Written by At Brookwood, we design, develop, and deploy all types of learning solutions. Training today is not that same training this day a year ago, or 6 months ago for that matter. Every day, the training demands of an organization increase, shift, or change. How do you manage, and inform your trainees in keeping them current and in the know? Food for thought: Social and collaborative tools can be predominant value-adds to online training/learning in your organization for quick hitting, up to date training information. Right now, as you read this blog, a highly visible shift to including and utilizing these tools are mounting. The advent of MOOC’s, social networks, blogs, wikis, Tweets, are all a part of today’s new learning solution.
In designing eLearning solutions, the most effective type of learning is derived from participation, collaboration, and interacting with others. eLearning can no longer be singular, linear, or simply asynchronous. eLearning needs to rise above and beyond, having to study a prescribed course, and become more interesting and engaging from an information sharing and active participant environment, i.e. what you can learn from your colleagues or other sources along with your training. The new structured eLearning platform is enhanced by these additional avenues of information and collaboration whereas engagement of others, collaboration of teams and the ability to share knowledge through an online learning to a community, with higher levels of thought and learning investment resulting in greater retention – and more than likely a faster, more in depth study.
Be it a social networking or e collaborative environment, the student is afforded the ability to broaden their learning horizons through the doors of additional content access points. This would include interactive additions of emailing questions to someone on the network, starting a discussion group or community, posting a question to a forum or responding to a blog, chatting with other students or trainers, and interacting with others to find more learning information.
For more information, call Brookwood today about extending your learning environment to a social or collaborative learning environment. It will be an asset to the learner and ultimately promote an archive of additional information, resulting in an information rich resource learning site or community – which is now not the future of eLearning, but what it should be today.
–Ed Stengel