3 data-based ways to scale collaborative learning

Learn how to scale your L&D initiatives

How do the fast-growing companies of L&D teams work to scale their learning programs? We looked at organizations that use 360Learning’s Enterprise Plan Features and found some valuable insights that demonstrate the impact they’ve had on the way their teams work.

Read on for some product insights that show it’s the most effective way to put your people first scale collaborative learning.

1. Involving students from the start increases engagement

In our recent survey 70% of respondents said they should be the ones to identify their own learning needs, as opposed to their managers, L&D teams or executives. Let that sink in: Your employees want to decide what they need to learn to be successful in their careers and at your company.

Many L&D teams still rely on inefficient training needs analysis processes or ask managers to articulate their teams’ learning needs. This means they are out of sync with the people who know the needs of the organization best: the learners themselves. Our Learning Needs feature decentralizes this age-old process by allowing anyone to seamlessly submit a learning need as it arises.

What happens when employees direct their learning needs? Organizations that have activated the Learning Needs feature have seen amazing effects on their students:

Students who have indicated a Learning Need return to the platform twice as often and stay 25% longer.

Compared to learners who have not identified or have the opportunity to do so, users who have identified a need return to the learning platform twice as many days per month and spend 25% more time learning each time.

Those who have identified or voted for a learning need are 30% more engaged.

Users who interact with the feature not only learn more, but they also collaborate 30% more through actions such as commenting on courses and participating in forums.

Try it yourself

Activate learning needs in your platform will help your team gain a better understanding of what employees want to learn, while also prioritizing the most useful needs based on upvotes and comments. Your employees will feel valued, which encourages their involvement and learning time.

2. Subject matter experts want to be a part of creating learning programs

Because L&D teams are not experts in every area of ​​the business, they need help from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to create and collaborate on new training projects. Finding the right SMEs can be difficult and time-consuming, further delaying the delivery of training.

77% of respondents from our recent survey said they have valuable knowledge to share, but they haven’t asked for it. That’s a enormous number of experts you may be missing out on when using learning programs.

Instead of spending time looking for experts, why not let them come to you? Once a learner submits a learning need, experts can choose to volunteer to help with that need with one click. Companies that have given experts the chance to volunteer have produced surprising results:

On average, there is at least one expert volunteer to solve a learning need.

For every learning need submitted, there were, on average, one to two experts who volunteered to help with that need. Simply put: your experts want to help with learning programs. So why not make it easy for them?

Pro tip

Let your experts come to you by giving them an easy way to:

1. See which learning needs have been identified.
2. Apply to help answer a learning need.

Before you know it, all the time you spent tracking down experts will be free to work on other important initiatives.

3. Using a project tool to launch learning programs will dramatically reduce the workload of L&D teams

Creating and launching learning programs on a large scale can seem like an impossible task. L&D teams are challenged with coordinating learning projects, including establishing timelines, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring on-time delivery. As training projects multiply, the manual work of collecting content and sending reminders gets heavier.

360Learning’s Project Tool makes it easy to align stakeholders, assign tasks and deadlines, and collaborate in one place. Increased visibility and a continuous feedback loop throughout the content creation process enable teams to deliver high-quality learning programs.

Organizations using the Project Tool have seen positive changes in the way their teams work:

After transitioning to using projects, experts complete +70% of tasks (out of ~25%).

Let’s break it down: L&D teams that don’t work through the Project Tool to collaborate with experts are stuck with about 75% of the work (creating content, reviewing content, and facilitating discussion). We analyzed data from teams that switched to the Project Tool to manage new learning programs and found that after three months, the Subject Matter Experts controlled 70% of the collaborative work. That’s a big shift from centralized work primarily done by L&D teams to decentralized, collaborative effort by experts.

Still not convinced? Using the Project Tool not only decentralizes work for L&D, but also increases engagement and results for experts:

In an average month, 30% of experts who use projects publish a course (compared to 6% of those who don’t use projects).

By enabling experts to create, review, and collaborate on learning programs, all in one project space, they can go from launch to launch in record time. Consolidating resources and communications into one space eliminates the need for experts to work across channels such as Slack, email, or other project management tools.

Start planning

Business Plan customers get access to two free projects. You can easily start a project from a learning need or create one from scratch. Learn more here.

You can start scaling your learning programs by equipping your people with learning needs, expert identification and our powerful project tool. The Enterprise Plan features are available for: try it out for free on the 360Learning platform.

Originally published on 360learning.com.