Learning ecosystems: Personalized learning in digital learning environments
The surge in digitization due to Corona, the home office and the rapid response that companies have to show has fuelled the discussion about learning & development offerings. Corporate learning ecosystems are developing into diverse learning landscapes — with a variety of digital and analog offerings. However, these extensive learning environments are often not coordinated with each other. In most cases, they do not yet form a harmonious whole, because they are often individual offers: here training offers, events and working out louds, there a wiki, there the intranet and then a learning management system (LMS). As a result, employees have to fight their way through a jungle of offers and systems if they want to learn or look for solutions to problems.
Definition: What is a corporate learning ecosystem?
Learning ecosystems (also known as learning ecosystems or corporate learning ecosystems) are adaptable diverse learning systems that have a social and technical dimension.
They play an important role for organizations that want to strategically shape learning.
Such systems help to establish a fixed learning culture in the sense of a “learner experience” for sustainable competence development.
From a wild learning ecosystem to an organized learning landscape
So much is part of the learning ecosystem: The social dimension includes, among other things, the willingness of employees to learn, the attitude of managers, a learning culture in a team and the strategic, structural and budgetary integration of learning and development in the organizational structure. The technical dimension is also a decisive basis: The digital learning landscape and whether employees like to move around and find their way around it easily. In itself, diverse learning environments, platforms and various sources of learning across the system are an advantage. Diversity is part of a good learning ecosystem. However, employees and personnel development are finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of things as complexity increases.
The solution is an intelligent platform, such as a modern Learning Experience Platform (LXP), which is used as a “single point of entry”, as a central access to the entire learning ecosystem. It helps to reconcile learning sources, arranges offers and at the same time supports users in learning in an individualized way because it can filter offers and makes targeted suggestions. Tailored to users' personal information and search behavior.
Individualized learning with strategy
A good learning ecosystem is there to offer users personalized learning offers from across the company. At the same time, it creates a better usability and overview for all players.
A good corporate learning ecosystem should therefore be designed to offer just a single platform as a starting point, from where employees embark on learning paths in a meaningful and independent manner and where they can discover the situation.
In short: Users should independently find personalized offers that interest them AND that are in the strategic interest of the company.
Another learning platform? The addition to the LMS
Today, it is no longer enough to “just” manage and manage continuing education, for example through a learning management system (LMS).
Nowadays, learning offers from different platforms should be linked together more and more strategically and sensibly via interfaces. Such curated offers then complement traditional formal continuing education. The right platform in the learning ecosystem makes this possible.
It provides an overview and connects people and sources of learning. As a result, it supports ordering, filtering and finding. And in this way, learning content can be compiled individually for employees, but also data for personnel development can be collected. The organization's learning needs are becoming even more obvious.
Personalize the learning environment: For targeted learning suggestions through the system
The Haufe Academy Learning Experience Platform is an example of such a platform that complements the formal learning offering: The platform and its algorithm access the profile of users and support personalized learning. The platform knows interests and plays out automated offers based on individual search processes.
And that is exactly what makes a learning experience stand out: Employees move independently within a wide range of offerings, find solutions to daily difficulties and, for example, can also create content themselves, so-called user-generated content, and pursue their own development with a long-term perspective. In this way, competence development is carried out independently and in a personalized way — via a central platform with access to the entire learning ecosystem in the company.