Are leaders and employees in your company busy and stressed? Do you feel that our world is moving faster and faster and it is hard to keep knowledge levels in your organization up to date? In my work as Solution Development & e-Learning Developer I sense that many people are facing competition with others in their career and they want to learn more, gain new knowledge and skills BUT still, they lack time to attend a university, seminars or other traditional learning methods. In the following article I will present you solutions and new possibilities that have the power to revolutionize the learning processes in your organization.
Okay then, what is the solution? Simply eLearning!
eLearning has completely changed the way of transferring knowledge and information from those who work on creating the content to those who want to learn and get the best outcomes of the process. Unlike traditional ways of teaching, eLearning makes the learning journey easier, more effective and more motivating.
There is a variety of eLearning methods nowadays which makes you probably wonder: what are the best methods of e-Learning for my business? Maybe, a video course which is one of the asynchronous eLearning methods, where you have time and location independency by choosing what to learn, how much per session and also where you want to learn (at home, work, on the train, …).
Or maybe you prefer to interact more with the content you learn. Therefore, you might go in the direction of interactive e-Learning, another asynchronous eLearning method, where you have both time and location independency and can also interact with the content you try to master. A video course with additional features, like answering question where your answers will be the key of drawing the left course path.
Once I got asked about an eLearning method where the learner could learn and interact with other learners in real-time. Webinars are maybe the most famous learning methods in this case. A webinar is a synchronous method where you learn through events in real-time and interact with both the facilitator and also other participants of the online seminar. You can ask question and listen to others’ questions, get answers, and also get documents in some cases.
New technologies
Now you might ask yourself the following question: I am somehow familiar with the previous mentioned methods, but what are the new eLearning methods on the market?
The answer to this question might be confusing to some extent, because there is already a lot of cool new technology being used in the eLearning sector. But, one of my favorite new learning technology is the Virtual Classroom.
Virtual classrooms are online spaces that are designed for learning. They facilitate live teaching, either one-to-one or for a group. This includes live video and audio streaming capabilities, an interactive whiteboard set up, file repositories for sharing additional resources and text chat options.
Most virtual classrooms are accessed via cloud-based software. Students and tutors won’t need to download anything onto their own computers in order to use it. This means that they are hosted by the educational or training organization themselves. This is excellent for organizations who want to teach courses online to a whole range of students, including those who are studying around existing jobs, courses and commitments.
When looking for the best eLearning software that meets your organization’s, leaders’ and employees’ needs, it’s not always obvious which services a software can deliver. There are a lot of eLearning software applications out there on the market. From Learning Management Systems where you can host the eLearning like Promote, Moodle, LearnDash or Google Classroom, to Authoring Tools like Adobe Captivate oder Articutale 360 and Simulation and Gamification eLearning. Other important softwares that provide especially Virtual Classrooms are Blackboard Collaborate, BigBlue Button or Learn Cube.
All-rounder webinar
When I am looking at the full picture of the business world nowadays, I can see that webinars are the most common eLearning methods. Webinars (synonym: online seminar, web conference) as we know and already said at the beginning of this article are online meetings or presentations held via the Internet in real time. This leads me to the following question: Why? Simply, because it has many benefits; Accessibility, cost effectiveness, attractiveness and its potential. This gives us a brief understanding of the benefits the webinar facilitator has:
- Multidirectional conference.
- Ability to download and watch presentations and videos.
- Text chat.
- Digital board.
- Polls and surveys.
- Desktops shared by the presenter.
- Recording broadcasts to watch later.
While the participant has the following benefits:
- Knowledge Dissemination
- Networking Opportunities
- Team Building
- Employee Recognition
And if you ask me what the best software for webinars is, I will definitely answer with Adobe Connect. They offer robust analytics to help generate qualified sales leads and interactive tools including participant Q & A’s, private chat, polls and more. Adobe Connect also gives the user rich multimedia presentations with customized branding. Adobe Connect doesn’t come cheap; it’s among the most expensive webinar software options in the market. Still, they deliver an optimal participant and facilitator experience.
Webinar insights: Toni Chung during a presentation
What does it take for a webinar to be successful?
Let’s dive deeper into this most used eLearning method and explore what is imporant to make webinar successful for both the presenter and the participants. During my webinars I generally mind following aspects:
- Who will be attending?
- What challenges/problems are they facing?
- What are their goals?
- Knowing who your attendees are will ensure that you plan for a high-value and successful webinar.
- Think about visual branding. When it comes to webinars, I need to be consistent and try to align everything with your brand’s visual tone.
- Keep mobile in mind. Not everyone who views my webinar will do so on a desktop computer.
- Topic
- Date & Time
- Webinar Format
- Single presenter
- Dual presenter
- Interview webinar
- Q & A webinar
- Service Demonstration
- Technical issues
- Test run
The future of learning starts now
I know that a lot of people prefer offline seminar rooms rather than remote class rooms. Some people like to interact with people, build connection and tend to distance themselves the electronic world we live in all day. While others prefer to do the e-Learning journey, as they have a lot of freedom and time independency. This situation leads us to this dilemma: Which is better, traditional learning methods or new eLearning technologies?
The answer is both!
All people no matter their age, culture, origin, etc. learn differently and teaching methods should reflect this by designing teaching programs in a way that reaches all kind of learners. With these new great technologies, we’ll be able to improve teaching, people engagement and their responsibility also the most important thing; the enjoyment.