Leadership development will be the top priority for workplace learning professionals over the next 12 months.
A survey conducted among 417 learning and development specialists by Video Arts revealed that 61% intended to provide leadership development training over the year ahead. Other priorities were people management, coaching, teamwork, customer service, time and change management.
Classroom training remained the most popular training medium and was used by a huge 90% of organisations. Next in line were video clips (85%), self-authored e-learning tools (49%), e-learning resources from specialist providers and mobile learning (11%).
Martin Addison, Video Arts’ chief executive, said: "Although the take-up is still relatively small, mobile learning is the fastest growing medium for training. This reflects the interest in learning on-the-move, using hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablets. L&D teams are predominantly using m-learning to reinforce the messages from classroom training or e-learning."
Indeed some 38% of L&D practitioners said that they planned to introduce m-learning factilities in the near future, with 71% indicating that the appeal was simply being able to reach more people. But 48% acknowledged that they faced technological barriers that would make m-learning difficult to implement.
As for e-learning, its most popular application was to provide learners with training in compliance and legal skills (47%), health & safety (44%), personal development (43%), IT skills (40%), inductions (39%) and diversity and equal opportunities (37%). Moreover, of the 29% of L&D practitioners who did not currently use the channel, all of them said that they planned to do so in the future.
"The evidence shows that e-learning courses are used more widely for ‘hard skills’ such as IT training, compliance and health and safety, whereas video is used more for ‘soft skills’ such as leadership and management skills, customer service skills and professional skills," Addison said.
The survey also showed that L&D teams used video to a number of different ends:
- As part of classroom-based training courses (79%)
- To provide short pieces of bite-sized learning (50%)
- For informal learning (32%)
- For standalone online learning (31%)
- To support one-to-one coaching (24%)
- In self-authored e-learning courses (23%)
- For mobile learning (10%).
"Video can support experiential learning, but it is also an effective substitute," said Addison. "It is difficult to role-play a situation if you’ve not had any experience of it. However, the next best thing for learning is to watch someone else do it. This is particularly true when you want to explore the emotional impact of real experiences in the workplace, such as redundancy."
