Immersive Learning Experience: Enabling Growth through better Learner Engagement

While COVID-19 has acted as a barrier against the growth drives for a lot of otherwise booming industries, it has been a boon for the education sector, pushing everyone into hyper-drive – looking for better and more efficient ways of delivering knowledge. When over 80% of the world’s learners and nearly 25% of the world’s workforce were affected by country-wide safety and social distancing measures, individuals were prompt to look for solutions. E-learning was already on an upward trend before the pandemic hit. But with this sudden closure of on-premise learning options all around the globe, many are expecting a higher rate of adoption than previously estimated. Standing at the beginning of Education 4.0, let’s try to understand what can drive better ROI for e-learning players and how.

Why?

With the demand side bloating up unprecedentedly, companies in this domain are in dire need of adopting digital means in their pursuit of higher user acquisition and retention. In a world where e-learning is becoming increasingly consumer (learner) focused, companies are looking for answers on how to keep the end-user hooked through better engagement.

What?

Delivering a more engaging experience to your learner simply equates to higher customer retention and in turn, better ROI for an organization. Companies are thus focusing on creating LXPs (Learning Experience Platforms) to provide a personalized learning experience to their end users through customized learning paths, contextual suggestions and many more. Interactive real-time learning experiences where the learner gets to interact with the instructor through their mobile devices to engage in live Q&A sessions, or evaluations are rapidly on the rise. Real-time assessment acts as a feedback to the instructor giving her/him a birds-eye-view of the class and enough information to tweak the course based on the same, making it a lot more engaging. All these features are incorporated in order to attain a higher learner focus, by providing them with captivating and diverse content to increase learning effectiveness, along with the primary goal of engagement.

• With mobile and smartphone penetration reaching new heights, mobile learning and micro-learning has picked up pace. M-Learning is tailor made for millennials, who have grown up with an extensive knowledge of digital and handheld devices. It also offers exciting use cases for LMS (Learning Management Systems) in organizations, for employees who are always on the move. M-Learning is proven to be more accessible, convenient, engaging and cost-effective, and is often the most preferred channel for e-learning.
• Organizations have been looking at gamification as a way of engaging their learners though fun and interactive visuals, leaderboards, scorecards, badges, virtual money, etc. Game-based content can provide uninterrupted learner engagement as it communicates continuously with the user and demands their interaction to proceed. Gamification has long been proven to offer higher course completion rates, higher knowledge retention and higher proficiency gain when compared to traditional methods of learning.
• Another innovative concept in E-learning is the addition of a social element through communities and user-generated content – giving the learner a sense of belonging and a chance to engage in peer learning. The famous ’70:20:10 Learning model’ says that the two big chunks of learning come from observing (70) and interacting (20) with peers in the class, thus highlighting how this new approach can help engage learners. Social learning creates an informal learning environment where the learner can share his/her ideas, ask questions, collaborate on problem-solving and much more.
• Immersive technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) have been buzzwords for quite some time and have now made their way into e-learning. They have been a widely discussed and sought-after option due to their ability to create digital learning scenes through training exercises, virtual lectures, public speaking and many other compelling use cases when paired with social-learning and micro-learning concepts. Immersive technology can help keep learners engaged in your content through experience that helps them connect with the concepts better.
• Chatbots have been used extensively, across verticals, in creating interactive consumer-facing solutions like Customer Relationship Management, Social Media, etc. Although new to the e-learning domain, Chatbots display massive potential in bridging the gap between the learner and the course instructor. Answering FAQs, helping with assignment submissions, guided learning, etc. doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the immense possibilities Chatbots hold in the E-learning space.

How?

None of these solutions are easy to implement and won’t give your organization an overnight boost in numbers. But with the external stimuli seemingly working in tandem, it’s time for CIOs to look into these propositions and leverage them to achieve better results in the long term.

An innovation-focused leadership, a foolproof implementation plan and the right digital partner onboard, such enablers can give your company the competitive edge it needs over others. The right technology partner with the required skillset and expertise in delivering result-driven solutions to meet your transformational needs, can not only help you drive down your customer acquisition costs, but can also give you better customer satisfaction and an overall better RoI.

We, at ValueLabs, have all those bases covered. With over 22 years of experience in delivering technology and insight-driven solutions to our clients across sectors, we are well-equipped to work with and enable organizations in this space to achieve newer heights.

Reference:

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/infographic-covid19-coronavirus-impact-global-education-health-schools/
• https://www.boltlearning.com/blog/article/why-you-should-start-implementing-mobile-learning-/
• https://startkiwi.com/blog/gamification-in-the-workplace-tactics-for-restaurant-gamification/
• https://elogiclearning.com/15-elearning-trends-and-statistics-to-know-for-2017/
• https://theappsolutions.com/blog/development/ar-vr-in-education/#:~:text=Virtual%20Reality%20Education%20Statistics,and%20%24700%20million%20by%202025.
• https://www.gc-solutions.net/blog/learning-management-system-chatbots/