Now, every employee picks their own learning path

Chennai: Say you have a meeting with a vendor at 11 am and exactly an hour ahead of your meeting, you get a short video on vendor negotiation, on your cell phone? What if you could benchmark yourself against peers across the globe and know which precise course will help you move up the ladder? From classroom sessions, learning in a corporate has transformed into short, gamified, tailormade and intuitive e-learning that can be directly applied at work.

Catering to the new age audience, players like

Skillsoft

,

KNOLSKAPE

and Pluralsight are looking to offer a unique learning experience to every employee. “People don’t want learning to be a destination with credits and compliances. What one needs is relevant information that is integrated with work and offered in an engaging manner,” said Rajiv Jayaraman, founder and CEO, KNOLSKAPE . The Bengaluru-based startup is building an intuitive mobile app to make timely suggestions. “If an employee gets a short video on a specific skill they may need for a meeting on the same day, they will find it useful. The idea is to provide learning that is seamless with work,” adds Jayaraman.

Today’s learners want a personalised learning experience that fits their learning needs, speed and style, while earlier, everyone learnt from the same material at the same pace and it is this need that e-learning corporates are attempting to fulfil.

Long-time corporate learning company Skillsoft is using predictive analytics to make recommendations. “We modify content every quarter on a need basis — changing the user interface and introducing concise content. For over 200 corporates, we provide predictive analytics-based recommendations. Based on the history of the employee’s courses and those his peers take, one gets recommendations of modules that would suit his role better,” said Vinay Pradhan, country manager, Skillsoft.

While Skillsoft is toying with predictive analytics, augumented and virtual reality, KNOLSKAPE offers a Siri like

AI

assistant to help employees hone their behavioural skills. “You can converse with the AI character who will respond based on your facial expressions, voice tone, and choice of vocabulary. This can be useful for managers who have to appraise employees, customer service professionals who need to deal with irate customers,” adds Jayaraman.

Customisation helps when an employee knows what they want to learn. For those unsure on what to work on, US-based Pluralsight offers an adaptive assessment engine which gives the user an absolute and a relative score that benchmarks them with peers across the globe. “We then suggest courses based on the skill gap identified in the first step. Once the course is completed, the user can take the test again,” said Arun Rajamani, country head, Pluralsight.

The company also offers a mentorship platform. “A user can buy the time of an expert, which the system identifies as best fit based on the users expertise level and course area,” adds Rajamani.


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