The success of e-learning in companies mainly depends on the ability of your employees to learn independently. But how can you promote these self-learning skills? We have summarized the 5 most important tips for you:
Reading Tip: We have already explained the concept of self-learning competence in another article and shown why this ability is so important in e-learning: The prerequisite for successful e-learning.
The further training of your employees continues to take place predominantly digitally in many companies. Therefore, many HR professionals are increasingly relying on e-learning and time-shifted, asynchronous learning units. In this context, the independent learning of employees is more important than ever. In e-learning, your employees must take responsibility for their learning process. What sounds easy is a major challenge in practice: Many employees must first learn this self-responsibility.
As a training officer, you should specifically promote the self-learning competence of your employees before you provide the first learning material. Only then can you be sure that they really have 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 person, this means giving up control and passing it on to your employees. They need to take care of their own knowledge acquisition.
Self-learning competence is important at four points in the learning process:
Learning planning and organization: Your employees need to be well organized in e-learning. They require sufficient learning times, an optimal, individual learning pace, and suitable learning media.
The actual learning process: Learning is primarily determined by the content. To ensure a successful learning process, you should align it with the learning goals.
The learning outcome: Control is important to ensure that learning remains successful. The match between the learning objective and the learning level achieved by your employees is crucial.
The coordination: Learning must fit into everyday life. Coordinating learning with other areas of life is therefore particularly important. Also, the exchange among learners increases the learning success.
At all four points, your employees need the right competencies and resources. Learning processes always involve both self-directed and externally-directed components. Even e-learning is partially externally-directed, for example, through the selection of learning media. “Self-directed” does not mean “without guidance”. On the contrary: That's why we will now reveal how you can promote your employees' self-learning competence.
How to promote self-learning competencies in e-learning
In order for your employees to develop self-learning competence, you must support them specifically. Therefore, you should first assess the current state and promote your employees accordingly on an individual basis.
Three examples of targeted support:
Do some employees have problems with the technology? Then explain the process of your course to them, for example, in a short video.
Other employees may find it difficult to find a personal learning pace – support them here, for example, with a template for a learning plan.
For many employees, it is challenging to plan sufficient time for further education: Fixed learning times help here.
As a training officer, you can promote your employees' self-learning competence at various points:
How to promote self-learning competence: Own representation // inspired by: Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training
As the graphic shows, you can promote your employees' self-learning competence at various points. With the following tips, this can 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 they can learn independently.
Delegate responsibility to your employees and allow them to decide independently about the learning process.
Raise awareness for learning and explain to your employees the reasons and goals of your further 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 respond to your employees' needs.
If you equip your employees with this competence, both sides benefit: You as a responsible person can hand over the learning process to your employees, and they become independent in their learning process from you as a course 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 covers topics like blended learning, e-learning, video production, and much more!
