Corporate training is an important part of life in a corporation. It helps improve employee productivity, and in turn, the overall effectiveness of the corporation. What’s more, in today’s technology-enabled workplace, life skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking and emotional intelligence are what showcase the human aspect of the human + machine partnership. Thus, reskilling workers in these and other skills are very important to keep pace with the continuously changing world.
For a long time, e-learning has been a major part of corporate training; and with all the advancements in learning technology like augmented reality and gamification, corporate training has come a long way.
However, for all its benefits, traditional e-learning is driven by cost and convenience, and the effectiveness of learning outcomes often suffer as a result. Thus, the need of the hour is a learning solution that can be offered ‘anywhere, anytime, while also taking effectiveness and learner engagement into account.
This is exactly what adaptive learning technology offers!
What Is Adaptive Learning?
Adaptive learning by definition is the delivery of custom learning experiences that address the unique needs of each learner. It uses proven data analytics and intelligent technologies – in real-time to adjust and provide an optimal learning experience.
To better understand this, consider a one-on-one tutoring scenario. In such a situation, the tutor would alter hints and advice while explaining a concept, based on verbal and non-verbal cues from the learner. Thus, the learner would be able to understand the concept clearly, unlike in a situation where the teacher is teaching many students together.
Since the tutor is adapting to the learner in the above scenario, tutoring can be called an adaptive learning experience. However, human tutors cannot train more than two students at one time in such a manner. That is where adaptive learning technology comes in handy.
The technology emulates and supports educators to provide the best possible learning experience for every student. It helps scale learning to hundreds or thousands of students at a time.
The Modes of Adaptive Learning
The ways in which adaptive learning adapts to students can be classified as follows;
- Designed Adaptivity: This method of adaptivity has the expert or educator designing the teaching sequence that guides students. The content sequences and the way the feedback is adapted in the course is driven by the educator. This is an ‘if this, then that’ model, wherein the technology can be told how to react in certain unique situations, giving the educator more control over the adaptivity.
- Algorithmic Adaptivity: As the name suggests, this is a method of adaptivity in which algorithms decide the content and the learning experience that the student should pursue based on what the learner already knows. An often-used algorithm is ‘Bayesian Knowledge Tracing’ that calculates the rate at which learning occurs to provide an optimal educational experience..
In both cases adaptivity factors like performance, level of knowledge, content preferences, misconceptions, demographics, etc., all play an important role in personalizing the courseware. These factors in combination with preset rules or algorithms make it easier for the technology to provide remediation, extra content, and encouragement as necessary.
Besides the above, there are many variations of adaptive learning in the market, each with very different implications. A framework developed by EdSurge classifies adaptive learning into three types:
- Adaptive Content: Adaptive learning technology responding with feedback based on the learner’s response to a question without actually altering the overall sequence of skills.
- Adaptive Sequence: Altering the course sequence, in terms of the order of skills to the type of content received by the student, based on data collected about them through their interactions with the program.
- Adaptive Assessment: Adapting questions a student sees based on their response to previous questions. If the answers were correct, the questions get difficult and vice versa. This variation is used to assess student understanding or progress.
How Adaptive Learning Revolutionizes Corporate Training
Adaptive learning is the future of corporate training. While e-learning used in corporate training is already fairly personalized, the path of the course is usually still linear. Adaptive learning technology takes the personalization a step further by altering the in-course path based on the learner’s choices and interactions with the program.
Thus, while the course may start at the same point for all learners, the next steps and material to be viewed would alter based on the learner’s responses. This leads to many clear benefits that adaptive learning provides, in comparison to traditional learning. Some of these include:
- Reducing training time
- Since the course is personalized and adapted for each learner, it is only natural that it takes a learner less time to gain the skill if they have pre-knowledge of the topic. Research shows that training time can be cut in half.
- Providing 100% proficiency based on learning objectives
- Corporate training is focused on improving an employee’s proficiency at their job and helping them up-skill to master more advanced work.. Adaptive learning ensures that every employee will gain 100% proficiency based on the learning objectives independent of pre-knowledge.
- Finds and fixes unconscious incompetence
- Quite often, employees are ‘unconsciously incompetent in critical competencies that are required for them to do their job. This means that the employees believe they know something, when in fact, they don’t. Adaptive learning technology can help find and fix this unconscious incompetence.
- Enhances business and learning outcomes
- By utilizing advanced functions such as peer reviews and built-in coaching functionality, the student will enhance their learning, especially in areas such as soft skills.
Thus, adaptive learning technology can really revolutionize the world of corporate training. That is why we at Chart Learning are so excited about it and have partnered with Area9 Lyceum to make our award-winning leadership courses available on their highly advanced adaptive learning tech called Area9 Rhapsode(™).
Therefore, Chart Learning’s leadership content – designed based on 13 core competencies every leader must develop for success – can now be accessed through Area9 Rhapsode. This in combination with Chart Learning’s Leadership Skill Inventory Assessment – a gap analysis that measures competencies, diagnoses strengths and identifies areas to improve – can truly make a difference in corporate training.
Let’s take an example; you have a larger organization where you have hundreds of projects running. By utilizing Chart’s Project Management training in adaptive learning, you would be able to train every project member in Project Management, independent of previous skills. Those who are skilled will do the training in expert mode (fast-tracking) and those who are new, will do it in novice mode. Both will gain 100% proficiency. In this way, you can get your whole organization trained in a very short time with the best possible outcome for every learner.
To find out how adaptive learning can improve learning outcomes at your organisation, get in touch with us today!
