2016’s Hottest eLearning Trends

Today’s Hottest eLearning Trends — Defined and Deconstructed

The eLearning industry is on fire, with new eLearning trends emerging as technology changes and grows. Today’s eLearning has completely changed instruction, information management and typical learning methodologies.  This day and age it is important for companies to stay current on the latest eLearning trends in order to maximize new training strategies. Here are six top eLearning trends to consider when crafting eLearning courses for your organization.

Incorporating games into learning

This eLearning trend is exploding in the online learning arena. Gamification simply means incorporating entertaining and/or competitive aspects into an eLearning platform. Games may assign points, or bestow awards or badges to those who meet certain benchmarks. Also, establishing leaderboards can engage learners by challenging them to compete with co-workers, the clock, or their own past scores, for improved performance and retention. Gamification can be especially successful with unmotivated or reluctant learners by making the process fun. Some experts claim that this technique can even boost a learner’s motivation to a 90% recall rate.

If you don’t have prior gaming experience, fear not. There are many advanced gamification development tools, templates, libraries and themes to help you create the most engaging eLearning course for your needs.

Automated development and solutions

Automation has become a crucial aspect of both content creation and processing in eLearning today. Although this is a relatively new concept, templates, themes and prepared assets are already available for use in developing courses. Automation has reached a whole new level in reducing development costs and the time needed to create assessments, games and learning materials.

Automated tools can generate tests and exercises and then scan the content to determine the most important aspects to be analyzed. Courses can be optimized to match the preferences and needs of individual users. Once the learner’s skills and knowledge level have been assessed, automated tools can offer algorithmic suggestion to modify the course content accordingly.

Wearable Technology and mLearning

Personal, wearable gadgets such as the Apple Watch, Google Glass and Oculus Rift are grabbing headlines today and creating an emerging eLearning trend. The use of mobile devices for eLearning purposes, also known as mobile learning or mLearning, is expected to dominate our future eLearning market.

Mobile devices give learners dynamic access to eLearning training anywhere, at any time. Users will be able to access augmented environments by means of QR codes or GPS tracking. 3D simulations and scenario tools are available which make the design process easier and less expensive. Virtual reality based training is slated to be the next big technology trend.

Big Data

This eLearning trend incorporates tools into eLearning courses which analyze activities such as individual learner and group patterns. The data generated provides a better understanding of the learner’s behaviors and preferences, which then allows each organization to fine tune its strategy. In turn, big data leads to more efficient and useful eLearning structures.

Big data is a big deal. It can provide extensive feedback and concrete statistics. Big data analytics will help providers better understand the learning process itself. When big data produces a thorough feedback analysis, full course personalization becomes a reality.

Reach for the Cloud

More eLearning systems and authoring tools are following this eLearning trend and moving to cloud based platforms. Data security was a big concern in the past, however, as encryption measures have improved, the security of sensitive data has also increased. Companies are using cloud based approaches to reduce their eLearning training costs and provide more accessibility for their employees. Also,updating content on the cloud is quick and easy when new rules, specifications, products and features arise.

Customization

Since organizations have different needs for eLearning, the biggest eLearning trend is personalization. With big data we can now analyze massive amounts of information to better address the preferences and requirements of each learner. A personalized eLearning solution is about adjusting the pace of learning and choosing specific images, videos, and text to deliver the course in more efficient ways. Customizing means creating specific learning environments, tools and course curriculum to better engage, motivate and inspire learners. Through customization, we produce better results in less time.

To improve your organization’s online training strategy, consider these six trends to keep your eLearning relevant and relatable for today’s modern learners.

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