7 Digital Tools to Supercharge Learning & Development

Discover 7 essential tools to supercharge learning & development.

Creating an e-learning course by yourself is possible. But great digital learning content requires equally good ingredients to be successful.  In an increasingly digital age, and with remote work now a common part of every organization's workforce strategy, HR and L&D managers rely on digital applications and content sources to facilitate employee growth and develop their L&D roadmap.

Edflex takes stock of the different digital learning and development tools focusing on the top 7 to create a unique and impactful employee experience.

Description of Digital Applications

What is a digital application? How do they contribute to a better learner experience?

Digital applications are platforms or websites, aimed at improving the internal and external communication of a company, via the transcription of a database. To name a few well-known digital tools:

• CRM ( Customer Relationship Management ), i.e. marketing automation analysis tools to manage customer databases such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, Zendesk
• CMS ( Content Management System ), i.e. platforms for creating a website via WordPress, Webflow, Prestashop
• Project management software (Task Planner, Trello, Monday)

A free version exists for almost all these platforms, allowing you to sample the horizon and judge which ones you feel most comfortable with. A good way as a marketing and communication manager to prepare your marketing project management with the right digital solutions.

But what about the world of corporate learning and development and digital transformation? What digital tools will allow you to launch and grow a high-quality continuous learning journey for your employees? And above all, do you need a certain level of computer science to handle them and create your virtual classroom? Are dashboards sufficient? What is the best digital tool to launch your online training in adaptive learning?

7 Learning & Development Solutions

There are many tools in the employee learning and development market today that HR leaders should consider when facilitating a learning and development strategy. Here are our top 7 for learning and development managers who are responsible for developing a comprehensive, continuous learning journey for employees.

Designing personalized learning and development for a compelling and inspiring employee experience does not require you to be an IT expert. Wearing the hat of digital project manager and drawing up your digital learning and development plan becomes easier with the right digital L&D tools. In a few clicks, it is possible to create a virtual course that includes bells and whistles such as gamification, collaboration, social sharing, learning paths, and learning certification.

1. Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Learning management systems (LMS) provide an online platform to host, organize, and share learning content across an entire organization and track and measure employee adoption, engagement and achievement. LMS systems can host a variety of different types of learning content, everything from custom-developed courses, professional certifications and skills competency development programs, to informal learning content that employees can access “just in time.”

LMS platforms are one of the most preferred educational solutions used by corporate L&D. Using the platform, learning and development managers and trainers can follow how learners’ skills evolve, manage and decide on additional educational training and manage the administration (planning, learning and development action plans, reporting). An LMS centralizes all learning and development content in a single database and includes the names and actions of all learners, functional managers, and training executives.

Key Points: LMS

✅ The centralization of data from all stakeholders

✅ The opportunity to monitor progress and professional development

✅ Develop a training path through content creation and knowledge certification

✅ Mobile, blended and collaborative learning

2. Learning Content Management System (LCMS)

Another significant learning and development digital solution is a Learning Content Management System (LCMS). An LCMS is a collaborative content management tool for content authors, designers and managers and provides benefits such as templating, content design rules, workflows, version control, quality assurance, permissions, approvals, and a library of assets that can be incorporated into learning content. LCMS tools are widely used by learning and development managers because they make their daily life easier.

The key difference between an LMS and an LCMS is the target user. The LMS serves the learner and the LCMS serves the learning content creator.

An LCMS tool is practical because it allows training designers to decide on everything: the creation of virtual classes, creation of new courses and management of all, downloading of educational content, organization of a training schedule, etc.

Key points: LCMS

✅ Hosting and data security

✅ Flexibility: courses are created via training modules or downloaded

✅ A collaboration exchange between learners and trainers to give their opinion, and share their score...

✅ Drawing up a long-term educational scenario is easy

3. Learning Experience Platform (LXP)

Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) are very similar to LMS because they provide a centralized platform for learning. The big difference between the two is the level of personalization that LXP offers. LXPs use artificial intelligence to map personalized learning experiences to employees and have better integration capabilities to connect with third-party applications and content sources.

With the learner at the heart of the LXP platform, learning and development managers can develop a learning journey that is ultra-modern, super-intuitive and highly engaging using the latest technologies. Learners can leave feedback, share content, score and rate content quality and the platform can learn about the learner and make recommendations and suggest learning paths. Learners can set preferences across content themes, formats, and learning levels too! And in some cases, learners can make their own playlists using curated content provided by the learning and development team.

Key Points: LXPs

✅ Multiple teams can use

✅ Validation of achievements is done on a case-by-case basis. Each training course is monitored individually without encroaching on the development of other learners.

✅ Flexible and modern, the platform adapts to all digital media and current educational resources.

4. Learning Content Catalog

A solution that always excites the intellect of learners is the learning catalog or digital learning library. Learning catalogs are omnipresent in the business world because they facilitate continuous, daily learning required by employees and accelerate the presentation of qualified learning content without the time, resources or cost to create on one’s own. Learning catalogs grow daily as third-party content is published on the web. Learning catalogs are flexible, cover hard and soft skills, are cross-functional, and cross-disciplined and can address specialized skills and technical fields.

The key to learning catalogs is understanding how employees prefer to learn every day and that in order to meet those learning needs and preferences, learning and development managers must provide immediate access to that content and track and measure engagement. Learning catalogs are not developed or created by the organization or learning and development teams. Learning catalogs take content that exists on the web from trusted sources, the content is curated, organized, and enhanced with metadata so employees can easily access. The catalogs improve the employee experience while also providing learning and development teams with tracking and reporting across learning adoption, engagement, and achievements.  

Key Points: Learning Content Catalogs

✅ A robust learning and development content offering across hard and soft skills, different disciplines, and different content formats

✅ Learning paths that are easy to set up for functional managers

✅ Personalized learning formats across podcasts, MOOCs, COOCs, blended-learning, distance learning or face-to-face training

✅ Organized learning paths to facilitate the learning journey on the platform. In order to save time when selecting training, they are all grouped by theme: personal development, and management

✅ Community and collaboration where learners can share opinions and comments and make them visible to all. Employees are thus more autonomous and involved

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5. Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is no longer reserved for video games. VR has taken center stage in learning and development as it provides learners with immersive learning experiences, A great example includes training employees on health and safety measures using simulated experiences. VR takes learning and development to new heights and its applications are limitless.

Key Points: Virtual Reality

✅ Creation of more interactive and intense training for the learner

✅ Ease of linking virtual reality to the employee's professional experience: working on stress management, creating a training session tailored to their problem

✅ Total immersion which, although virtual, allows the employee to be physically involved in their training

6. Intranet Tools

Internal digital tools in companies are called intranet tools and are mainly used for internal communication. The advantage is that everyone can (depending on the options of the platform) develop the training in the format they want. This is then distributed to as many employees as possible.

Key Points: Intranet Tools

✅ Easy distribution, especially since the format is flexible

✅ A digital tool that allows you to offer open training on a variety of themes (discover the movement of Open Education)

✅ It's easy to analyze employee feedback. HR can distribute questionnaires upstream, to better target employee training requests

7. Digital Adoption Platform (DAP)

Among all the digital tools in corporate learning and development, we cannot overlook the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP). Its advantage? DAPs integrate with existing applications to provide in-app guidance to learners and employees, DAPs can do things such as provide step-by-step instructions or guidance, make suggestions and recommendations, and self-help menus in the moment of need. DAPs can also take the form of an interactive library which is updated in real-time.

Key Points: Digital Adoption Platforms

✅ Didactic and accessible training, which can be done online or via a mobile application

✅ Separate training in different modules, which allows you to train without going too fast

✅Training that allows push notifications to be sent to users as soon as the next training module is released

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Conclusion

It’s clear that there is an exciting learning and development technology stack and that there is no "best" digital tool to compare against one another. It’s not an either or choice.

A few considerations as you evaluate your learning and development technology stack:

1. Budget: Cost of software, cost per learner per year, cost to develop learning content and training materials, and how to measure ROI
2. Development of Learning Paths:. If using an LCMS platform consider the time, effort and cost it takes to create qualified training and learning and development programs. Do you need a curated content catalog to complement custom-developed courses? A curated content catalog can supercharge your learning content in terms of resources, learning paths, and skills coverage and can save hundreds of thousands of hours and dollars.  
3. Agility: Adapted to the needs, preferences, and learning levels of employees. Choose a digital tool that is accessible to all your employees in whatever format they want, whenever they need.

What suggestions do you have in creating the best learning and development solution stack?

About Edflex Edflex provides customers with qualified curated learning content that is continuously evaluated, updated, and refreshed. Our customers benefit from 7 Learning Domains, 30 Subdomains, 7 Languages, 5 Formats, and localized learning content in 7 different languages. Our personalized learning options help your learners and leaders prioritize learning at the time of need.