Article Insight: Is your e-learning outdated? Is it possible for your learners to access learning content on their mobile devices? You can transform your legacy e-learning into a modern learning experience.
In the primitive years of e-learning, the courses generated from scratch with the help of software that is now outdated are labeled as legacy e-learning. As these courses are voluminous, extended, and comprise old-time instructional design, the legacy training fails to engage learners, resulting in poor performance and higher dropout rates.
The importance of modernizing training for improved learning experiences: This is the age of millennials and Gen Z, and they are all technoids. And it's expected that millennials will make up around 75% of the workforce by 2030. So, transforming legacy training for modern learning is a must. They enjoy gathering information from different devices and platforms. And more importantly, you can't expect them to sit for a long, boring 1-hour training course. You can improve the learning experience of new-age workers by using technology and mobile devices in the modern learning process.
The drawbacks of outdated legacy training
No access to mobile devices: Most of the legacy eLearning courses don’t have access to mobile devices, particularly the courses that are flash-based. This curbs most modern learners, as they like to take courses on different devices and are more inclined towards on-the-go learning.
Courses are bulky: These courses are text-heavy and lack interactivity, and there is no interaction between the content and the learner either. When learners don’t have an engaging learning experience, it's difficult for them to retain the knowledge.
Collecting data is a challenge: It doesn’t have a strong reporting system, so gathering data, creating, and sending different types of reports is a big challenge.
The modern e-learning paradigm: At present, the modern e-learning experience has transformed dramatically to facilitate communication in different ways using effective interactive tools. Allowing learners to pick how they receive and react to e-learning content. Encourages engaging learning. E-learning methods and technology have changed astoundingly for the betterment of employees in the workforce. It's very crucial for employees now to have the right skills and training, as technology is evolving at a rapid pace. In this situation, e-learning is playing a major role in reskilling many people by encouraging engaging learning, which legacy training lacked. Moreover, many companies have shifted to eLearning for training and upskilling their employees. Learning management systems (LMS) are very popular in corporate settings.
The benefits of modern learning: As we have discussed above, technology integration has changed the world we live in. And changed the learning methods as well. Let's shed some light on the various advantages of modern e-learning.
The advantages of e-learning
Accessibility: The biggest advantage of eLearning is its accessibility and ease. It allows learners to access eLearning materials whenever they want. Making it possible for the learners to manage their study schedule. This way, they can easily balance education and their other responsibilities.
Engaging and interactive: E-learning makes good use of multimedia elements like videos, quizzes, and animations, which makes learning more engaging and interactive. Making the learning experience fun and helping learners retain information better.
Gamification: Gamification in e-learning not only makes learning more cordial, but it also allows learners to have fun at work. This way, they remember things that they have learned for a long time.
Strategies for transforming legacy training
Assessment and evaluation: This requires a clear plan of action, as it can be a time-consuming process. But it will help you get the desired results. Assessing the effectiveness of legacy training allows you to identify gaps and update it easily. Follow these steps for a comprehensive assessment.
Start by conducting a course inventory and organizing your courses. Create a table listing course assets, the software used, and any associated challenges. This approach helps establish workflows, identify overlaps, and evaluate the need for new authoring tools by defining specific phases. Once you have compiled a comprehensive inventory of legacy content, proceed with the following steps:
Evaluate what is important and what you can discard.
Before converting your legacy content, it's better to decide on standards like background, font, pitch, color schemes, and more for title headings and sub-headings.
Recognize limitations and flaws in repairable content and identify what is needed to fill the gaps.
Go for the delivery options, which include mobile, and responsive design.
Legacy courses had mouse-click elements, which are not applicable to smartphones.
Finally, conduct target user group testing by creating a blueprint for the upgraded course.
Identifying Learning Objectives: It's important to set clear objectives after the assessment of the legacy training. You must know what your learning objectives are and what you want to attain with the modernization effort. Defining learning objectives in training transformation guides your development process.
The role of learning objectives in modern training
Learning objectives play a major role in making any e-learning course learner-centered. They are like a guide for both learners and instructors. With clear objectives, there is no confusion, as learners clearly know what the course aims to attain and what they can anticipate at the end of the course. Let's look at the process of defining clear learning objectives.
Define the overall goal: This will help you align the objectives with the big picture. Think about the skills the learners need to learn to attain this.
Decide what you want your learners to achieve: When you know the goal of your course, think about the results you want your learners to get. And these results should align with the overall goal of the course.
Objective statements: Write precise objective statements describing what the learners will do after completing the course.
Coordinate objectives with course: To make sure that your course is well-structured and on the right path, you should align your objectives statements with the course.
Refine objectives as required: Refine your objectives as required if you find that some objectives need to be modified to better align with your content. Refining and assessing your objectives will help your course stay on track.
Modernizing outdated training methods: Content Transformation: If you think that your e-learning has become outdated and is not serving its purpose, then don’t worry. There are enough ways to reframe your legacy eLearning without reinventing it from scratch. Your training transformation should focus more on accessibility and engagement. Today's learners want access to e-learning materials whenever and wherever they want.
Strategies for Converting Legacy eLearning into Engaging Modern Learning Experiences
Mobile learning: Most learners today want their training to be more engaging and to-the-point according to their style. Employees prefer to undergo training at a time and place that suits them. You can use mobile-friendly HTML5 to convert your outdated eLearning courses.
Bite-size lessons: Learning has changed exceptionally and is no longer limited to a specific time or particular environment. But legacy training was thanks to mobile learning, which changed the scenario. When employees are presented with bite-size learning, it proves to be more effective and enhances employee performance. This type of learning can be swiftly absorbed. So, modernize your eLearning by breaking it down into small nuggets.
Technology Integration:
The role of technology in modernizing training:
Converting legacy eLearning into modern learning experiences" is essential for ensuring that your training programs meet the demands of today’s workforce. Technology has completely changed the learning process lately. The availability of educational materials and collaboration with others are easy now. Technology has influenced the learning process in the following ways:
Anywhere and anytime, access to educational materials is possible because of massive open online courses (MOOCs).
Learning Management Systems: (LMSs) and online platforms allow instructors to design and share materials with learners and give feedback by tracking their progress.
Learners can collaborate on a project with the help of collaboration tools like video conferencing and online document sharing. No matter which location they are in.
Learners can learn and practice new skills with educational software and apps.
Technology has made training functional and well-timed. Technology integration for training modernization is the need of the hour. If you have eLearning available for your employees but it's not serving its purpose, then you can always update and revamp your legacy e-learning content without implementing new eLearning.
By updating your legacy e-learning, you can save money and provide engaging learning to your learners as well.
Learner-Centered Approach in training updates
The importance of focusing on the needs and preferences of learners: E-learning designers can easily engage learners if they understand their needs and preferences. It helps magnify learning outcomes with the help of learning tools and design elements.
Strategies for creating learner-centric training experiences: Learners definitely play a major role in an e-learning project. You can achieve success in your project by keeping them in mind while designing courses. The ideas in the course must be transferred to the learner in an engaging way. Learner success is what people use to gauge the success of the project.
Let's look at some strategies for creating learner-centric training experiences:
Courses must be responsive: In legacy training, learners are used to access courses on a particular platform. Things have changed; tabs, laptops, and mobile devices are now a source of e-learning. So, designing courses according to this situation will help. Personalization of the courses is also possible, which helps with better engagement.
Microlearning: The attention span of people has gone down remarkably, no matter what they do. Engaging learners is a big challenge. So, the idea of breaking topics into concise subheads has already been well-liked by learners. And they are sponging up materials better in short bursts.
Make use of tools: There are many issues that come up when you think about the course relating to slides and screens. It's not interactive, and it confines the learner to just slides. Learners can't explore more by clicking, and when the course material becomes more complex and detailed, the slide-based approach is not portable enough to take in the required complications. With the evolution of tools and resources, things have changed. The tools available today for instructional designers are more accommodating. HTML5-based courses are more captivating, give enough liberty in design, and, more importantly, are easy to maintain.
Summing Up:
To improve employee performance with modern learning by meeting the latest industry standards and delivering effective learning across all mobile platforms, revamping your legacy courses is the need of the hour. The multimedia elements used before are not serving their purpose now and do not meet modern learning needs.
