Today’s learners are the most sophisticated an organization has ever faced when it comes to developing and delivering content. They have a complex set of needs that can be difficult to meet.
In a webinar on July 30, Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer for Brandon Hall Group, and Tim Donohue, VP of eLearning Solutions for IHRDC, discussed five reasons why organizations are not meeting the needs of the modern learner:
- Courses need to give way to bite-size learning. If you’re relying on one- size-fits-all courseware to educate and train the modern learner, it won’t work. Learners today are moving targets and they need to learn on the fly and while they are doing their jobs. You need to deliver learning in a compact format. Learners don’t have the time to relive their coursework.
- Learning needs to be more relevant. Learners want high-octane/super- charged content that they can use to fuel their on-the-job performance. Content that is theoretical, or not specifically targeted to specific competencies or situations, will either not get used or receive a lukewarm (or worse) reaction.
- Measurement must be sophisticated. Measuring learning effectiveness is about analyzing changes in performance, not whether someone likes a course. Assessing changes in behavior and measuring the resulting change in performance is what matters.
- Learning needs to be personalized, not commoditized. Learners need to feel that their learning was specifically designed for them. It needs to motivate them, drive competencies and skills development, and be sticky enough to have them remember what they learned. A Learning Content Management System (LCMS) provides the tools to personalize your learning in a cost-effective and scalable fashion.
- A lot of content is not automatically a good thing. We have to create less content and focus on building a strategic portfolio of highly condensed and potent content that can be repurposed for multiple audience needs.
To properly address your learner needs, you to need to start at the end and work back to the beginning. Start with understanding what learners are facing in their jobs and what they need to learn to be better at them. From there, work back to what type of learning experience is best suited for the learner. Only then can you begin to develop content that best supports their needs. The LCMS is a highly effective tool in developing content that creates the ultimate learning experience.
–Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer, Brandon Hall Group
