Impact of e-learning - xperience Web Services

Introduction

The development of the e-learning industry has taken many twists and turns over the last 10 years, and the impact of e-learning has increased substantially. More so today there is a greater desire to move away from the ‘let's implement it because it looks good’ philosophy to ‘let's deliver real learning to exceed business performance. A clear strategic approach to learning and development will give necessary results in areas such as:

High level of knowledge and skills
Productive and motivated work force
Cost effective solutions
Business value

Finding the right solutions to meet the ever-challenging corporate demands can be difficult, so the focus needs to be placed on what will make e-learning give realistic outcomes to make the journey worthwhile.

This document will give you a guideline to how developing trends are not only making e-learning exciting, but can deliver business critical needs.

Impact of Learning

There is an interesting breed of e-learning people in the industry today. Those who have lasted at least 10 years in the industry have had the opportunity to see the very best and worst delivered solutions. Recently there has been a major push by SMEs (subject matter experts), creative designers and technical developers to make e-learning more interesting and adaptable to the learners. Due to competitiveness we are seeing a drive to e-learning content innovation. Games-based learning is now leading the way in this drive and is responsible for giving birth to other sound bites, such as learning by impact, tasked based learning, immersive and simulation learning.

In its simplest terms, if we ‘mirror’ an individuals working environment in an e-learning simulated environment we are putting a ‘real’ dimension in to the learning. It is important to understand what makes an individual learn. If you give an ‘action-packed’ computer game to an individual, 9 times out of 10 they will always remember how they got to the point the last finished. They will always remember where they had to collect items or what paths to take. This is the key to making e-learning work. A computer game is engaging, interactive and fun, but mostly they are mind activating/stimulating, which creates a high level of attention. As an extreme if you tell a learner they must achieve an 80% score in the learning assessment or they will lose the job, the learner will be sure to have a high level of attention even if the learning is mind numbing. The key here is setting objectives, expectations and goal levels. As in the case of the computer game, the individual must have a clearly defined goal.

Using this basic model we can set a clear learning path that has a constant review process. When you reach the top step you start the whole process again.

A model to make this work

To make e-learning work we need to focus on gaining the interest and respect of the learner. Just like in the ‘real’ world we must challenge the individual and help them learn through decisions they make. This method does not work for every type of subject matter, but its principles can be taken in to account.

We are going to focus on how we can take the following actions to create impact learning. The actions are:

Activities
Scenarios
Challenges and tasks
Impact
Feedback

Activities are essential to any e-learning content package. It is important that the learners do not feel like bystanders – reading text or listening to audio. The delivery of simulation based activities has proven to be very successful, by following a process the individual can start to bridge a gap in how to deal with a issue.

One example is delivering a synchronous e-learning course to a group of learners, which involves the building of a structure. If you have four teams with four individuals in each team, all responsible to an element of the structure. You can analyse not only their understanding of how to build the structure, but also their ability to work in teams or as team leaders.

Scenario learning can provide the learner with a mirror image of the working place. This works very well with more soft skills-based learning. For example, a manager's role demands that they have a different skill set and are also very strong leaders and trouble shooters. Putting an individual in to a management simulation scenario where varied problems and issues require solving and they are analysed against their key competencies will not only help them understand the art of decision making, but will quickly highlight their immediate knowledge gaps.

Research and assessment can help the delivery of standard based tutorials much more interesting. Remember it is important to give the learner clear objectives and goals - providing assessments will drive the learner to research specific information (instruction they need to know). In some cases it can be more beneficial to provide the learner with the assessment prior to the learning, giving them a clear direction on what is expected so that they don’t miss the key learning message.

Feedback has never been utilised as it should. This is a final chance opportunity to home in on the key learning messages especially if the learning still hasn’t grasped it in the first place. Feedback should be much more than ‘wrong or right’. The individual needs to know why they are wrong or right, and also needs further reference points to enforce the learning message.

Impact adds complete strength to the learning material. With any challenge we give to the individual it is important to show the cascading effect of their decision. For example, a project manager’s team member has called in sick for 2 weeks – what should they do? Whatever option you give, the decision will have either a positive or negative effect on budgets, client, team members, motivation, productivity, your line manager, etc. It is essential to know how to manage all of these different elements

Can it work?

With the right strategy, impact learning will have outstanding results. It is how we have learnt to do our jobs, only now we have the ability to simulate it. Much like the airline pilots when they go through their regular training simulations, they are thrown every possible dangerous scenario that could happen in a real flight. Airlines simply do this to make sure that the pilots are able to cope with any situation. Adopting this approach will ensure they create the ideal workforce.

Considering this structure might help formulate your strategy:

The employee lifecycle

Stage 1 – skills level check
Stage 2 – role profiles
Stage 3 – learning analysis
Stage 4 – learning design

Moving forward

This document is designed as a thought-provoking discussion on how learning should be designed and delivered. If you utilise the basic principles discussed we can create something that is very strong and meaningful. Using this method of delivering learning does not mean that it will be more expensive. We have so many positive elements to make e-learning much more slick – widespread broadband connection, smaller media file sizes, stable e-learning tools and reductions in e-learning development costs.

Put the right elements together with the right team and you will have the solution you desire. The potential impact of e-learning is inestimable.

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