Even before the pandemic outbreak, organizations have been transforming their corporate learning strategy, methodology, and tools.
They started investing in learning management systems and developing content to support their online, remote learners.
With most of the organizations adjusting to the ‘new normal’ and some even permanently moving to remote work, the urge to keep their employees motivated, competent, and engaged is growing.
This spring (2020), we began remote operations and since then we have delivered hundreds of online workshops, focusing on Microsoft 365 adoption. The value of interactivity, where the participants collaborate with their peers, try new features on the spot, ask questions, and show engagement, is an unbeatable advantage.
However, two challenges always remain. First, it is very difficult to find the slot which will suit the schedule of the entire group of attendees. This means that there are always some team members who will miss the workshop. The second challenge is that everyone learns at their own pace and some might need more time to digest the information delivered in a workshop.
One of the main advantages of online courses is flexibility. This means that you can access the online learning materials as per your convenience, and from wherever you are. The video courses can be paused, rewound, replayed as many times as needed and as per user’s preference. The learners can benefit from the content from almost any device and study the materials at their own pace.
The second advantage is cost reduction. Some of the costs include venue, travel, learning material costs, lost productivity, and the limitation of the number of attendees. An interesting example is that IBM saved approximately $200 million after switching to eLearning, according to Dave Evans.
The third, and often unjustly ignored advantage, is that online courses support different types of learners. Based on scientific theories, there are 4-8 different types of learners. An average learner can belong to more than two types of learners, where the percentage of each type can vary. Knowing the learning type can help the learner be more successful and obtain knowledge more swiftly and smoothly.
We recently embarked on two new projects focusing on delivering online courses to drive Microsoft Teams adoption. To learn more about how we can support your learners and what type of content we can develop for you, click here.