In a year filled with uncertainty and drastic changes, we are proud to announce that SHIFT won the highly coveted and prestigious bronze award in Brandon Hall Group’s 2021 Excellence in Technology Awards. This award is our tenth global recognition since 2009 — but this year is especially important as it comes in a category that represents our present and future as an organization: Best Advance in AI for Business Impact — a new award introduced in 2020 in the Future of Work category.

We are seeing the emergence of a global skills revolution - where reskilling employees is a new business priority to help them rapidly adapt to the fast-changing economy. The vast majority of companies globally (87%) are conscious that they have a significant skills gap or will have one within a few years, according to McKinsey & Company. And more than just being aware of this challenge, companies consider it a priority (nearly all respondents to the McKinsey survey ranked closing potential skills gaps as a priority for their organizations, with about a third saying it is in the top three priorities) and want to take action to close it. The latest LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report also confirms this: 64% of training and development professionals say retraining today's workforce to fill skills gaps is a priority. So, if in 2022 one of your goals is to create more upskilling and reskilling opportunities for your employees, that means it is time to identify the existing skills gap. But what exactly is “skill gap,” you ask? As the name implies, it is: “a significant gap between an organization’s skill needs and the current capabilities of its workforce.” It’s the moment at which a company realizes it can no longer advance, keep up with previously set goals or be competitive against other companies unless those skills are learned or improved. It is driven by a combination of factors that create the new world of work including the exponential growth of automation, artificial intelligence technologies, along candidates lacking the necessary skills to interact with these advancements and innovations. The World Economic Forum said it clearly this year: COVID-19 situation worldwide has made the skills gap bigger and the need to close it more urgent. This calls for new strategies at every level to best prepare workers for the post-pandemic economy. Identifying these gaps is critical to building effective and focused training programs. Often, companies launch programs without enough understanding of where the skill gaps exist in their workforce. This just produces poor results. It doesn’t make sense to improve your customer service training when what your employees really need is leadership initiatives, right? There is a multitude of benefits to skill gap analysis and identification, including: Analyzes the organization as a whole. Analyzes existing skills and lets you know if employees can learn these new skills through training or if you may need to hire different workers. Gives you an idea of what training is required first and where you need to spend the most money and time. Keep your company updated and aligned with the new demands of labor markets that are continuously disrupted by technology, demographic change, and the evolving work environment. Motivated employees. Employees are anxious about the growing skills gap, and 46 percent of those surveyed by McKinsey believe their current skills will become irrelevant by 2024. By constantly reskilling and upskilling them, you are feeding their need for growth and improvement.

In an age where continuous learning is widely becoming a mutual goal for both employers and employees, it is vital for a company to supply learners with a structured eLearning environment. Part of what conveys a stable structure of the learning environment is the ability to optimize the learning time and efficiency. Workers, in general, work hard and are consistently busy people leading busy lives. Taking time to learn something new, either concerning their work or for self-improvement, may also be consuming time where the worker could be actively accomplishing a key task.

Anyone seeking to create meaningful and engaging eLearning courses can benefit by remembering what it is like to be on the other side. It is bad practice to subject learners to any training that you would not participate in yourself. It’s time you stop blaming the “boring” content and commit to stop tormenting the learners who are required to take your course! Our job as eLearning designers is to FASCINATE and DELIGHT the learner from beginning to end. In the excitement of launching a new course, it’s easy to overlook details. Therefore, it can be very useful to have a checklist for last-minute touches.

It's so easy to assume the content is all that matters in an eLearning course. But, how information is presented affects its effectiveness. The design, for instance, influences how students interact with information. Think about one of your existing eLearning course designs: Is it too cluttered? Or is it designed to properly guide learners toward clear goals?

Usability applies to any user interface, from a door handle to an airplane cockpit - or an eLearning course. It means, simply, how easy it is for users to get what they need out of the device. How usable your eLearning course is, is one of the most important factors that make or break your entire program. Usability is so critical in eLearning because every minute students spend learning to use the software is a minute out of their time spent learning the content. What is Usability? Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. If you are in the middle or just starting an eLearning course, before you go any further, ask yourself if you have covered the 5 E's of usability. Use these as guidelines or standards to make sure your course is as easy to use as you can make it.

So, you’re at your desk, cruising the Internet, and suddenly a random ad flashes on your screen, totally catching your attention. So much that you’re inclined to click on it to learn more. It’s happened to all of us many times before. And despite continually blowing off ads, when they lure us in, most of us will admit, “That was good!” as we click for more. When was the last time someone caught your attention in a second? It’s not that easy nowadays, but creating attention-grabbing eLearning content can be an easy task by applying some proven tricks.

Though building an eLearning course isn’t necessarily an easy task the first time around, it doesn’t have to be a frustrating experience. Like most things in life, creating your first course simply requires structure and a little know-how. If you’re here, you are probably a beginner and eager to learn more about how to create effective eLearning courses. In an attempt to make your journey easier, we’ve compiled five essential tips to help diffuse the drama around successful eLearning development.