New Trend - Learning Portals with Social Media Elements
One of the interesting things about being a vendor, is trends in the marketplace become evident quickly. Over the last 6 months, we have had multiple requests from clients to develop learning portals.
Just like the google interface, a learning portal can be used to access all of a company’s training information. It can be cloud-based or can be attached to a company’s learning management system (LMS). With learning portals, when you do a search, bite sized training information will appear in order of relevance based on key words in the search field. Gone are the days of 50 page participant guides or long eLearning courses. The most effective learning portals, will show short infographics, videos or eLearning modules that will take only minutes to read or take. Everything from videos, job aids, to on the job training will be accessed in bite-sized chunks that can be read and easily understood before being applied on the job.
We are seeing an increasing request for learning portals that also have social media and community of practice elements (COP). What I mean by this is that learners will be able to add comments, or will be able to “like” (think Facebook) any training informationwhich they find helpful. Interfaces will also be able to show which information is “trending” at any time (meaning a high-volume of users are looking for the same training information in a given period).
We are also getting requests for portal customization. More and more corporate clients are asking for the ability to have learners login to a learning portal and to see information customized to their training needs.
I remember attending a session at the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTSD) annual conference 12 years ago, where a professor from York University was talking about how learning on demand, would be the latest trends - 12 years later, I think this trend is finally here!
To know more about Learning Portals, please visit us at www.pathwaystrainingandelearning.ca!
