Learning Paths For Effective Training Programs
Using an apprenticeship management system (LMS) just to train your employees (either discrete courses or random courses) does not help you make the most of it— the LMS you have turns out to be a white elephant. Nevertheless, you can train or upskill your employees through standardized programs by using the priorities of your organization and learning and development (L&D) techniques.
In this writing-up, we explore what a learning path is, how to create different types of them, and what advantages you reap from them by designing structured learning programs for your organization’s employees.
Learning Paths
Consider the direction you’re heading between your arrival and departure. You come across a number of stages along that route apart from the start and endpoints. You’re getting closer to your destination every stage you pass, isn’t it?
Use and apply this metaphor to your L&D. This ensures that your learning should take place as a sequence of milestone points to reach the organization’s intended goals. It helps learners feel like they’re on a learning journey with a set of goals set before them, and each learning goal is laid out in a course.
Therefore, the learners and their industry go from strength to strength, fulfilling one goal at a time, both as an individual and as a whole. That’s the hypocrisy of the learning path strategy!
Learning Paths Types
It is possible to divide the learning process into 3 groups. You can build one of them as your own learning path, depending on your needs. Remember that a learning path aims at achieving one goal at a time, but by the time you complete it, it is designed to target a set of goals. Now let’s see the three types of paths of learning.
1. Successive
The successive path of learning is one where a series of courses are created. All the courses in this direction are mandatory and the worker must complete one course at a time. As the learner completes one, access to another will be granted. When, and unless, the course is completed by your employee he/she can not get permission to see the material of the next course. This form of the learning experience is therefore aimed at achieving optimal results. The level of learning difficulty will rise in a subsequent learning path as the learners go from one course to the next.
For example, before he/she contributes code to your Moodle (or LMS) application, a software employee trainee at your organization must go through a number of courses. The employee must finish HTML, CSS, JScript, and PHP first.
2. Alternative
The alternate learning path is similar to a short-cut route that you use for some distance to avoid driving on the expressway, but you will come back to it later on the trip and continue to travel on the expressway.
Similarly, you can create a learning path where your employees can skip one or two courses (optional) along the way, but in order to complete the learning path they need to complete the rest of the courses (obligatory). Here you provide your folks with a learning option without sacrificing on achieving the goals.
The alternative path of learning emphasizes the learning outcome and flexibility rather than the learning order. As a supervisor, by combining compulsory and optional courses, you can set the order of the courses.
3. Level
In learning paths, you can build levels. Can level consists of a series of courses that, like choice-based learning, can be either all compulsory or versatile. When your learner completes a level, he/she achieves that level of mastery.
In other words, the path of level learning combines the successive path of learning with the alternative path of learning. You can choose the number of levels that you want them to comply with and the goals that can be accomplished through this method. Inside or without a timeline you can undertake all these forms of learning routes. Everything is contextual.
Read: 5 KEY CUSTOMER TRAINING FEATURES YOUR LMS IS LACKING (AND WHAT TO USE INSTEAD)
Learning Paths Benefits
All that’s all right. At the end of the day, before you decide whether to use this L&D method for your people or not, you have to determine if your company and employees profit from the learning path. I’d like to send you a rundown of the advantages of using a learning course.
Create purpose-driven learning
Do your organization’s people have or know that they need to go through a “so-and-so” L&D strategy? If they don’t know, but still go through the preparation, it ensures that your money on L&D goes down the drain. Thus, create a purpose-driven training with viable goals through a learning path that ensures that your employees do not sweep away from the learning path set.
Achieve your L&D goals one at a time
Not only do you help your employee achieve his goal by developing a learning plan with a set of goals, but you also make the organization meet some of those goals. It’s like the earth rotates as it orbits the sun on its own axis. In other words, match individual priorities with the organization’s objectives. Train them with a single shot to get two birds!
Redeem admins’ time
Time is a precious resource. If you have a huge number of goals, you can’t get more than 24 hours. Therefore, once you build it, these objectives are mapped to the courses along a learning path. And, you immediately streamline courses and targets. You then save time to concentrate on something else.
Measure the effectiveness of their learning path with feedback
On a learning path, your folks are just one side of the coin. Once they complete it, your job as their boss doesn’t end — it goes far beyond that. Watching over them for a while, like a good shepherd, and getting feedback lets you find out the usefulness of their route of learning. The training strategy’s success directly translates into the ROI.
Learning Path Use Cases
The learning path’s reach goes beyond a single field’s L&D policy. It learning technique can be applied in any learning environment across the business continuum.
Below is a list of areas where learning pathways for developing structured learning programs can be used effectively:
Customer support or tech support
Sales enablement training
Employee skill development
Franchise/Dealership training
Academic learning
Association L&D
A nice thing about learning paths is that you can customize them to suit any L&D requirement you may have.
To conclude, combining a community of courses and organizational objectives with a learning path approach is a successful augur for your organization.
Source: https://elearncommunity.com/news/learning-paths-for-effective-training-programs/