Modernize Advanced and High-Tech Curricula
For high-tech curriculums, training leaders need to address the new needs of their employees for digital, remote, self-paced content in addition to the traditional instructor-led, in-person courses. “Meeting the learner” has now become a term reflecting a corporate necessity. In a perfect world, Subject-Matter-Experts could easily transform their knowledge and the classroom instruction to engaging, effective self-paced content. Often, organizations do not have the bandwidth to keep instructors out of the classrooms for long periods to support content creation.
The solution is to outsource content to eLearning content creators and providers. However, such providers generally do not have the internal technical content expertise to handle technology content meaningfully. The added overhead of teaching high-tech concepts and skills to course developers is too costly (in terms of time and other resources).
A partner who can successfully provide both the subject-matter expertise and the instructional design capability is very valuable. Such capability greatly streamlines the organization’s effort to transform technology content. It empowers training directors with the ability to provide engaging and effective content to their users rapidly and with less management overhead.
eLearning’s solution offers streamlined technology learning design and development, bringing substantial market advantages to clients including:
- Highly qualified in-house, partner technology experts
- Instructional designers using modern user engagement (UX) modalities.
Remote workforces and younger generations have vastly changing needs for progressive learning
Learning environmental factors are dramatically changing the educational landscape. Educators are still looking for ways to maintain effectiveness with remote workers and the younger demographic. Unlike prior times and older generations in today’s workforce, people in their mid-20’s to early 40’s grew up using computers. They are now very mobile, consuming content, gathering information, and engaging in communication for longer periods throughout the day via small-screen, connected devices. In terms of learning and instruction, what can’t be seen or used on a smart phone – at any time throughout the day – doesn’t exist or is no longer relevant. Even laptops are ceding ground to small touch-screen devices.
Little wonder then, that paper-based or traditional classroom modalities are increasingly ineffective. By any measure, but particularly by the all-important Kirkpatrick 4-Level measure1, traditional courses struggle, if not fail. Often tied to in-house subject matter experts using PowerPoint and computer labs, MGZ’s simply do not engage (Level 1) which causes other levels of evaluation to suffer, too. The attrition rates of prior generations make this a big problem for organizations. For organizations seeking to develop and retain their people for long-term benefit, they must find a way to teach remote employees, and the Millennial and Generation Z staff. To effectively teach these populations, technology must be seamlessly embedded in the process. Curriculums must include collaborative functionality; short bursts of information must be communicated in a variety of ways. The problem isn’t with the content, the problem is in delivering that content that will engage, teach, and improve MGZ employees.The modalities should adapt to the needs of the student.
Transform the workforce to ‘meet the worker where they are’
The flow of work, and the time available to get it done, has changed dramatically from just a decade ago. As Josh Bersin writes, employees are overwhelmed, the pace of work is accelerating, and people are “way too busy.” The average employee has only 24 minutes each week to learn.
With the constraints on workplace productivity and learning, workforce curriculum transformation is as important to the corporate balance sheet as low fixed asset costs. It must “meet the learner” on their terms to successfully transfer important knowledge.
Instructional courses should be convenient, readily accessible: wherever the staff is located, no matter their device, and no matter the time of day (or night). And more than that, the learning program must engage the user despite the distractions or external claims of their attention.
Transform Good Curriculum to Standard Platforms
The modern user experience (UX) is table-stakes for organizations’ ID/TD. Learning programs must be accessible via a platform that supports any connected device. A recognized expert in developing corporate leadership skills and operational talent from remote and MGZ workforce recommends the course content have six fundamental characteristics:
- Brief and beautiful. Make the content bite-sized and visually appealing.
- Agile and accessible. Make the content available on mobile devices, untethered from a classroom.
- Instant and intelligent. Design the course so that helpful information is readily available.
- Collaborative and communal. Create a community where peers, experts, managers can contribute their expertise and experience.
- Relevant and relatable. A process suited to continuous learning, where content can be quickly created or modified maintains learning awareness, and thus effectiveness.
- Blend and Bind. The younger workforce will need to merge their training and learning with real-world
experience. Off-line learning remains effective but blending the online with the offline will dramatically improve the effectiveness.
The challenge comes not in knowing, but in responding to that new imperative. Re-casting curriculums, especially those involving advanced technology topics, is particularly difficult. The goal is not simply to redistribute course content, but rather to make that content delivery engaging and effective. The user experience (UX) must compel new behavior for maximum results.
Challenges in Course Content Transformation
If it were easy, everybody would be converting course PowerPoints to interactive modules and computer labs.
There are big challenges. High-tech content in the form of lectures and simple labs can not simply be exported to animations and interactive quizzes. Just as having a word processor does not a good novelist make, having a LMS does not a modern UX course developer make. Great UX course developers disassemble content to reconstruct it.
They use existing content to build customized, interactive modules
- They have a “designed for thinking” approach
- They conceive ways of illustrating core concepts through new ways using modern media
Re-purposing high-tech teaching content requires hundreds of man hours and expensive software. For example, converting lab routines to large-scale deployment on mobile devices requires not just high-tech SME, it requires experienced mobile developers. Yet, with all that overhead, doing this work to transform high-tech course instruction is only a partial solution. In most cases, high-tech courses are taught by internal subject matter experts. Asking them to turn their attention to overseeing even one new multi-modality course design project is asking too much.
No organization can afford to hire and retain a team of such professionals solely for the purpose of training a segment of the workforce.
Craft Collaborative, Interactive Modules with High-tech SME Partner
eLearning organizations’ internal resources add significant value to eLearning clients for advanced or high-tech course development. Their teams of experts can professionally analyze curriculum content to determine the most effective and efficient way for transformation.
End-to-end organizations like Sify have instant access to credentialed subject matter experts across multiple technology disciplines, in addition to many ISO recognitions allowing them to put even complicated curriculum on mobile devices.
Bringing Augmented and Virtual Reality to eLearning
Because continued engagement is helped by advancing the user experience (UX), highly advanced technologies are being introduced to their instructional design.
Immersive, engaging content is the key to unlocking the potential inside employees. Combining new technology with back-end IT expertise, eLearning organizations can bring heightened performance to eLearning, accessible where the learner is. The recent innovations in AR/VR are making such applications affordable for instructional designers. These new applications are particularly well-suited for the younger workforce.
The Strategic Path Forward
Protecting your organization’s future depends largely on its ability to engage and teach the increasing segment of the remote and MGZ workforce. Bring customized classroom learning, through advanced digital technology, to your workforce. Talk to us about how to transform your current high-tech course content to a modern user experience without the hassle.
