Eight Ways to Best Spend Your Online Learning Budget

Therehave never been more opportunities and choices available to use to learn,collaborate, share, and build knowledge. Technology has broken down the geographicbarriers to connecting with subject matter expertise, wherever it resides. Theability to blend free, user-generated, and paid-for content can help addressmore learning needs than ever before.

Ourcomfort levels with living, working, learning, and socializing online provideopportunity for organizations to roll out more creative learning solutions. Therange of services offered by online learning partners helps provide theappropriate technology, content, and tools to support the ambitions of L&Dand the board. But with all this choice can come confusion, so here is aselection of my top tips for spending your precious budget to create future-prooflearning solutions that deliver maximum impact

1. Do invest in the technologyknow-how of the L&D team, if you want to make the most of any onlinelearning spend

The new-skillsagenda for L&D is a huge topic of debate at the moment—in fact it’s beenthe topic of debate since the early 2000s when learning technologies started tohint at a more informal, collaborative approach to learning and knowledgesharing.

Aconsistent feature in reports such as the Towards Maturity Annual BenchmarkingStudy or the CIPD L&D Report highlight time and time again that there is acore of skills demonstrated by the high-performing L&D teams and there isno getting away from technology:

• Understanding new and emerging learning technologies
• Facilitating peer-to-peer contact
• Designing beyond the course
• Supporting communities
• Going beyond need analysis to aligning learning to real businessoutcomes

These areall part of the high-performing L&D team skillset. However, many L&Dteams have not had the support or investment in skills they need. This isespecially true in IT confidence. Understanding learning technologies,facilitation, curation, and blended learning design are core skills if yourL&D team is to maximize the knowledge of your organization and benefit fromsupporting technology.

You’llfind a number of suggestions for development topics in this article—like allgood learning strategies, ensure you are focused and understand what impactthese development areas will have on delivering real business value.

2. Do invest in online communitiestraining

As partof the new L&D skillset, understanding the dynamics of online communities—howto foster, nurture, grow, and measure their effectiveness—will deliver hugevalue.

Communitiesare one of the most effective ways to deliver on an informal/formal learningstrategy or on 70:20:10. However more importantly, they are one of the mosteffective ways to:

• Drive innovation through collaborative problem solving and unearthingexpertise
• Manage change through peer support
• Identify the knowledge present in the organization as well as identifyreal gaps (communities don’t see things as “learning needs,” they discuss thereal challenges of delivery which mean you identify true skills, knowledge, andprocess gaps)
• Connect a dispersed workforce and capitalize on great practice whereverit resides
• Develop a more collaborative and facilitative approach to leadership—theskills of community facilitation rely on motivated individuals seeking to raiseperformance, rather than dictate a mandate

3. Do make the most of freecontent, but be focused

Relevantto both your learners and to L&D themselves, there is a plethora of freecontent out there, from substantive programs like MOOCs to almost daily tweet-ups.This is both an opportunity and a huge distraction! It’s easy to get side-trackedwith the next exciting topic and the range of content and events can be utterlybewildering. Don’t chase the next shiny new topic—chase the business need.

If youcurate your own content, sifting and filtering to create a focused developmentplan, you’ll be exercising the very skills you’ll want to impart in your organization.So get along to free seminars and sign up to webinars and don’t forget to sift onlinefor some great free content.

4. Do invest in a learningportal

One pieceof technology that is going to become more and more important as we movetowards greater personalization of learning is the learning portal. It is avery cost-effective way to not only revive the investments you have alreadymade but create the user experience you really want but which may be difficultto achieve with enterprise systems.

Yourorganization already has plenty of content—it may not be perfect but whencontextualized for the learner, blended with informal learning techniques, anddialogue fostered with other learners, you can get much more value out ofexisting investments.

Alearning portal acts as the aggregator—a way to signpost great learning content,which can often be hidden with a multitude of systems, platforms, and content. Alearning portal doesn’t require reinvention—you probably already have many ofthe sources of great learning (both formal and informal) that you need.

5. Don’t throw out yourcatalogue, but put it in context

Thislinks nicely to learning portals—you probably have a wealth of contentavailable to you already, but it may look tired, be in an immense cataloguethat’s difficult to search, or be of varying quality or relevance. However,when creating effective online learning programs, you may find that extractsfrom existing content are bought to life and contextualized by blending it withnew content, videos, discussions, scenarios, and more.

This is wherethe skills of curation come into play—with effective learning design techniquesand clarity on the combination of core knowledge acquisition, skillsdevelopment, and application needed to create a full learning journey through atopic, your existing content could well play a part when it’s put into contextwith relevant videos, case studies, and discussions. This then helps you focusyour budget on new content development for critical or underserved areas.

6. Don’t forget face-to-facebut make it add unique value

Linked tothe previous point, understanding the role of face-to-face in the learningjourney helps you make much more of the limited time you have to take learnersout into a different environment. You can achieve knowledge acquisition,developing core understanding, and some initial practice online through use ofeLearning, eBooks, videos, interactive scenarios, discussions, and assignments.

Thisenables face-to-face and live interactions to concentrate wholeheartedly on veryfocused, personalized support. There are great examples where online has beenblended with live and face-to-face learning, where the concept of facilitatedpeer reviews, skills clinics, and coaching circles have taken the place of thetraditional classroom format. Face-to-face is still very valuable, especiallywhere subjects can be challenging or highly contextualized.

Shortfocused workshops are the perfect opportunity to support learners through thosecritical periods when they are practicing skills in context. They can also bethe catalyst for more sharing, collaboration, and dialogue online.

A greatway to get that sharing, collaboration, and dialogue online, and to extend thereach beyond the actual day, is to use your “social wizards,” those people activein your organization’s professional networks and communities, to give the onlineelement a “heart beat.” They can instigate dialogue around topics, provokedebate, and connect learners prior to face-to-face interactions. Afterwardsthey can sustain momentum and facilitate the learning journey by encouraging ongoingfeedback, sharing lessons learned from applied learning, and building this backinto future programs.

7. Do be wary of“gamifying” everything—reward what matters

Seriousgames, gamification, badges—these are all regular topics when the subject ofmotivating learners to engage online is discussed. However, they run the riskof being regarded as a trend that came and went. Stepping back from the hype,there are some important lessons on motivation and instilling desired behaviorsand practices that should not be ignored, it’s just that you may choose not toannounce you’ve “gamified” everything! There are some fantastic examples ofhigh-production interactive content that draws on game elements and platformsthat reward activity through badges. But proceed with caution.

You needa light touch to make sure you are rewarding things that truly matter to theuser—if you overuse badges, rewards, levelling up, etc., it soon becomes tiredand gimmicky. Learning and development strategists need to think about theskills, behaviors, and contributions that really matter to both the learner andthe organization and have a coherent framework that rewards valuablecontributions.

8. Do informal learning,but provide formal content that makes it more effective

This isreally where all these themes come together. As we have seen, it’s the blend ofa range of learning design techniques, technologies and supporting skills thatcreate the entire learning journey.

However,just as face-to-face alone is not the most effective learning journey, orgamification will not be the cure-all to motivating learners, the informal/formallearning choice is not an either/all decision.

Toaddress the important learning needs for your organization, your learners willexpect more than a single intervention, even if that’s what you deliver. They’lltry and fill in the gaps themselves but this is time consuming, difficult tomake relevant, varying in quality, and can be distracting. It’s the role oftoday’s L&D team to deliver expertly blended formal and informal learningthat is truly aligned to business need and utterly relevant.

Aneffective formal learning scaffold can provide the right environment for intensiveinformal knowledge sharing, dialogue, and peer support.

Bydistilling the key topics into well-designed formal learning (which couldinclude eLearning modules, videos either created or curated from sources suchas TED, eBooks, diagnostics, etc.), you can set the scene and context for moremeaningful informal exchanges.

Want more?

LisaMinogue-White will present Using the Power of Online Communities to SuperchargeYour Learning at DevLearn 2015 Conference & Expo, session 502, on Thursday, October 1, at 1:15 PM.