Get Real with Virtual Learning: It’s the Digital Age in the Workplace

“…I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the Web, nor coddled on a computer. Instead I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were highly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know. My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives. They’ll never know a world without ubiquitous broadband Internet access.”
                     ----Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation

Virtual learning takes place in different settings than traditional classrooms. Although some people think that virtual learning is new to the employee development area, it actually started a couple of decades ago with employees training on the computer. However, virtual learning today doesn’t mean that someone is learning alone in a room and simply interacting with a computer screen. In fact, virtual learning gives people almost endless choices and options for learning and sharing knowledge. 

When the Internet exploded onto the world scene, and not long thereafter, there was also a large-scale growth of communication network systems. These two events have significantly impacted all areas of the workplace, including how employees learn new tasks and skills; and even how employees can come together to accomplish a goal. 

Here follows a quick glance at just a few basics and attributes of virtual learning: 

• Virtual learning, typically, consists of voice options such as the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or voice over Internet phone systems and teleconferencing.
• Visual options include the Microsoft Office products including PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Participants can also enjoy viewing options such as shared whiteboards, Webinars or Webcam.
• Visual options can range from slideshows to multimedia types of presentations.
• Virtual learning can provide for the sharing of applications, creating polls and conducting short surveys.
• There can be opportunities for online “chats” with others, or even for breakout sessions in which there can be side discussions or activities to be completed by a small group.
• The medium of virtual learning can be used to meet the needs of training employees on both hard and soft skills.
• Leaders and managers can conduct more effective meetings and provide educational opportunities for employees such as:
  • rolling out new employee benefits information;
  • streamlining the on-boarding process so that employees get their information quicker and more consistently and
  • coaching and mentoring employees.
• Vendors can introduce new products or marketing materials more quickly. 

Virtual learning also meets the needs of the next generations of business learners.

The above lists just a few ways that businesses can benefit from and apply virtual learning techniques. In fact, a lot of companies are altering their business practices and processes to address the needs and interests of the younger ‘digital age’ generations in the workforce. The people represented by this demographic do just about everything technically today, including the use of Blackberries, social networking, etc., and they seem to utilize these technologies all the time. 

What advantages does virtual learning bring to businesses? Two major advantages that come to mind are: (1) Virtual learning helps deliver consistent messages and (2) it significantly reduces costs, such as expenses for travel, the employees’ traveling time and conference meeting space, shipping materials, etc. 

So businesses are getting prepared, as the digital generations will expect these tools and devices in their places of business, both as employees and consumers. And virtual learning provides the type of learning environment that can meet their levels of interest.

Virtual learning gives people almost endless choices and options for learning and sharing knowledge.