Learning Organizations: Prioritize the Quality of Learning
Last week, CLASSUM released the first part of our new blog series, HRxEdTech: 3 Mistakes Hindering Continuous Learning in Your Company. This week, we would like to introduce a second mistake that might contribute to the failure of your learning organization: forgetting to prioritize the quality of learning over quantity.
Once HR managers initiate training programs or spaces for continuous learning, it is easy for them to feel pressured to provide high quantities of content, which they incorrectly equate to a successful training program. This leads to them overlooking the more important issue of understanding the different needs of members and examining whether content is being delivered in the most effective way. As a result, training can become general and meaningless, failing to truly upskill employees.
Moreover, some companies promise to offer material awards to those who actively participate in training, such as uploading a certain number of questions and visiting the training website a certain number of times a week. While such compensations may act as a temporary catalyst for participation, they take away from the true purpose of training and lack the power to prolong continuous learning in the long run. In fact, more and more useless data gets compiled within the company as employees participate to receive awards rather than to acquire new skills. So, what are some ways managers can improve the quality of corporate training?
To avoid stagnant corporate training, it is important to personalize training and cater to the diverse needs of employees. Every team member grew up with different educational backgrounds and now need to perform tasks that require separate sets of skills. Therefore, it is natural that employees demand customized training. While it may seem impossible to personalize training to every member of the company, blended learning can help by overcoming the barriers of offline training and offering a more flexible model of training. As explained in the first article of this blog series, blended learning is an education model that incorporates both online and offline curriculum. Among numerous blended learning models, the flex model, as implied from its name, provides learners with the flexibility to select content and choose when to take each course. Because members can build their own curriculum and efficiently manage their time, the overall satisfaction level of the training program increases.
Such blended learning can be easily practiced in CLASSUM. CLASSUM enables administrators to create multiple spaces within a single institution. Managers can also categorize coursework to cater to different interests. For instance, our CLASSUM team has multiple spaces that are used for different studying purposes. The CLASSUM Growth space is used for onboarding content while there is another space for members to study the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) together. Within the CLASSUM Growth space, content is sorted into separate teams such as Business, Marketing, and Tech. This makes it easier for participants to select from various content according to their needs and interests.
Additionally, conducting training programs or continuous learning spaces online has made it easier for administrators to keep track of training data such as participation time, completed courses, and other numerical factors. This support data can help HR managers modify and improve learning experiences based on employees’ progress and feedback. In fact, CLASSUM provides data analytics for each space and institution for administrators to use as insight when planning in-company training. In the “Space Insight” page, managers can examine the total number of posts and interactive activities, which can be used to identify the most effective courses for upskilling and the programs that are not as helpful. Managers can also prioritize most commonly asked questions during Q&A sessions by referring to the “top questions’’ category. In addition, the member progress page offers data for individual members, including their number of visits to the space, posts and replies, and much more. Such data can be used as reference when planning training programs that promote active participation and user engagement.
Gamification, which adds an engaging competitive element to learning,is another key trend that has recently been gaining popularity in the corporate training industry. This is because gamified elements have been proven to drastically increase user engagement in an online training environment. Following this trend, CLASSUM provides quizzes, an example of gamification, as one of its features. Both instructors and participants can create and upload quizzes for everyone to check how they are doing in each course. Kahoot!, CLASSUM’s official partner, is also an example of a game-based learning platform. In Kahoot!, users can easily create quiz games of any topic to engage learners through friendly competition and help them retain important information.
In summary, it is important to create a learning environment where training is catered toward members’ interests and needs. However, many companies often gear toward the opposite direction with the erroneous belief that simply providing a lot of content leads to successful training. To prevent this mistake, training managers should instead spend more time on monitoring the activities and feedback of members to improve the quality of their training methods. They should also strive to conduct interactive corporate training by incorporating blended learning models or gamification to customize the learning experience for each member.
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