An Important Problem Your LMS Isn’t Solving And What You Can Do About It
Engagement.
According to a Gallup survey, only 30% of the American workforce is engaged. The remaining 70%, not so much. It now takes a great deal to keep your employees engaged.
Training your employees is the only way to keep them engaged.
Most companies today train their employees (if you aren't then it's time you start). But has the disengagement problem been solved?
In fact, quite the opposite.
Information overload has made sure that everyone’s attention spans are low. And we now have more training programs and more disengagement.
Irrespective of the course content and the value of a training program, if engagement is lacking, learning does not happen. So, if you’re looking to make your training programs effective, engagement is the key.
Low Engagement
Let’s try to understand why engagement rates are low.
Learners find the learning experience boring and frustrating. In most cases, training programs are assigned to them with the learner not very sure what the takeaway is.
Solutions like gamification are proposed as methods of motivation to make learning happen. But in spite of gamification and other gimmicks, if the learning process isn’t interesting, a few brownie points and badges don’t make a difference.
Is there no hope for this conundrum?
No, there is, and it begins with the choice of LMS.
LMS choices are made based on the use cases and needs of trainers and administrators. Little goes into making sure an LMS makes life easy for learners. Choose an LMS that is also built for learners.
How to make life easy for learners?
Make learning easier.
Microlearning
Movies come with trailers. It is the same with any large piece of content. If learners are required to sit through lengthy courses, they are most likely to get bored.
So break it down.
Break it down into interesting, actionable bites just like movie trailers. When content gets broken down into actionable bites, it’s not just easier to consume but easier to act on as well. Learners will get the takeaways and will also have some incentive to sit through long courses.
So much has been spoken about microlearning in the LMS community. Though it is a step forward, it doesn’t address the problem completely.
What we need is a little more than microlearning.
Open Learning
Research suggests that the human brain is not capable of processing information that is not of immediate use. Microlearning courses have to be broken into actionable micro bites, and a choice of progress has to be built in. A choice for the learner to move from one actionable bite to another or take a deep dive into a particular course. Microlearning should also be accompanied by an intelligent suggestion mechanism that suggests different courses to the learner based on their learning path.
Different lesson choices for different learners leading to different learning paths is the key to make learning interesting, simpler and easier.
Informal Learning
If that sounds interesting, there are also a number of ideas out there that show what interests and motivates people.
Learning has to take a cue from real-world behavior.
How many times do people buy something on the internet without looking at reviews? Is there any action of ours that is devoid of social authority in the current landscape?
The same applies to learning.
People look up to peers and are more likely to consume things that are consumed and shared by them. That begs the question, is the content from your LMS shareable?
When a learner has completed a particular course and has found it interesting, is there any way for this person to communicate it with his/her peers?
Can your learners create informal learning groups and showcase what they have just learned, or find interesting new courses shared by others?
Informal groups for learners decentralize the Learning Management System experience and place the learner at their center.
Having all these built in an LMS makes sure people learn, stay engaged and grow.
The Dawn
Concepts like same learning paths for all, robotic course content and language, curriculum-based learning, and lengthy monotonous courses that don’t kindle the curiosity of learners don’t belong to the 21st century.
People are intelligent, talented and busy. They’ve actionable,time-bound stuff to do.
Make sure the LMS you choose is built for them.
