The Power of Digital

Learners today are looking for an ultra-personalized learning experience that’s available on demand and just-in-time. L&D functions can leverage the power of digital technologies to change learner experience.

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The Changing Digital Learning Landscape

If you picture the modern employee, you will likely come across someone who is overwhelmed and pressed for time. In fact, the 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends found that the average employee spends only 1% of his or her time on learning. If you look at the modern workforce, millennials are now an integral part of the workforce. A Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data states that millennials currently make up 35% of the American workforce.

In such a scenario, where GenX is no longer predominant and the influence of Baby Boomers is all but diminishing, it is no wonder that a number of companies are going through multiple transformations to adapt to a new generation that works, thinks, and functions very differently from its predecessors. Digital transformation is at the core of these transformations because the new workforce has grown up with technology as an integral part of their daily lives.

“In this world of automation, business transformation, and continued obsolescence of skills, companies are realizing that delivering on a compelling, digital learning experience is critical to business success.”

– Josh Bersin

L&D has a major role to play in digital transformation. However, industry research finds that most L&D organizations are struggling with the change, given the plethora of platforms and emerging technologies available to the modern learner.

According to research by Bersin, the corporate L&D industry is more than $140 billion in size. With the emergence of digital content and tools, all of these programs are going through a reinvention for digital access, enabling businesses and employees to learn like never before. The 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends research discovered that 83 percent of companies rate this issue as “important” and 54 percent rate it as “urgent,” up 11 percent from last year.

So how can L&D sift through the noise and create a digital learning offering that resonates with hyper-connected learners who expect to learn “when and where they are” in their preferred mode of learning.The answer? An ultra-personalized digital learning experience.

The Ultra-Personalized Digital Learning Experience

NIIT’s digital learning offering centers on multi-layered customization and offers learners what we call an ultra-personalized digital learning experience. The five key elements at the core of this experience aim to transform:

Transforming The Learning Experience

At the core of transforming, the learner experience is our data-driven needs analysis that allows us to ultra-personalize and serve up content that is most relevant to each learner. We identify learning needs through various channels: individual interviews, surveys and communications; performance data and business outcomes from systems; and external avenues such as benchmarks by industry analysts, trade associations and standards bodies. All this data is consolidated in learning records. We then analyze this data through predictive analysis to identify the personalized learning needs for each individual for an adaptive and dynamic learner experience. In an age where learners have become consumers, this approach gives a “Netflix” like experience to the learner. We also use this data to identify skill gaps and adapt to learner needs. We work with your existing systems to build this experience for your learners.

Transforming The Learning Portfolio

One of the paradigm shifts that L&D is looking at is the change from instructional design to experience design. The modern workforce prefers to learn in a variety of different ways and traditional ways of learning are increasingly becoming ineffective. Learners prefer compelling digital experiences over traditional methods of instruction to learn something new, hone their skills, or gather information.

At NIIT, our goal is to transform your learning portfolio by creating compelling and immersive learning experiences that truly engage learners. Our learning methodology utilizes scientific principles of learning and the latest learning technologies to maximize learning engagement and minimize time to competency.

At the same time, it offers a variety of engaging experiences with the use of simulations, gamification, augmented reality and virtual reality.  We supplement this with content curation solutions to offer learners a structured and organized learning offering.

We also recommend an adaptive skills-based curriculum that helps:

Track acquisition of skills rather than completion of courses.

Allow learners to choose their own path to skill to mastery.

Adaptively recommend appropriate learning interventions for an individual learner given their personal goals and history.

Transforming The Learning Platform

Our Learner Experience Platform provides a one-stop shop for all learning content needs, facilitating a seamless end-to-end user experience from initial recommendations of learning content through ultimate tracking of skills mastered.

Intelligent search

Content recommendations

Learning assignments

Scheduling

Access to work in progress

Record of completions and accomplishments

Gamification

Skills passport

Notifications

The platform enables the organization of content such as virtual environments, eLearning, vILT, Classroom, On-demand programs, Micro Learning and Immersive games into role-based learning paths relevant to the learner.

Transforming Learner Engagement

Dr. Christy Price, a professor at Dalton State College has done extensive research on how millennials learn. The following is an outline of her key findings and how they can be mapped to modern workplace learning:

Relevance

They want to connect the subject material with current events and culture. This means that workplace learning also must be contextualized with a relevant narrative.

Rationale

They will more likely follow policies if they’re given the reasoning behind them. In a workplace learning context, it means telling a story behind why things like cybersecurity may be important for an employee.

Relaxed

Students thrive in a less formal and constrictive environment. This explains the rise of more informal forms of learning such as short videos and gamification, which have elements of “fun” as opposed to formal instructor-based learning.

Rapport

Want a strong connection with their educators. It may seem that millennials are distracted but research clearly points to a strong need for connection – that’s why social learning and collaboration must be a part of the modern learning strategy.

Research-based Methods

Prefer variety of learning methods. Millennials prefer a variety of learning methods so while they may be open to taking a face-to-face class, they would also prefer more techno-savvy options like watching a related video on their smartphone or listening to a podcast on their morning commute. Structured content curation is therefore an integral part of this approach.

You can’t spell TRAINING without NIIT.

NIIT is a market-leading, pure-play Managed Training Services company with over 41 years of experience in learning outsourcing. With a global footprint that spans over 40 countries, we help the world’s leading companies dramatically improve L&D effectiveness and efficiency.