The One Thing That L&D Teams Can Do to be More Learner Centric

by Kim Jolly Writer

Imagine you walk into a Levi’s store to buy a pair of jeans. You will easily find 30-40 different kinds of jeans just for you. As will others. This gives consumers the feeling that their pair is unique. Across industries, organizations are investing in this level of customization to be as customer-centric as possible. This begs the question that if my clothing can be so customized, then why can my learning not be personalized as well?

Existing learning practices are outdated, almost archaic. Therefore, learners are taking their learning and development into their own hands. In doing so, a crucial link is missing - L&D teams serve the important function of identifying learner needs, even when learners don’t recognize the need for themselves. With this, L&D is also responsible for analyzing performance and return on investment, both of which are important to business. With these heavy responsibilities on their shoulders, what to L&D teams need to do to leverage their value to both learners and business? The answer is to invest in Technology-based Experiential Learning.

Experiential learning has been around for a while now – human board games, using legos, theater and drama, and even cooking challenges to learn skills like negotiation and collaboration have been popular with L&D teams for decades. There is no doubt that these activities engage learners. However:

Does the learning stick or does the activity become a memory of a fun time?
Does the learning tie back to business and add value to learners’ roles and responsibilities?
Is business able to understand the impact of the learning intervention? Is the intervention contributing to business growth?
Is the needle-movement in performance tangible and measurable?

To all of this, the answer right now is a big NO! Because, technology is largely missing in learning as we know it, experiential or otherwise.

Investing in technology-based experiential learning affords organizations to cater to the collective agenda of learners, L&D and HR teams, and business. How?

1. For the learners, who want engagement, experience, and digital learning: Technology-based experiential learning tools such as business simulations, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning provides learners:

Safe learning environments to practice without real world implications
Real-life like scenarios for high impact, deep learning
Instant, constant, objective and unbiased feedback resulting in mindset changes
High engagement, social learning, collaboration and competition through gamification

2. For L&D and HR teams, who want a trusted partner for an end-to-end learning solution: Technology-based experiential learning provides:

Capability, competency, and performance assessment
Skill gap assessment in real-time work environments
Development of skill sets in a holistic manner
Data and deep insights into learner trends, performance, strengths and weaknesses

3.For business, who want accelerated capability development to align with business needs: Technology-based experiential learning:

Allows assessment and development at scale
Provides immediate, robust, unbiased and measurable analytics tied back to business
Speeds up time to employee productivity

With such significant benefits to employing technology-based experiential learning, and the promise that technology will do to learning what it did to marketing, it is a question why organizations are hesitant to incorporate technology and digital platforms into their assessment and learning initiatives.

Reach out to KNOLSKAPE to understand the power of technology-based experiential learning or talk to one of our experts.

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