Remote learning is steadily becoming the new norm for corporate, academic, and non-profit organizations in Africa. Yet, some people consider traditional learning to be much more effective. There’s lots of evidence that proves otherwise.
Higher Retention Rate
The most popular bias about online or remote learning is that learners acquire less knowledge during online sessions. However, the opposite is true.
According to an IBM study, employees learned five times more training material during the same time after they had implemented eLearning technologies.
A number of factors can explain such an astonishing result. First, there’s less human involvement, which is good because trainers can be tired or in a bad mood, affecting how well they deliver information to learners.
Besides, one person can’t physically provide the same attention to every student or trainee during in-person sessions. Learners can get easily distracted during classroom lessons, and there’s no way to access the information that they missed.
Online learning is based on online courses that learners can take and retake at any time. If they forget something, they can always locate that information and review it.
Increased Learner Engagement
Learner engagement is one of the key factors that affect training success. If it is low, learners consider programs dull and formal and don’t put their energy into acquiring new skills and knowledge. Such an attitude decreases training effectiveness significantly. That same IBM study shows that you can boost learner engagement by 19% if you train online.
Online courses can include various types of eLearning content: interactive presentations and quizzes, video modules, role-plays, ebooks, and more.
Learners get involved in multiple activities; they don’t lose interest and maintain their focus until the end of the course. And if they get tired and need to take a break, they can pause the course and come back to it later. These features of remote learning let you keep your students or employees engaged.
Higher Revenue
Some people might think of online learning as another expense that’s not worth investing in. But what eLearning does is save you money and allow you to realize higher revenues.
Online learning doesn’t require physical presence. That’s why it saves your company all the travel expenses on trainers who – for face-to-face training – have to go from one department or city or country to another.
And that’s a lot. For example, Triad Unlimited, a US asset management solutions organization, saves each of its customers over $200,000 of travel expenses by using iSpring eLearning tools.
To launch eLearning, you only need to purchase two tools: an authoring tool for creating online courses and a learning management system to deliver them to learners and track their progress.
They range in price, but, in general, companies gain $30 for every dollar invested. This happens because employees can train faster and better online and apply new skills and knowledge to their work performance right away, thereby improving their effectiveness and bringing the company higher revenues.
Besides, some eLearning vendors offer all-in-one solutions that cost less than purchasing separate tools. So, you can invest even less in online learning and get the same great results. For example, iSpring, one of Africa’s most popular global eLearning vendors, offers its learning management system iSpring Learn bundled with an authoring tool, iSpring Suite.
These tools proved highly effective in various African corporate, academic, and non-profit organizations.
They are currently used by organizations such as Universiteit Stellenbosch, ABSA Bank, TVET Colleges, and Compassion International.
Less Time to Develop and Complete
Traditional learning requires a lot of time from both parties: trainer and learner. Trainers need to prepare brochures, print tests, and check them manually.
And learners have to sit through hours of lectures and training sessions that often take longer than expected due to organizational issues.
When you spend so much time on these less critical tasks, you might not have enough time to focus on something essential like analyzing training needs, formulating a learning strategy, or – if you’re a learner – implementing new skills and knowledge in your work.
It takes up to 60% less time to develop online training materials and complete training programs. Of course, there can be some exceptions. If you don’t have coding and technical skills and start working with an advanced authoring tool, you might spend more time on content development.
But easy-to-use tools, like iSpring Suite, speed up the development phase greatly. For example, Consulman, a business consulting firm based in Italy, cut the time required for building an online course in half with iSpring Suite.
Another advantage of eLearning is that a learning management system (LMS) automates most training management processes.
Trainers don’t need to check learners’ quiz answers – the LMS will do it for you and generate detailed reports on each trainee’s progress, allowing you to see an employee’s strengths and aspects that require development.
Besides, an LMS sends invites to learners, notifies them of new assignments, reminds them of deadlines, and performs other routine tasks that take a lot of trainers’ time and energy in traditional learning.
As you can see, remote learning provides many benefits to organizations: it increases learner engagement, knowledge retention, and revenue. Moreover, it reduces the time required to develop educational materials and complete training programs.
These facts prove that online corporate training and online learning are much more effective than the traditional approach.
With business initiative, this learning approach can become widespread in Africa and take its economy and education to the next level.
