The current push to remote work has raised many questions, one of which being: how do you provide your employees with the training they need? Face-to-face training is likely not an option right now. Maybe you’re getting tired of the Zoom calls. In a world now filled with unknowns, it can be hard to find practical solutions. And while eLearning has been rapidly growing over the past two decades, our current climate has cranked up the speed. With no one really having a clear picture of when our work life will return to normalcy, companies are looking for more long-term solutions to their problems. While you may be looking into eLearning in order to fix a temporary issue, the results may encourage you to make it a key cog in your business. This series will provide the main reasons to move your training online and guidelines to follow that can help you put together quality content.
Unfortunately, our new normal has probably led to many individuals getting a bad first impression of eLearning. In addition to their own potentially awkward workspaces, millions of parents are now watching their children struggle with virtual learning. While this is an issue in and of itself, it shouldn’t be cause for concern for our context. It’s important to make the distinction between academic learning for children and skill-based learning for adults. Researchers know that children often struggle to learn online. This is due to a number of factors, such as a lack of direct contact with teachers and classmates. The former issue can lead to emotional stress and the latter can lead to a lack of motivation. This communal aspect of learning can be make-or-break for many children, so it’s not surprising to see them responding relatively poorly to eLearning for the most part.
However, adults are much more likely to embrace self-motivated and self-initiated learning. The reason comes from why adults are learning in the first place. Whether it’s for school or work, adults are often learning because there’s a specific skill gap they need to fill. Most adults are learning because they choose or need to, unlike the situation for children. Also, a high priority for adult learners is ease of access, which eLearning affords. So, what all this tells us is that professional audiences are the perfect eLearning candidates.
Pandemic aside, companies today are already frustrated. They’re often understaffed and spending a lot of time and money on traditional training that just doesn’t seem to work. Maybe this is your company, and you’re wondering what you need to do to boost your current training programs. Companies around the globe are solving these issues with online learning. In the second part of this series, we’ll go over some of the best practices to help you put your course together. But first, let’s look at some key statistics to push your business case.
We have three main stats that support the process of moving from face-to-face towards online learning. These three statistics will be the focus of our blog series:
- 42% of companies saw increased revenue after implementing eLearning.
- eLearning can help learners retain 25-60% more information than traditional learning.
- 57% of employees expect their learning to be just-in-time (or relevant.)
In addition to the clear financial incentive here, this information sets up our current dilemma: our current training methods just don’t seem to cut it. New and innovative eLearning strategies come into play here to fill this gap and meet employee needs and expectations.
In the next blog, we will explore these three statistics in more detail. Additionally, we’ll discuss how exactly your eLearning can meet those needs and how best for you to implement them.
