We already know that Adaptive Learning is a versatile corporate training tool that can onboard new employees or train an experienced team. But Adaptive Learning is especially helpful for complex technical training (like software programming or laboratory medicine) because it helps uncover unconscious incompetence, something traditional corporate training tools cannot do.

What is unconscious incompetence? Not knowing what you don’t know.

What Is Unconscious Incompetence & How Can It Hurt Your Technical Training?

Unconscious incompetence - or not knowing what you don’t know - affects all industries. Area9 research shows that employees are 15-40% unconsciously incompetent about critical aspects of their jobs, aspects that they must master in order to perform their jobs well.

But Why Is Adaptive Learning Particularly Important for Complex Technical Training?

Complex technical training is learned cumulatively, with the underlying concepts evolving over time. This often leads to knowledge becoming stale or outdated without the learner realizing. Adaptive Learning systems are particularly well-suited to complex technical training because Adaptive Learning uncovers and corrects unconscious incompetence.

Since we know that employees are 15-40% unconsciously incompetent about critical aspects of their job, uncovering unconscious incompetence in technical training is important. That knowledge - which employees don’t know that they don’t know - can make up the foundational building blocks of their job skills. In other words, knowing 80% of how to do your job isn’t good enough when the missing 20% is critical to all other on-the-job knowledge.  

Ask yourself: How dangerous is it for your company when an employee thinks they know something - they may even be teaching others - and is taking actions upon that wrong information and passing it along to others? It’s an insidious problem, like the start of a virus, that prior to Adaptive Learning companies had no way to uncover and correct.

What Other Benefits Does Adaptive Learning Have?

Uncovering and correcting unconscious incompetence is one of the many benefits of Adaptive Learning. To learn more about how Adaptive Learning can optimize training time, improve engagement, and put productivity back into your business, download this free infographic.