How to Empower Instructional Designers to Make Corporate Learning Effective

It is indeed amazing how swiftly businesses could transition to 100% remote learning last year – something that was in the pipeline for the longest time and yet never really prioritized. Every organization, big and small, has now adopted online mechanisms to continue with their employee engagement programs. This was crucial. Corporate training need to be consistently delivered as skills preparedness is critical when employees are needed to keep pace with shifting skill needs. Ever wondered then who might be instrumental in making these interactions feasible? The guess is right – instructional designers – and the creative ways they come up with for remote corporate training.

Instructional Design and Why It Matters

Specialists in creating online learning materials for institutions, corporations, and more, understand different types of problem sets in the corporate world and apply instructional design ideas for learning the problem answers. Though it is a creative process, instructional designers, or IDs, extensively make use of technology in developing better course content. For instance, designing interactive learning experiences, or creating training content that can be accessed on a mobile, are some of the requirements IDs need to consider. After all, learning is expected to be a smooth and effective process and is intended to support employee development. Let us look at how this process can be bettered.

Making Learning Collaborative

Corporate trainings are designed keeping varied end results in mind. These could be for delivering a digital curriculum to fulfill some skill gaps, or for sharing company policies and procedures. Either way, the learning solution should address the organization’s specific training challenge. To gauge this, IDs need to incorporate collaborative learning solutions. This will also be helpful in determining what employees are struggling with and creating programs to help them improve. The quickest way to add a collaborative element to an online training program is by taking advantage of the features offered by the company’s LMS. Unfortunately, many companies opt for learning solutions that are based on convenience and budget, and not on software effectiveness. These don’t really add to the training effectiveness. It is important to avoid software that promises to be a one-size-fits-all and instead look for niche products. For instance, Raptivity allows tracking learner performance and is SCORM compliant as well. This means companies and IDs can check whether the learning content is truly facilitating a more effective learning experience for the employees and accordingly make changes.

Catering to Everyone’s Needs

IDs need to develop courses for diverse learners. Not all employees come with the same cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Hence, better understanding the learners’ or employees’ mindset is the key here. Design Thinking is one way to add to the entire learning experience. It takes into account how employees absorb and apply their knowledge. Raptivity, for example, offers hundreds of latest interaction templates. Now based on a Design Thinking study, an ID can thus use these templates, build visually engaging, responsive experiences, and achieve a customized learning format. Such efforts are bound to increase employee engagement and ensure course completion. With the pace things are moving these days, IDs are asked to develop training solutions as quickly as possible. The right tools are eventually going to speed up the entire training as well as learning process and increase productivity for everyone.

It is a busier time being an instructional designer. The shift to online learning has been accelerated, and IDs will play a major role for corporate training. As we move on with 2021, it is apparent that companies will continue the online/remote training mechanism for the months to come. IDs, in that sense, should be empowered with the tools and opportunities to help trainers deliver the business goals.