Do I as a trainer really have to use digital learning tools?

Leadership in the VUCA World

At the „7th Congress Outdoor and Adventure“ on February 19 to 20, 2019 in Treuchtlingen (Germany), DEX presented the concept “relevant.digital.experiential“ in the session “Leadership in the VUCA World”.

Joerg Janzen created lots of attention and discussion with the approach to potentialize experiential training with digital tools: Many trainers perceive that including the digital reality of their clients is becoming increasingly important. But how to address this need is unclear for most.

What benefits are created by digital learning formats – and are they really relevant?

That is a question many HR professionals, trainers and coaches ask themselves. The jungle of learning platforms, e-learning formats, games and apps is huge. Their benefit is often unclear – and many times minimal.

How beneficial any – not only digital! – learning formats are, depends on the relevance of the learnings they provide. “Relevant” is anything that improves the work flow or the relationship between colleagues. Consequently, a development program needs to have a positive impact on everyday work – otherwise it is not worth much!

Using learning platforms correctly is the secret!

Staff and leadership development means working on a behavioral level. A learning platform can be of incredible use – if it supports three things:

  1. Relevant learning tasks and content. This means implementing them has a tangible positive impact on everyday work. To do so, tasks and content need to be heavily adapted to the participants.
  2. Sustainable learning – instead of superficial absorption of content. Sustainability is created by three factors: a) learning over a period of time b) strong impulses and emotional anchors c) the joint working and thinking with others.
  3. Learning agility. Because of the increasing complexity and declining routine at work, constant development is essential. This means it’s also increasingly important for one’s personal success. Thus, participants carry the responsibility for their own learning and often still need to develop the competency of “learning agility”. Part of this is co-creating their own learning journey – for which in turn they need the flexibility and space to do so.

Added Value: Blended Learning and learning platforms support competencies for New Work

That means that for trainers who really want to create added value for their clients, the time of stand-alone workshops is truly over. But it also means that just using online or individual learning for soft skills development – especially if delivered as standardized learning programs with rigid schedules – does not work.

The right mixture makes all the difference: time and opportunity for engaging with the subject matter, reflection and exchange with others, as well as the implementation at work potentialize each other and thus the learning outcomes. The attitudes and competencies needed for this learning process are the same ones employees and leaders need in the world of New Work…

Only learning platforms that support different learning formats – whether digital, individual, collaborative, experiential, discussions or implementation – are useful at all. But the best, sleekest platform and most attractive learning formats won’t do anything without a high quality program architecture and customized learning design.

And how’s this going to work …? Learning Platform as a Service

Alright, and how do I, as a trainer find the right platform and effective tools? And which tasks and approaches guarantee the implementation at work? How do I embed this on the platform? What do I need to know and be able to do for this? And maybe most importantly – where do I find the time to do all this next to my seminars!???

With our “TrainerNav” DEX is now offering to trainers and coaches a Learning platform as a Service.

We address specifically freelancers and small to mid-sized companies. They are the ones that through their broad spectrum of tasks have little time and need to be able to credibly pass on any additional costs to their clients. So, it’s not primarily about a sleek design, but about the greatest benefit for an adequate price.

With this “One Stop Shop” you have the all-round support starting with

  • Goal definition, to
  • Individual program architecture with your own contents and
  • Ideal blended learning design for maximum implementation at work, to
  • Accompaniment and support of your development program on our platform

VUCA

Interested? Contact us at: management@dextraining.de, Munich/Germany: +49 89 388 99 749, Cologne/Germany +49 221 169 18467