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Storytelling is in our DNA; they are important to us humans and they have the potential to teach, change and make us better. Using storytelling in training is a great way to improve participant engagement and information retention. Out of the many versions that narratives have, three stand out as having great potential for learning: parables, example stories, and ‘what if’ scenarios.
So with everything improving around us, learning how do more things in better ways, we can’t really stand still. Of course, inserting a chip into our brains and installing new software is not (yet) the answer but we do all need to try and take a peek into the future and prepare for it. Automation brings with it a need for a specific set of skills for employees and a requirement for a paradigm shift for organizations. Here are just five of them.
Even though there is no patented popular wisdom in this respect, artificial intelligence is very present in our lives and has already started to replace people in various industries. It does not only perform easy assignments but also very complex ones – let’s face it, AI is smarter than us. That’s why all companies should start to prepare for the post-automation workforce. It’s only a matter of time until that happens.
The onboarding process of new employees should be very important for any organization. There are many ways to design a successful onboarding process, but odds are employees will stay longer and be more productive if a company manages to handle this properly. So make the first impression your organization leaves with a new employee a powerfully positive one!
Running a general training needs analysis when there isn’t one particular burning area gives L&D specialists time to be thorough and look at the big picture rather than figuring out how to quickly patch-up something. Learning is a process and having defined paths that are right in line with where the organization is going is the most effective way to achieve good performance.
The L&D department keeps designing and buying programs that may have had their share of freshness, taste and utility at one point but end up moving forward solely out of inertia. That’s why every so often it’s good to take a good look at the entire database and figure out what is still of value and what has to go. Running a training needs analysis for existing content is therefore the best solution.
The L&D department responds positively every time when it’s asked for a certain learning intervention. Yet there are instances when situations can’t be fixed with training, instances where there are existing modules that can very well do the job and instances when something altogether new needs to be created. In order to positively identify the most appropriate course of action, a training needs analysis has to be conducted.
Attention is a cognitive process that is closely related to another very important aspect of learning: memory. A certain learning intervention is deemed successful when the participants are able to remember and apply what was taught. For e-learning designers who face the challenge of creating quality modules that facilitate information retention and transfer it’s important to know how the brain works when it comes to attention.
Corporate learning itself is moving towards a new era. While e-learning remains the main L&D tool, xAPI comes to link this with all the other formal and informal learning instances for a better experience and more efficient planning and reporting. Tune in to find out more about the advantages that come along in an organization that includes xAPI in their training strategy.
In order to be effective, learning needs to be done with some effort. That doesn’t mean that all the gimmicks learning professionals come up with to make it easier and more fun are counterproductive. Nor does learning have to be torture. The key are those desirable difficulties that make the brain work out. There may be some discomfort but the results are worth it – just like in the case of regular gym sessions for the body.
