Even though we are halfway through with 2023, the events of 2022 are still evident. Battling the energy crisis, excessive inflation rates, exorbitant petrol prices, ever-increasing living costs and a struggling economy, affecting people on a personal as well as professional level. Learning and development (L&D) strategies need to shift focus to accommodate all the above-mentioned hurdles and bring new initiatives to the table to cater to the needs of people in current times.

eLearning is currently being influenced from two directions: learner-driven trends and organisation-driven trends. With more companies adopting the hybrid work option, this year’s biggest L&D trends can be seen as a reflection of these workplace changes as well as ever-changing technology at our fingertips. The focus is on personalisation of learning, the creation of on-demand courses, as well as new and inventive ways of delivering this type of learning.

Here are some of the most important learner-driven and organisation-driven trends to consider, trends which VUCA Consulting both advocate and implement themselves:

1. Deliver On-Demand Learning

On-demand/ ready-to-consume/ off-the-shelf courses are a popular trend. These refer to generic courses that can be added to any employee’s learning program, regardless of the type of organisation or industry. The on-demand courseware is designed and developed by industry experts together with consultations with subject matter experts. VUCA’s existing on-demand courses range from in-depth to summarised topics and include courses such as POPIA, Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, our Retail package (coming soon) etc. These can be uploaded onto any type of LMS (or hosted on VUCA’s LMS) and distributed to employees immediately. Some benefits of on-demand courses are cost effectiveness (bulk orders), faster training time, standardized training across the company etc.

2. Personalised Learning

Most organisations consist of various departments, each with their own speciality training needs. For example, the marketing team of an organisation may not necessarily need training on the point of sales system. Thus, customised training paths can be set up in such a way that employees view only the courses directly related to them (based on their needs, skills, strengths, roles and responsibilities within the organisation). In addition, this learning path can also be tailored in such a way that courses are visible on the platform only when employees need to complete them. This method also allows for employees to manage their own time, thus completing training as their schedules allow best.

3. Mobile Training

Combining on-demand training and/or personalised training with Mobile training permit employees to do training anytime, anywhere and at their own pace and convenience with no downtime necessary for sitting in a classroom setting (thus saving petrol – another benefit).

4. Microlearning

Microlearning is a familiar concept that’s been trending for a while. We at VUCA believe in what we call “learning crumbs”- courses that are broken down into modules and then further into topics, allowing for 8-10 minutes of focused portions. This ensures improved user retention, increased completion rates and impressive pass rates. Thus, microlearning remains a great approach for our eLearning courses, especially when there is a need for mobile learning.

5. Learning Experience Platforms

Last but not least, Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs). Don’t get too intimidated, LXPs can be seen as LMS 2.0. Both are tools to assist in the delivery and hosting of eLearning courses. The LMS is a more basic and traditional top-down layout with the courses listed, whereas the LXP offers a higher potential for personalisation for a user.

LXPs allows you to:

• Personalise learning: Creating dashboards for the users, as well as auto-assigning learning content to all users within a specific unit or role in an organisation to name only a few functions of the customised learning experience.
• Add gamification: Gamification is very much still trending and is an excellent tool for motivating employees to complete their training. It can also be used in KPI’s or implemented as part of a rewards programme.
• Personalise recommendations: LXPs can display recommend courses which are not necessarily compulsory within the organisation but which can be beneficial for the user to complete.
• Pull custom reports: Custom reports can be pulled for each individual learner, showcasing data such as the amount of attempts of a specific course, time spent on the training, their assessment results, etc.

To conclude, not only are the above-mentioned a few of the 2023 and ongoing trends used in learning, but they are some of the tools we as VUCA Consulting use when designing eLearning courses.

Sources:

https://elearningindustry.com/elearning-industry-the-road-ahead

https://www.talentlms.com/blog/elearning-trends/

https://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/elearning-trends-2023