Feature insight - e-learning and e-assessment
The future of learning
Julie Lock, innovation director for Mitrefinch Ltd, discusses the advantages of e-learning over the traditional method
P eople gain qualifications and careers, but learning does not stop once qualifications have been gained, it moves to continuous professional development to keep updated with industry changes and new or improved methodologies. With the average shelf-life of skills now being less than five years and people changing their roles on average fifteen times in their career, demand on learning and development is at an all-time high. The war on classroom style training and e-learning has been around for just over ten years. It is true that classroom training does provide immediate responses to questions or to dive deeper into an explanation, but the argument for e-learning still stands. Classroom style training is an expensive way to train with the cost of travel and accommodation, a time deficit of a whole day out of the office and then the daily training rate which includes training facilities and salaries. Oh, and it also means that the trainees are not in control of carrying out the training when it suits them best. In 2018, we now have much more data to analyse the impact of e-learning to help reach the decision on the best learning approaches for our workforce. As we are all time poor these days, e-learning typically costs an employee 40–60 per cent less time than learning the same material in a classroom environment. Face-to-face training delivers around 8–10 per cent information retention rates, whilst e-learning increases retention rates to between 25 and 60 per cent, which means trainees participating in e-learning can learn nearly five times more information than they can in a classroom environment. Studies have further revealed that organisations that use e-learning technology boost employee engagement by up to certificates to equip them to do their jobs well or to progress their
eighteen per cent. With these statistics, it does seem clear that there are additional benefits to organisations when using e-learning to educate their employees beyond the cost savings, the higher information retention rates, the time savings and the higher employee engagement. ...there are additional benefits to organisations when using So, what does the future of learning look like? To understand this, we must look at the changes that are taking place in the world of work. The days of employer-prescribed training are dwindling away. People have greater expectations from work now, more than just turning up to work, doing a job and getting paid. The average length of service in the UK is at an all-time low of 2.7 years because people are no longer looking for an employer for life; instead, they look for their next experience. With each new role must come opportunity to try new things, gain new skills; people want opportunities to learn, develop and take charge of their own career development destiny. If employers want to attract then retain the top talent, they will have to offer much more diverse learning and development opportunities – and the most cost-effective way to offer this is through e-learning. For human resources directors looking to increase employee engagement and retention, e-learning is becoming another tool of choice for several reasons: e-learning to educate their employees...
● e-learning tooling enables organisations to provide a much wider variety of training options to employees than the costly classroom style training ● courses made available via e-learning are much cheaper per trainee, therefore the learning can be offered across an organisation rather than restricted to a set number of classroom attendees ● employees can choose when to do the training rather than figure out how to fit their workload around a day out of business-as- usual ● trainees can learn at their own pace through e-learning which cannot be achieved in a classroom style environment that is working to a timetable ● smart e-learning solutions will enable people to select the best method of learning for themselves to increase information retention rates such as a choice of sound, visual, reading etc ● for courses which require a test, an on-line assessment is less pressure than a classroom style test; again, the people can move at their pace, after all, we do want them to learn and retain the information and pass the assessment ● training administration is automated: e-learning systems notify, track and report on trainee statuses removing the need for manual tracking and reporting. There are some training courses that still require practical classroom style delivery – for example, first aid training, but this is currently being researched by augmented reality tech companies. To summarise, for organisations wanting to attract and retain top talent, they are recognising the need of people to own their own development destiny. Therefore, they need to provide a much wider variety of development opportunities – and the most cost-effective way to do this is via e-learning. n
47
Issue 43 | September 2018
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker