The era of training restricted to a classroom setting is now on its way out. Let’s be clear: it’s not that classroom learning is no longer useful. Far from it. But it should no longer be considered THE ONE AND ONLY setting for training. It is just one of the many ways people can learn what is meaningful to their professional and personal development in the landscape of personalised training.
What people want today is training that is immediately useful, has a specific focus and is compatible with the everyday pace of life. They want training that suits their individual needs, as delivered by the methodology used in adaptive learning.
Digital technology allows this to happen very precisely and efficiently. We can calibrate the level of detail of content, in line with the specific roles and duties of individual learners. In fact, some areas require someone in the company to have in-depth, specialist knowledge. Others require only a sprinkling of knowledge, just enough to establish whether a problem exists and who to turn to if it does.
It would be a waste of time, money and motivation to require people to study things that only experts will ever use on the job.
Personalising content for actual practical application by specific functions and roles is one of the innovative benefits of digital adaptive learning.
What’s more, learners are able to learn when it suits them, devoting time and energy only to the content they need, thanks to the software’s ability to calibrate how the material is presented to them.
Training programmes with these criteria involve some initial work to organise the content. Delivery, on the other hand, takes less effort, occurring over a period of time as and when needed by learners. The system provides reports so activities can be monitored in real time.
The principles and theory behind adaptive learning are not entirely new. What is new is the fact that digitalisation now enables full and effective implementation of those principles. Now that the technology exists, it is up to humans to develop the best methods and processes to take advantage of this valuable new opportunity for personalised training. And that is precisely what we mean at APPrendere when we say we transform how learning is provided within organisations.
