3 Themes to Consider When Reinventing Your ILT Learning

Learning is changing and it’s not enough to only focus on the text and graphics of your content. We have to think about how the learner has changed. But wait, doesn’t the content matter? Of course, but with our world embracing a global virtual transformation of learning, we have to go back to basics. We have to think about the learner. I’ll share three major themes that we’ve seen over the past few months from our clients reinventing their ILT courses.

In response to COVID-19, businesses and our entire educational system rose to the challenge of engaging learners from home. Everyone forced into making the same, simultaneous change. Parents were thrust into homeschooling, while working, and noticed first-hand, the gaps with online learning for themselves and their children.

Creating learning that is engaging, remembered, and meaningful is no longer a “nice to have” or one of your goals for 2021. And that’s really good news because we can focus on making the learning great! This shared, global experience is forcing learners to embrace change, and they are leaning into this virtual transformation.

With many workers leaving their offices to work remotely, we need to be the catalyst for meaningful change in learning.

• Since March 27th, it’s estimated that 16 million US workers began working remotely.
• In a recent Gallup poll, 63% of all employed Americans worked from home in April.
• Gartner released April survey results stating that 74% of companies surveyed plan to move at least 5% of their workforce to permanently work remote.

1. What Do You Need and What Do You Currently Have?

The fastest and simplest way to change your approach to learning is to start with an assessment of what you have.

• What are the outcomes you’d like to see for these courses; are they different from the last time they were delivered?
• Which courses, programs, and learning modalities are the most critical to transform?
• Who has the skillset in our team or extended team to visualize and create a different learning experience?
• Does our existing learning technology have the functionality to help create a new learning experience?

2. How Can You Get the Work Done?

Once you have a good understanding of what is needed and your focus, there are many subtasks to break down within your course catalog, delivery methods, content development needs, and design.

• Do you have the resources in-house, or do you need to outsource?
• Can you divide up the work between in-house and outsource?
• Will the timelines allow you to create content that will meet your intended objectives?
• Do you need to phase your approach to be sure that each part of the learning is created in an impactful way?

3. How Do You Know You Are Successful – How Do You Measure for Success?

This is much easier said than done. I often roll my eyes when I hear businesses say they need to see ROI with the learning. The intent to measure ROI is genuine and understandable because we are running businesses. What we really need to measure how the learning contributes to the business outcomes. If it does, the business wins 10-fold! It’s not just about meeting course objectives – think about what changed or improved for the business.

• Did we improve overall company compliance and eliminate fines/penalties from external governing bodies?
• Did we shorten the time to job autonomy for new hires and thereby increase overall revenue annually?
• Did we improve customer responses and raise NPS scores?
• Did we create a more effective career pathing and overall increases in retention?

The challenges of educating workers remotely are hitting us all. Continuing the conversation and sharing best practices is how we help our clients transform learning.

Please share ways that you are making an impact on your learners. We’d love to highlight your story and talk about how you are reinventing learning in your organization.