The success of e-learning in companies primarily depends on your employees' ability to learn independently. But how can you promote these self-learning competencies? We have summarized the 5 most important tips for you:
Reading tip: We have already explained the term self-learning competence in another article and shown why this ability is so important in e-learning: The prerequisite for successful e-learning.
The training of employees continues to take place predominantly in a digital format in many companies. Therefore, many HR professionals increasingly rely on e-learning and asynchronous learning units. Independent learning by employees is more important than ever. In e-learning, your employees must take responsibility for their learning process themselves. What sounds simple is, in practice, a significant challenge: Many employees must first learn this self-responsibility.
As a training manager, you should specifically promote your employees' self-learning competencies before you provide the first learning materials. Only then can you be sure that they truly possess the necessary skills for independent learning.
Self-learning competencies are diverse
Self-learning competence has a lot to do with the self-responsibility of your employees. For you as a responsible party, this means delegating control and transferring it to your employees. They must take care of acquiring knowledge themselves.
Self-learning competence is important at four points in the learning process:
Learning planning and organization: Your employees must organize themselves well in e-learning. For this, they need sufficient learning times, an optimal, individual learning pace, and suitable learning media.
The actual learning process: Learning is primarily determined by the content. To make the learning process successful, you should align it with the learning objectives.
The learning outcome: Control is important to ensure that learning remains truly successful. The alignment between the learning goals and the skill level achieved by your employees is crucial.
The coordination: Learning must fit into everyday life. Thus, coordinating learning with other areas of life is particularly important. Additionally, interaction among learners increases learning success.
At all four points, your employees need the appropriate competencies and resources. Learning processes always include self-directed and other-directed elements. Even e-learning is partially other-directed, for example, through the selection of learning media. “Self-directed” does not mean “without guidance”. On the contrary: That is why we will now reveal to you how you can foster your employees' self-learning competence.
How to promote self-learning competencies in e-learning
To help your employees develop self-learning competence, you need to support them specifically. Therefore, in the first step, you should assess the current state and promote your employees accordingly in an individualized manner.
Three examples of targeted support:
Do some employees have problems with the technology? Then explain the process of your course, for example, in a short video.
Other employees may find it challenging to find a personal learning pace – support them here, for example, with a template for a learning plan.
For many employees, it is difficult to plan sufficient time for further education: Fixed learning times help in this regard.
As a training manager, you can therefore promote the self-learning competence of your employees in various ways:
This is how you promote self-learning competence: Own presentation // based on: Research Institute for Corporate Education
As the graphic shows, you can promote your employees' self-learning competence at various points. With the following tips, this will succeed at all five stages of the learning process:
5 concrete tips for promoting self-learning competence:
Provide your employees with the necessary learning content and sufficient input so that they can learn independently.
Delegate responsibility to your employees and let them decide on the learning process themselves.
Create awareness for learning and explain to your employees the reasons and goals of your training.
Explain to your employees why the individual learning measures make sense and place them in the overall context of their work.
Offer fixed times for feedback, questions, and suggestions to address your employees' needs.
If you provide your employees with this competence, both sides benefit: You as the responsible party can hand over the learning process to your employees, and they become independent in their learning process from you as the instructor!
Are you looking for more content and inspiration for your own training measures? Then feel free to check out our learning materials. Our collection is of course free of charge and includes topics like blended learning, e-learning, video production, and much more!
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