If your organisation is finally jumping on the eLearning bandwagon, it truly is a great investment. It’s not just embracing eLearning because it’s a trend, but because of the power, it unlocks as you go about training your staff, partners and clients. If we consider a Learning Content Management System comparison with the past, it centralises and organises your training efforts and makes updating them simple; it makes the learning experience more immersive and effective; it makes access unlimited; it makes tracking progress and performance easy; it cuts costs and slashes development time; it simplifies compliance; it seamlessly integrates with social media – and so much more.
But let’s face it: while you’re biting the bullet because it simply makes sense, investing in an LMS does cost money – so the results need to be guaranteed. In the business world, every investment is measured by its return, so what are the steps to maximising the potential ROI of your impending move to eLearning?
- Tailor it
Like most new things in the technological world, an LMS has undergone an incredible evolutionary process in the past years to the point that, today, the platforms are incredibly versatile and flexible. But it’s this ability to truly customise and personalise your platform that is the key to unlocking its full power. We’re not just talking about the actual learning content here, but the ability to customise dashboards, add social features like chat boxes and games, forums, sharing and collaborative options, and the like. Even your LMS’ tracking and report-making features can be customised, opening up unparalleled insights into how the training is working – and how it can be made even better.
- Go social
As mentioned above, it’s the social features that really can supercharge the collaborative powers of a truly effective LMS. Once upon a time, social learning was what happened almost accidentally within the relationships inside organisations, but the way social media and eLearning can work hand in hand makes the mainstreaming of it mandatory within your system. You’ll reach a wider audience with more influence, ramp up the learner-trainer collaboration, and improve skills through the sharing of content and easy, direct access between users.
- Make it fun
The natural ‘next step’ of the social aspect of eLearning is the unprecedented ability to make learning – and even training – fun. ‘Game-ified’ learning is truly exploding in popularity, and it’s not hard to understand why … because who hates having fun? Remember, there’s no rule that means you can’t combine the gaining of knowledge and skills at work with fun, and modern educational philosophies are even proving that learning and fun fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Combined with the collaborative power of your LMS, the games can even take on a competitive edge, making them even more powerful.
The final word: Never stop eLearning
Finally, it’s the very nature of eLearning that LMS administrators need to pay attention to – its stunning rate of progress. Unlike learning systems of the past, the digital age means these technologies will continue to evolve apace, and we are already starting to see how AI-integrated systems are doing that learning for themselves, constantly improving and tailoring programs with adaptive learning capabilities that help to make them better, more fun and more perfectly tailored for those who oversee and undertake them. In short, the future of eLearning is in everyone’s hands – all that’s required is to fully embrace it.