Three new trends affecting training managers

Keeping track of the latest research into learning styles can feel like an arduous task, especially in the current climate which includes remote working, the rise of digital training and technologies, and demanding learners. And while classic learning styles have a useful place in creating online training, the changing face of learners and learning environments has rendered rigidly sticking to any specific model obsolete. To help, we’ve brought together three key ideas.

1. Curiosity and on-demand learners

By now, you’ll have read about your learner as a digital consumer – someone who is used to easily accessible information at the touch of a button. While some might argue this makes life harder for training managers, it also means contemporary learners are more used to satisfying – and maintaining – their own curiosity. Tools like search engines and social media platforms facilitate learners in directing their own knowledge consumption and application, and this natural curiosity can also be satisfied through e-learning.

Some researchers believe a learner’s self-motivation can be consistently encouraged, and therefore their interest in learning regularly renewed, by recognising their innate curiosity and providing ‘thematic scaffolding’. These are areas of educational content that learners can explore freely in their own way; however, e-learning that forces learners down a particular path and doesn’t allow choice (even within the smallest of constraints) can turn off users who are used to getting the information they want, exactly when and how they want it.

2. The new tutor

In the last few years, the role of the tutor in workplace and online learning has changed significantly. Rather than being an expert ‘broadcaster’ of knowledge, tutors now have to inhabit many roles as coach, mentor, peer and even learner. Learners at work may be untethered from a particular location or working pattern, making the role of tutor an important connecting force between them and the organisation. Similarly, as learners self-direct their education, they are beginning to create their own learning networks in which there is no longer one tutor, but many.

For some tutors, this shift can be difficult; despite their subject matter expertise, ‘teaching’ in this contemporary way may prove challenging. Tutors are now required to be flexible and empathic, responding to the changing needs of learners, session to session. The most effective methods to ensure this in your organisation are to ‘train the trainer’ and provide them with pedagogically sound materials, which facilitate successful tutoring, as well as successful learning.