9 Tips to Get the Most out of a Learning Path

As explained in our previous blog post , Learning Paths are an efficient and powerful way to deliver multiple courses on a particular subject or program through a learning management system. Allowing learners to gradually build their knowledge at their own pace. Learning paths are not a one size fits all training method. They can be customized and accommodate different styles of learning, which is one of many reasons why organizations are employing them in their online training programs today.

However, just creating and deploying learning paths does not automatically mean it will be successful or resonate with your audience. There are many different ways in which an organization can make a learning path a success. In this blog, we will go over some tips that will allow you to automate your learning paths, enhance the learner experience, and provide visibility to help you keep track of learner progress and learning path performance. 

1) Set Goals and Expectations

When creating and delivering a new learning path, be sure to communicate clear goals and expectations of that specific learning path. Your learners will distinctly know what to expect and what they need to accomplish by attending these sessions. If you do not set these early, your learners will not have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, and as a result, they will not be able to properly apply the knowledge they received in training to their roles. 

2) Make Training Resources Easily Accessible

Have your training resources readily available for your employees, so they have the training information they need, whenever they need it to supplement their learning or assist them if they get stuck on a particular subject.

Creating a resource library in your LMS is an excellent way to consolidate your training resources in a single and easily accessible location. Also, consider having various types of materials such as videos, presentation slides, PDFs, and infographics. Having a variety of training collateral makes training more appealing and engaging, and it will accommodate the different learning styles of your workforce. 

3) Provide Feedback and Support

How can employees improve if they have no feedback or additional support? It is essential to let your employees know how they are doing and what areas they need to work on. Be specific in what they need to improve, how, and the benefit of becoming an expert in that area.

In your LMS, for example, you can set up automated emails to users who failed a course or learning path and suggest additional courses or resources to support them in an area they are struggling in.

4) Cater to Different Learning Styles

It should come as no surprise that you will have employees with different learning styles and react differently to various methods of training. Just focusing on a single type of training, such as having only text-filled content, will not resonate with certain people like visual learners.

A significant benefit of an LMS is that it supports multiple types of assets such as videos, pictures, presentation slides, and graphs, so you can accommodate a variety of learning styles from visual to auditory. Another benefit of utilizing various types of assets and collateral is it helps increase engagement and can lead to higher knowledge retention rates. 

5) Enable Course Sequence

You can set prerequisite courses for employees to complete a specific session in order to progress to the next one. This can help your learners to better focus and perform well in a particular class as they are focused on a single topic and are not dedicating their attention to multiple classes simultaneously. It also organizes and simplifies the learner’s journey as only one course can be taken at a time.

6) Set up Learning Path Auto-Enrollment

With your LMS, you can assign learning paths to multiple users based on employee properties such as title, department, location, course completion status, and training expiration date.

For example, when an organization hires many new employees, you can auto-enroll these new hires to an onboarding learning path that contains training on company culture, code of ethics, policies, and procedures, and role-specific. 

Using this feature allows you to easily and quickly ensure your employees are assigned to relevant training so you do not need to worry about manually enrolling users in each course.

7) Create Training Reminder Notifications

It can be challenging for every single employee to keep track and stay on top of every single course they need to take. A learning path can help solve this issue by organizing multiple sessions into a single group, making users aware of what classes they need to take and by when. But, this may not be enough with extremely busy employees.

Your LMS should be equipped with automated notifications you can set up to notify your team if they have not completed or started a course, or have training that is due. This will help make sure they complete the required training before their deadlines.

8) Obtain Data-Driven Insights

Having data-driven insights into your learning paths will help you to keep track of learner progress and identify any improvement areas so that you can produce the most effective training program possible.

An LMS will provide admins with reporting capabilities that can generate data on this information and other KPIs instantly. Auto-scheduling these insights directly to your inbox or sent to your team allows you to keep tabs on everything going on at your fingertips. 

For example, you can create a report to see which users completed the learning path, how many are in progress, and which users did not even start it. You can send this report out every Friday to see if there are any issues from the past week, such as if there is a large number of employees who did not start when the due date is fast approaching. You can then take measures to remind those learners and encourage them to start and complete their courses before the training deadline.

9) Utilize Quizzes and Assessments

It is vital to see how your learners are digesting your content, and if the methods you are using are useful, to ensure you are providing relevant content that is comprehensible. Set up quizzes within your courses to test their understanding of a subject and spot if there are sections or topics they are struggling in.

You will be able to see if you need to offer your learners additional support or if you need to revamp a portion of a course to make it more easily understandable. Quizzes also make a course more interactive, so you can quickly boost engagement by employing them in your learning path.

Final Thoughts:

Learning paths can be a very powerful and efficient way to deliver different sets of training if done correctly. Following the 9 areas we highlighted above will help you to make your learning paths more effective and provide more value for your learners.

To learn more about SkyPrep and how it can help you get the most out of your Learning Paths, request a call and one of our product specialists will be in touch with you shortly.