5 eLearning Trends for 2020 that Make Corporate Training a Piece of Cake

We are at the end of the holiday season, eager to start the new year – bringing with it new wishes, beginnings, and opportunities. While some of us don’t want the holidays to end, there are others who are chafing at the bit, impatient to start doing something, and trying to bring in better workplace practices in 2020. And for all you training managers, here are 5 eLearning trends that will help make your corporate training easy and effective.

eLearning Trends You Shouldn’t Miss in 2020

1. Rapid eLearning with New Tools

If there’s one thing most corporate training professionals moan about, it’s the constantly reducing time allotted for designing and rolling out eLearning courses. Truly, people outside L&D think training managers are magicians who can cast a spell and pull a rabbit out of a hat – sorry, an interactive eLearning course from a dismal PPT deck.

But jokes aside, even though developing an eLearning course doesn’t involve casting spells, it has a very magical secret weapon – Rapid eLearning. While most of you are aware of this trend, it has still managed to top the list of the most popular trends for 2020, due mostly to some new tech tools which are sure to enhance eLearning development.

Any discussion on rapid eLearning inevitably involves a discussion on rapid authoring tools. There are a slew of tools designed to carry out specific tasks during rapid development. Two such tools which are gaining rapid popularity are:

Panopto: This is an easy to use, online platform which enables recording, live-streaming, storing, and managing videos within a cloud or through LMS integration. It is rapidly becoming very popular because it allows users to search and fast-forward to specific points in the video to access information instantly. It also comes with built-in analytics which monitor video activity minute-by-minute.

Amazon Polly: Using voice-overs in eLearning courses is a common practice but finding someone to do it is always a hassle. And while many authoring tools provide text-to-speech (TTS) feature, they do not always offer the quality you seek. So what should you do?

Well luckily for you, there is Amazon Polly, a cloud-based TTS engine which uses deep learning technology to synthesize life-like speech for text threads.

Download this eBook on how rapid eLearning design helps in quick training rollout.

2. Learning Analytics with Customized LMS

Hmm… So learning analytics is the newest buzz in L&D town and while you must have heard about it in theory, its practice is still a bit hush-hush. So what exactly is this trend? In simple words, it is a way for you to measure and analyze your workplace training and its effectiveness by using analytic tools.

What good will it do for your organization, you ask? Well, once you measure what is right or wrong with your training program, you can use the right intervention to change it and therefore increase your training ROI.

While it is still rare to find full-fledged learning analytics implemented for workplace training, you can always start small. And the first step includes integrating a learning analytics tool with your current Learning Management System (LMS).

While traditional LMSs do track learning activities and generate reports, such data is often insufficient to obtain a complete picture of online training effectiveness. It also does not include the overall impact training has on organizational productivity and growth. But integrating LMS with an analytics tool will provide actionable insights.

3. Outsourcing LMS Administration

Do you have an in-house L&D team? Does your in-house team include experts in LMS administration? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you must be in a pickle. But fear not, you’re not the only one.

More and more organizations are now migrating toward online training and often have an in-house team dedicated for eLearning course development. But maintaining an LMS is quite another feat. While L&D experts are good at instructional design and courseware development, their expertise doesn’t count for much when it comes to LMS administration.

That is why many organizations are keen to outsource LMS administration, both full-time and task-based to eLearning vendors. How will this trend benefit you? Well, when you outsource, you’ll save your L&D team the headache of setting up training programs, uploading courses to the LMS, setting up a ticket system for users, building catalogs based on job-roles, generating reports, and carrying out support actions such as trouble shooting and technical issues. Phew…won’t that be a relief?

4. LMS Apps for Offline Learning

Speaking of the LMS… there is another trend which will most certainly pique your interest – that of LMS apps. If you think your eLearning courses are mobile responsive and can be accessed through any browser, so there is no need for a separate app, I will ask you one question – is it enough?

The truth is that while eLearning courses can be accessed through browsers, they cannot be tracked since this activity will occur outside of the LMS. And this problem of inability to track also happens when the learner downloads a course and accesses it in the offline mode. However, with a mobile friendly LMS app, the downloaded course can be tracked as soon as the user goes online.

Many popular LMSs such as Adobe Captivate Prime, Docebo, Moodle and CourseMill are already equipped with an app.

5. Apps to Integrate Multi-level Workflows

As you can see, mobile apps are becoming an integral part of corporate training programs. It isn’t just about learning management; apps also facilitate operational efficiencies, streamline workflows, and help learners perform better at their jobs.

Apps are also more appealing to today’s workforce as they allow them to maintain a sense of continuity in the workflow. They provide information regarding who they should collaborate with on similar projects and processes, and whom they should report to on finishing the tasks. They also allow learners to reach out to SMEs and instructors from within the app for expert advice.

Surely today, when you have a mobile app to order clothes, food, cabs, and even monitor your sleep, why should learning be left behind?

Summing it Up!

Aren’t you glad that these trends are there to greet you once you go back to work? They will surely make your work life a lot easier. And these five are not the only trends for this upcoming year; there are many more. To get a better idea on what each of these trends means for your corporate training program, refer to our eBook here.