eLearning is on the rise, and due to its immense customisability, it looks like it isn’t planning on stopping any time soon. As organisations begin to embrace online learning for what it can achieve rather than for its convivence, professional development is dropping its traditional approach. These multiple day seminars that dives deep into every angle of how every type of manager may encounter and deal with a certain situation in the workplace are no longer necessary. Instead, it looks at a more personalised approach, viewing eLearning as the dynamic solution to online training courses.
For most of you, it is likely you’ve been asked by a manager to quickly deploy a learning solution that meets training requirements while ensuring high learner performance and knowledge retention. And it looks like you’re in luck.
At Guroo Pro, our focus is on simplifying the approach to custom eLearning while remaining as effective and engaging as possible. By creating agile learning experiences that incorporates branching scenarios and the expertise of subject matter experts (SMEs), we help you create custom eLearning solutions that meets your training needs and goals.
What is custom eLearning?
Before we dive into how to build your custom eLearning solutions, you must first understand what we mean by it, and why we place an emphasis on customisable learning. The phrase ‘custom eLearning development’ or any alike, are not just buzz words that people within the industry like to use to sound well-informed; it’s actually an approach to learning design that focuses on a tailor-made approach that meets the specific training requirements of each learner and their role. When you opt in for custom eLearning solutions, you gain the flexibility to meet these specific training needs and gain the creative control to achieve lasting impressions on your learners.
Let’s dive into the tools, resources, and learning development approaches you can take to ensure your learning remains relevant and effective.
Agile learning
Custom eLearning development doesn’t end at the design process, it looks beyond the online course; at how well learners perform after the learning, whether what was taught was retained, and works to continuously ensure that learners are getting the most out of the learning. An agile approach here is an ideal way to ensure your learners receive the ongoing support and training material necessary for your custom eLearning to succeed.
Unlike traditional learning models, agile eLearning takes a more flexible, collaborative approach to the continuous improvement of your learning. By incorporating everyone involved; stakeholders, SMEs, instructional designers, eLearning developers and so on, you can create learning that evolves with the constant changes made to training needs, industry regulations, and risk management in a way that feels less like a short course and more like a constant yet timely skill development process.
Branching scenarios
Using branching scenarios is a great way to engage learners through a customised learning journey. These scenarios allow learners to make their choices and see the consequences of their action, think of them like a choose your own adventure game but for employee training. Adding interactive elements into your learning not only ensures engagement but is likely to books knowledge retention through active participation.
But there’s more, branching scenarios do more than actively engage learners in what would have been a passive click-through experience. This adaptive approach incorporates real-world situations, allowing learners to work through events in a risk-free environment, understanding how their actions and choices could unfold in practice. This type of learning encourages critical thinking and problem-solving. By having learners analyse situations and consider outcomes, you are able to foster a learning experience that develops deeper analytical thinking.
However, it should be noted that creating branching scenarios is no simple task. Between gathering all the resources and information, connecting the right links to each new path and ensuring it cohesively makes sense to every learner no matter the path they choose, its hard to say how long the process will really take. But rest assured, when approached and designed correctly, they are a sure-fire way to get some highly impactful and interactive elements into your learning.
Want to find out more about how Guroo can help you design adaptive learning and branching scenarios? Check out our Playbook: The Learning Designers Playbook.
Collaborating with SMEs
Subject Matter Experts, like the name suggests, have a wealth of knowledge in a particular field or topic. For learning designers there really is no better tool to help them create relevant, well-informed learning solutions than partnering with an SME. By partnering with an SME throughout the custom eLearning development process, designers are able to gain real-world examples, case studies, and insights from a person that has experienced the field or topic first hand.
By using specific knowledge, learning designers are able to build a custom learning journey that otherwise would be inaccessible – this is due to the fact that having a discussion with someone in the context of learning design is always going to gain better results than any Google or library search will. This innovative approach to content creation is further improved when the SME promotes the course among their peers and colleagues.
eLearning design, when created correctly with the learner at the centre of all considerations, is more than just learning design. By utilising your resources and tools at hand creating custom learning that fits to the needs of each of your learners while achieving business goals is simple. Consider a custom eLearning development approach next time you need training material and see the results for yourself.
Get in touch with a Guroo
Ready to take your learning to the next level? Get in touch with a Guroo. Tell us your goals and objectives, and one of our Guroo Pro learning experts will deliver a fast and free demo of a learning solution right for you.