Achieving The Right Learning Blend For Your Organization

Every organization has different requirements for their learning processes. Creating a customized Learning Management System for your organization with just the right blend of techniques and touch points is crucial to how efficiently your trainers train and your learners learn. There are a few factors that should be taken into consideration when you are on the search for the perfect learning blend for your organization:

Technology-enabled Content

Let’s take a moment to imagine a typical classroom scenario:

• The trainer uses learning resources like a presentation to teach various concepts to the class
• The learners are encouraged to ask questions after the presentation and the session ends with a paper- based activity session.
• The learners are provided with handouts of research material to take back for studying in their own time.

Now imagine this:

• A trainer comes for a session with a calendar that is shared with the learners earlier, asking them to complete online assessments before the sessions
• The trainer asks learners to take up a few basic courses that will help them have a better grasp on concepts that will be explained at a later session
• The interactive presentation is tweaked based on the results of a pre- session assessment and topics are introduced and removed based on the profiles of the learners
• The presentation has links that connect to YouTube videos, encouraging learners to play a five minute game on their systems
• Assignments can be finished online, when learners are back at their workstations

By leveraging the sound technological base of the learning program to disseminate various kinds of content, the trainer is able to connect with the learners, assess just how much they have understood, and be sure that they have enough information on a concept.

Audience

An analysis of the audience being trained is essential to determine which delivery options will be effective in achieving your performance objective. A number of factors are looked into when an analysis takes place. These include:

‍Uniformity of knowledge: This analyzes the base knowledge that a trainee joins an organization with.

‍Preference of learning styles: As discussed previously, Gen C looks at innovative ways of learning while an older audience might prefer traditional methods of learning. An understanding of the audience demography can help in identifying the best mix of tools and touch points to incorporate in the learning blend

‍Motivation: This analysis depends upon the level of effort and time your audience is willing to invest in acquiring the knowledge that you are providing them with

Over all, an analysis of the audience gives you an insight into their preferences and helps you provide training in the way they feel most comfortable.

Infrastructure

The infrastructure at hand might constrain your delivery options. Classroom capacity is frequently a constraint on speed with which you train a community. There are a number of issues that come up when the quality of infrastructure is in question. It is in a very fortunate situation that you find sufficient network bandwidth to play a full motion video. However, the best e-Learning technologies are compatible with existing infrastructure to operate over very low bandwidth network connections.

Learning Outcomes

The ultimate goal and the purpose of your training process must be analyzed in order to design a well-orchestrated training strategy. What you as a trainer and your trainees believe you will get out of this learning process enables you to reach your goals quicker when your final requirements are in full view.

It is important to keep the factors outlined above in mind when choosing the right learning blend for your organization. Most importantly, a good blend characterizes flexibility and variety. As training and development becomes more learner centric with newer tools and platforms, a good practice for an organization would be to re- engineer its learning strategy from time to time.