eLearning and enterprises: a winning relationship

The pandemic and the revival of the country's economy have shown how the combination of lifelong learning and eLearning is the winning tool for businesses. Advanced communication tools have made it possible to limit the interruptions caused by quarantines and sick leave; smart working has contributed to the success of conference calls. Now, with the focus on re-launching, it's the turn of personnel retraining as the key to business success. To the most reactive the occasions will not lack. 

Even for workers, investing in their own training is a wise choice, both for those who are only now entering a job market full of pitfalls, and for those who wish to follow their career to the fullest. For everyone, acquiring practical skills with real-world applications is a need that online platforms can satisfy. 
Underlining the importance of these needs are the positions of institutions, both national and European, and of trade associations, such as Confindustria: for all of them, bringing together national skills and employment opportunities is a long-term strategy to be pursued.

The most advanced eLearning platforms, able to provide a service that combines updated and in-depth content with the evaluation of user response, are part of this. The trend, which has already been evolving for a few years, has confirmed the validity of the model. The case of DynDevice LMS is emblematic: to its training offer is added the possibility to act as a marketplace between experts and users. The world of distance learning is here to stay and play its part.

Lifelong learning as continuous updating

Pandemic months have forced businesses and workers to rethink how they collaborate. The success of conferencing apps has not only enabled continuity of business processes during the most uncertain times, but also helped change the perception of remote work as a natural condition. Whether there were live people or prerecorded content on the other end of the screen, we adapted to the newness. 

For managers and professionals who had already adopted this solution, distance learning proved to be a winning tool for the competitiveness of their companies. Winning, because the wealth of skills of the staff is the most valuable asset for a company and its updating is the key to the success of any business. By way of example, the construction industry, which never really stopped during the quarantine, continued to need safety managers and prevention officers. For those that are more responsive, the approval of the construction superbonus in the Relaunch Decree was an important market opportunity. From a situation of uncertainty and crisis to a market expansion in less than three years: perhaps an extreme case, but one that confirms the advantages of the ability to adapt to new solutions.

It is not only companies that benefit from training. Deepening and updating one's skills is, and will increasingly be, a necessity for workers.  This is true for young people, who are required to have as much training as possible when they are hired, as well as for long-term employees, who are expected to keep their experience up to date. In both cases, lifelong learning is the key to recruitment and long-term employment. 

This is not just in the industry: a lot of soft skills are essential for anyone looking to make a change. Topics such as privacy in the company, environmental sustainability or the mastery of computer procedures - the office package at the bottom of every CV - are ubiquitous and always in demand. In a context where the job you start with is less and less the same as the one you end your professional life with, investing in flexibility and variety is always a good strategy.

The importance of continuing education is also confirmed at the regulatory level. The Ministry of Labor and Social Policies reports the National Strategic Plan for the development of the skills of the adult population, approved at the Unified Conference on July 8, 2021. In it the following guidelines are outlined for the three-year period 2020/2022 according to essential and optional lines of action: 

• Intercept and orient individuals
• Qualify and requalify human capital
• Intermediate and synchronize demand and supply of skills

The plan, which is aimed at the entire adult population, "in particular low-skilled and/or with low levels of qualification, the unemployed, the inactive, those at risk of unemployment or with income from work below the poverty line" envisages for the period 2021/2023 to focus on the 29-64 age group. 

The document finds an important point of reference in the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning. It defines a common classification of levels of competence for professional qualifications in order to standardize the certifications issued according to the following progressive levels of knowledge, to which are associated skills and competencies:  

1. Basic General
2. Basic practice in a work or study setting
3. Knowledge of facts, principles, processes, and general concepts
4. Practical and theoretical knowledge in broad work or study settings
5. Practical, theoretical, and specialized knowledge with an awareness of its limitations 
6. Advanced knowledge with critical understanding of theories and principles
7. Highly specialized knowledge possibly on the cutting edge
8. Knowledge at the most advanced frontier at the frontier and intersection of multiple fields 

Staying practical: small is beautiful

In summary, never before has the concept of Kaizen, continuous and ubiquitous improvement, been appreciated. The risk, if anything, is that of a series of updates for their own sake, just to accumulate points for a ranking. Not all of the courses offered by the orders are educational in the strict sense; many of those enrolled in the orders complain about the time required to follow them compared to the level offered. The solution then is to remain practical. 

A course is useful when it enables you to gain the specific, targeted knowledge to make your work more complete, faster or more reliable. With a more in-depth level of Excel functions, it is possible to prepare a spreadsheet for a detailed analysis of costs and company budgets; HACCP principles are essential for maintaining the cold chain in food preservation. 

Nothing like the eLearning mode allows for this breadth of content. In a one-hour course, you can condense the key points of a manual, provide practical examples, instructional videos and assessment tests. For more in-depth topics, a list of courses can cover all sections. This is the philosophy with which the Moocs (Massive Open Online Coruse) have established themselves: since 2006, when Khan Academy began to help students prepare for the American college admission tests, the offer has multiplied; last October, the Udemy platform was listed on Nasdaq with a total of 44 million users in 180 countries.  

The accounts with the market

With hindsight, the success of these platforms is evident: a wide bouquet of content, ease of access and competitive service costs. This trend has also convinced the main universities to convert at least part of their offerings to online. 

Confirming that the market has its own needs is also the position of Giovanni Brugnoli, Confindustria Vice President for Human Capital, who, interviewed by Sole24ore on the occasion of the edition of Job Orienta 2021 and ITS Pop Days last November, formulated his recipe for education: focus on STEM degrees and tertiary professional paths, to train those 83 thousand Its graduates who are currently missing. The key word, according to Brugnoli is networking: "We must create networks, stable aggregations between companies and training bodies, schools, lefp centers, private employment agencies, universities, Its, in which to share and co-design training paths." The topic of technical figures was recently addressed by EconomyUp, where it emphasizes the importance of certified skills to implement Industry 4.0.

So, train to employ, as emerged from the meeting " Funding education for Wellbeing" of the Lifelong Learning Platform, which brings together 42 European organizations in the field of education and training in December 2021: making lifelong learning more effective and organized allows not only to improve the well-being of workers but to increase the return on investment of companies. 

How eLearning has evolved: the case of DynDevice LMS

The way of doing distance learning has evolved a lot since its origins. The spread of the Internet in homes has allowed us to move from simple computer programs (Computer-Based Training, CBT) of the early nineties to what we know today as eLearning. A good example is given by the DynDevice LMS system, which provides a complete training system for staff: this makes it possible to combine the functions of a teaching office, managing enrollment practices and, archiving and notifying users, with those specific to training, both remotely and in the classroom.
A fundamental element for understanding the scope of this innovation is Scorm (Sharable Content Object Reference), a set of technological standards that make learning content catalogued, traceable and reusable on different learning platforms. This makes it possible to record the behavior of the user during the fruition of the course: it is thus possible to evaluate both his learning and the quality of the material provided. The production of content is assisted by the LCMS (Learning Content Management System), which allows you to create and organize the learning material. 

In the field of technical training then, a perfect synergy is given by the integration between the remote course and the technical tools on which the employee is called to train. A course of this kind is able to combine the basic preparation with the practical case, allowing the subject to acquire the familiarity with the instrument essential for its use in the field. To get an idea, think of the first aid pages in driving school exam manuals: as interesting as they are not very useful in an emergency. A defibrillator or first aid dummy can help avoid the worst if staff have been provided with adequate training.

Produce content

Another opportunity for businesses is to capitalize on their knowledge. Training a team is a complex and delicate process; creating a library of skills to make the hiring and training process a good one allows you to create a good practice, regardless of who is performing it. More broadly, eLearning offers the opportunity to create a marketplace between experts and users. Anyone who is knowledgeable in a field can gather ideas and material and organize courses accompanied by real-time webinars and lectures. In life you never stop learning and sometimes you start teaching.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator