In a recent post, we covered four reasons why you’ll want to personalize your learning and development initiatives this year. This post will cover how you can personalize your training and development initiatives this year.
Rely on the Right Technology
It’s important that you rely on technology that has adaptive learning features if you want to implement personalized learning initiatives. Your learning management system or learning platforms must have things like xAPI capabilities, a mobile-enhanced platform or app, instantaneous feedback on assessments, etc.
Read 6 Adaptive Learning Features You Need Your LMS to Have and How Does Adaptive Learning Work Inside an LMS? for greater insight.
Create a Strategy
While the right technology will help you implement personalized learning experiences, it still won’t prove very useful if you don’t know why you’re implementing personalized learning, and for which courses or programs you’ll want to use it so that it yields a consistently high ROI for your department or organization.
Before implementing personalized learning initiatives, do your research to discover when personalization would be the most helpful for your learners and organization. Remember to include in-person and blended learning courses into your strategy for personalization, too, because not all personalized learning experiences will or should be delivered via e-learning or virtual approaches alone.
Always Focus on the Learner
Regardless of the type of technology you decide to use or not use, don’t forget that personalized learning is all about each individual learner—what is relevant to him or her and his or her career trajectory and interests. All content and learning experiences should be centered around their aptitudes, abilities, and personal employee profiles and career paths at your organization.
Overall, the point of personalized learning is to provide relevant and engaging learning experiences to each and every learner when it’s most relevant to them so that they can learn and develop their skills and aptitudes.
Always Evaluate Data and Feedback
For personalized learning initiatives to be successful, you’ll have to constantly evaluate learning experiences to see when they’re the most effective and when they’re not, as a whole and per each learner. You’ll want to make sure to consider employees’ feedback regarding their learning experiences and the learning content they engage with or encounter.
For instance, at the end of a course module, you could ask employees how relevant they felt the content was to them or whether they found it engaging or not, etc. The need to constantly evaluate learner and learning content data and feedback is why relying on the right advanced technology with adaptive features can be critical to implementing personalized learning initiatives and programs, especially for larger organizations.
However, if you’re constantly looking at your learners and focusing on their individual needs, preferences, and experiences, you’ll still be able to implement personalized learning initiatives successfully.
Use the tips outlined above to further personalize your training and development initiatives this year.