Online Learning Courses - Gaining Huge Acceptance

Online learning courses are gaining momentum continuously for organizational trainings as well as for higher education for that matter. The reasons are very obvious that online learning courses offer huge flexibility, lower stress, learning pace, independence and of course monetary benefits.

1. Flexibility :- Learners can complete the course at their own pace, this is essential for people who lead a busy life - which to be honest is everyone nowadays.
2. Lower Stress :- It doesn’t mean that online courses are easy and do not need hard work. But given the flexibility to study at your own convenience makes learners less worried and stressed.
3. Engagement :- Learners can interact with one another on the same forum. But unlike the traditional classroom setting in which the fast talker is advantaged, eLearning platform allows every student to stand on equal footing.

Certainly most of the employers are earning benefits of online learning courses for training and development.  Sometimes online learning courses are not an appropriate solution for the learner, but with huge amount of interactive games, quizzes and videos etc. that can engross a wide range of learners, makes it more preferable for learners.

E-Learning does offer certain challenges when it comes to appropriate knowledge and experience in using the technology to make effective use of online learning courses, however this challenge overcomes when companies invest in imparting relevant knowledge and skills for professional and technical enhancement of the trainers.

There is no doubt in saying that eLearning is a constructive method of imparting education as a blended approach. The growth of eLearning is estimated to be highly striving with around 50% colleges and organizations to be emphasizing on online learning by 2019, thus, making eLearning industry worth over a 100 billion industry. Considering online learning course reaching less engaged and enabling the disadvantaged to learn, surprisingly United Nations Institute for training and research reported on UNITAR’s online course on international water law. The course received 1219 applications from 115 countries out of which 82% came from developing and least developed countries. This clearly demonstrate that learners need training which is engaging and are more inclined towards online learning courses rather than traditional learning methods.

Online learning courses is a blessing to the education system offering effective and engaging trainings for the learners. It’s not immediate success and executing a blended model of delivery is not that easy; it’s not just a matter of stabbing some course on a virtual learning management system and your job is done, but it is important to do it the right way to get optimum return on investment.

Training Management Software Is The Key To Keep Learners Self-Motivated

Training management software ensures happy and enthusiastic learners along with easy training delivery and learner’s performance tracking. Training management software is one of the key secrets to keep the learners self-motivated and happy because:

1. It allows you to keep stock of the learning courses. The learners can choose the relevant course based on their skill gap analysis and professional development. If they do not get the desired courses, they might lose the motivation to learn. The organizations can also conduct surveys through structured questionnaires to know what skills they need to acquire and then assign the relevant courses based on competency mapping.
   
2. It leverages the competition as learners can get score cards based on their performance. Competition is not bad if used in a right way. A healthy competition between groups ensures that no one feels left out and motivates everyone to score better and get rewarded.
   
3. Training management software provides reward system, which is like cherry on the top. While there are lots of revolutionists to this common extrinsic motivator, sometimes rewards just work — plain and simple. It can be in the form of bonus points on a test or quiz, a night off homework — you just need to find the system that works for your organization and employees.
   
4. This software offers a feature where users can be evaluated before and after the course completion. Regular evaluations can be conducted, including written tests, multiple choice questions, assessments, among others. This allows frequent monitoring and modification of irrelevant strategies. Learners can also review their performance and work hard on their shortcomings to complete the course successfully.
   
5. Learners can access the study resources and business information at any time and place — be it home, workplace or any other spot. There can be multiple learning resources such as PDFs, videos, webinars, or any other source that increases the quality of information you need to share with the learners.
   
6. Interactivities help the learners in skill development, which in turn keeps them happy and motivated. Social interactions through different collaborative tools that allow the learners to connect with their peers, allows them to share their progress reports, and other such things.
   
7. Training management software also allows the evaluation of employee training courses and certifications. Organizations can monitor the employee skills and abilities, and provide notifications to the management on those employees who have not completed their courses.

Motivated and enthusiastic employees are assets. The advantages of Training Management software are unavoidable when it comes to the long lasting benefits such as learner’s motivation and increasing productivity.

Mobile Learning Trends 2016

The benefits of mobile learning are many. When Learning is available for the learner at all times, it creates an opportunity for ‘just-in-time’ learning. Being learner-driven, this provides a learning opportunity whenever the learner needs it the most. There are a several reasons leading towards the shift towards mobile learning, but five in particular stand out for the year 2016 making it evident that m-Learning will continue to be the driving force in the future of employee education and development.

• Global Mobility Continues To Rise: All organizations are looking forward to global growth and with this comes the opportunity for employees to travel abroad for work. But it is not advisable to send an employee to an unfamiliar location with no prior preparation. International assignments bear great costs on a business, and when lack of preparation causes stress to the employee, it often leads to poor productivity and early return.
  
  
  Training the employee to deal with vast amount of changes they may experience is crucial to the success of the assignment. They won’t have time pre-departure and during work hours to truly focus on their training, so it only makes sense to create a mobile learning program they can engage with while on the go.
• New Crop of Employees are Demanding Mobile Based Training and Development: Instead of wasting on travel and commute, mobile learning employees can spend their time more fruitfully by building skills, and attaining knowledge that helps them achieve targets. New crop of employees tend to value training over many other work perks as it opens a lot of career avenues. Most modern corporate learners choose to receive training over flexible hours, cash bonuses and even a company car. Many teams within the organizational structure, including sales teams, are mobile, and using tablets and other devices for learning is becoming very popular. If employees are demanding training, it should be accessible when and where they need to access it.
• Evolving Technologies To Be Par With: With global competition rising, having great talent on your team is now more important than ever for business survival and growth. Due to constantly changing technology, there is the continuous need to keep your employees at par with the developments so that your organization does not lag behind. By implementing an m-Learning training program, organizations can easily distribute ongoing training to keep up with the latest industry trends and new skill sets to stay ahead of the competition.
• The Need For Engaging Content: On-the-go employees like sales executives of FMCG companies or pharmaceutical sales reps aren’t receiving value from the traditional paper-based training they are currently forced to learn by cramming the information into a one-day instructor-led event. The employee doesn’t learn anything, and the company doesn’t receive the benefits of the employee knowing, understanding, and implementing the information -- which is why it's important to create learning experiences that complement the individual and make learning accessible wherever they are and whenever they have time to fully engage with the material.
• The Need For Performance Support: m-Learning and performance support makes an awesome team! Performance support is all about providing employees with the support they need, in the moment they need it, so as not to interrupt workflow. While both m-Learning and performance support extend far beyond one another in applications, the relationship between the two will continue to grow stronger as we continue heading more and more into a mobile-focused world.

The need of the day is that businesses must find solutions to meet the demands of the new employee who craves much greater flexibility and work-life balance -- and the adoption of mobile learning will provide solutions for better learning as well as better employee satisfaction.

Source and suggested further reading: forbes.com/sites/theyec/2016/04/13/five-trends-pointing-to-mobile-learning-as-the-future-of-corporate-education/#49cfa719196a

How To Find Out If Your Corporate Learning Management System Really Works?

Corporate learning management system provides a platform for an organization’s online learning environment by enabling the management, delivery and tracking of blended learning for employees, stakeholders and even, customers. Modern corporate learning management system, also works as a learning content management system in the organization and aggregate all learning material within one common platform.

From an operational point of view, the LMS and its key components namely content management, user administration and system administration should completely Web-deployable, requiring no additional client applications. As with any enterprise application, the more a software is customized, the harder it is to maintain, upgrade and expand. In the past, a lot of companies over-engineered their e-learning solutions, spending a lot of money on consulting and customizing their applications. Because of changing business needs, educational goals and targets changed and organizations were stuck with legacy solutions with limited flexibility and scale.

Thus, it is important to evaluate learning management systems thoroughly before investing in the new system as most LMS system entail a lot of investments.

• LMS must be available to learners at all times and robust enough to handle concurrent traffic from learners, administrators, content builders and instructors simultaneously. It should provide a platform for learning – as per needs of end-users.

• Scalability: LMS infrastructure should be flexible and be able to meet future growth, both in terms of volume of hosted content and number of learners.

• Usability: LMS should also have different options for usability to provide personalized learning. It should also be easy-to-use and highly intuitive.

• Interoperability: To support content from different sources and multiple vendors' hardware/software solutions, the LMS should be based on open industry standards for Web deployments (XML, SOAP or AQ) and support major learning standards (AICC, SCORM, IMS and IEEE).

• Stability: LMS infrastructure can reliably and effectively manage a large enterprise implementation running 24x7.

• Security: As with any outward-facing collaborative solution, the LMS can selectively limit and control access to online content, resources and back-end functions, both internally and externally, for its diverse user community.

• Assessments systems: An assessment engine with built-in testing and evaluation capabilities is critical to monitoring, tracking and rating e-learning initiatives. The system should support time limits for self-administered tests, limit the number of attempts allowed and impose a time delay between attempts. By tracking the learning process, learning officers and management can evaluate the effectiveness of the courses and accurately gauge the knowledge and skill levels of their workforce.

To choose the right corporate learning managementsystem it is important to map the company's technical capabilities and needs. There is no one-size-fits-all LMS solution, and learning management system vendors usually have different licensing options to choose from. Ultimately, it is the organization’s decision whether or not to have the enabling infrastructure hosted or installed. Equally important, once they make a choice, e LMS vendor should provide the flexibility to e-work it over time. As e-learning needs change and grow, organizations do not want to be locked into what originally fit. The LMS should be able to scale and support new and emerging learning modes, technologies and tools.

Source and suggested further reading: Assessing Learning Management Systems by John Hall

Creating E-Content Faster With Rapid e-Learning Development

Training and Learning is a continuous process in the corporate environment considering the immense pressure to be at par with the latest developments across all industries. This explains the increasing demand for online learning. Rapid Authoring is often the preferred route for e-learning development to save time, effort and money managers and cater to the ever-increasing need for customized content.

In a bid to utilize existing content, presentations created in PowerPoint can be transformed into interactive e-learning – with very little effort with the help of rapid -learning tools. Since Microsoft PowerPoint is a very popular tool, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can themselves create e-content – cutting the development time considerably. In addition to converting the entire content with ease, rapid authoring tools also help build interactivity into courses. Attractive graphics, audio as well as video can be added to the course to make it multimedia rich and hence, more impactful to the learner. And all this at a fraction of time, compared to traditional e-learning development cycle.

How to convert PowerPoint presentation into an E-course:

• Chunk sections from the presentation to create ‘chapters’ for the e-course. 

• Since an e-course is not the same as a presentation, create an e-course with 5 or less number of chapters. For detailed or extensive course material, develop multiple courses and avoid presenting the learner a lengthy course. Short courses are more effective and do not alarm or overwhelm the learners. 

• For web-based e-course, keep in mind that web pages can be of any size. Therefore 2 or more slides can be consolidated into one page to decrease course length. 

• Since e-courses have to be more detailed than presentation where the speaker also has a chance to explain in detail, avoid using phrases or one-word descriptions and use full sentences instead.

• The ‘notes’ section of a PowerPoint slide can be utilized to include external links, optional exercises or step-by-step detailed instructions. By giving these extra details, the learner as the choice to approach the subject in detail or skip through the basics- as per need. 

• Rapid authoring tools can pick up graphics from the presentation and place them as per their assigned position on each slide. 

• To make the e-course effective, it is necessary to include tests regularly through the course. A wide range of tests can be created including multiple-choice, true-false, text or numeric fill in the blank or even drag-drop picture images. 

Rapid Authoring Tools like Adobe Presenter, Presenter 09 and Presenter 09 can be used to convert PowerPoint Presentations into E-Courses. Most e-learning developers have a keen interest in the field of rapid e-learning and by utilizing existing material the process of content development can definitely be more efficient.

Installed Versus Cloud based Learning Management System

For the modern workplace, Training and Learning are very important. Employees need to acquire newer skills and knowledge on a continuous basis to be effective and attain professional success. This is the reason why most of the organizations take the process of training with apt seriousness and implement the Learning Management Systems, or LMSs, to provide learners with the opportunity to learn as per their own needs and pace. The adoption of eLearning software does however, me with its own sets of needs and overheads. Organizations need to devote certain amount of time and finances to manage an learning management system. Even if the organization has a dedicated team to handle the change in management that comes along the implementation of an LMS, most find it difficult to ensure widespread adoption and user satisfaction.

Compared to the installed legacy LMSs, there are many benefits of implementing a Cloud learning management system, especially for the smaller organizations who do not have the necessary support staff to manage or maintain the learning management system. 

• Smaller organizations have limited budgets and with cloud learning management system, you can make significant cost savings, especially at the initial investments level. Smaller organizations often do not have the necessary infrastructure or the in-house expertise to deploy and run an installed LMS. They do not have the freedom to carry heavy overheads in the ever changing market situation. For them the pay-as-you-go mode of a Cloud learning management system makes more sense, as it allows them to reap the benefits of training without incurring any overhead costs.
  
  
• LMS have to be installed at each and every office premise of an organization. However, the technological infrastructure might not be appropriate across different offices, making it difficult to train the employees in remote locations, or those on the move. With Cloud learning management system, the learners can connect with the internet through the device of their choice, be it a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. The learners also need internet connection, which is available even in remote locations. But if in any case the connection is inconsistent, the learners’ progress can be saved and the courses taken up from the section last read.
  
  
• Integrating a Cloud learning management system is also simpler than an installed LMS, and can be done in a remote manner. This makes sure that LMS data is synched with data from other systems across the organization, especially with HR database that controls and maintains user access of the learning system. Learners can be assigned courses with ease and the administrators can chart their progress without logging in and out of different systems.

Cloud-based solutions are with gradual pace, being accepted by organizations across the world due to the scalability, flexibility, and cost savings it provides. It makes sense, as it is easy to deploy, implement, and maintain. Cloud learning management system provideshassle-free learning, as compared to install on premise LMS.

The Success Of Mobile Learning In Corporate Sector

Mobile Learning or mLearning has emerged as the platform for learning to new age corporate learners. Mobile devices are now easily available and affordable for all. In addition to e-courses, corporate organizations are making use of this ubiquitous platform to deliver learning to their learners – anytime and anywhere.

E-Learning developers are including mobile learning within their repertoire of e-learning services. Newer technologies are also ensuring that mlearning development is more streamlined, standardized as well as budget-friendly.

Success of m-learning in the corporate world has been due to several factors.

• Users are getting accustomed to the mobile platform: Modern learners have a variety of online activities that include social networking, shopping and paying bills. They also watch a lot of videos and listen to music on their handheld devices. Accessing learning content on mobile devices thus comes naturally to them – especially if the content is aligned to suit the medium as discussed in the next section.

• The development of mobile-friendly content: Creating mobile content is not just making e-content available on mobile devices. Just as converting classroom presentations into e-format does not deliver impactful e-learning, converting e-courses into mobile learning also does not reap results.  The content developed for mobile learning has to align itself to its strengths and keep its limitations in mind. Small bursts of learning work best for the mobile platform – with minimum text and prominent media inclusion like graphics, audio and video.
• Creating mobile learning is not overly expensive: There are many ways of reducing mobile learning costs. Previously, separate modules of mobile learning and e-learning used to be developed to cater to the needs of the two platforms. But by using modern development technology like HTML5, content can be created for delivery across multiple devices – laptop, mobile or tablets. Also if you have existing e-content, a lot of material like graphics, videos, animations and audio can be reused when creating mlearning content – thus making cost and time savings.
• Rapid authoring tools for Mobile Learning: By using rapid authoring tools, mobile learning content can be created quickly and within tight budgets. Many rapid authoring tools provide ready templates for mobile delivery of content. Media assets from e-courses can also be included in these templates to increase the visual appeal and interactivity.
• mLearning can be interesting and interactive: Mobile learning is not always linear and unimaginative. Mobile platform supports a lot of interactivity – the most popular being audio and video. Learners can utilize these elements very well and find them easier to assimilate than boring text.  Other interactivities like quizzes and mobile games can also be built in to entice the learner and make learning fun. The level of interactivity depends on available technologies, the compatibilities of the learner devices and available budgets for mlearning development.
• Uniform user experience: Mobile learning technology is fast evolving and now it is possible for all users to access mobile learning content on different devices but have the same superior viewing experience. Web responsive technology is being utilized to create mobile learning content that aligns itself as per the specifications of the viewing device. The user does not have to scroll or pan in/pan out unnecessarily to view the content. This ensures a uniform learning experience for all –irrespective of the viewing device. 

Mobile platform is still evolving and newer ways of mobile content creation as well as delivery are being explored. As a platform, it has found tremendous success in the corporate world and with the new wave of emerging mobile technologies this success is bound to scale new heights.