Learning from a company is a great benefit for employees and a way for a company to gain new competencies. According to a Global Industry Analysis report, the online learning market will reach $325 billion by 2025. In March-August 2020, 250 universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and other Ivy League universities, launched more than 900 free online courses. In addition, online corporate training is profitable. According to a 2018 LinkedIn survey, employees stay longer in a company that invests in training and development. There are many online courses and platforms with courses on the market. Which of them are worth paying attention to? We will give some tips that can help in this situation.
8 eLearning Tools For Corporate Education
The first thing to do is to pay attention to distance learning systems that are common around the world. IT technologies come to the aid of teachers and students: there are many tools and products designed to support online learning, and they can be connected without leaving home, with only access to the Internet. Some systems can be connected in 2 days.
- Moodle is a free and open learning management system that can combine communication between teachers and students. Provides many features, including task execution, file uploads, messaging, evaluation, and event calendar. Moodle also integrates state-of-the-art technology to test for plagiarism with the Unicheck plagiarism checker.
- Coursera for Business is already used by more than 2,500 customers. At Coursera you can pass professional certifications, for example, from Google Cloud, IBM, get a bachelor’s and/or master’s degree. Among the businesses, Coursera offers online courses in marketing, business administration, talent management, finance, and more. There are also paid master’s programs (for example, in this category the most popular programs of business administration and management accounting from the University of Illinois). In addition, the company offers a corporate solution that allows you to plan and track employee training.
- edX is another global platform. The platform offers business leaders a set of courses in four areas: finance, project management, marketing, leadership, and entrepreneurship. It is crucial to take into account employees working abroad. Hiring an online translation agency will help with the translation of any document or manual that is necessary for your corporate education. You can also take management programs here, such as the Strategic Management program at Wharton Business School. Also on the platform, there is an opportunity to issue a corporate subscription – edX for Business, which will allow you to administer and plan employee training and track their progress.
- Google Classroom is a free web-based file-sharing service. In the service, you can download works, edit them, evaluate tests, or control works. All you need to get started is Google Mail (Gmail). The service can help keep small schools and large educational institutions out of the learning process. The LMS-system “Google classroom” in Europe is implemented almost everywhere. This system is simple and very clear in operation. Creating and designing training content is a big part of a corporate trainer’s job. If you work for a translation agency, creating a guide for translators and other employees allows you to plan the learning process, create courses, communicate with all students, and much more. Most importantly, the classroom has integration with all Google services and other additional services, such as plagiarism. This is very convenient, especially when students submit many works that must be unique.
- FutureLearn platform offers courses and programs that can meet almost any need. Here you can choose an online course, a set of courses that will help you dive deeper into a particular topic, bachelor’s, master’s, and postgraduate programs. In the “Business and Management” section you can find courses on project management, entrepreneurship, marketing, and digital marketing, talent management, communication, big data management, and more. FutureLearn can also master “soft” skills, such as effective communication, change management, so the platform is suitable for professionals in various fields and levels. The enterprise version allows users to create their courses, and in the process receive help from the company’s team.
- Icebreaker is a video platform for gaming networking. The essence of the tool is that it allows each participant to combine in any order to communicate with another participant. Each game (or round, which can last 5-10 minutes) offers a series of cards with topics for discussion.
- Microsoft Teams is a team room for Office 365. It’s a simpler version of learning management systems, but it allows a class or study group to communicate and share files. The program combines everything in a common work environment, which includes chat for discussion, file sharing, and corporate programs.
- Ding Talk is a video and distance learning service. It is completely free. To use, you need to download the program to your smartphone, tablet, or PC. The language of use is English. The interface is simple, intuitive. Registration is by phone number. Here you can: communicate in writing in a personal or group chat, create a task for which to set a specific deadline for execution (above the field for writing messages is a button with a tick). You can also add files from your computer or create them directly on the platform. The files will be available to all members of the group chat in which they were created. There is also the possibility of video calls – both personal and group.
Learning Management
Online learning is an extremely important method of maintaining the continuity of the educational process. The teacher has the opportunity to keep in touch with pupils and students, help them and constantly check their work. If it is not possible to quickly implement a learning management system for your group, faculty, or university, teachers will always be helped by communication platforms such as Zoom, Hangouts. This will make it easier to transfer homework and help keep in touch with students during quarantine.
