When building an eLearning program, the layout of your training can be just as important as the content itself. There are many eLearning trends that you might know of already, but not much is said about the learning journey. By designing effective learning paths, you can guide your learners’ journeys to specific outcomes. Let’s take a look at how these paths can bring value to your eLearning.
Create a Goal-oriented Structure
Learning paths help you build your training toward various goals, which can be straightforward or relatively unclear at first. For example, say you want to design sales training for your employees. In this case, you could easily create courses for skills such as prospecting, pitching, and handling objections, then add these courses to a “Sales Training” learning path. But there could also be a case where you want to design generic training for your employees. Imagine that you wanted this training to be a resource your employees can use to level-up their knowledge as they complete several courses. For such a case, it wouldn’t be uncommon to have shared content for different departments, while also having content unique to each one. A learning path would help you navigate that situation. By creating different learning paths for each department, you can easily include company-wide courses and department-specific courses in each path. So, your sales department will have a course on prospecting, but will also have one on “Good habits” that everyone in your company will take. All you’d need to do next is enroll the right people into the right learning paths.
Learning Paths Are Customizable
A part of what makes learning paths more organized is how customizable they are. As mentioned, you can design your learning journeys to include content from other ones. This also means that courses can easily be swapped or added at any point, so you can update your content if you ever need to. This process is made a lot smoother by the learning management system (LMS) that you’re using. Our platform, Knowledge Direct lets you create paths, assign courses, re-order and change courses within seconds.
Similarly, learning paths help you personalize the learning journey for each individual. By creating pre-requisites for each course in the journey, you can tailor the experience to match the learner’s performance. If they struggle in a post-test, their path can lead them to another course that will focus on the content they had issue with. Likewise, if a learner excels in a topic, then the journey can omit further material on that same subject.
Gamification also has a role to play in your learning paths. When learners complete courses or hit certain milestones, points are an effective way of rewarding them for the achievement. Similarly, you can award badges to them when they complete larger sections of the journey. These awards help connect the pieces of the larger path. For learners, this is key to retaining engagement throughout the training. These reminders help them remember that the work they’re doing is building toward an ultimate goal in the end.
To take advantage of these features, make sure your LMS supports them. Or contact Digitec Interactive (now Apti) to check out Knowledge Direct!
Takeaways
Properly organizing your training program is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. Learning paths offer a goal-oriented and customizable setup to help you in that process. With the right LMS, you’ll be able to personalize the journey for each team and individual. Additionally, a platform like Knowledge Direct will offer you the ability to gamify the path with badges, points, credits, and certificates.
If you’re interested in how learning paths can help you with your specific needs, then contact us. We’ll be able to offer you the expert advice and learning platform to get your training up and running.
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