What The Report Revealed About Corporate Learning
While the recent report by Towards Maturity's study of more than 2,000 self-funded learners revealed some good news for corporate learning, there were issues for you to consider if your courses are to strike a chord with learners.
Key findings of the report:
- 70% of respondents think that eLearning has had a positive impact on their job performance.
- 80% of respondents believe that eLearning has helped further their career. That’s the good news for eLearning, but training providers need to tap into how people prefer to learn.
What the report says about how people prefer to learn:
- 90% go mobile, using apps to further their learning. Half of these apps are educational, while half are productivity tools or provide on-the-job help.
- 70% use their own smartphone, and fifty-two percent use their own tablet for learning (so BYOD is big news).
- 75% rate working in collaboration with others as essential or very useful, with another seventy percent liking technologies that enable them to network and connect with others.
- 80% say that Google or other web search engines are either essential or very useful to learn what they need to do their jobs.
- 47% rate classroom courses as essential or very useful.
Learning Professionals Must Provide A Blended Solution
It’s obvious that online learning is popular and that people love using mobile technology, so, while you should be creating eLearning that works across devices and platforms, you shouldn’t forget the personal touch just yet!
People say they like to learn from one another, so, in the move to digital, you should not eliminate the all-important human factor. It is clear that learners are looking for a flexible approach that gives them a mix of online resources, face-to-face contact, networking, and collaboration.
Classroom-based corporate learning still gets top marks, and people like face-to-face sessions because they can learn from their own teams as well as those from other departments. And, because workplace training is often about changing office behavior or organizational culture, collaboration is crucial, because it can help to shift group thinking. Personal contact is also essential to a successful and satisfying learning experience.
Related: Why blended learning is important (4 reasons)
Final Thoughts
In 2016, you need to provide learners with bite-sized, multi-device courses that enable self-paced learning. You need to support your learners with easy-to-use on-the-job tools, templates, tips, and case studies.
A blend of face-to-face and virtual classroom sessions will foster collaboration. Authoring tools like Elucidat, with inbuilt social learning features (polls, scenarios, gamification), will help you keep the all important people element in your online learning.
