What Is Automation In eLearning?
Before we delve further, let’s understand what is meant by automation in eLearning. In the eLearning industry, automation has a wide spectrum of applications. The most common ones include the Learning Management System, which itself is a grand system and can have many internal automation modules.
Access control (to content) and assessment are two widely automated areas in the eLearning spectrum. In short, various aspects of the eLearning life cycle are being automated right from audience profiling to certification at the end of the learning cycle.
Let’s take a simplified example of how automation works in the learning domain. Consider a corporation that wants to train its executives on functional skills in a progressive manner. An automated eLearning program will push relevant content to each user based on their profile, performance, and training needs.
It will generate an assessment to evaluate the employee and direct the learning path. If any particular employee is lagging in a particular competency, the system will keep pushing content and keep evaluating till the employee becomes proficient.
Most Widely Deployed Features Of Automation In eLearning
As mentioned earlier, automation is eLearning is not fixed to a particular area. Everyone is free to choose the desired features that are to be automated. Let’s look at some commonly automated features:
- Reports
It is difficult for a large organization with thousands of employees to keep track of individual employees’ learning histories. Automation of reports comes to the rescue in such a scenario. Modern LMSs are equipped to generate a whole plethora of automated reports that management can use for a better understanding of the employees and make informed decisions. - Notifications
Most LMSs automate the notification process thereby saving a lot of time and resources. Just imagine sending a manual notification to each user about all new content, activity, etc., versus system-generated notifications in no time. - Content
Modern LMSs are capable of evaluating users’ proficiency levels and pushing relevant content accordingly. This ensures that everyone’s learning needs are catered to. - Assessment
Assessment automation is perhaps the most commonly used automation by any organization. The LMS can be used to generate questions based on pre-defined criteria from a bank. The evaluation can be done by the system quickly and accurately. - Certification
Certification is another widely used automation. The system can generate personalized certificates to be issued for successful users. A lot of certification features can be automated including but not limited to issuance, tracking, renewal, and so on.
Benefits
Automation, in any industry, brings a lot of benefits to the user as well as the organization. Let’s see how it benefits the eLearning landscape:
- Personalization of learning experience
Using automation, the learning experience can be personalized for each user. This, in turn, makes learning more effective by engaging with the users. - Data-driven learning management
Automation tools utilize user interaction data to make an informed decision about learning content and assessment for each user. Thus, the result is more accurate and effective training. - Optimized development time and cost
Using automation, the Learning and Development team can free up eLearning courseware creation time and utilize time and resources, thus saving for more meaningful activities that require intense human involvement. - Reduced time to live
Automation helps speed up training rollout and reduces the time required to make new training live.
Automation is the way every industry is leaning toward. To leverage the full potential of technological advancements, automation plays a key role that takes up repetitive work that does not essentially require human intervention.
Conclusion
eLearning, being a technology-driven industry, has the maximum potential to embrace automation and lead other industries. Modern LMSs are offering a lot of automation features. Even free and open source LMSs, such as Moodle, offer a variety of automation. LinkedIn Learning is perhaps one of the most widely known learning platforms that utilizes automation in a great way. It utilizes Artificial Intelligence to understand user actions and provide an amazing learning experience.
eLearning service providers are fast utilizing their automation capabilities to offer the best in the class learning experience for users. For a client organization, it gives immense value in terms of rapid deployment, increased Return On Investment, and better learning outcomes.