3 Tips for Creating the Right Enterprise Learning Environment

• 4 min read

3 Tips on what an extended enterprise learning environment should look likeEnterprises can employ thousands, work with an equal number of partners, and serve customers across the globe. It can be an extensive community, and what’s more, for the first time there are five generations in the workplace.

Whether you’re onboarding new staff, bringing a cybersecurity team up-to-speed on the latest threat or showing partners the newest product version, the ability to effectively educate internal and external audiences is critical.

For success, you need the right environment, one that can accommodate varied learners and program components, delivering powerful experiences and program management at scale.

Here are three areas to focus upon and some tips to make sure you get it right:


Enterprise Learning Styles – Blended Learning vs Hybrid Learning

Provide a program mix that fits your entire audience.

For enterprises that usually means blended learning that combines offline and online activity. Learners interact with an instructor, material and other students via physical classrooms and online platforms. Online exercises support “in-class” lectures.

This can enable you to work with various learning styles. You need that when you have a range of participants that includes the tech savvy, shorter attention spans of Gen Z to the more traditional, less tech-oriented practices of Generation X.

Hybrid learning is much the same as blended, only online interactions replace face-to-face communication between learners and instructors. This doesn’t mean simple online lectures – instead, classrooms should incorporate interactive elements.

That said, and regardless of your approach, remember that The Learning Pyramid shows the hands-on “practice-by-doing” method is one of the most effective ways to learn. So, you need to incorporate that type of experience into your training mix as well.

Related: 6 Benefits of Social & Collaborative Learning Technologies

Interactive Learning Experience – Gamification for Instant Gratification

Special cloud-based solutions are required to provide hands-on learning in real-world settings. This provides that practice-by-doing experience that raises retention.

Basically, you want to put the tools that will actually be used in the learner’s hands and create scenarios they’ll likely encounter. Applications can range from educating on new software to gamifying cybersecurity threat response.

While this is vital, especially when it comes to educating on complex technology, the experience for those spearheading enterprise learning must be a good one, too. That requires using purpose-built tools and best-of-breed platforms to efficiently create, manage and accelerate programs.

When evaluating cloud services providers, some things to look for include the ability to upload tools and environments intact to the cloud easily. Make sure learners can work in isolated virtual training labs, too. This will ensure there’s no harm to infrastructure and eliminates learner anxiety, freeing them to experiment.

Further, look for features that deliver those in-person benefits via virtual instructor, such as thumbnails that provide “over the shoulder” monitoring and chat assistance. This allows learners who are stuck to get the help they need, when they need it most all.

Related: 3 Simple ways to gamify your online learning

Extended Enterprise – Seamless Integration Between Software Platforms at Scale

Purpose-built clouds deliver faster time-to-value. The trick is to ensure you can scale at the speed of business, easily create content and manage programs. When looking at provider platforms, see what functions can be automated to drive cost-efficiency. Be sure they offer features that take it up a notch, like auto shut-off of resources and alerts to control budget, multi-language support and more.

Equally important, LMS integrations have to be simple, and all your core tools should be usable so you can leverage the best of all worlds. For instance, you want to be able to integrate with your core learning management system. This delivers those powerful experiences, accompanied by tools for administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of learning and development programs.

The importance of good communications between these platforms is essential for realizing full capabilities. As an example, the combination of two best-of-breed platforms that play well together – like CloudShare and Docebo learning platform – is what you want in your stack.

Finally, if your enterprise uses a large public commodity cloud, you want a specialized cloud provider solution to sit on top of it. This will provide that necessary purpose-built power without integration headaches.

Related: Maximize Your Learning Platform’s Potential With These Integrations

Takeaways – A One-Stop-Shop Learning Platform for Your L&D Needs

Integrating platforms will ensure your team is focusing efforts on creating strong content rather than on administrative tasks. Learners can interact with code, features, programs and operating systems directly from a web browser. This approach, made possible by advancements in cloud infrastructure, enables online learning that’s far more convenient than a traditional classroom.

And let’s not forget the benefits of online learning itself. It allows one-on-one interactions between instructors and students, hands-on learning through simulations and exercises, an ability to leverage on-demand resources and modules. There’s also far greater cost-efficiency. Online programs are cheaper to run and maintain, and the greater accessibility eliminates travel and shipping costs.

All of the pieces exist to create the right environment, and once you do, you’ll take your enterprise into a new era of learning success.

Want to see how it’s done? Check out this webinar on how CloudShare and Docebo’s seamless integration helped Tufin revolutionize their virtual learning program!

Related: What is Social Learning (And How to Adopt it)