Learning and training is changing. That’s of no surprise to most. It’s what comes next that divides the opinions. It turns out there might be more than one possibility.
Viren R Kapadia, who is the president and CEO of Gyrus Systems, has posted an interesting blog detailing the four top learning technologies that can’t be overlooked. They can easily be rounded up to five as they have a lot in common.
Kapadia points to Mobile Learning as one of the top technology trends. The widespread adoption of mobile devices is opening a lot of opportunities. One of them is for organizations to provide easier trainings to employees on-the-go. Mobile learning has other benefits such as allowing one to go at their own pace. A disadvantage would be the lack of personal touch and attention by the trainer.
Another top tech pointed by Kapadia is HTML5 and Responsive Learning Management System (LMS). This is tied with Mobile Learning. HTML5 can be very useful for the development of trainings for mobile devices. Responsive LMS on the other hand can help incorporating technologies and content into a useful package.
Then comes Big Data. Analyzing all gathered data from a training can make the difference when looking for improving the results of employees. You could find out what had been the most interesting part for the participants of the training. Big Data analytics can also give a bigger insight about the effectiveness of a training course by tracking and analyzing several identical trainings with different trainers and/or participants.
The fourth tech is Virtual Learning and Avatars. This is probably the one that is the furthest away in the future, but it is on its way. It means that people will be able to use Virtual Reality and other similar tech to attend a virtual training which could look and feel like everyone are in the same room despite being on the opposite ends of the world.
Which brings us to the fifth learning technology. This one is a bit broad, but it sums things up rather well – e-learning. Slowly but surely, more and more trainings and types of trainings will have their online and virtual alternatives. This doesn’t mean that traditional trainings will be going away anytime soon, but they should start taking into account their e-alternatives and looking for how to use them to improve even further their effectiveness.
Image credit: Flickr (CC) / UTKnightCenter