Area9 Lyceum Blog

Adaptive Learning is a Learning Experience, Not a Learning Event

Posted by Area9 on Feb 7, 2018 9:00:00 AM
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When you take a training course to get your motorcycle license, does passing the course make you a master motorist? No, of course not. The course only means you have the most basic knowledge required to safely operate a motorcycle on the road.

We all accept that it’s going to take practice to really learn how to drive, and for that, you’ve got to spend hours on the road.

Learning is a lifelong endeavor, so why would we expect a corporate e-learning experience to work any differently?

How to Turn Corporate Learning into a Learning Experience

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Put simply, traditional corporate training is designed to be a one-time learning experience. You pay to have your employees trained, the employees receive training, and everyone goes their separate ways confident that knowledge has been gained. But that’s not how the human brain works. In fact, this kind of learning only puts your employees at risk for unconscious incompetence.

Having completed the e-learning course, (but, being so bored at the bombardment of information they already know, they completely skipped the content that was useful) the employees assume that they are completely up-to-date. But because e-learning only works in a pass-or-fail linear format, these employees may start making mistakes they don’t realize are mistakes because, after all, they “passed the course.”

To avoid this kind of trouble (wasted money and time) corporate e-learning needs to rethink the way it approaches the human mind, and to start viewing learning as a lifelong or career-long pursuit, and to turn learning into an evolving experience.

Adaptive Learning and the Recharge Approach

By accepting and knowing that the human brain is an imperfect computer, Adaptive Learning tackles the unconscious incompetence problem head-on, rather than blaming employee laziness.

People naturally forget things, and won’t always learn something new the first time they read it, including even the most dedicated learners.

The Recharge function quizzes learners and assesses where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and asks them questions from areas they have likely forgotten. In this way, the learning caters uniquely to each learner’s strengths and weaknesses and focuses on the areas they struggle with, bypassing the ones they have mastered.

The Recharge process can be used continually - among even the most proficient employees - to make sure everyone is up-to-date with their knowledge, in a way that doesn’t punish employees for being human and making mistakes.

The Recharge function quizzes learners and delivers the results to them, so the learner can personally and easily understand their progress. They can do this in their spare moments, from their mobile devices, allowing employees to keep their learning with them wherever they go in life. The learning doesn’t stop at the classroom.

Adaptive Learning can be done from any device, anywhere, and can adapt to any brain. Perhaps most importantly, Adaptive Learning focuses on the experience of learning, rather than on a single event of learning. After all, learning isn’t in the graduation ceremony; it’s in the mind.

For More Information on Adaptive Learning and How It Focuses on the Learning Experience, Download This Infographic

Adaptive E-Learning infographic

Topics: Corporate E-Learning