When Should You Update Your ILT Courses?

This article was originally published on eLearning Industry.

Tips To Improve Your Instructor-Led Training

So often, Instructor-Led Training has been the standard practice to facilitate employee training and development programs within organizations across industries. ILT is a fantastic way to provide training tailored to learners, build relationships within a team, and support a collaborative learning environment. However, ILT methods have changed a lot over the past few years—especially with the adoption of remote work and ongoing advancements in virtual tools to support digital learning.

Meeting new standards for effective learning experiences means that, as with any other type of employee training, ILT programs will need regular updates and evaluations to ensure that the training aligns with organizational needs and modern learning techniques. Here are 3 of the best practices to help you determine whether your ILT course could use an update.

3 Steps To Evaluate And Update ILT Employee Development Programs

1. Conduct Annual Reviews

Implementing regularly scheduled, yearly reviews should be a central part of the process for your L&D team and organization. It is best to revisit all of the employee training programs, but even more so for ILT. Why? Because the needs of your learners and organization are going to evolve—and especially so if the training is conducted in person.

Commitment to annual reviews ensures that you have a space to take inventory of your employee training to ensure that your programs are still meeting recognizable goals. No industry is stagnant, and annual reviews can allow you to understand if your course requires updates. Conducting a needs analysis during these annual reviews will provide key insights you can use to prioritize updates.

These can be conducted by internal company resources or with the help of training consultants so you can determine the strengths and weaknesses of your Instructor-Led Training. This consistent review process will help you understand how your Instructor-Led Training for employees could be reinvigorated for better engagement and alignment with company goals and regulations.

2. Gather Feedback

As part of your annual review and needs analysis, solicit feedback from both learners and instructors who have participated in or led these trainings. The feedback you gather will provide valuable insights, as survey respondents will express concerns or positive feedback that will help shape the objectives of your update process. All employee training aims to improve behaviors in a way conducive to professional development, so if there is information in the ILT that is obsolete or difficult to present, feedback is your first line of defense.

Along with collecting feedback, have training consultants analyze performance metrics to evaluate employee performance after completing the training. These metrics will provide further context for any future updates you may want to implement.

3. Increase Engagement With New Strategies

After conducting the annual review and evaluating feedback, your L&D team may be looking for the most effective methods to respond to the data as you update your Instructor-Led Training. Commonly needed strategies often include conducting technology updates, curating and digitizing content, and integrating different learning platforms. Workplace technology has advanced rapidly in the past few years, which has led many organizations to incorporate new technologies to improve their employee training and development processes.

Instructional Designers and training consultants agree that even Instructor-Led Training should make use of digital elements for optimal functionality and accessibility. Consider digitizing your content or supplemental material by, for example, converting them to downloadable PDFs. This will increase the likelihood that your employees will engage with the material.

Also, consider that integrating digital elements into Instructor-Led Training does not take away from the benefits of in-person training. As some of your employees may be transitioning from remote to hybrid or in-person work, or just require the flexibility to follow up with materials outside of training hours, this is an important consideration when it comes to updating ILT.

Updates could also include adding elements of multimedia and microlearning to increase engagement. Breaking up lengthy courses into smaller, digestible modules is a great way to keep learners engaged by allowing them to learn in a self-paced timeline that doesn’t conflict with their job responsibilities.

Conclusion

Ultimately, any updates to your Instructor-Led Training should be motivated by a need to align the training with your organizational goals and the needs of your learners. Conducting annual reviews and gathering consistent feedback is a best practice that ensures that you are aware of when your course may need an update. Leverage the expertise of your L&D teams and training consultants on how to meet industry standards for technology and workplace learning.

ILT is an incredible way to foster communication and collaboration in the learning process, and as your workforce may be transitioning from remote to in-person work, it is important to find new ways to incorporate digital elements and other learning strategies to make learning more engaging. Instructor-Led Training provides a great opportunity for professional growth, and these updates will ensure that your ILT successfully empowers your employees for continued success.