The Rise of Personalized and Adaptive Learning

Rise Up is a Business Reporter client.

Ensure that employees gain the skills and knowledge they need through learning that is targeted, engaging and relevant.

Learners are a lot fussier these days about what and how they learn. And why shouldn’t they be? We’ve all gotten so used to technology personalizing our everyday experiences—from streaming services to shopping—that we now expect it in all walks of life, learning included.

Fortunately, most L&D teams and business leaders are also in favor of personalization, recognizing the value of highly targeted, relevant learning that helps people do their jobs better, rather than putting the entire workforce through a “sheep dip” exercise.

What are personalized learning and adaptive learning?

This understanding and improved technology have led to the emergence of personalized learning, in which content and training are tailored to learner profiles. Learning is personalized to the individual—such as a content feed that can help an employee do their job better.

Adaptive learning is more sophisticated and dynamic, and goes a bit deeper. This extension of personalized learning is largely AI-driven and tailored to what a person knows and their level of capability, and as that knowledge and capability change, adaptive learning adapts in real time. Adaptive learning understands where an employee is on their learning journey and can provide personalized learning at scale in organizations.

Both types of learning are data-driven, and take data on an individual’s skills and knowledge and use it to suggest and deliver learning that will move them to the next level. This process then repeats throughout the employee’s learning journey.

One of the main benefits of personalized learning is that employees don’t need to repeat training with information they already know. In the past, employees often had to sit through training material they’d already learned—a waste of time and resources and a real turn-off for learners. With adaptive learning, content is targeted, relevant and timely.

Macro-adaptive and micro-adaptive learning

At Rise Up, we believe there are two approaches to adaptive learning: macro-adaptive and micro-adaptive. Macro-adaptive focuses on personalized training pathways, while micro-adaptive focuses on personalized training content.

New research into L&D trends is constantly being conducted, and personalized learning and adaptive learning have ranked near the top for a few years now. But it took a while for learning teams to integrate personalized and adaptive learning, largely because L&D wasn’t sure what to do with the data it was collecting.

Benefits of personalized and adaptive learning

Organizations with effective adaptive learning practices know how to interpret data and use it to drive learning forward. By making good use of data, learning professionals can make informed decisions about what learning is needed, where and why—and they can track its effectiveness.

Even before the pandemic hit, it was generally accepted that the old approach to learning—the one-size-fits-all classroom method—was outdated and didn’t deliver the best outcomes. This recognition has enabled blended learning to flourish and facilitated highly personalized and adaptive delivery, which allows people to learn through a variety of different mediums and channels according to their needs and preferences and those of their organization. The move to remote working and then to hybrid working during the pandemic has broken down barriers to digital learning. With the rise of remote and hybrid work, it’s even more important that employees have access to personalized learning, wherever they are based.

What now?

Learning teams need to push ahead to ensure that employees have a truly engaging, personalized learning experience. An organization’s people are its best asset, and their skills need to be nurtured and developed. Employers can help employees do their best work by giving them access to effective, personalized learning, when and where they need it, and the opportunity to fulfill their career aspirations.

L&D proved its worth during the early days of Covid-19, helping organizations and employees shift to digital ways of working and learning, and business leaders realized the pivotal role that learning plays, particularly in times of change and uncertainty. In 2021, personalized learning shifted from being a nice-to-have to become a need-to-have, and many L&D teams expect their budget to increase this year.

L&D teams need to think wisely and creatively about their spending, how to effectively bring about change and how to keep that top seat at the table. Providing employees with personalized, adaptive learning experiences has been a priority for long enough, and now is the time for it to become reality.

Rise Up delivers a dynamic and impactful learning experience through an all-in-one training solution that facilitates personalized employee learning. Offering an AI-driven adaptive learning capability, Rise Up is leading the way to incorporate experience, culture, need, impact and agility. To find out more, book a short demo with an L&D expert and watch an exclusive webinar exploring what adaptive learning means, how companies are successfully using it today and what challenges it is helping to solve.

This article originally appeared in Business Reporter. Header Image credit: iStock id1291288780