Don’t stop at Blended Learning

Different people learn best in different ways. This means it’s incredibly important that businesses provide their staff with a range of corporate learning opportunities to suit individuals’ learning styles. 

Blended Learning, or providing a mix of online and offline learning experiences, is a popular L&D strategy that makes a great step in the right direction. Yet, businesses need to do go further. Within the different learning methods, it’s vital that learners get the chance to develop themselves when they want it, how they want it and in the area they want.

At Bookboon, we want our business eBooks to be fit for purpose for the widest audience as possible and on our journey to create the perfect online learning experience we’ve identified five key elements that make up a well-designed online learning experience.

Hands-on and practical

This might seem like an obvious one but many learning experiences are too theoretical, too abstract or too far removed from the learner’s day-to-day situations. Learning experiences should provide employees with a tool to tackle a realistic problem or to advance skills that are needed in a real-world workplace.

The Goldilocks length: not too short, not too long

A learning experience should have enough substance to further the learner’s skills or knowledge. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be so long that the learning seems daunting and that there’s so much information to process that the learner ends up remembering nothing. The time between learning and implementing should also be kept to a minimum. Make it as short as possible and as long as necessary.

A wide range of topics

Employees’ roles and skill gaps vary so widely that learners should have the option to access a broad range of topics. Staying too narrow in your offering will limit the usefulness of your training programme.

When they want, where they want it

Is your training material only accessible when a person is sat at their desk in the office? Think about those people that prefer to do a bit of learning on the train home, in their sofa or anywhere else but the office. Make sure your learning experience is accessible online and offline, and from any device.

As simple as 1-2-3

People just won’t use a complicated solution. Complex learning systems can provide attractive functionalities but aren’t very effective if no one uses them. Learners like intuitive systems that take literally seconds to work out. Make everything accessible within a few easy clicks.

What would you add to the list above?

Thomas Buus Madsen is the COO and co-founder of Bookboon, the world’s largest e-book publisher for employee effectiveness and soft skills. By making its platform incredibly easy to use and only publishing industry-leading experts, Bookboon boasts some of the highest usage rates in the digital learning sector.  

Get a free copy now of Bookboon’s “21st Century Corporate Learning & Development” by Prof. Dr. Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer at McKinsey & Co.