Losing out on the biggest benefit of online learning?

One of the biggest benefits of online learning in your company over classroom sessions is that online learning can be continuous, hence enabling reinforcement, application and assessment of the topic. The online medium should theoretically make it extremely easy to do this.

It seems ridiculously obvious that any online or blended training program should experience this benefit. Is that really the case for you? If yes, how easily were you able to reap this benefit? If no, you are in company of an overwhelming majority.

When this benefit is ascribed to online learning, it carries some underlying assumptions that are not so obvious. A bit of digging into the assumptions makes it obvious as to why this benefit has stayed on paper. Let us look at these assumptions.

·        The content is chunked in small modules that can be used for learning at periodic intervals. This seems obvious as there is only so much time that an employee can regularly spend on structured learning.

·        It is possible to create or evolve such continuous learning material in a very short time. More pertinent to business the content, more the need to keep it up to date with latest business changes.

·        You are able to slice or merge the content based on the feedback you are getting from the continuous learning.

·        The content is available on any device at any time. While the “any time” condition is easily satisfied, most online training content and learning systems are not device agnostic. Even when they claim to be, the learning experience on mobile devices is severely compromised.

·        The management of the continuous learning content and the learning results is so simple that any employee in your company should be able to do it.

How many of the above conditions are satisfied by your online learning environment? Unless all these elements come together, online learning will remain a fringe strategy for you and you will continue to rely heavily on classroom training sessions.

Is your LMS and your content creation ecosystem using traditional authoring tools really giving you the benefits you deserve?

Nittio Learn is a learning automation platform that will enable you to finally derive all the benefits that online learning has promised but never delivered. Check it out at www.nittiolearn.com or send us an email at hello@nittio.com.