The concept of people-centered learning is one that’s easy to buy into. However despite the best of intentions, many learning teams are struggling to really prove the value of their learning programs. In my seminar at the upcoming World of Learning conference, I’ll be exploring the 6 principles that underpin people-centered learning and sharing proven recommendations for how to deliver and demonstrate real-life impact. But, for now, here’s some food for thought.

Are you part of the 5%?

Did you know that only 1% of employees surveyed reported involvement in the design of their workplace learning (Towards Maturity, 2018 Benchmark Report)? This is pretty mind boggling given that the opportunity to learn new things is the main reason that people join new companies. Perhaps it also goes some way to explaining why the majority of leavers go due to the feeling that they’re no longer learning and developing… (Fosway, Revolutionising the Learning Experience, 2018).

Another surprising statistic for you: only 5% of L&D teams collect feedback from users. And just 2% of these teams use this data to make decisions about the learning they produce (Towards Maturity, 2018 Benchmark Report).

So it’s worth pausing for thought and honestly asking yourself: where do you sit against those benchmarks? Some of these things may seem like mountains to climb, however, when you break it down, some relatively simple shifts in your approach can make an enormous difference.

What underpins people-centered elearning projects?

We wanted to identify the key ingredients for elearning that delivers real-life impact. An analysis of data from millions of learners in Elucidat, insight from industry leaders and the testing of ideas in hundreds of projects helped us do just that. From this research, we found that the most successful projects are underpinned by the six principles of people-centered elearning.

Guiding principles to help you deliver real-life impact

1. Be personal

Respect your audience by taking the time to understand their individual needs, contexts and perspectives (this template will help). Design personalized, adaptive learning experiences that feel personal! This brings us back to that initial stat: only 1% of employees are currently involved in learning design. But if you don’t know what your learners need and prefer, how will you make your learning people-centered? Invest time at the start of your project to really get to know who you’re trying to help.

2. Respect time

Produce insightful, useful learning experiences that your (busy) audience feels will help them develop. Give your learners just enough, when they need it.

People are busy. Not only do they have their day-to-day workload to manage, but remember you don’t know what they have going on in their personal lives as well. Treat time carefully by creating truly useful, insightful learning experiences that your user will genuinely benefit from. It’s also a great idea to divide content into digestible sections so the learning can be fitted around a packed-out schedule.

3. Meet clear goals

Each elearning project must have a tangible purpose. You need to be clear about the real-life goals you are helping people achieve and align your elearning with business and personal goals.
Unless you have clear goals, how will you recognize when you’re having a real-life impact? Without an objective, you can’t measure success. Ideally, your project goals will be determined right at the start and feed into everything – from concept through to design, development and measurement.

4. Measure your learning

Measure, measure and measure some more! Assessing performance isn’t something that should be done as a last step. The most successful learning projects are measured in terms of their impact from start to finish. This means continuous improvements can be identified and refinements made to ensure learners are being supported in the right way. Not sure where to start? These 20 learning measurement ideas will help!

5. Make it widely available

Everyone needs to be able to access the learning in a way that suits them. It’s key to ensure that your content is easily available in a way that works for your audience, be it on a variety of devices, in their first language, via screen readers or through keyboard interaction. Think about all the different people that you’re expecting to use your learning and take their needs into account.

6. Deliver ROI

Deliver ROI: make sure you produce experiences which deliver consistently effective elearning. When it comes to delivering ROI from elearning, it’s not as black and white as a simple financial equation. Instead, it’s about checking that your learning is delivering maximum value against the objective you set for your project at the start.

I love the way that Georgia at the Open University, one of our clients, described what people-centered elearning means to her:

“To me it means putting the student at the forefront of everything we produce. This means making elearning engaging and crucial to their learning and development. It should also consider their lives and environment (are we thinking about the socio-economic factors that come in to play). For example, learners could be looking for a 10 minute burst of learning while on the train home from work so our product would have to be accessible by smartphone. Or, learners could be deaf, blind or have RSI so we must ensure we have transcripts/it works on screen readers and doesn’t require too much scrolling.”

– Georgia Axtell-Powell, Open University  

Case study: A tried and tested people-centered strategy with big impact

Although I can certainly vouch for the impact of people-centered elearning, it’s always useful to reflect on an example. One of the world’s leading providers of business consulting and training adopted a people-centered strategy for their learning content and has seen brilliant results.

Using the approach, they have successfully transformed their face-to-face materials into valuable digital experiences and scaled their learning content to support employees around the world.

By putting their users at the heart of their content, they have:

Find out exactly how the organization has delivered people-centered elearning here.

Is your learning really delivering for your people?

Hopefully, these guiding principles have made you think: how people-centered really is your learning? If the answer is ‘not very’ then you’re missing a trick both for your business and your employees. In case you’re not sure whether you’re successfully prioritizing your people or not, download the free people-centered elearning checklist to help you assess and improve your strategy.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on people-centered learning. Join me for my talk at the World of Learning Conference on Tuesday 16 October from 10.45-11.15 in Theatre 2 where I’ll be exploring strategies that will help you transform the way your team creates online learning experiences.