Look at pretty much any business right now, and you’ll notice signs of an impending digital transformation. Call it a sign of the times since most businesses these days know it’s a requirement to incorporate digital strategies into day-to-day and long term operations.
As a leader in the technology training space, we want to ease the pain of those changes and transitions for our clients. That’s why we’re constantly thinking of ways to make training more accessible and easier to consume. One approach is a new on-demand training format: GK Digital Learning. This is strategic because we aren’t producing a ton of content only to mirror what’s already in the market. Instead, we’re trying to produce engaging content in topical areas where we see a gap in the market. This allows companies to have the option of training topics in whichever delivery format you deem right for the particular team and instance.
Ultimately, GK Digital Learning is about producing the best product to help companies take their employees from good to great. We want students to learn rather than buy a subscription and never use it. To facilitate learning, we’re constantly doing pilots and listening to feedback to enhance the learning experience. John Mckeever, VP of Digital Learning Production at Global Knowledge, said it best: “Our goal is to leverage the best of what is out there with solid, measurable learning design to create the best digital training product on the market.”
To achieve our goal of creating the best product, we spend a lot of time working with instructional designers on pre-production activities rather than just moving into the production phase. “Many development companies cut corners to move content quickly and cheaply; however, you often get what you pay for,” Mckeever said.
For example, while voice-over slides may help you learn a single concept at a point in time, we’ve learned through research and customer interviews that our customers often desire more than just fundamental knowledge on topics. That’s why we invest so much time in pre-production.
“The ability to spend just a little extra time to think about the quality of the user experience allows us to create a product that we believe most closely recreates that relationship you have with an instructor in a live environment,” said Ted Singdahlsen.
Singdahlsen, a Learning Experience Manager at Global Knowledge, seeks to improve how this is put into practice. Knowing that a learner’s personal life, mood, motivations, or even day-to-day job duties can play a role in how much they retain, he sees beauty in allowing someone the opportunity to train when they are ready to consume the information at hand. “If you learn bit-by-bit and incorporate your learning into your work life (or experiment!), that learning becomes part of your experience and vice versa. You know why you are learning what you are learning, and you can easily fit the new pieces with what you already know. That is real learning,” explained Singdahlsen.
Real learning and skill development are what any manager and student desire. Staying stagnant will in no way help your customers or co-workers grow. We’re currently working on digital training portfolios specific to Microsoft and Application Development, but we also have other large topics on the roadmap that scale areas like cloud and cybersecurity.
For a deeper dive into digital learning, stay tuned for our next blog post on what a “digital approach” entails. Want to stay in the know about Global Knowledge more generally? Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.