Adopting e-Learning to Combat Coronavirus Shutdown

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, housebound and social distancing measures have forced almost every organization around the world to shift their training online. With the increasing spread of coronavirus outbreak, e-Learning and virtual technology have become the need of the hour. The considerable shift to adapt online training solutions is forcing organizations to identify ways to engage the remote workforce, without compromising with their health and wellbeing.
While organizations are considering work from home as the new normal, they are seeking ways to deliver online learning solutions to cater to the pertinent needs of all. Let us see how e-Learning plays a vital role when it comes to managing the employees working remotely:

• Personalized learning

While maintaining social distancing during this global health crisis, keeping your remote employees engaged and connected becomes essential. With the evolution of Learning Experience Platforms, corporate leaders can quickly provide curated learning content from credible sources like OpenSesame, YouTube, etc. Consequently, experience-driven learning aligned and personalized to job roles, KPIs, skills, and learning habits, enable employees to learn more and retain for long.

• Shifting from ILT to VLT

This unplanned downtime has compelled organizations to shift from Instructor-led Training (ILT) to Virtual Instructor-led Training (VILT) approach. Two major challenges that organizations are facing during the novel Coronavirus outbreak is how to keep their employees engaged and connected. So, corporate leaders can virtually communicate and train their team members by adopting the e-Learning approach. They can effectively train remote employees about stress management skills, team building, and other topics. Ultimately, distant employees can feel more connected with their peers as well as the organization.

• Game-based Learning

Organizations are coming up with the idea of incorporating games with training courses, which can be delivered online. The reward mechanism, leaderboards, and levels within an e-Learning game keep up the employee morale, drive peer-to-peer collaboration, and hence overall productivity, engagement, and retention.

• Online assessments & feedback

Corporates are also providing online assessments to identify the skills-gaps of remote employees during the pandemic. Consequently, they can align relevant training to cater to the pertinent training requirements so that employees stay productive and upskilled when they return to the workplace. With immediate feedback received from the managers, employees can work on their weak areas and upgrade their skills, while leveraging a continuous learning culture.

• Content localization

Using robust digital learning tools, organizations are adopting ways to localize online training content for their remote employees. This boosts the overall engagement and retention levels of the workforce with varied cultural backgrounds and experiences. Content localization helps to create and repurpose training content into learners’ native languages, thus mitigating overall cost and effort.
As the Coronavirus news unfold each day, organizations from every vertical are adopting eLearning solutions to ensure their employee wellbeing, while keeping them engaged, motivated, and connected.

Key Reasons For Increasing Popularity Of Game Based Learning

Gaming industry has attained huge popularity and success in recent years and now games are being used for formal and informal learning. 

In Corporate circles too game based learning is fast gaining popularity for training and learning purposes. Due to further advancement in video game technology experts are forced into in-depth research on the design and efficacy of game based learning. They explore the instructional designing strategies for designing innovative game based learning to make them popular and successful in the training industry.

Few reasons why Game based learning is gaining popularity in the corporate sector:

• Highly Engaging- By creating game-based learning environment, motivation and learner’s engagement can be influenced positively. Learners work toward a goal, choose actions and experience the consequences of those actions while playing game. They get a chance to make mistakes in a risk-free scenario, and this substitute different skills acquisition as well. Learners get engaged as they practice behaviors and thought processes while transferring from simulated environment to real life.
• Development- Games play important role in personal development and improvement in learner’s self-esteem. Games are very helpful in breaking social and cultural boundaries. They also have some hidden interactive elements which learners can explore. The level of complexity of interactions should depend on the learner group.
• Evaluation- Games can provide a close link between action and immediate feedback. Learners get a chance to scrutinize their activities and judge their own performance. Then, they can evaluate themselves and take necessary course of actions to perform better.
• Explanatory- Games are explanatory in the sense that games have illustrations for the learners to do self-assessment and find out their weak and strong areas. This is how they can work hard in the areas of concern. Games also provide suitable background to explain where he/she has done well and where improvement is needed.
• Elaborative- Game based learning provides a resource unit with comprehensive documents or audio-visuals, that provide useful information on the subject a learner is going through. This helps the learner to score better and enhance knowledge.

Usually learning is hypothesized as a multidimensional paradigm of learning skills, intellectual learning outcomes such as practical, declarative, strategic knowledge and attitudes. Game based learning solutions are used in some areas of corporate trainings very effectively, specifically in FMCG, banking, pharmaceutical, business, physical, automobiles etc. In most of the cases serious games and simulations are applied to provide platform for learners’ to apply acquired knowledge, to experiment and get feedback in form of consequences adding to their experiences in the “risk free world”.