Every learner learns differently. Don’t rely on just live webinars, just audio lectures, or just downloadable PDFs to get your subject matter expertise across. Instead, diversify the learning experiences to engage better.
Your organization can accommodate diverse learning styles by creating diverse learning experiences. One way to do this is by utilizing instructional design services provided by your online learning technology provider, or by hiring an outside instructional design consultant. Another (and maybe more cost-effective) way to do this is by tackling some of the major delivery challenges head-on, in-house.
Below, read up on common challenges — and possible solutions — associated with delivering diverse learning experiences to your learners:
Limited Internal Resources
Problem: One of the biggest challenges many organizations face as they attempt to create or scale online learning is making sure they have the internal resources necessary to produce quality learning content.
Solution: Choosing an online learning technology that has built-in content authoring tools, powerful monetization options, thorough reporting features, and strong administrative functions, limits the need for different 3rd party application experts — but, that doesn’t necessarily help produce the learning content. Let knowledge experts decide what should be included in each course and lesson, then turn to instructional designers to design how the content should be presented to the learners. Finally, it’s time to actually create the content. Here are resources for creating different online learning content on a budget:
Differentiating Your Learning Content
Problem: It’s hard to stand out in an oversaturated learning industry. Differentiate your learning content and don’t focus on only one content type.
Solution: Create a unique course with multiple content types and help your learning experience stand out. In addition to differentiating your learning content, differentiate the learning processes to help learners make sense of the learning content. Break lessons up with unique assignments or assessments to help learners digest what they’ve learned before moving to the next lesson. All of this is enabled by choosing online learning technology with creative content authoring tools.
Culture and Language
Problem: When you are trying to deliver online learning to learners in different geographical locations, it becomes increasingly difficult to deliver diverse learning while also localizing the content. For example, if your organization produces an animated video using avatars, you might want to change the avatars to fit the demographic of your learners. Or, if you are recording videos as part of your online learning, those videos must be created in multiple languages. This could add a lot of time to the content creation process.
Solution: To reduce some of the time and money investment, choose an online learning technology that allows your organization set learner’s language on the back — automatically updating the language throughout the learning experience.
Connecting with Learners
Problem: Without face-to-face interactions, it’s hard to connect with learners.
Solution: To best understand how learning content is resonating with learners, utilize learning technology features like discussion boards, surveys and built-in email. Constant communication will help your organization understand how to deliver the best — and diverse — online learning experience.
Creating valuable, diverse online learning content isn’t always easy. Once your organization has a handle on these four challenges, growth and scale is inevitable. The Thought Industries’ Learning Business Platform™ can help your organization deliver diverse learning experiences. Request a demo to learn how.
