As a leader, you never want your team to stop learning. Through both high-tech and practical methods, you can engage your employees in  memorable, effective learning experiences.

Among employees, corporate training is not exactly known for being fun or terribly effective. But the past several years have seen an explosion of new approaches – some low-tech ones, some high-tech ones.

Which of these approaches are supported by the science of learning? We round up the latest approaches, along with thoughts about when and why each approach might or might not promote effective learning.

1. Micro-learning:

Micro-learning is about delivering learning experiences in short bursts, distributed across extended periods of time and potentially across several different platforms. An employee might begin a lesson on the subway during their commute, continue it during the workday and finish it a week later.
A large body of research literature suggests that micro-learning approaches are effective at imparting information and teaching skills. 
This kind of training can also be a bit solitary. There are ways of incorporating social interaction, but the typical use case is an individual learner moving through the training material on their own.


2. Virtual reality:

The main use case of the VR learning approach is teaching people a complex physical skill that would otherwise be expensive or dangerous to practice. It's especially appropriate in environments with complex visuals and physical interaction – think flight simulations and surgery.
VR works best when you can incorporate rich feedback for the learner, through either the VR program itself or a debrief with an expert. Then the learner can practice using the VR program again. You can also use VR to create an exciting initial experience, which future non-VR training can build upon.


3. Simulations:

Simulations present problem situations for employees to work through – usually in a team. For example, a team of employees tries to manage a growing food truck business, with the goal of learning how to make dynamic business decisions. After the simulation, there are debriefing sessions with experts who talk to employees about what went right, what went wrong, how to improve and what the main takeaways should be.
 

There are two main ways to use simulations for teaching:

1. You might create a simulation that directly mimics a situation your employees will face at work. This gives them practice doing the exact thing they will be doing in the future.

2. You can create a simulation that simply incorporates many of the skills your employees need to do their work. 
There are several advantages to the simulation approach. Many companies are concerned with developing soft skills, like critical thinking and cooperation. Simulations are ideal for teaching these skills.
Most experiences with simulations also form narratives that can be particularly memorable. Simulations can incorporate various technologies, such as interactive visualizations and augmented reality. But they can be low-tech too – think board games.


4. Other trends:

Most companies have diverse training needs, so blended training approaches are becoming more common. You might imagine integrating all three of the approaches above to create a comprehensive training regime. 
In addition to the three approaches above, there are several trends that you can incorporate into almost any training approach.

Social interaction:
This dovetails with the current corporate interest in developing soft skills. It could be small doses of interaction through a social media platform over long time periods (as with some forms of micro-learning). 

Gamification:
Gamification has been around for a while now, but it continues to be popular among corporate training and employee compliance programs. Gamification is about incorporating basic reward systems throughout the training, typically points, badges and leaderboards. The goal is to make training sessions more fun and to motivate people to complete training tasks. Gamification can be incorporated with almost any training approach – even grades are a form of gamification. 
 

Adaptive learning:
Adaptive learning leverages AI to create models of what the employees know and tailor instruction to meet their needs. An understanding of the learner's current knowledge and skill level makes instruction more efficient. This is a natural fit with a micro-learning approach and can potentially fit a simulation-based approach as well. Given the expense of creating custom VR scenarios, adaptive learning may have an advantage over a VR-based approach.

 Assessment:
The traditional way of assessing employee training programs is through short quizzes at the end of blocked training sessions or by simply verifying that the employees completed the training modules. The recent trend is toward formative assessment – evaluations of employee skill during the learning process, which provides important feedback to the employees about their performance. As the science of learning shows, this kind of feedback is vital for learners to improve over time

Multi-platform access:
Increasingly, corporate training solutions are offered across multiple platforms (e.g., phones, tablets and computers; Apple, Android and Windows products). 

Augmented reality:
Another trend to keep an eye on is employees using mobile phones for augmented reality experiences. Basically, when the phone is in a certain location, the phone's camera will display an overlay with extra information. An employee might trigger a lesson by being in a relevant location and have to use the information they see on their phone to perform a learning task. You might also use AR in a simulation-based approach as a group of employees collectively integrates information and makes further decisions.

Original Article Source: Business.com - Writer: Ulrich Boser