The Three C’s of Learning Technology Strategy Development
Like any other corporate initiative, investment in learning technology needs to be evaluated and implemented within the framework of a strategy that will help you articulate the benefits and measure the business results as they are achieved. Technology may or may not help you reach your goals, however it can make the ride smoother. At a minimum, your strategy should allow you to identify the learning experience you want to create for your learners, the business benefits you hope to gain from the implementation of the technology and how the new technology will fit into your culture.
It can be challenging not to be seduced by the shiniest new toy in learning technology. Before you implement that new game or the new LMS or a new video channel, take some time to understand the impact of the technology and how it will fit in not just with other legacy systems in your learning environment but also with the culture of your organization. Here are some questions that you may want to answer as you draft your strategy. Does your culture encourage autonomous learning or are people limited to learning activities sponsored by the learning department? Is information in your organization freely accessible or is it limited on a need-to-know basis? Is your content ready for being consumed through mobile devices? Would your learners want to use BYOD or are in an environment that allows the use of mobile devices while at work? How will your culture support social learning and gamification? Is information freely shared between teams?
Here are three important things to keep in mind when developing your learning technology strategy.
1. Content: Ease of access to content is one of the most vexing problems learning organizations face today. The volume of content being generated not only by the learning organization but by the business and customers far exceeds what can be efficiently managed. This typically results in silos of content where people in the “know” can access content that is hard to find for others. Before you implement a system that will allow anyone in the organization to access content, it is important to understand what content can be shared and with whom. Whether there are business or regulatory reasons not to share content across businesses units or with non-employees and if yes what business rules and process will govern the segregation of content.
2. Context: Context is inextricably intertwined with content. You may present the same content in different modalities but what will stick with the learner is the content presented in the right context. Context provides the learner the ability to connect and retain the content that is being presented. To get the context right, you need to understand how your learners access the content and when they are most likely to access it. If your learner population is contact center employees with restrictions on using mobile devices, providing them mobile learning on the job will not get you very far. Similarly, for a service professional, the access to a troubleshooting instructions on the way to a service call is crucial. The further away learning happens from the workplace context, the harder it is to set an interaction between the content and the learner. This lack of interaction is debilitating to the learner’s understanding and retention of content. When deploying a learning technology, give some serious thought to how this technology will enable contextual interaction between the content and the learner.
3. Culture: Your employees are learning, whether you drive that learning in a structured way in a classroom or it happens organically at the water cooler, each interaction that your learners have forms a learning experience. The real question is how you drive the culture towards a goal that is beneficial for both you and your learners. Understand what works and does not work in your organization’s culture before you introduce a learning technology. Its not important to answer the questions of how, who and when this technology be accessed but also the most important question of “why” learners will access the technology. If you are introducing a new LMS, answer the question of why your learners would use this as their go-to destination for learning related content, if it's a new modality, understand the incentive for the learner to use the modality. The better you can understand the “why” for a learner, the closer you will be to implementing a technology that will provide both the context and the content and deliver the culture that you want for your organization.
The most successful strategy will result from a thorough understanding of your learner needs, wants and desires. This understanding will allow you to create lasting value for your learners and provide the competitive advantage that your organization needs to be successful in the market.
