State of eLearning

by Academy Of Brain

9.3.2021

We picked the brains of Studytube CEO, Homam Karimi, on the state of eLearning. Studytube has a bird’s eye view on eLearning as a leading Netherlands-based SaaS Learning Experience Platform.

You have a large number of companies and institutions as clients, and thus a broad view of current organisational eLearning. What do you see happening at the moment?

In our customers, there is a huge driving force to become a learning organisation, which is essential from an employer branding and employee retention point of view, to begin with – but certainly also to keep up with latest developments and to gain and maintain an edge over the competition.

They are moving away from unstructured, unplanned people development, and towards strategic investments to Learning & Development programs underpinned by modern technology. Such as our Learning Experience Platform, which allows them to create a diverse offering across a plethora of learning methods and media: online, offline, longer training courses and short so-called micro learnings, delivered by their own L&D team, or by external training providers.

More and more of our clients are using our authoring tool to create their own, company-specific training courses to complete the picture. They map their training offering based on their business goals, and the skills they need within the organisation to succeed. Once the curriculum and the delivery mechanism are in place, they use performance dashboards and analytics to keep track of progress, to understand where more investments are needed, and to generate an ongoing stream of student and teacher feedback back into the L&D organisation.

How has eLearning changed during the past years?

It’s a no-brainer that COVID-19 has changed our landscape completely. First of all, we experienced a proper surge towards online learning. With many workers confined to their home offices, L&D groups had to accelerate the adoption of online learning as a primary means of reaching their objectives. On the content side, all classroom training ceased immediately, so many of our trainers (typically self-employed, and fully reliant on the classroom setup) had to find ways to turn their classroom content into digital training courses delivered through our platform. Our media studio in Amsterdam is literally operating around the clock to fulfill this demand. As a result, the volume of digital content we have on offer has doubled, tripled and quadrupled over the last weeks and months. The way COVID-19 had accelerated online learning is beyond anything anyone in our industry could have imagined.

eLearning has been growing rapidly for the past years. How do you see the future of eLearning in the organisational landscape?

Well, the trends described above will only continue to accelerate, as the momentum has quickly built and continues to build.

We do expect learning to become a more and more strategic topic in the boardroom. In the Netherlands, by law it is becoming more difficult to just fire people without helping them prepare for a new role at a new company. Employers and employees will have to become more flexible – which means professionals are always learning, and employers are offering educational programs in all stages of the employee lifecycle. Delivering that content digitally makes it easier for people to learn whenever they need to, wherever they are.

Classroom based learning vs. eLearning. Is it either or?

No, it’s complementary. Blended learning is still a hot topic with a strong following. There is more than enough room and demand for both, and a combination typically delivers superior results and longer lasting skills.

What is the best way of using eLearning solutions?

From the company’s view:

Integrate them in the day to day life of people
Make the technology super easy to use
Connect learning to business demands

From the individual’s point of view:

Make a career plan with your manager, with a few clicks you add a development plan with online and offline training courses related to your plan, and off you go
Train when and where you want to
Team up with your manager: your manager keeps an eye on progress and supports your learning. As a result you become a stronger team.

– Academy of Brain, the science of e-learning