It’s the Right Time to be in L&D: A Conversation with Shalini Merugu

CommLab Podcast with Shalini Merugu

0:10
Hello there, welcome to the eLearning Champion Pod hosted by CommLab India, where we discuss the ins and outs of eLearning training trends, learning technologies, and more, that impact corporate training. Your success matters to us and that's why we bring you what matters to you. I'm Sherna and today, we're going to be focusing on something different. We have Shalini joining us back again. Welcome back, Shalini, looking forward to hearing from you.

0:40
Thank you, Sherna. I'm very happy to be here too.

0:45
Allow me to introduce you to all our listeners. Shalini is a versatile learning design professional with 18 plus years of diverse experience in instructional design, learner and user assistance solutions, designing as well as delivering customer training. She's passionate about working with customers in developing performance enhancing learning experiences that achieve measurable business results.

This includes analyzing customers’ training needs, developing actionable roadmaps tailored to each client's unique requirements, and creative strategies to maximise learning. She leverages the strengths of various modalities to design effective rapid eLearning blended solutions and performance support materials. Shalini conducts customer education workshops, both in person and virtual, globally.

So now actually coming back to the topic in focus. In one of our recent podcasts, we looked at trends in the training domain. We saw how cutting edge tech like AI transforms the way we work. However, not every organization has AI driven capabilities. Some are still in the more conservative part of eLearning adoption and still testing the AI waters. So let's touch on a few popular trends in eLearning design and development that are not related to AI, but have been around and going to continue well in 2024. Like the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, tight training budget, and time constraints have given way to new trends with eLearning design and development. Shalini, could you share a bit about the timeless trends?

2:28
Sure, Sherna. To begin with, I'd just like to set the stage by saying that every year eLearning has been attaining new heights. And thanks to the advancements in technology that have been making eLearning really contemporary and cutting edge, there have been leaps and bounds in terms of progress every year. And this year also has been amazing for eLearning training managers who were able to embrace the new trends in the industry to get the best out of their training budgets.

And based on our experience working with Fortune 500 companies, we found that small companies also could save millions of training dollars while effectively imparting training.

And so that is of course, one trend that is not going away. I will come to it a little later, but since some of the other trends that I'm going to touch on are other avatars of eLearning, I just wanted to mention this right at the beginning.

Now coming to the trends that we have captured, the first one is the rise of curriculums.

Earlier, when we saw in our experience with our customers, eLearning courses were mostly developed as standalone modules. Each module was treated as a standalone project. Now it has changed, and organizations are thinking in terms of curriculums right at the beginning. So after analysing the training need, organizations decide on the portion of the entire curriculum that can comprise classroom training and the portion that can comprise online training. On the whole, online training content is being developed in one shot in order to reduce development costs.

And I think I mentioned creating personalized learning journeys for learners in the last broadcast.

It's not that curriculums were not there previously, but the emphasis was really not on treating the entire eLearning initiative as a curriculum development, except in cases where there was a very clearly laid out curriculum because the subject demanded it. Now the trend is to go in for curriculums, even if things are in a state of evolution. Curriculums are getting defined as we go along.

So unlike the previous years where we nailed down everything and then got started with curriculum development, now we found that because we are all working in an agile fashion, curriculums are being developed as we go along. And that actually is one of the challenges for us in L&D.

Of course, for those of us who have AI driven platforms to support us in creating learning journeys, it does simplify the task in some sense, but a lot of us are still creating everything manually.
And the design of the road maps, the design of the role based curriculums, that is something that we have been doing in the past and we will continue to do so. And that's where we in L&D really play a very critical part.

So let's see why curriculums are in, not just from the learner point of view, because they get a complete road map, they know exactly what lies ahead. They know what are the different milestones they need to clear.

But we will also look at why curriculums are in, from the development point of view. When it comes to design and development, it really is an added benefit for the organization because developing curriculums reduces the development costs because they're developed in one go rather than individual modules, each treated as a separate project. And we can divide the entire learning into various levels to address the different knowledge gaps of learners. So we can have basic, intermediary, and advanced levels. As I mentioned for learners, it gives a very comprehensive view of the entire road map ahead in depth. It gives them a chance to estimate their level of competency and also pick modules that they really need to focus on. Another benefit is that subject matter experts also find it easier to work with curriculums because there's a clear road map which is defined at the beginning. That ensures that there is no duplication of content and the SME's time is well spent. I'd like to share an example of how we did this for one of our customers.

Theirs was an evolving road map, and we started with just two pieces. And as we had discussions with the main SME, a business leader, we could effectively identify all potential pieces that could make up a comprehensive curriculum. However, things were still in a state of flux.

And the challenge was to get all the other SMEs involved in this curriculum development effort while ensuring that each SME didn't really encroach on the area of the other, because these were modules that were also very closely aligned with each other. That was a very interesting challenge and as we created these role based curriculums, it was very, very satisfying because we could partner with the company right from the word go in developing their curriculum and playing a very consultative role and educating the other SMEs about the overarching vision that their leadership had, and developing each of the courses in parallel.

So this close partnering with them for curriculum development and then the eventual execution really helped them and us to truly work as one unified team.

So that is a remarkable example, Shalini. The thought of setting up curriculums can be daunting when it is all evolving, but that's the reality. Very seldom do we have a clear picture of every single piece that is going to be a part of the curriculum. And when there are role specific learning journeys, the challenge gets more interesting.

9:11
Absolutely. But as I mentioned, it was highly satisfying to partner at the stage of curriculum development and help our customers succeed. I think that was one of our most satisfying projects. Now I'd like to share the second trend, which I'm sure I've covered in the previous podcasts, but I'd like to touch on this. The second trend is that of shorter learning modules.

I think we all agree that in today's fast-paced world with severe time constraints, learners really cannot invest time in going through long courses. They would rather prefer to imbibe specific information that would serve their purpose. So providing small learning nuggets has become really a trend in recent years and this is just going to continue. Regardless of how you design a course, no matter how well you design it, people can digest only some amount of information at any given point in time. So instead of long 45 minute long courses, we are now beginning to more and more focus on 15 to 20 minute modules or even modules of lesser duration than that. When you tackle topics as smaller courses, they are far easier to process. And the way to develop these is to develop a series of micro learning curriculums and space them out over time. This helps learners not just learn, but also retain what they're learning. Even certification courses, which traditionally in the past were typically of one hour duration, are now being broken down into smaller modules.

In fact, last year, most of the courses that we developed were less than 10 to 15 minutes. And closely related to this, these shorter courses are the assessments that were used to reinforce teaching, and these when used along with microlearning, end up giving a very solid robust training and testing framework.

Another thing I would like to share to do with the nature of our learners is that we've seen a great influx of Gen Z into the workforce. Gen Y and Gen Z are digital natives, and they differ from their predecessors in their learning approach. They're more tech savvy and being exposed to the most advanced technology, their learning approach is also completely dependent on these technologies, and they would prefer specific information that would serve their purpose.

So providing small learning nuggets helps them to learn better, where information can be consumed during breaks, even during your coffee break, your lunch break, or in their spare time.

And due to the shorter duration of these training modules that actually match the average adult attention span, which is also limited, the retention, understanding, and applicability of the concepts on the job will be high.

In fact, when you think about it, all of us take microlearning on an everyday basis. We may be doing it informally without even being aware of it. If you recall how you spent your last week, I'm sure you would remember that some part of it, you must have spent looking at quick videos, just a bite sized learning nuggets. So microlearning as a trend is here to stay.

And microlearning, the biggest advantage is that it can happen in the flow of work, and it is the least disruptive format for training. There's also a close tie between microlearning and video-based learning because micro indicates short duration, and videos typically are less than 5 minutes. So you can see that there is definitely a link between microlearning and videos.

Videos tend to be shorter and they're a hot favorite among all generations. I'd like to share some stats here. Around 1 billion hours of daily content consumption happens on YouTube every day. 1 billion hours. That's mind boggling. This really highlights the transformative role of videos in the digital age.

And about 88% of companies utilize video-based training as per the 2021 training industry report.

And lastly, according to Forrester Research, employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails, or go through other formats of learning.

Now, as I quickly mentioned earlier, when we talk of microlearning, we immediately get the image of content.

How is the content looking?

What images do we need to use?

What are the tools?

What are the interactions?

So we tend to focus on the content part of microlearning, but we forget the delivery part. How do we deliver this through conventional LMS or through a microlearning platform?

There are market leaders in delivering microlearning like Qstream, for instance, which allows you to launch microlearning quizzes where you can set up scenario-based quizzes and in the feedback, you provide the teaching content, which helps to reinforce the learning and make sure that learners don't slip down the forgetting curve.

Not only that. Learners also get to see how other learners are doing. So there's an element of friendly competition there.

So that's an interesting microlearning platform. We have partnered with Qstream, and we really encourage you dear listeners, to visit our website and take a quick look at what we have here.

15:14
Right. That sounds great, like healthy competition teamed up with learning. That's actually really interesting. So then microlearning can actually be leveraged in more than one way of just rolling out chunked content, right?

15:31
Yeah, Sherna. To summarize, if I were to put it in a nutshell, microlearning is effective not only for the actual training content, but also for assessments and evaluation, and performance support.

Which actually brings me to another related area, which is of mobile learning, which again has a very close connection to microlearning. Most mobile learning courses are micro by design because microlearning is usually consumed on the go, most learners prefer taking them from their mobile devices. So responsive design is something we need to keep in mind when designing and developing our courses. Let me explain responsive design for those who may be new to it. This is where courses are designed keeping in mind the device from which the course will be accessed. The design is such that the course automatically gets adjusted to suit the screen resolution or size. The device could be anything right from smartphones and laptops or desktops or tablets. So we can safely assume that the learner may use more than one device to access any given training content.

That clearly indicates that the learning courses we've developed should be compatible to all devices of various screen sizes. That is where responsive eLearning design actually came into the picture and it's here to stay. Now, I'd like to very quickly touch upon why organizations are showing increased interest in this trend.

As a training manager, you can develop responsive eLearning courses that can be accessed seamlessly not only on mobiles but as I mentioned earlier, even on computers and laptops. This goes a long way in saving precious time and you just have to develop a single course once, which can be accessed on all devices.

And of course, you can track the learner's progress regardless of the device they use. You don't have to really create different interfaces for different devices. A single interface will do as the course will automatically get adjusted to the device. This can significantly reduce the development time as well as the costs.

And as far as benefits to the learner go, this kind of responsive eLearning design ensures that learners are more likely to go through the content because it's so much easier to just pull out your phone, for instance, and quickly check out training content, then go to your workstation, log into your laptop, and then go through the same course content. So learning adoption significantly goes up.

Of course, although I did mention that Gen Y, Gen Z are really the main consumers of mobile learning, it’s a fact that this trend has now caught on across all generations. I think by now everybody's comfortable with learning from our mobile devices. There's a definite indication that most learners prefer mobile learning over eLearning.

Now coming to the next trend, which is translations, one of the biggest needs for L&D is translation and localization of training content.

And most design teams are already trained in implementing localization – how do you come up with the strategies? How do you incorporate all of that?

Now translation and localization really help in making sure that all our learners have equal opportunities to learn. It's about providing them equal access to the same learning content. So in a way, in a sense, it promotes DEI in L&D initiatives.

Also, it ensures better learner engagement, better learning from our learners because they're able to view the content in the language they're most comfortable in. That also fosters that kind of a learning culture. So I think translations are one area that's definitely not going away.

We had done a survey at CommLab among our customers and prospects across 33 countries to find out what they feel about translations. About 59% indicated that multi-language learning was important to their organizations. And almost 85% of the respondents said that they translated the eLearning courses into nearly 12 different languages.

This was some time back, mind you, this survey that we did was some time back, a couple of years back. Now you can just imagine how much more the need is, given that there is far greater reach, global reach, and there is a greater need to meet the needs of a very diverse global workforce.

Of course, I'd like to mention that there are these technologies also aiding us in our translation efforts because even something like MS Teams, when there's a presentation going on, it allows a group of participants to select the language in which they want to read the onscreen text. So that is really amazing. Although they may not be able to understand what the speaker's saying, you still have access to the onscreen content in your language and that's still better than not having anything there at all.

And of course, there are all kinds of AI driven translation tools that are available.

21:54
So now that you've mentioned tools, do you think these translation tools can replace human translators?

22:02
Good question. I think that no matter how sophisticated a tool is, we do need translators who can do a final QA, because sometimes a lot of nuances can get lost in AI translations. So this is where, as I keep mentioning in every podcast, there is no substitute for a human and that's us.

Now let's look at some benefits. I think I already touched upon them.

But basically, with translations and localization, we can create a single course that is culture neutral in English and we can quickly, and cost effectively get it translated into various languages to reach the global workforce. Of course, translations also help in reducing the SME's time of conducting trainings to their worldwide employees.

And learners greatly benefit from this because, as I mentioned, it gives them an advantage of learning in their native language and that results in better understanding of the concepts and the content.

In fact, research shows that training is most effective when done in the learner's native language, especially if it is compliance or certification courses.

So wherever possible, it is best to offer eLearning courses or mobile learning courses in the learner's native languages.

Now coming to the next trend I'd like to highlight is using eLearning to train your customers.

When I say eLearning, do think of all the other avatars as well, mobile learning, microlearning.

This is really a top trend and let me let me just lay the stage for why this is trending. One of the biggest assets for any business organization is the customer and retaining customers in a global competitive environment is a huge challenge. Also the cost of acquiring new customers has become high due to continued product expansions, and so on.

An inexpensive way to retain a customer in the business circles is to educate or train them, and this will improve your customer loyalty and satisfaction.

For instance, educating customers on your new products through eLearning is the latest trend. As far back as in 2010, I remember this Aberdeen Group study report that showed that 51% of organizations have trained their customers using eLearning.

So now in 2023, you can only imagine how much more the adoption of eLearning has been for training customers. And of course, there are mixed modes of online learning to support customers – regular eLearning, interactive videos, recorded ILTs with interactivity and animated videos with engagements, interactive PDFs, infographics, content disseminated through mobile apps, standalone gamified learning, eBooks, the list goes on. The possibilities are really many.

I just want to quickly mention one of these areas because that's something that is very quick to do. And that is webinars. Webinars involve PowerPoint decks with animation and audio script. What is best about webinars is that in addition to having it live, you can convert them to on-demand programs and host them on your website, intranet, or your LMS for your extended stakeholders to benefit from this knowledge transfer.

In fact, we've been helping many of our major clients to convert their live webinars to on-demand programs and they have reported that their extended stakeholders have immensely benefited from this service.

Designing a live webinar in a sense is very similar to designing an eLearning course. You have to set some learning outcomes and develop content based on those outcomes. And tools like iSpring can be used to quickly convert the webinars and render them in HTML5. Also you can translate your popular webinars into multiple languages for global reach. So these are the quick 5 trends, Sherna, that I wanted to share. Before I sum up, I just want to reiterate a couple of points.

Basically mobile apps are here to stay. So if you need to be on the cutting edge of your competition, you need to come up with creative technological solutions to help your prospects and your customers and your learners.
You can actually repurpose and reuse a lot of existing content from PDFs, PPTs, audios, and videos and share them through mobile applications.

And of course, you can revisit your online courses and see what content can be excerpted from it for quick microlearning.

If you want to reach out to your global audience, it's better to translate your online content into various languages. And again, you have many translation options. You can translate just the on-screen text and audio, or you can translate only the audio of the video, or you can have the on-screen text in English, but you can translate the audio as well as subtitles in other languages. And closed captioning, of course, I think by now all of us are familiar with it. We can right reuse the same audio, the video with closed captioning in various languages.

28:02
Right, right. So thank you for touching upon this last point. This was sort of similar to like how we bring something in terms of rapid development, right? Repurposing elements into different options.

28:22
Yes, yes, right, absolutely.

28:25
So like you mentioned before, it would be wonderful if you could sum up the five non AI trends briefly for all our listeners.

28:36
We started with eLearning for employee training where organizations are now increasingly thinking of curriculums instead of one odd course with creating learning journeys, extensive roadmaps which help them not only from the perspective of the learner, but also in terms of development costs. And then of course, the huge need to translate courses into multiple languages within short turnaround times.

Responsive design is another trend because courses are now responsive to various browsers and devices.

And the other trend I mentioned is rolling out eLearning to customers. In fact, many of our customer organisations have set up an additional LMS just for training that will be deployed to customers. That's again an interesting thing that we've seen happening.

And repurposing content into various elearning formats, all those ones that I mentioned earlier.

So all of these, including the online assessments and interactivities together create a very impactful learning solution if you look at the entire journey as a whole.

And finally, I'd like to just mention that organizations are creating useful apps when it comes to customer training, for them to get useful updates on the product.

So these are just some of the trends.

As you can see, Sherna, as all our listeners agree, eLearning has evolved way beyond what it used to be even just a couple of years back. And we just have to tap into our imagination, our ID expertise and leverage tools effectively to come up with engaging and impactful learning that stays with our learners and makes a difference in improving their performance.

30:44
Right, right. Thank you so much for your time, Shalini. Your summary of timeless trends. And like you said, like learning really has to be engaging and impactful at the end of the day.

30:59
Thank you for having me here, Shena. And I'm looking forward to our listeners joining us for our upcoming podcasts.

Yes, and thank you to dear listeners for listening to us today. Feel free to head out to our website, www.commlabindia.com, where you can browse for more information, or related videos or use the Contact us form on the top right to reach out to us.

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