Is the COVID-19 crisis forcing your company to adopt remote corporate learning in a hurry? If so, these best practices will help with the transition, writes Alexandra Goger, Senior Marketing Specialist at Itransition Group.
With so many employees now working from home, a similar widespread transition from traditional to online training and education is also taking place.
That may be great news for training companies and vendors of eLearning solutionsOpens a new window . However, it places an unforeseen burden on enterprises that must switch quickly from a face-to-face approach to training to employee development based primarily online.
Whether you choose to embrace remote learning readily or do so reluctantly in light of social distancing conventions, it makes sense to fully commit to it. That means researching and implementing principles and best practices to ensure your online training programs are effective.
5 Best Practices To Help You Embrace Remote Corporate Learning
To get you underway, here are a few guidelines that should ease the path for your organization’s successful transition to remote corporate learning.
1. Start with the right software
If you’re serious about developing a full online learning and development program for your employees, you’ll need a platform to manage content and delivery. Learning management system (LMS) software products are available to suit every type and scale of businesses and organizations. Of course, the more extensive and diverse your workforce, the more sophisticated your LMS will need to be.
The primary benefits of a learning management system are as follows:
- It provides a single location in which to keep all your learning materials and media.
- It provides the tools to track trainees’ progress and performance.
- It makes it easy to change or expand remote learning courses as required.
- It simplifies the integration of multiple methods and models of remote learning.
- It gives your students or trainees unlimited access to classes, modules, and other program components.
Learn More: Do Your Employee Skilling Initiatives Include Digital Credentials?
2. Choose between off-the-shelf or customized LMS
While there is no shortage of LMS solutions available in an off-the-shelf format, it may not be easy to find one that meets your needs precisely. However, it’s advisable to avoid trying to create a remote-learning strategy that considers the limitations of a particular LMS platform. If your employee-development team finds itself leaning toward this option, you might wish to consider engaging a development company to construct a custom-built platform for you instead.
3. Don’t lose the sense of community
Remote should not mean impersonal, so be sure your online learning strategy includes plenty of options for trainees to learn in personal and social settings. While some employees will not mind working and training in isolation, many perform more effectively when they can maintain interaction with colleagues, leaders, and trainers.
The best employee training programs include a range of learning methodologies that enable trainees to play to their learning styles and minimize motivation-sapping monotony.
Some of these methods allow and indeed require trainees to study alone when it suits them (asynchronous learning). Others involve interaction sessions between trainees and trainers, taking place in real-time (synchronous learning).
At a time like the present, when remote working and learning dominate the business environment, a program containing plenty of synchronous learning opportunities can be extremely beneficial. It’s especially advantageous for trainees who, under normal circumstances, would typically work and learn as part of a close-knit team.
Learn More: Gaming the Learning Experience: 4 Powerful Elements of Gamification
4. Diversify the learning experience
Fortunately, opportunities to mix and match different types of learning are plentiful today. The rapid development of online training over the last few years has stimulated diversity to the extent that there are now several types of solutions. Of course, some of them will match your training preferences – and those of your employees – better than others.
For example, you can choose from the following methodologies, and it will often make sense to incorporate several of them into your program:
Microlearning
These short training modules comprise text, video and images, audio, games, and tests, and are easy to consume in between other tasks. Microlearning offers proven benefits to knowledge retention and trainee engagement but may not be the best approach for teaching complex concepts or in-depth training.
Video-based learning
Video is a flexible and portable medium for training delivery, and many students retain knowledge better when they receive it via video rather than text. However, creating video courses can consume much time and — if you want the best-quality production — money.
Adaptive learning
Sometimes controversial, adaptive learning involves using artificial intelligence and related technologies to deliver highly individualized training, based on data captured before and during the learning process.
Immersive learning
Immersive learning is another hi-tech approach to training and education. It’s a method that employs virtual and augmented reality technologies to create visually immersive environments. Advantages include the ability to liven up dry, theoretical topics and make them more engaging. The cost of VR and AR technologies is reducing but could still be a little too high for some smaller businesses and organizations.
Gamification
Game-based training also uses digital technology to create engaging simulations and challenges that enable hands-on learning for trainees. Gamification encourages competition, teamwork, and collaboration among employees training in remote settings. In many cases, though, extensive customization is necessary to tailor game-based training to match an organization’s needs.
Social learning
As a broader concept, social learning can be described as any learning activity in which students acquire knowledge by watching, listening to, and interacting with one another. In the corporate-training environment, it is often characterized by the use of social media as a learning tool.
5. Monitor and measure performance and engagement
By deploying the right learning platform, choosing appropriate remote learning methodologies, and balancing synchronous and asynchronous training activities, you’ll have the foundations of a compelling corporate education program. However, you won’t know how effective it is if you don’t monitor your trainees’ engagement and performance rigorously.
It will be helpful if you select an LMS with comprehensive analytics capabilities to create a dashboard of KPIs to measure your program’s effectiveness. Nevertheless, you will probably need some additional solutions to capture data too. These might take the form of scheduled appraisals via online chat tools, questionnaires, or surveys to gain trainees’ subjective views on program quality.
The Fortuitousness of Remote Corporate Learning
Whether your company will transition to remote learning with enthusiasm or purely a sense of necessity, it’s fortunate that the technologies and principles that underpin it have advanced so notably.
It’s not easy to switch quickly to online training and education if your organization was not yet on the path, but it is achievable, as many companies are now discovering. If you apply the principles and practices outlined in this article, your efforts are likely to be more successful — and your transition smoother — than you might have imagined.
Which best practices have you followed for a fast transition to remote corporate learning? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .