It’s 2022, and with a new year comes a new reality for people and businesses. We’ve gone through lockdowns and remote work, and now every company is establishing its own ways to organize employee work.
Training delivery methods keep changing, and you may discover that it’s time to revise your approach to corporate training. That’s why we’ve written this article. Please read it to learn about the five major learning delivery methods, their pros and cons, and which one will best suit your company’s purposes. Here we go!
Contents:
5 Learning delivery methods: the comparison table
Learning delivery is the means by which you communicate knowledge to learners. This implies that you need to use certain technologies, resources, and facilities to deliver the intended learning experience and meet specific goals. Learning delivery has its own methods, and these are the five of them: face-to-face training, virtual classrooms, online learning, blended learning, and mobile learning. Let’s look at each of them in greater detail.
This is an oldie but goodie. Face-to-face (F2F) training is the environment we all first experienced: we meet a teacher/trainer/instructor in the classroom and learn from that person. In the corporate sphere, face-to-face training may come as mentoring, coaching, hands-on workshops, on-the-job training with a supervisor, or group seminars. All of these share two things in common: they’re instructor-led, and they require the physical presence of all participants.
Face-to-face sessions can have a part to play in your corporate training, but they should not be your only solution. For example, you can choose face-to-face training for jobs that demand precision, accuracy, or working with sophisticated equipment. This way, you’ll be able to observe how learners perform required actions and share your hands-on experience to help them.
If you have to use face-to-face training because of the pandemic, opt for well-known video conferencing tools and take your training online. Schedule Skype or Zoom sessions with learners, or consider giving them talking-head video lectures on webinar platforms. And this brings us to our next training delivery method.
A virtual classroom, or virtual instructor-led training, allows you and your learners to meet online in a designated video call session to share interactive learning activities with them, enabling all learners to actively participate in the training process.
You can show a presentation to the learners, for example, then split them into breakout rooms and give them a group task, and finally, come back together and discuss the results. Learners can join your virtual classroom regardless of where they are in the world and participate simultaneously.
Since you and your learners aren’t present in the same physical location, it can be challenging for you to catch the moment when people’s minds start wandering. We recommend coming up with brief discussions, quick polls, or quizzes to engage students – and the more the better. Virtual classroom software, webinar platforms, and Zoom have features for creating breakout rooms and conducting polls, so you won’t need any extra tools for this.
When planning the training sessions, you might find that notifying people and tracking who attends classes requires too much effort. If that’s the case, then consider using an LMS that supports synchronous learning, so you can keep virtual classroom training under control. That’s where iSpring Learn LMS comes in handy.
Also read: 12 LMS Benefits For Recruiters, HR, Sales and Commercial Directors—Expert Opinion
helps you schedule training sessions through the built-in calendar, setting automatic reminders that are sent to the instructors and their learners. Thanks to its integration with Zoom, the LMS automatically invites learners to their Zoom meetings, shows you who has registered for the classes or who has declined the invitation, and prepares the list of attendees after each session. Thus, planning and managing virtual classroom training is no longer an issue.
Next, you’ll learn how much easier all of this can be with online learning and LMSs. Keep reading!
, or online learning delivery method, refers to using digital devices and content for training. The most common content types of eLearning are slide-based courses, interactive quizzes, video courses and tutorials, screencasts, simulations, podcasts, and e-books. Learners can access these materials on their PCs, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Online courses help you scale training in your company and avoid the expenses associated with face-to-face training. With online training, no matter how big your audience is and how far away they work from your headquarters, you can perform a great number of tasks:
To create and deliver content for all these training tasks, you will need:
Course creation may seem complicated, especially if you’re new to this. But in fact, you can use existing slides and materials and build professional courses right in PowerPoint. Choose iSpring Suite to create courses with multimedia and interactivities just as you usually prepare PPT slides. This tool is PowerPoint-based, so you already know how to use it.
If you want to make your course truly engaging, you can add fourteen types of interactive quizzes and role-plays to your course, and record and edit video lectures and screencasts — all with a single tool, and in no time at all.
Here’s what a course made with iSpring Suite looks like:
You can make professional looking courses like this, too, and you don’t have to search for the media assets. iSpring Suite includes a content library where you can find suitable characters, objects, backgrounds, and more to illustrate your ideas.
With iSpring Suite, you can publish courses to an LMS with zero fuss. Use an LMS like iSpring Learn to administer the training process, enroll learners, assign materials, and track learner progress.
The system collects statistics on how individual learners or an entire staff take courses and quizzes, and will provide you with clear reports on scoring, attempts, mistakes, time spent, etc.
As a technology-based sphere, eLearning can’t help but exploit new ways of communication and become usable on new kinds of devices. Now learners can access online training materials not only in their browsers but also via mobile apps. This changes the way people perceive training and interact with content, and it constitutes a whole new method: mobile learning.
Also known as m-Learning, this is a specific approach that employs mobile, portable devices to deliver online training content to learners. As with eLearning, the content is digital, but you need to convert it into HTML5 format, deliver it in smaller portions, and ensure that it adjusts properly to various screen sizes. Only then will your online course or quiz be fully mobile ready.
Implement it to embrace your learners’ mobility. Employees who don’t work in the office setting and are always on the go also need access to training and learning. Mobile learning is just what they need. Prepare business memos, instructions, and short refresher courses for sales reps, account managers, auditors, and others. They’ll find these materials useful for quick reference on their smartphones.
That’s how the Oticon company used m-Learning to train their account managers in the US. As one of the leading companies in the global hearing aid industry, Oticon needs highly trained account managers in every country where they have a presence. To consistently deliver the same message to everyone, including itinerant and dispersed employees, the company chose the iSpring Learn mobile app.
In the app, learners can study courses wherever they are — even during their frequent business trips. Oticon field teams find the off-line version of the app particularly convenient, because they can download any of the 300 courses in advance and study during their flights. They can brush up on product features and industry regulations anytime and stay in the loop on any updates.
For customer service and other training courses that require hands-on experience and assistance, Oticon combines self-paced mobile learning and a face-to-face approach. And that brings us to the next method of learning delivery: blended learning.
Blended learning is an approach that mixes the formats of classroom and online learning. It gives your learners online access to learning materials to study at their own pace, but it also includes meetings for discussions, group tasks, or mentoring sessions.
Also read: Mentorship Program: All You Should to Know in 2023 [Expert Insights]
When implementing blended learning in your class, you maintain control over schedules and pace, and students can learn synchronously. But you also reserve some activities and content for online asynchronous learning and independent study.
Consider using blended learning for situations in which you need to maintain some degree of live training. It’s particularly relevant for training topics that demand a hands-on approach or guidance from the instructor. For example, you can prompt client-facing departments to study a basic course on customer service principles online, and then practice communication skills during face-to-face training sessions.
You can also use blended learning for effective training on multifaceted topics, as the Drone Class success story demonstrates. This company from the Netherlands provides drone license courses and piloting training to various customers, from individuals to organizations. Since drones now can be used in many spheres, learners may have very different knowledge and require diverse types of training.
To address this challenge, Drone Class organizes classroom training sessions to introduce learners to the basics, and then invites them to continue in iSpring Learn. In the LMS, soon-to-be drone operators deepen their knowledge with online courses and take quizzes that comply with the ensuing licensure exam. Classroom activities and online training together help to prepare well-educated drone pilots for a wide range of projects.
To help you summarize this information and determine the training method that best suits your company, we’ve compared them in the table below.
| eLearning | Face-to-face training | Virtual classrooms | Blended learning | m-Learning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driver | Online courses and quizzes Video tutorials Dialogue simulations | In-person, instructor-led training in a physical setting | In-person, instructor-led training in a virtual space | Face-to-face sessions Online learning | Mobile learners Portable devices |
| Main task | Provide unified, consistent, replicable training across an organization | Share hands-on experience and exchange ideas | Keep the lively nature of F2F training, but make it available to remote participants | Bridge the necessary instructor-led training and more scalable online learning | Make learning accessible anywhere and anytime, even on the go |
| Main challenge | Maintain engagement | Scale training | Hold attention and maintain engagement | Needs both technologies and instructors | Fight distractions caused by smartphones |
| Facilities needed | Authoring software Learning management system (LMS) | Dedicated training venue Printed materials Whiteboard Transport and accommodation for participants | Video Conferencing tools Virtual classroom software | Authoring software LMS Webinar platform Video conferencing tools Training venues | Smartphones or tablets |
Here are some frequently asked questions about learning delivery methods.
Learning delivery is a systematic process of communicating knowledge to learners based on a particular set of technologies, activities, and social practices.
Learning delivery methods are the main 5 ways of organizing learning experiences using specific technology and facilities. They include face-to-face training, online learning, virtual classrooms, blended learning, and mobile learning.
According to the 2021 Training Industry Report, blended learning accounts for 43% of overall training hours. Given that 56% of companies plan to combine classroom training with remote learning in 2022, blended learning appears to be the most popular training delivery method.
Every training delivery method we’ve discussed above has its own purpose and area of application. None of them is a panacea, but they can all yield great results when properly implemented. It’s wise not to settle for face-to-face training only, but to try new approaches and even combine them! This will help you address each method’s potential bottlenecks and train employees more efficiently.
Which learning delivery method do you prefer, and why? Share your thoughts in the comment section!