Online learning, or “eLearning” refers to the use of electronic technologies (typically, the Internet) to serve as the foundation for any type of education program, including corporate training. Today, companies of all sizes and from every industry are realizing the benefits of moving their corporate training out of the classroom and into eLearning-based programs. In addition to offering a more cost-effective approach to training, companies appreciate the convenience and flexibility corporate eLearning offers and the value it can bring to an increasingly complex work environment.
Learning Management Systems for Corporate Training
The core technology that supports an eLearning program is known as a Learning Management System, or “LMS”. An LMS is the application for the building, delivery, and tracking of corporate eLearning programs and is offered in a number of options to support your corporate eLearning needs and objectives. You can, for example, choose to deploy your own on-premises LMS. But more commonly, companies choose to work with cloud-based LMS vendors in order to eliminate the need for a large, up-front capital investment.
A more recent development in LMS architecture is the availability of multitenancy. While a single tenant LMS dedicates the entirety of the application to a single audience, a multi-tenant LMS allows you to “spin up” a new instance of the application to offer private eLearning environments (portals) for each of your unique training audiences. This approach is well-suited for third-party training and consulting organizations or for “in house” training programs in which there is a desire to logically segment and scale your training program.
In choosing an LMS for your corporate eLearning program, it is important to consider the types of content you plan to leverage.
Creating eLearning Content for Corporate Training
One of the benefits of eLearning-based corporate training is in the flexibility it offers to leverage a variety of content types. The key for training managers is in understanding their audience preferences and the training approach that is likely to be most beneficial, given the training objectives.
Some of the most common types of content to consider include:
Video
Video has proven to be among the most effective approaches to corporate training. This is especially true for complex types of training that might even require a demonstration. In working with video, it can be helpful to keep each piece of video content relatively short (3-5 minutes long), otherwise you risk losing the audience’s attention. You can also increase engagement by delivering content in interesting and humorous ways.
HTML5
HTML5 represents the latest specification for HTML. HTML5 offers a variety of features that deliver interactive content and can transform learning programs. This is especially true given the support it offers for the current and next generation of browsers. Incorporating HTML5 content can take your corporate eLearning program to a new level of employee comprehension and engagement.
PDFs and Other Types of Documents
Many companies find that they can repurpose existing PDFs (and other document types) as corporate eLearning content. The use of these documents can decrease your time-to-market for a new program or course and help to minimize your overall development costs. In addition, document-based content can support offline learning activities (such as homework assignments).
LMS Portals for Creating Corporate eLearning Content
LMS Portals offers a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows our clients and partners to build, deliver, and manage corporate eLearning and training programs. Using our platform, you can leverage all types of eLearning content and “spin up” new, branded instances of the application to support your various training audiences. And each portal you launch will have its own user onboarding system, messaging and collaboration tools, analytics engine, and more.
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