Ever wonder how to incorporate eLearning as the knowledge transfer tool in your organization – and why it ould benefit you so much?
We hear it at almost every organization we talk to – the workers (or the human resource, if you will), are their most important asset. An asset we must protect and nurture. But in our ever-changing world, we might need to add protection and nurturing of your employees’ knowledge to our priority list: the knowledge levels in your organization must be in sync with the technological and business advancements your company is undergoing – which, if we’re being honest, are only getting faster and more extreme.
The old-fashioned way of transferring knowledge to our employees or to our business partners (retailers, customers and so on), has been using some sort of a traditional instructional model. It might bring back some memories of college – the traditional way combines face to face meets, quizzes and practices. But here is our problem with this paradox: while the world of your organization’s knowledge transfer may remind you of your college or high school days in its design, and many L&D departments see themselves as the sole provider of knowledge in the organization – why should it be similar? Without getting caught up in the philosophy of the thing, let us just put up a thought:
What drives a student in college or high school are usually the grades (or maybe an angry parent back home); but in the workplace, our motivations are completely different. So why should our learning look the same?
If we throw into the equation the immense changes technology and the internet have made in how we search for knowledge and learn, the divide between what should be and what is grows even bigger. The fact that we can ask any questions and get hundreds of different answers from thousands of sources from search engines, our phones and for some even in their watches, glasses, tennis shoes… makes our learning processes different than anything we’ve known before.
Beyond the fact that our source of knowledge is changed from one professional individual passing on his expertise to others (teacher to students) to learning through several sources that feed on each other constantly, making the information more relevant and reliable, we’re adding on the dimension of how we acquire the knowledge – and that is the experience dimension. When we talk about experience, we’re not necessarily talking about how the content looks and feels (because in our world today, it’s obvious that if we want to grab anyone’s attention from the sea of information that surrounds us, the content that we put out has to look good and be written in an interesting way); we’re talking about our expectation to be able to consume content, the same content, in a streamlined way through several devices and with each device’s UX features in mind. We start reading an article on the computer, continue on our phone while waiting for someone, and finish it on our tablet, after we convinced our kids to trade the tablet for our smartphone…
New Reality – New Ways to Learn
To deal with this new reality, we are seeing more and more organizations turn to different learning solutions that can build complete training plans that make use of blended learning techniques and technologies. If there are still organizations, or departments, or someone out there that is considering incorporating technological devices such as mobile and tablets to their learning strategies, we suggest changing the line of thinking from if – to how.
We feel that many organizations and learning solution companies out there are having the wrong conversation, about whether the new learning technologies might replace the old ones. That’s debating the wrong question – the learning technologies we have available to us today are expanding our ability to answer our learners’ needs, transfer more relevant and updated content, all in a faster and more measurable way. So, instead of seeing these technologies as a threat (or being afraid of them), the question we should be asking is where, in our learners’ training, we can incorporate these technologies to make the learning quicker, more impactful, and stretched out over a period of time and across several platforms.
Case Study: Safety Procedures Made Easy
In one of the projects we worked on, we implemented a learning system dealing with safety procedures in several big companies. In this company, the entrance to the power plants was only allowed once the employee has undergone specific safety training sessions; and each plant required a different type of training plan. To make the learning process more efficient, one of the tools we implemented were short lessons, available on tablets and other mobile devices, that covered the different subjects required to get into the different plants. In that way, entrance to the plants could be monitored, as the system made sure the worker knows the knowledge necessary (with short quizzes available on their mobile devices), and if he doesn’t, the system then provided the knowledge needed on the spot (short, interactive lessons available both on the workers’ tablet and mobile devices), before granting them entrance to the relevant plant.
In this case study, the solution that included the learning system technologies revealed itself to be super effective, and solved some of the major issues that the company faced:
Is It Worth the Cost –
The face-to-face training sessions, held once a year to all employees, were expensive, time consuming, and simply not satisfying – this solution made the learning continuous and available everywhere, on any device, and actually transformed as an additional tool that supported learner performance throughout the workday.
Measuring Effectiveness –
Measuring the effectiveness of the previous training methods was difficult to say the least: all the company really had to rely on were the statistics of accidents and malfunctions to see if the training has done its job. As part of the blended learning introduced to the organization, the learning was broken up into smaller, more manageable chunks, allowing managers to measure its effectiveness more often, and as a result the organization got a bigger picture of their knowledge gaps (if any) in the field.
These and other issues, which many organizations face around the world, were solved using technological tools that make the process easy and fun, while supporting the strategic goals of the organization. The right incorporation of these technological advancements will support and expedite the learning processes in your organization, while making it an ongoing, easy to use, and all around better process, available on any and all devices.
Want to learn more about these tools that can make your life so much easier? (yes please!) Click here to learn more about LearningZone, and see how you can start improving your orginazation’s knowledge transfer right away!