Digitalization and flexibility have been the trends in the training industry for years. Especially for companies, the theses on development in the next five years are interesting: Modern digital training is flexible, mobile, and saves time. We show you how to bring your company to the top with digital training methods based on the four most important theses!
Trend Analysis: The Future is Digital
Studies and data are particularly interesting when absolute professionals are involved in the collection. This is also the case here: Since 1993, the Wuppertal Circle has been collecting annual trends in training related to market and method development.
The Wuppertal Circle as an industry association unites 46 educational institutions of the German economy. In addition to active exchange and quality assurance, the industry association has made it its mission to gather and track trends and market developments in training. The results of this annual evaluation can be found on their website.
We have looked at the detailed evaluation results and discovered many theses that impressively show:
Digitalization is the key to the future of the training industry.
The following four theses offer potential for the digitalization of learning methods - especially for mobile learning formats like e-learning. The magic word is flexibility!
2 Theses: How Training Becomes More Mobile
The importance of digitalization is steadily increasing: More and more companies rely on mobile workplaces or hire people remotely. As a result, communication via online media is inevitably increasing: “Space” is increasingly becoming a “virtual space.”
Thesis 1: “Digital learning and teaching platforms will replace the seminar room as the most important learning location in a few years.”
The results of the study show that there is no consensus on whether seminars will be replaced by digital learning platforms. Agreement and disagreement are almost on par.
At first glance, this thesis divides training professionals directly: 42% agreement and 45% disagreement clearly indicate that complete abandonment of seminars is not an option, even though digital learning formats undoubtedly gain relevance. Therefore, much more important than the complete replacement of in-person seminars is to find a symbiosis between traditional and digital learning.
Potential for Companies:
The learning format “seminar” is not very flexible: time and place are always fixed. To make training more flexible for your participants, you can loosen seminars by offering content in an online supplement. The personal contact during in-person events is combined with self-directed learning in virtual spaces. This combination is also called “blended learning” and has been the trend in the training industry for several years!
Thesis 2: “One task of educational service providers is to organize collegial learning in the virtual space across regions and internationally.”
More than two-thirds of respondents agree that collegial learning must also be organized across regions and internationally.
Three-quarters (76%) of the surveyed training professionals agreed: Collegial learning should go beyond regional boundaries. And this thesis is not only relevant for freelance trainers but especially for companies: Particularly for companies with multiple locations, the fixed attachment to one place quickly becomes problematic. Here, learning models that work without spatial constraints are needed.
Potential for Companies:
Whether external trainers, coaches, or speakers are brought in, or whether you have internal contacts for employee training – spatial flexibility is an absolutely necessary trend. Blended learning offers various models to connect in-person events with online content. This way, you and your client save a lot of time, productivity loss remains low, and even remote employees can participate in training without travel costs.
For example, an in-person appointment can serve as the basis for longer online support. In the online support, participants receive exercises to solidify their new knowledge. Additionally, the trainer can use online impulses to prepare employees for an intensive seminar for joint results discussion. This means: little spatial attachment with much potential for preparation and consolidation of what has been learned.
Sounds good? Then learn more about the models in blended learning:
2 Theses: How Training Becomes More Time-Flexible
A second important change in training concerns the temporal organization: Flexible working hours, together with the decoupling from a fixed workplace, also increasingly necessitate time-independent training. In the study of the Wuppertal Circle, theses for temporal flexibility were therefore also established, which offer exciting development opportunities:
Thesis 3: “In-person and seminar times will be supplemented and thus significantly reduced by online and web-based learning.”
Almost 80% of respondents agree that online learning can significantly reduce in-person times as a supplement.
78% agreement shows what you have likely already experienced: Getting all employees together for a training session “at one table” (or in a seminar room) is not that easy. Different working hours complicate time planning, and a multi-hour or even multi-day in-person training costs valuable working time for participants and companies.
Potential for Companies:
Impulses, exercises, small tasks – such learning snacks can be wonderfully incorporated by trainers through e-learning and thereby meaningfully supplement in-person appointments. Participants can flexibly integrate the learning units into their own schedules. Through this splitting of content, in-person times can be shortened and used more effectively – for example, for discussion rounds or situational exercises.
Thesis 4: “Educational offerings will be provided on mobile devices (e.g., tablets, smartphones).”
9 out of 10 respondents definitely expect that educational offerings will also be made available on tablets or smartphones in the next five years.
Over 90% of training professionals are sure: In the next five years, the development will massively shift towards the use of smartphones, tablets, and the like. After all, in 2018, over 80% of Germans owned a smartphone – and the trend continues to rise in all industrialized countries around the world!
Potential for Companies:
Since the blended learning concept is based on the integration of in-person and online learning, an appropriate online platform is, of course, the key to success here. With the platform, the trainer can provide content for large groups of participants or centrally manage various projects for different teams, departments, or employee groups. In this way, the right online platform can also integrate smartphones and other mobile devices into training and serve as a "training room for your pocket".
Strong Future Prognosis for Blended Learning
As you can see, blended learning offers advantages for training in companies for every thesis. It is therefore no surprise that 76% of training professionals predict a strong increase in the integration of in-person seminars with blended learning components in the next five years.
76% of respondents expect a (strong) increase in in-person seminars with blended learning components in the next five years.
Let's summarize the theses:
In-person learning will not be replaced by digital learning forms in the coming years, but rather meaningfully supplemented.
Collegial learning will become spatially flexible and better planable through the connection of in-person and online learning.
In-person appointments can be shortened and used much more effectively through blended learning.
Smartphones and tablets will become individual and time-independent training spaces for your pocket through learning apps.
For companies, this means that blended learning is not a short-term trend for adventurous freelancers: Blended learning is a learning model with a future. The trend analysis shows that the combination of in-person and online learning has great potential to make training in your company spatially and temporally flexible - without sacrificing effectiveness!
