Learning Is Not Just For Newbies
There are at least five use cases a learning platform should support.
“Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching,” is a familiar quote that gets thrown around.
In today’s workplace, where technology is rapidly changing and evolving, there’s no doubt that learning has to play an important and ever-present role. But often, training programs fail to go beyond the needs of the uninitiated ‘new’ student which has to be brought up to speed. In fact, there are at least five, and all just as important, use cases that a learning platform should support.
The “first” experience
The learning of a brand new subject is most often delivered in a giant bolus, all at once, during the course of several days straight. This is done in an attempt to digest a mountain of information in a short period of time. But ideally, the first experience should be a manageable serving size, which whets the appetite and lays the foundation for the continuous experience to follow.
The “continuous” experience
Studies show that information learned over time is remembered more than the same amount of information learned all at once. This approach encourages a cycle of learning and application, learning and application, and so on. And, with each return to the learning phase of the cycle, the student is armed with more experience and real world understanding regarding how they will apply what they are learning.
The “knowledge refresh” experience
Even in a well-paced, well-spaced continuous learning experience, the process of knowledge assimilation is far from perfect. We have all experienced this situation at one time or another. You are trying to work on a project, you know that the information you need was presented in a class, but you cannot remember the details. Ideally, you should be able to jump back to that point in the learning experience and review it again. This requires a learning platform that provides a searchable library of key, confirmed and validated information that the student can quickly look up.
The “real world” experience
What is not a sure bet is the fact that remembering the information automatically translates to being able to apply the information. Let’s face it, the training experience is often built upon simple examples which can be understood by a broad audience of students. And, because the examples are engineered for educational purposes, they frequently follow a happy path without encountering errors or exceptions to the intended workflow or process. In the real world, the application of what you have learned does not always go quite so smoothly. This is where a learning platform which supports a collaborative learning environment allows both students and instructors to leverage their knowledge and experience to help each other over the hurdle of real world application.
The “keep current” experience
Things change all the time and you must continuously learn new information; that’s a fact. Technology is constantly being upgraded or replaced with new technology. Practices and procedures are continuously being improved. And, ideas and strategies are always evolving to fit an ever-changing social, economic, and political environment. This is where a learning platform needs to be governed to ensure that all the information it provides stays current. For the content developers, it may require nearly as much effort to maintain this content as it did to initially create it. However, without this ongoing effort to keep content current, the student will quickly lose confidence in the learning platform if they discover information which is, at best, out-of-date or worse yet, incorrect.
Our Qlik Continuous Classroom addresses all these uses cases by providing continuous and up-to-date learning content, anytime, anywhere, always. You can try it for free right now at qcc.qlik.com.
