{"id":19838,"date":"2021-05-14T09:40:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T09:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/?p=19838"},"modified":"2021-05-17T09:41:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T09:41:39","slug":"myths-and-misconceptions-about-learning-platforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/blog\/myths-and-misconceptions-about-learning-platforms\/","title":{"rendered":"The biggest myths and misconceptions about learning platforms (LMS, LXP & more)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to learning at work, we\u2019re all products of the environments and offices we\u2019ve tried to build new skills in. If you\u2019ve only ever seen those click-through compliance courses or an LMS that\u2019s not interactive, uninspiring and detached from how you work, you wouldn\u2019t know there was a whole different side to learning solutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in some ways, we\u2019re not just dealing with myths and misconceptions but the hangovers from people\u2019s past experiences with other platforms – which often means the LMS. The truth is that modern learning platforms offer so much more and to help people understand that, we\u2019re tackling some of the big issues here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learning solutions take too long to get up and running<\/b><\/h2>\n

It depends on the platform you pick! If you want to hit the ground running, seek out a platform that works for you out of the box and can tick the right boxes. Imagine you\u2019ve got a spare ticket to an event and need to leave in five minutes, do you call the friend who takes that long to get ready or the one who\u2019s always late? Pick the former and you\u2019re less likely to be disappointed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2019ve seen a trend for learning platforms that are far simpler to set up and use. In HowNow, for example, we developed the Nugget, which is such a simple way of creating content that countless people are using it on launch day – our Gymshark customer story<\/a> is a prime example of that. It\u2019s as simple as clicking create, typing in, attaching or linking your content, choosing where and who you share it with and hitting publish.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sharing<\/p>\n

And that goes back to the idea of layout and interface, if something isn\u2019t easy to use then people won\u2019t use it. Hopefully, you\u2019ll excuse the self-promotion, but let\u2019s take HowNow for example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before anyone needs to even scroll, they can find the vast majority of things they need. Recent recommendations and key announcements are front and centre, the left-hand column organises their content in an easy to navigate way, and they can either search for or create content with the side by side search bar and \u2018plus button\u2019 in the top-right corner.<\/p>\n

\"HowNow<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too hard to curate or create content<\/b><\/h2>\n

Hopefully, the GIF above shows you that this really isn\u2019t the case! As we\u2019ll come to later, creating content is only hard if you choose to make it hard. Although, when people are starting from scratch and perhaps don\u2019t have a lot of existing resources, it can seem like a content mountain to climb in order to get sufficient materials into your platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where the idea of curating content comes into play. It also takes us to a quick side myth, which is that it\u2019s a choice between curating external content or populating it with your own, the best situation and one many learning platforms offer today is a combination. The best of both worlds is particularly helpful for those people we mentioned without too much of their own content ahead of launch.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ll indulge us with another glance at HowNow, we enable you to select which content providers you switch on and populate the platform with. If we break it down another level, when people want more control over what they\u2019re seeing and learning from, they can subscribe to channels relevant to them. And then alongside all of that, you\u2019ve got artificial intelligence (AI) recommending relevant content to those people. And AI is a big myth-buster in itself, because if you do believe time is a barrier then it really breaks it down for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Switching<\/p>\n

The content has to be absolutely perfect from the offset<\/b><\/h2>\n

Imagine your phone breaks and you\u2019re really desperate to get your hands on a new one. A kind friend offers to buy you a replacement but claim they can\u2019t give it to you until they find the gift box that\u2019s just right – and it might take weeks or months. The phone is what matters, not what it\u2019s wrapped up in! And we find ourselves in a similar space when it comes to content.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you wait until the design and packaging of the content is perfect, you might miss the moment that it\u2019s actually useful. A HUGE myth is that it has to be a polished work of art when you send it out – people will appreciate the content a lot more if they have access to it without a six-month delay for design sign off. Bullet points now are better than a polished book later, which is hopefully what you saw in our Nugget example.<\/span><\/p>\n

All your content has to be uploaded for day one<\/b><\/h2>\n

Rome wasn\u2019t built in a day and your learning platform won\u2019t be either – because it\u2019s a living and breathing thing. There will be content that people need on launch day and stuff they won\u2019t need for months to come, think about what\u2019s going to be useful and when! By the same token, you\u2019ll find new problems arising over time and will need to deliver content that caters to that. That\u2019s something you\u2019ll have to manage as it moves along and it\u2019s where that idea of delivering content when it\u2019s useful comes into sharper focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

People often put too much pressure on themselves when it comes to the content they need, and that perpetuates this concern or myth that they\u2019ve got a huge hill to conquer to get everything together at once.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They’re only for certain types of content<\/b><\/h2>\n

Now, this could well be one of those hangovers from using an LMS we mentioned at the start. And it\u2019s because they\u2019re typically associated with a limited set of content types that leave people feeling disenfranchised. Compliance training<\/a> tends to fall into that category because you often see them in the long-read and click format or structured where people need to watch long videos and answer a few questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problems are that this doesn\u2019t reflect how people learn in the world outside of work and that it\u2019s a format people can\u2019t apply in the flow of work. This leads us to the ideas of including all the content we encounter in everyday life and incorporating microlearning into your strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

If somebody\u2019s had a long week and wants to make a cocktail on Friday night, do you think they\u2019ll sign up for a course or head over to Google or YouTube? It\u2019s almost certainly the latter (who wants to delay their favourite tipple!?). So they should be able to replicate that behaviour at work. YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts – they should all be a part of your learning strategy and content catalogue. It\u2019s all about that idea of working with people\u2019s existing habits, not against them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, by the same token, that also applies to where\/when they can access and apply that information. A traditional LMS would force people to head out of the workflow and over to the platform to learn what they needed. Today, people need learning platforms that integrate with apps they already use and then offer digestible content that can be understood and applied at the point they need it. That\u2019s where microlearning meets the points of need\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

They encourage a top-down approach where a select few control learning<\/b><\/h2>\n

This one is definitely a hangover from the days of the LMS, where a select few people in the company controlled who was learning and what the content was. Forward-thinking learning platforms give everyone a voice to democratise learning because we recognise that everyone has wisdom to share.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social learning and knowledge sharing<\/a> are centred around the idea that subject matter experts exist at all levels of your organisation, so you should be able to tap into that and connect them with others. Most importantly, you should be capturing that and making it accessible to everyone, on-demand. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>HowNow can be that single front door for your company\u2019s knowledge and resources, where you can capture and share it across your company and make it accessible in one place. We\u2019ve got an on-demand product tour<\/a> if you\u2019d like to see how it works, but if you\u2019d prefer to have a chat just complete this form<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to learning at work, we\u2019re all products of the environments and offices…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":19845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3115],"tags":[1595],"yst_prominent_words":[11,225,12,9,1003,800,349,162,1710,1310,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19838"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19847,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19838\/revisions\/19847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19838"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}