At present, eLearning personalization is one of the hottest trends in employee learning and development (EL&D). While planning and designing training programs, learning managers explore ways to customize the learning programs according to the precise needs and preferences of the learner. But the organizations cannot deliver personalized or customized learning without leveraging technologies and data. As a new-age education model, adaptive learning helps L&D managers to deliver customized learning or training to every employee according to her precise learning needs by leveraging both data and technologies. Hence, organizations across the globe, have started the process to implement adaptive learning.
According to EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI),
“Adaptive learning is one technique for providing personalized learning, which aims to provide efficient, effective, and customized learning paths to engage each student. Adaptive learning systems use a data-driven approach to adjust the path and pace of learning, enabling the delivery of personalized learning at scale.”
Your organization can implement adaptive learning using a slew of methodologies and technologies – expert model, student model, instructional model, and instructional environment. But you cannot implement the education model successfully without focusing on both planning and execution. In addition to choosing the right adaptive learning platform, you must focus on setting up an adaptive learning environment. At the same time, you also need to consider many ideas to transform EL&D by implementing adaptive learning successfully.
7 Ideas You Must Adopt to Implement Adaptive Learning Successfully
Abandon Content-First Approach
While panning EL&D, a large percentage of managers focus extensively on content. They try to create content that will make learners understand concepts and topics regardless of their knowledge and experience. But you cannot implement adaptive learning successfully without abandoning the content-first approach. Instead of making all readers read and review the same content, you must focus on personalizing the content according to every learner’s knowledge and experience. The adaptive learning system must adjust the context and complexity of the content to make every learner acquire relevant knowledge without putting in extra time and effort.
Leverage Cutting Edge Technologies
Like other educational technologies, adaptive learning has been evolving continuously. Adaptive learning 2.0 was driven primarily by algorithms developed manually. But adaptive learning 3.0 will be driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Your organization cannot set up a futuristic adaptive learning environment without leveraging AI and ML. The cutting-edge technologies will make it easier for you to personalize content and learning experience according to the learner’s knowledge, experience, behavior, and performance. Also, you can use AI to assess the performance of employee learning programs based on real-time data.
Enable Real-Time Content Adjustments
While implementing adaptive learning, many managers personalize the learning experience by conducting an upfront assessment. They assess a learner’s knowledge and experience by making her answer a series of questions before accessing the content. The upfront assessments often demotivate the employees who are not familiar with the topic or subject matter. Your adaptive learning strategy must focus on replacing upfront assessments with real-time content adjustments. You can leverage AI and ML to customize and adjust the content according to the knowledge and experience of every learner based on real-time data. Also, you must allow learners to skip certain levels according to their knowledge and expertise.
Invest in the Right LMS
You can reduce the time and resources required to implement adaptive learning by choosing the right learning management system (LMS). As mentioned earlier, adaptive learning is currently one of the hottest trends in EL&D. Hence, many new-age learning management systems (LMSs) come with built-in adaptive learning features. At the same time, there are many LMSs that can be customized fully according to your adaptive learning implementation strategies. But several studies suggest that gamification is is a key element of the adaptive learning environment. You can implement adaptive learning successfully only by investing in an LMS that supports some of the gamification options preferred by adult learners.
Leverage Real-Time Learner Data
The conventional LMSs and adaptive learning platforms lack the capability to assess real-time learner data collected from diverse sources. But the new-age LMSs leverages AI and data analytics to provide managers with actionable insights. You can make informed decisions leverage informed decisions without organizing and analyzing the large amount of learner data being collected by the LMS regularly. The actionable insights help you to understand what, when, and how an employee wants to learn. Hence, you can easily personalize the learning experience through recommendations and follow-on predictions. You can further leverage the real-time learner data to optimize the existing content and courses for the adaptive learning environment.
Keep Learners Engaged and Motivated
Unlike conventional education models, adaptive learning focuses on making learners more active. In addition to delivering a personalized learning experience, adaptive learning uses content to facilitate preparation and practice. That is why; you must explore ways to keep the learners engaged and motivated while implementing adaptive learning. Your strategy must keep learners engaged by focusing on knowledge construction, information analysis, and critical reflection. At the same time, you need to keep the learners motivated by enabling them to track their own progress and encouraging them to share feedback. Your strategy must provide on-time support, guidance, or encouragement to each learner by making her interact with an instructor.
Implement Adaptive Learning in Phases
No organization can switch from digital learning to adaptive learning in a short amount of time. You must remember that adaptive learning adoption and implementation is an ongoing process. Your strategy must emphasize implementing adaptive learning in phases. The phased implementation will make it easier for you to identify and define key learning goals, getting courses created and fine-tuned, and evaluate content by performing A/B testing. However, it is always important to redesign the existing courses gradually during the implementation process. You also need to focus on implementing the education model more effectively by adopting emerging eLearning trends and leveraging cutting-edge technologies.
Adaptive learning is one of the new-age education models which are all set to transform EL&D and corporate training in the near future. But you must prepare an elaborate plan to implement adaptive learning successfully by focusing on both preparation and execution. At the same time, you must adopt many innovative ideas to set up a robust adaptive learning environment by leveraging technologies and data.
