How can Enable LMS help you deliver an adaptive learning approach?

Adaptive learning techniques are becoming increasingly central in corporate training - and Virtual College's Enable LMS can help your organisation to take full advantage of the benefits they offer.

As the state of modern technology evolves, so too do the techniques and standards of the most advanced e-learning solutions. On the one hand, this creates an ongoing pressure for companies to update their methods; on the other, it means that new possibilities for greater efficiency and better outcomes are always just around the corner.

One of the key drivers of these improvements in the last few years has been the rise of adaptive learning, a new approach to designing training solutions that has revolutionised the way that learning materials are designed and tailored to the needs of individual users. The emergence of these solutions has led to significantly better results for companies that have embraced them, and these benefits are only set to grow more pronounced as the technique matures.

As such, it's now time for organisations that are yet to embrace the power of adaptive learning to find out more about the advantages this method can provide - as well as how learning management systems (LMSs) such as Virtual College's Enable LMS can turn these conceptual gains into reality.

What is adaptive learning?

As the name suggests, the principle behind adaptive learning involves the delivery of tailored training that is able to analyse the needs and capabilities of individual learners, and adjust the teaching approach to meet their specific needs.

In its simplest form, this involves the creation of a branching structure to corporate learning materials, with students' actions, responses and performance in a set task helping to determine the level and scope of the next activity. This might mean that some learners are able to skip over certain parts of the course if their performance suggests they do not require it; it might also mean that others are taken through more steps, or provided with more challenging and rigorous material if results indicate that they would benefit from it.

To employ this kind of individually-tailored approach manually would be extremely difficult for large companies with broad, diverse workforces, which is why the automated nature of adaptive learning is proving so appealing. Using inbuilt algorithms, modern learning technologies can adapt automatically to deliver responsive, personalised training to any number of employees, with minimal input required.

What benefits does adaptive learning offer?

In many ways, adaptive learning represents a silver bullet solution that solves many of the problems associated with conventional one-size-fits-all approaches to corporate training.

After all, it's well known that different people tend to respond better to different forms of education, so mandating everyone in the company to work step-by-step through the same learning materials is unlikely to get the best out of everybody. For some, this will force them to spend time on topics they find unengaging or unnecessary; for others, they may not be able to go into the depth they want on a given subject.

Adaptive learning, in essence, offers learners the benefits of mentor-led, mastery-based teaching, without the company having to commit the kind of time and resources this would require if delivered person-to-person. It means every staff member will be able to develop a full, functional understanding of the material in as few or as many steps as they personally require, thereby bolstering their on-the-job performance and giving them a greater sense that their employer is responsive to their needs.

How can Enable LMS help to realise these benefits?

The advantages of adaptive learning can be numerous for companies that are set up to capitalise upon them, and Virtual College's Enable LMS solution can play a key role in this.

Enable can be used to manage off-the-shelf e-learning courses as well as supporting the creation of your own staff training programmes, meaning it is ideally placed to aid the monitoring of your employees' performance, regardless of the type of training you are providing.

With its modern, user-friendly interface, you can keep track of the progress of any number of learners, allowing you to get an at-a-glance insight into staff engagement levels, and the degree to which your adaptive learning programmes are delivering results. This data can be viewed at any time from any device, and compiled into reports to help quantify the return on investment you are achieving.

Ultimately, adaptive learning is about bringing down administration time, stress and costs, while delivering better training outcomes; by pairing this approach with the complementary benefits of the Enable LMS solution, you can make sure your organisation is able to retain its competitive edge.