The world keeps turning, learners keep learning
With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, more and more organisations will be operating with their staff working from home. It’s relatively easy to train and engage staff when you are all working together in the same location and on the same network. It gets trickier when your workforce is geographically dispersed, using their own computers and internet connections.
Here are our five tips to drive learning during a peak time of users working from home.
It’s all online, what’s the difference whether they are in the office or at home?
Let’s start at the fundamental level, how do your users log in? For most enterprise learning management systems they are only accessed at work, and logging in is as simple as clicking a link. But how does this work remotely?
Determine the ways your users can log into the learning management system and provide associated step-by-step guides to make it as easy as possible. Keep in mind the user may be using their own computer instead of standard office equipment, so ensure the process is specific to your LMS but broad enough to deal with the end-user’s environment.
Now they’re logged in, what should they do?
Often learners are spoilt for choice when it comes to the options of courses. But it’s easy to overwhelm and confuse with so many choices.
Identify and group courses into programs or learning pathways that provide structure. This could take the form of beginner level Excel training all the way through to advanced. Alternatively, structure a program that guides a learner to upskill, so they are prepared to take on more of a management role.
Self-paced programs such as the above, work well for online courses, but what about face-to-face?
You can’t book a room, what other tools are at your disposal?
Most organisations have collaboration software, examples of this include Microsoft Teams, Skype and Zoom. Rather than scheduling learning events to be held at a physical location, provide a link to an online meeting.
Use the tools at your disposal to empower your learners and provide more options for communication and collaboration during a time of potential isolation.
Learning isn’t limited to work topics, it can occur anywhere
Your learning management system is not the be all and end all for your staff’s training. Users might have completed training courses prior to their employment or be utilising external sites like Microsoft and Amazon for technical training. They might even be using mobile apps such as Data Camp, Udemy or Khan Academy to upskill. These learning providers are becoming more and more popular as people look for ways to fill their time.
Consider how you can capture that information in your LMS to enable staff to have a complete learning transcript regardless of the provider. By making the recording of external training easier, you’ll be able to have a deeper understanding of your organisation’s capabilities.
Everyone can be a teacher
An effective training course does not have to be a multimedia extravaganza, but it does have to be engaging by the nature of its content and/or delivery. Within any organisation there is a wealth of knowledge and specialist skills.
Enlisting the assistance of subject matter experts throughout your business to create short videos or screen recordings of their duties, then uploading those videos to the learning management system for others to consume creates a culture of knowledge transfer.
Veracity Technology is a leading IT service provider helping industry leaders transform their businesses. We provide digital strategy, IT platform design and implementation and remote IT monitoring and support to Australian businesses and government agencies. Contact us today on 1300 850 172 or hello@testing.mc-staging2.net,
