Customer Expectations, and while the story plays out in a logical flow, viewers get to pause the video at regular intervals and check their understanding of the concept along the way.
To keep the learners engaged, it includes review questions, click and display, hot spots, drag and drop, and other interactivities.
The scenarios in the video help learners relate to the subject and provide a realistic feel in terms of how they should treat customers and what they should do to meet customer expectations. The interactive video, being a short microlearning nugget, also helps learners learn the bite-sized way.
Example 4 – ILT Converted To Interactive Video
This interactive video solution showcases how we have converted an ILT session into an engaging learning experience.
In this video, we have an Instructor demonstrating the features and benefits of eBridge, our review and collaboration tool.
We’ve pepped up the learning journey with interactivities such as click and learn, info highlights, and drag and drop.
This solution is a classic example of how you can multiply the impact of your existing videos and convert the recordings of ILT sessions into a rich, interactive format.
Although the core is still the Instructor’s recording, the approach is now more learner-centric.
Example 5 – Training Video On Financial Subject Made Interactive
This video showcases how we have brought a relatively dry financial concept of Japanese Candlesticks to life with the interactive video approach.
The video features eye-catching visuals in the form of illustrations, icons, graphics, photographs, and animations with a voiceover explaining the subject playing out in the background.
The interaction points in the video come in the form of options to take notes and voice controls to navigate through the video. Learners can either type in their notes or provide feedback by recording their voice.
Learners can also learn using the drop-down interactivity to choose the right options in a simulation designed exclusively to explain the concept of Japanese Candlestick charts.
I hope these 5 killer examples of interactive videos help you identify how you can use them for your corporate training. If you have any queries or need any specific support, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.
Take a look at this video that showcases the key features of our interactive video framework. You can see the various interactivities that can be used to create an engaging learning experience.
Although outsourcing of online training has significant benefits, it does have inherent risks. This article outlines how you can mitigate these risks by selecting the right partner and create a successful outsourcing strategy.
How To Select The Right Partner And De-risk Your Initiative When Outsourcing Online Training
We, at EI Design have had the privilege of being a strategic outsourcing partner for several global organizations. We have seen one-off engagements turning into long-term relationships involving multi-year contracts.
We know that outsourcing custom or bespoke content development is not devoid of challenges. However, we do know by experience that these can be effectively mitigated using the right framework to evaluate the partner. If you get this right, you’re well on your way to achieve your goal of working with the partner that suits you best.
In this article, I outline several pointers that can be used during the evaluation of potential partner(s) and can substantially de-risk the challenges associated with your outsourcing initiative. Furthermore, these will also help you build for success and see your outsourcing gains multiply over time.
Is Outsourcing Your Online Training (Custom Or Bespoke Content Development) Right For You?
To begin with, you need to be certain about why you want to outsource. As a first step, you need to identify if your outsourcing requirement is strategic or opportunistic. The focus then shifts to the gains that you are eyeing from the outsourcing initiative.
Some of the factors that suggest you should opt for outsourcing are:
Scalability (to take up work in greater volumes).
A reduction in time to deliver/time to market.
Cutting costs.
Accessing talent that you do not have.
Enhancing your portfolio with newer, better, and more innovative solutions.
What Are The Reasons Why Outsourcing Online Training (Custom Or Bespoke Content Development) Helps Every Business?
Here is my list of 8 reasons why outsourcing custom or bespoke content development helps every business.
1. Reduction In Costs.
Ask anyone why they are looking to outsource and the most obvious response would be cost-cutting. Outsourcing allows you to get your work done in lesser time, lesser price, and with the desired level of quality.
2. Flexibility To Scale The Team Up And Down.
Business requirements keep varying but you can’t alter the size of your internal team every single time. With outsourcing, you can address this challenge as you get the flexibility to get more (or less) heads and hands to ensure the project sees the light of the day with minimal fuss.
3. Access To New Skill Sets And More Varied Talent In A Given Domain.
Tools and technology keep changing and at the pace at which they do, it becomes difficult to possess the skills and expertise to address the varied requirements. With outsourcing, you can bridge this gap and use the skills and expertise that your partner brings to the table.
4. Reduction In Development Time Leading To A Faster Turnaround Time.
One of the advantages that most outsourcing partners offer to provide is a short turnaround time to complete the work you assign them. They do this with a dedicated team aligned to work for you and take care of the minutest of details pertaining to your requirement.
5. Access To Best Practices Leading To Optimization Of Your Development Practices.
If you’re in the learning business, you know that there’s a lot of learning that happens with and from others. The same applies to adopting newer, better development practices. If your outsourcing partner has worked with a variety of global organizations, they’re likely to have several effective development practices. You can also get a peek into these and adopt a few in your organization yourself.
6. Addition Of More Innovative Solutions To Your Portfolio.
Working with an outsourcing partner gives you exposure to the different kinds of solutions that they offer. You can make the best of this opportunity and enrich your own solution portfolio with cues from your partner’s offerings.
7. Enhanced Focus On Your Customers.
When you have a partner taking care of a portion of your work, a lot of burden is off your shoulders allowing you to focus on your customers (internal or external). This way, you can better your chances of achieving customer delight and offer better service or open up newer avenues of business and revenue.
8. Channelize Your Resources To Strategic Activities.
By delegating certain portions of your work to an outsourcing partner, you can let your team spend more time and energy on the strategic side of your business.
How Should You Begin The Exercise Of Outsourcing Online Training?
Once you’re certain about why you want to outsource, you need to turn your attention to evaluating the options, wherein you need to consider whether you want to go with:
1. An Onshore Partner Or An Offshore Partner?
Here too, there are advantages and disadvantages. An onshore partner will provide you with access to more talent and help you enhance your existing portfolio but you might want to keep an eye on the weighing scale in terms of the cost and profitability for your business. An offshore partner on the other hand will be comparatively lighter on your pocket and provide you with other gains but you would need to factor for challenges such as time zone differences, communication, and cultural differences.
2. Single Or Multiple Partners?
Most organizations tend to play safe and opt for multiple partners rather than relying on one partner. I personally recommend going with one partner if you have a robust evaluation process in place and can test waters with your partner with pilot projects, thereby getting a complete view of what lies ahead before you get your partner to sign the dotted line.
That said, there are certain risks/challenges that you need to take care of before you get down to evaluate a partner.
What Are The Challenges In Outsourcing Your eLearning Content Development?
To make sure that there are no hiccups in your outsourcing venture, you need to watch out for:
1. Hidden Costs.
You may have factored for the outsourcing cost and allocated the time and budget to your Project Managers accordingly. However, if your partner doesn’t get your brief right, it may lead to reworks and multiple iterations/reviews. This can play a spoilsport in terms of cost and the project schedule.
2. Aspects That You Can Identify Only After You Begin Outsourcing.
Your outsourcing partner may have put their best talent on the job during the pilot stage to grab your attention and convince you to hand over the contract to them. You will have to ensure that there are no surprises as you actually begin working with your partner and interact with a completely different team that may not live up to your expectations.
3. Inconsistency In Performance And Quality Standards.
Closely linked to the challenge outlined above, you might get to see variations in the output and inconsistency in its quality. This will also have a bearing on the cost and project schedule.
4. Inability Of Your Partner To Adapt And Align Effectively To Changing Dynamics.
The learning industry is very dynamic and changes are taking place at all fronts, including tools and technology. You need to make sure that your partner is in sync with the changing dynamics and aligned to your future goals.
5. Challenges Intrinsic To Globally Distributed Development.
When you work with offshore partners, you have to deal with challenges such as time zone differences and interacting with team members who come from different geographies. This may have an impact on effective collaboration and if you don’t get it right, it may result in additional costs and unpleasant experiences.
How To Build For Success – What Are The Attributes Of A Partner That Will Help You Get Outsourcing Of Your Online Training Right?
Building an outsourcing strategy that works and delivers the required value needs the selection of the right partner who can understand the complexity involved in design, development and implementation of varied online training solutions.
The foundation. To begin with, they need to understand the business objectives, learner profiles, their proficiency, expected gains and should be able to suggest options featuring different learning strategies. Capability to consult and architect the right strategy is paramount.
The engagement model. Then the focus shifts to the engagement model that facilitates collaboration between distributed teams and provides an effective and transparent communication.
Access to the right talent pool. Finally, the development model needs to factor for processing of the brief effectively and be supported by strong Instructional Design, Visual Design, Technology, and Quality Assurance teams.
Building for success. Collaboration, flexibility and agility are three important aspects that make or break a successful partnership.
Easier said than done? Here is my list of 10 parameters that you can use to find the right partner.
Each of these parameters actually helps you de-risk or mitigate the risks inherent with outsourcing. Once you have the right partner, you will be able to to see successful outsourcing of your online training.
Expertise and relevant experience (but do verify references).
Focus on Innovation so that their solutions keep you ahead of the curve.
Maturity of processes and development methodology: The maturity of the processes has a direct bearing on quality and predictability. The development methodology needs to factor for distributed development and must provide for collaboration and ease of working across teams/across time zones.
Project management: You need to ascertain how it is aligned to collaboration, communication, and needs for globally distributed development.
Solution Architecting capability: Check whether it is aligned to meet diverse training needs and whether it encompasses new or upcoming approaches.
Talent pool: The partner you’re looking for must have the right capabilities in Account Management, Delivery (Project Management), Instructional Design, Visual Design, Technology, and Quality Assurance.
Capability to scale: At short notice, they should have access to the right profile of resources that can be scaled to meet your burst mode requirements.
Infrastructure and measures to protect your Intellectual Property (IP).
Sound understanding of Authoring Tools and Technology.
Strong Risk Management practices.
You can also take a look at this video to know how you can opt for the right outsourcing partner and get your outsourcing strategy right.
Like any initiative, outsourcing of online training also has its risks. In this article, I have outlined how you can reduce or offset most of these inherent risks. Most of these aspects are from my own experience over the last 15 years and they really work.
The biggest success factor is to have a focus on building a long-term partnership. Both sides must look beyond the transactions and establish a framework that will create success – blips and occasional misses notwithstanding.
If you have any specific queries on this, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.
In one of my earlier articles published in eLearning Industry portal on Aug 30th’14, I had shared a case study on the benefits of Gamification in learning (through a serious game concept).
In this article, I am sharing another case study using the same content (on Account Management Fundamentals) but re-designed using an Avatar-based approach. I will also share the gains that accrued with this enhanced approach.
While Gamification has been applied in several domains, our focus has been on its application in learning. The games that we design are therefore geared to meet definite learning outcomes and our Gamification strategies broadly map to:
Tasks or concepts that are overlaid on the learning content but are not related to the content
Contextual tasks or concepts that are overlaid on the learning content
Partial Gamification (notably in inline checks and end of course assessments)
Background
We had to re-design a quick online training for Project Managers who were being groomed to handle Account Management practices.
The course on Account Management Fundamentals outlined the basics of account management and more specifically, what they must do to move their organization up the value chain. The learners needed to understand two aspects:
Their organization’s view that was to scale the newly acquired/existing customer to an Account and then to a Key Account
The need to work on changing the customer’s view and scale their organization from a service vendor to a strategic partner (This journey was mapped to four levels/quadrants and it represented the challenges that the learners must face to accomplish the required mandate.)
The new brief
The need for re-design arose on account of two aspects:
The first was on account of varied backgrounds of learners. The target learners included Project Leads, Associate Project Managers, Project Managers, and Program Managers. The typical Project Management experience ranged from three years to 10 years.
The second was to have learners face challenges that mapped to their experience. In the initial concept, all learners went through an identical learning path featuring identical questions. However, in real life, the more experienced professionals would face trickier situations as they will handle bigger and more challenging accounts.
The revised concept
After reviewing the new brief, my team came up with an Avatar-based Gamification approach. The highlights of this approach were:
Creation of different learner paths
Alignment of the learning and Gamification path to the proficiency of learners
Presentation of a mix of questions in each path (mapping to real life challenges commensurate with the proficiency level of the learners)
Non-availability of learning aids of theory (lifeline) for higher proficiency learners to make the challenge tougher. (The complexity and the nature of the challenges posed to the learners tested their cognitive proficiency to tackle the situation at hand, thereby resulting in immersive learning.)
What we retained
From the original Gamification concept, we retained the overall look and feel and the Introduction.
We updated the rules of the game to sync up with the new approach.
Then we added the Avatar selection frame.
For the learners choosing more than eight years of experience, we provided a different path. After the Avatar selection, a Jeopardy game was presented to test their fundamentals on Account Management. Specifically,
A good score enabled them to move directly to Level 2.
2. However, if they scored less than 60%, they were provided with a friendly message nudging them to take up Level 1:
This is the landing page of Level 1. The Avatar chosen at the time of selection was in the middle. The challenges were presented on clicking or selecting the objects with the (+) symbol.
This was a sample question/challenge. On answering correctly, the learners were awarded a star as highlighted. We provided different question banks for each path that matched the challenges with the experience of the learners.
We also added surveys to seek inputs on the learners’ current understanding of Project Management.
The gains
We were able to match the learner proficiency to a specific learning path that gave them the right insight on how to handle customers. The Avatar-based approach helped us carry out this mapping.
At EI Design, we have been crafting gamification for serious learning (corporate learning) for over two years now. We now see a maturing in corporates’ understanding of its true potential and how a well-crafted gamification solution can create the right learning impact. Today, gamification is poised to impact corporate learning. It is more than a buzz and is steadily gaining momentum on account of increase in adoption of mobile learning or mLearning and significant numbers of millennial learners in the overall learner demographics that are asking for it.
Ways In Which Gamification Impacts Corporate Learning
In this article, I will share insights on how gamification is poised to impact corporate learning through the 4 key drivers that are pushing it (hence, why you should evaluate it/adopt it).
Background
Before getting into the specifics of how gamification will impact corporate learning, let’s quickly look at the basics. I begin by using 3 questions from my article on Gamification For Serious Learning – 5 Facts That Will Impress Your Boss to set the context. Then we will look at the crucial fourth question on how exactly gamification will impact corporate learning.
Q1. What Is Gamification?
Gamification is an alternate approach to traditional eLearning to provide engaging, immersive, and effective learning experience to your learners. By using gaming principles, elements, and innovative strategies, learners can be engaged and encouraged to apply this learning at work.
It provides an effective informal learning environment and helps learners practice real-life situations and challenges in a safe environment. Typical components of gamification-based learning courses are shown here.
Q2. What Are The Advantages Of Using Gamification Vis-A-Vis Traditional eLearning?
There are several aspects of learning notably its retention, and eventual application on the job that can be influenced by gamification.
Specifically:
Gamification puts scientific principles of repeated retrieval and spaced repetition to good effect and brings about a remarkable change in behavior.
Games can be “fun” for the learner but still have a significant impact on learning. (The player can experience “fun” during the game and still experience “learning” during gameplay if the level of engagement is high.)
Playing games with high levels of engagement leads to an increase in retention.
Q4. How Will Gamification Impact Corporate Learning?
I am listing what I believe are the 4 key drivers that indicate how gamification will impact corporate learning.
The gain for the learners (the learner perspective).
The last 4-5 years have seen dramatic changes in the way learning is delivered. Extensive adoption of mobile learning or mLearning allows learning to be delivered on devices of learners’ choice (including tablets and smartphones). The way learning solutions are being crafted is also undergoing a significant change. The focus is now on crafting more engaging and immersive learning solutions that appeal to the changing learner demographics, which now has a significant percentage of Millennials. Increasingly, modern day solutions use micro learning and feature extensive usage of videos and social learning. Both these factors provide a clear room to provide gamification-based learning that can be deployed on mobile devices in formats that appeals to the learners. It can be crafted in a style that resonates well with the learners leading to higher retention and application.
The gain for business (the business perspective).
While gamification-based learning has always appealed to the learner community, corporates have often been hesitant to embrace this on a wider scale. Not anymore! There are several case studies that establish gamification (for serious learning) creates:
High impact training.
Effective application on the job.
Maturing of tools and technologies to support gamification-based solutions.
This is a very significant driver and today it is much easier to craft effective gamification solutions on account of:
Maturing of mLearning or mobile learning authoring tools (particularly responsive).
Availability of varied gamification platforms to choose from.
Learning Management System support for gamification.
Capability to create high impact learning solutions.
With gamification, the learner engagement quotient is significantly high. It allows organizations to challenge the learners, get them to give their very best as there are rewards for the taking, bring in a sense of variety, and use the community factor and healthy competition among learner groups to good effect. Higher motivation levels and a responsive learning environment will help learners make their own contributions to the organization’s knowledge base. A well-crafted gamification solution designed with the learner preferences in mind will certainly result in higher learner engagement and knowledge retention. This in turn leads to enhanced performance, better application of learning, and fulfillment of the expectations that an organization has with its workforce and the learning initiative.
Specifically, gamification can:
Support all training needs (ranging from Induction, onboarding, behavioral change, soft skills and compliance).
Enrich traditional eLearning-based training (through partial gamification).
Leverage on learning paths (with wide and varied range of learning assets).
Leverage on collaboration (social learning).
I hope this article was useful in understanding how gamification will impact corporate learning and trigger an evaluation or adoption of gamification for your learning needs. Do reach out to me if you have any queries. You can also refer to my earlier articles:
In this article, I touch upon key facets of mobile learning and how can you use it to impact your employee engagement and performance. I also share 10 examples that showcase how you can achieve this mandate.
How To Use Mobile Learning To Boost Employee Engagement And Performance
Mobile learning is acknowledged as a key training delivery format by organizations across the world. It is used extensively as a modern training approach that is learner centric and facilitates an ongoing consumption of smaller bytes of learning instead of one large chunk.
Let us see how mobile learning can be used to drive higher employee engagement and performance.
Learn, Recall, and Retain. As the learning bytes are delivered in interesting and engaging formats and made available to learners within their workflow, they work more effectively in helping them learn, recall, and retain.
Apply the learning on the job. Over a period of time, this leads to the required application at work (and the anticipated behavioral change). All these factors are driving the usage of mobile learning to engage learners and boost their performance.
What Is Mobile Learning And Why Is It Gaining Momentum?
Mobile learning is the next-gen eLearning that can be offered across multiple devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and so on). It is an “anytime, anywhere” learning that they can assimilate at their own pace and on devices of their choice.
Mobile learning can be used to offer formal training as well as Performance Support or PSTs (just-in-time learning aids that are part of the learners’ workflow and are readily available to them precisely at the moment of their need). It can also be used to supplement traditional Instructor Led Training (ILT).
This is not all. The adoption of mobile learning across organizations is increasing on the account of:
Changing learner profiles. Worldwide, the Millennials are a significant part of the workforce. They need access to training that works on the device of their choice (read smartphone).
How learners want to learn. Learners today do not have the time to log in to a Learning Management System and browse through to identify what they need. With a lot of pressure on time, they want precise bytes of learning that they can use to solve a problem or practice. It goes without saying; this needs to be available in their workflow (read smartphone again).
Changing learning device preferences. Learners want this control to be with them. Depending on the nature of training, whether formal or informal, lengthy or micro nuggets, they want to exercise the right to choose the device they should learn on.
Maturing of tools and technology. Today, mobile learning solutions can opt from a wide ranging array of authoring tools and LMS platforms and offer both adaptive (desktops, laptops, and tablets) and responsive designs (desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones).
Why Does It Make Sense To Adopt Mobile Learning To Increase Employee Engagement And Eventually Impact Their Performance?
The success of a training program hinges on several factors as shown here. These aspects influence learners’ engagement and the eventual performance gain.
Learners’ reaction. It begins with the crucial first connect with learners (their reaction to the online course). This has a direct bearing on how the learners respond and on the desired completion rates. Mobile learning scores a high 5 here.
Effectiveness of learning or stickiness of learning. Usage of immersive learning strategies increases the stickiness of learning. Similarly, usage of strategies that truly engage the learner, facilitate recall, and push them to think and apply is vital to succeed in this endeavor. Mobile learning offers a great value here as it supports rich media formats and trending learning strategies like microlearning, gamification, story-based learning, complex decision making using scenario-based learning, and so on.
Application of learning (leading to the desired behavioral change and a positive impact on business). As I mentioned earlier, learners will not go through an LMS to seek an answer to address a problem on the job. Instead, they need this byte to be available to them when they need it. Similarly, when they need to practice a new concept or a new skill, they want the flexibility to learn on the device they access the most. Usage of mobile learning in a microlearning format that can be used for both formal training or as Performance Support is very useful in meeting this mandate.
From these insights, you will note that you can positively impact each of these facets by adopting mobile learning. With this approach, you will see a more engaged learner.
Is Mobile Learning Or mLearning For Millennials Alone?
It is a misconception that mobile learning appeals only to the millennial workforce.
Irrespective of age, all of us spend so much of time on our smartphones and tablets that it makes tremendous sense to extend the learning on these devices.
The flexibility to use the device to learn on, the ease of learning on the go, and the usage of rich media and high impact strategies attract learners of all profiles to mobile learning adoption.
As a result, you will see higher completion rates across various learner profiles and not limited to Millennials.
Additionally:
When mobile learning is used for Performance Support (just-in-time learning aids that are available to the learners within their workflow and precisely at the moment of their need), you can see increased application of learning on the job. As I have already highlighted, this is a crucial aspect in getting the desired impact that the business seeks.
Eventually, the combination of completion of training on time, higher retention and successful application has a positive impact on the ROI.
What Learning Strategies Adapt Well To Mobile Learning Or mLearning?
While most traditional eLearning strategies can be well adapted for mobile learning or mLearning, you can see added gains as you use the following approaches:
Microlearning.
Gamification.
Story or scenario-based learning (the impact is even higher when we use videos and interactive videos).
Mobile apps for learning.
Millennial-centric designs.
Social learning.
New trends that can further increase the learner engagement include:
Learning path-based approach to encourage “learning as a continuum”.
Personalization to make the learning experience more meaningful to the learner.
Content Curation to support formal training as well as to ensure that learners contribute to enrich the knowledge base.
Given the wide ranging corporate training needs, can mobile learning or mLearning be used to offer all of them?
Absolutely!
A report drafted by SailPoint in 2013 suggests that by the year 2018, approximately 70% of the mobile workforce worldwide will manage their business-related tasks on their preferred mobile devices.
If we look at the typical range of corporate training needs, the list is likely to look like this and each of these can be offered through mobile learning or mLearning:
Induction and onboarding (now this often includes pre-onboarding).
Compliance training.
Product training.
Sales training.
Leadership training.
Application tools’ training.
Soft skills training.
Specific professional skills training.
HR/HCM initiatives.
Significant corporate initiatives: Ranging from Quality and Innovation to supporting Change Management initiatives.
10 Killer Examples
At EI Design, our mobile learning practice began in 2011. Over the last six years, we have created over 1000 hours of mobile learning solutions for both formal training as well as Performance Support, including all the trainings highlighted above.
While the initial adoption of mobile learning was limited to access till tablets (adaptive designs), over the last two years, most of our solutions support smartphones (responsive designs).
I have shortlisted the following 10 examples to show the impact of mobile learning that would map to your varied corporate training needs. These examples reflect the usage of mobile learning for formal training as well as Performance Support.
I showcase strategies including:
Microlearning.
Gamification.
Scenario-based learning.
Learning paths.
Social learning.
Personalization.
I showcase high impact delivery formats including:
Apps for learning.
Videos.
Interactive videos.
Our award winning Interactive Parallax design nugget.
Click here to view and download the interactive PDF containing the 10 examples.
I hope this article provides the required pointers that enable you to adopt mobile learning (if you are new to this) or scale its usage. The supporting 10 examples show you how you can achieve your mandate. If you have any other queries, do contact me.
In this article, I highlight five compelling reasons why you should evaluate a blended training approach that combines classroom and online training. I also share two examples to show how you can use it to create a high-impact blended training.
What Ιs Τhe Βlended Τraining Αpproach?
As the name suggests, the term blended training, or else hybrid training, combines different learning techniques. It offers a combination that brings in the best of both forms of training, namely:
As it offers a blend of both formats facilitated as well as self-paced, it maps more effectively to suit the learning expectations of a wider audience.
While the pressure on training budgets may often trigger conversion of ILT programs into eLearning or online training programs; it is equally important to assess if a middle of the road. That is, a blended delivery offering a combination of classroom and online training, may be the right answer.
The push from learners is probably the biggest factor for that. This is driving the momentum to convert Instructor-Led Training, or ILTs, into blended training. If not fully online or eLearning programs.
Certainly, pressure on budgets and a need to reach a wider audience in lesser time are two other factors. Actually, these two are significant drivers from the organizational perspective.
What Are The Benefits Learners And Organizations Gain If They Adopt A Blended Training Approach Over A Traditional ILT?
Benefits For The Learners
The blended training approach is learner-centric and provides better control to the learner in adjusting the pace at which they want to learn.
It also gives them the flexibility to pick up the online resources in case they missed the ILT session or to refresh their knowledge post the workshop.
The supplementary online training provides them a self-paced learning track. Also the online resources are available 24×7 now.
The blended training offers a significantly better collaboration, including online discussions, messaging, feedback, and a platform to communicate with peers as well as instructors.
Research confirms that retention levels of online training are higher than face-to-face facilitated sessions. Therefore, blended training approaches lead to higher levels of retention for learners.
Benefits For The Organizations
From the organizational perspective, Virtual Instructor-Led Training, or VILT enables organizations to reach a wider audience in a significantly shorter time. This comes in complete contrast to the traditional Instructor-Led Training, or ILT approach.
As you convert the ILT program to a blended training mode, the seat time also becomes shorter. For instance, a 5-day face-to-face workshop may now need a maximum of couple of days of workshop. Moreover, you can balance the learning using online resources.
Additionally, the online framework enables the instructors to assess the learners’ performance online and far more quickly.
More significantly, with a blended training approach, organizations can tap into the prevailing online strategies, like Microlearning or Gamification. They can also adopt collaborative social learning to create supplementary online trainings. Usage of these approaches provides an immersive learning experience aimed at better recall, retention and application.
The supplementary online courses or resources facilitate a continued learning post the workshop.
How Do Learners Respond To Blended Training Approach?
Each learner has a different learning style and they relate differently to a given training format.
Blended training offers a broader set of options to the learners and can match a more varied set of learning styles.
Added to this, there is the flexibility that blended training provides. Even if they miss the facilitated session, they have access to the same resources online now.
Today, you can design online courses or supplementary resources to support multi-devices including tablets and smartphones besides desktops and laptops.
Particularly, online supplementary resources can be designed using a wide range of innovative formats, like Interactive PDFs, eBooks/Flipbooks, Interactive videos, and so on.
These can be accessed by learners on the device of their choice, when they need and as often as they require. All of these help the learners retain the information and re-use it when the need arises again.
How Can Blended Training Be Delivered?
Blended training solutions can be rendered in multiple ways based on the nature of training. Broadly, this maps to:
Here, the training is facilitated by an instructor, just like in ILT, but a virtual platform is used to connect learners who can be geographically spread out. The session integrates many online aspects like polling questions, online questions, and breakout rooms to conduct group activities. These sessions can be recorded and made available to participants as an online learning aid. The instructor can provide pre-workshop material in an online format that is accessible to the learners. Online delivery also enables the instructors to obtain feedback quickly. Since the assessments are online, the results can be shared quickly and more significantly, this data can be used to track the learners’ performance and determine the training impact.
NOTE: In this case, the primary training is facilitated or instructor-led, and eLearning or online training supplements it.
2. Blended Approach Where ILT/VILT Complements The Online Or eLearning Delivery
Certain training needs cannot be mapped readily to a pure ILT or pure eLearning formats. In fact, they need both components. A good example is an induction and onboarding program where significant parts of the training can be offered in a self-paced, eLearning format. However, to successfully induct and onboard an employee, several components of this program need face-to-face sessions. In fact, some sessions will greatly benefit with group activities.
NOTE: In this case, ILT and eLearning-based training complement each other.
Examples: How Can You Enhance The impact Of ILT By Adopting A Blended Training Approach?
Let me share two examples that will help you see the value that a blended training approach will bring.
Example 1: Features our platform eSpace, a unique online framework for offering ILT and blended learning that enables you to go beyond the traditional ILTand blended delivery to a new-age digital experience.
eSpaceretains the edge of the ILT delivery and offers the benefits and flexibility of online delivery. This unique framework allows you to offer ILT or blended training through an online platform. It is a cloud-based system and works on all devices including tablets and smartphones.
You can create learning paths featuring Microlearning nuggets for blended delivery. You may also integrate Social Learning features to provide higher-impact learning.
eSpace gives you the opportunity to:
Provide Access At A Single Source For ILT Material: Learners can share pre-workshop online material before the training session. They have an ongoing access to it, both during and post workshop.
Give Instructors Control: They can define the learning path and integrate all the job aids required for training acquisition and eventually its application on the job, thereby establishing a performance gain that businesses want to see.
Communicate And Collaborate: There are several features to facilitate communication with groups and individuals.
Engage And Contribute: The tool offers different features to take feedback from participants during the training.
Take a look at this video to see the features of our eSpace platform and how it can be used to enhance the effectiveness of Instructor-Led Training and blended learning deliveries.
Example 2: For our own Induction and Onboarding program, we use a blended training approach.
Part 1 – Online Learning Path: The essential elements of induction are available to the learner through the online portal, which supports multi-devices including smartphones and tablets. The learner goes through a multi-stage learning journey. The journey features various learning resources in microlearning format.
Part 2 – ILT Supplement: At each stage of the learning journey, we do an online assessment of the learner’s progress. We also provide additional face-to-face, facilitated ILT sessions. The focus of the facilitated sessions is to push knowledge acquisition to application. We must then also ensure that the new inductee can begin contributing quickly and effectively.
The online portal features innovative approaches, including:
I hope this article gives you a balanced perspective as you evaluate the transition of your ILT programs into online training modes.
I firmly believe that a middle-of-the-road approach is often a more sensible choice if you are in early stages of eLearning adoption. It is also a better choice where learning gains are directly linked to a human intervention. If you have any further queries, please contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.
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