A real-life modern-day mentor could do wonders for one’s professional development and as such many organizations have started to recognize this and have established programs to aid younger employees get in touch and receive guidance from more experienced peers. But how many types of mentoring are there, and how can an L&D professional decide for the best option?
Learning is greatly aided by emotion so personal experience is the best teacher of all. While in life one can’t find any way around these ‘teaching’ moments, there is an alternative in corporate training – incorporating real-life experiences in e-learning can prove very useful and efficient. Here are a few tips on how to create real-life learning experiences in online training.
When learning and development programs are set up, the attention is focused solely on formal learning. That’s probably because the informal version doesn’t sit well with schedules, set objectives and quantifications. While good old fashioned learning paths are necessary and very useful, since informal learning is almost always self-initiated, it proves to be a lot more effective and with visible effects on organizational performance.
The role of SMEs in e-learning is a very important one, as subject matter experts can bring a whole new world of knowledge into a training course. If instructional designers work together with SMEs by being specific about what they need to achieve, agreeing to a structure, establishing the complexity of the online training courses and sieving the information the get from SMEs, they can achieve impressive results.
With so many resources given to corporate training, one may wonder why at this time so little attention is given to leadership development. Well-tailored e-learning is an effective way to deliver management level training as it allows the autonomy managers so badly need and the flexibility of easily fitting in training sessions into busy work schedules.
Learning requires structure. There has to be a red line throughout the e-learning course, the learner should be able to follow a solid yellow brick road in order to achieve the goals set out for him. Hence, a storyboard for online courses can prove not only useful but vital because it ensures everybody will enjoy being on board with the program.
Before you dismiss it as yet another made-up nonsense for the young generation, gamification does not mean turning serious academic material into games. Game mechanics, however, prove very useful when your goal is to create engaging content that facilitates information retention. There are at least four reasons why the use of games in online courses, as they help to satisfy four common learning needs.
Immersive learning environments mix the worlds of leisure and work or informal and formal learning and have the potential to function as a professional learning treat, making learning fun. As the available immersive technology improves, and high speed Internet is everywhere at a very small cost, immersive learning environments should begin to play more of a role as a supplement to or major component of professional learning.
Many organisations talk about innovation and want to find new and better solutions to old problems, but they fail to equip their teams with the means to achieve these outcomes. They want out-of-the-box ideas, but at the same time they try to keep employees in their boxes as much as possible. Why do they do that? What’s stopping companies from learning and innovating?
Organizations that manage to hire talented people and help them grow are the most likely to succeed in the long run. It takes skill to balance both new and existing human capital, but creating individual development plans for each employee will surely be worth the effort. As employees grow, so does the success of the organization because the most valuable assets are those who walk into the office or log on remotely each day.
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