The year 2020 has become a turning point for enterprises all over the world. The global shift to remote work has prompted businesses to rethink their approaches to managing daily workflows, enterprise communication, and customer relationships.

Corporate learning is no exception. As employees’ workplaces have moved to their homes, so did enterprise education. Accepting these new rules isn’t easy because the popularity of on-site classes is still high. The 2018 LinkedIn Workplace Report shows that almost 70% of employees prefer learning at work. That’s why many employees may now feel skeptical about starting their learning activities outside the office.

To keep up effective learning workflows within this new reality, companies have no other choice but to reboot their learning initiatives in a digital environment and launch suitable learning management solutions. Turning to eLearning software development on top of SharePoint can be a feasible way for companies to not just start e-learning activities but also address common challenges of modern corporate learning. Let’s see how it works.

How to use SharePoint for learning management?

Adapting SharePoint for learning management needs is not that straightforward. It’s true that SharePoint isn’t a learning management system by default. However, it offers a variety of features that can be used as a reliable basis for a learning management system (LMS). Moreover, SharePoint, particularly its on-premises version, is extremely flexible in terms of customization, so the platform can be turned into a custom learning management solution that follows unique corporate learning scenarios.

SharePoint sites that form the basis of every SharePoint solution can support learning groups, ensuring ongoing collaboration between trainees and teachers. There are also ready-to-use wikis, community sites, and content storage that can become part of an enterprise LMS. Those who opt for cloud-based learning in Office 365 or Microsoft 365 can couple SharePoint-based learning activities with online learning in Microsoft Teams, media learning libraries in Stream and Sway, and learning communities in Yammer.

Addressing modern challenges of learning management with a SharePoint LMS

Just launching a solution for learning management isn’t enough to stay in line with modern corporate learning trends. It’s essential for the solution to stay flexible enough to be easily adaptable to emerging learning management challenges and support necessary learning management approaches and tools.

Operational learning. Learning experts point out the rise of operational learning that aligns learning activities with enterprise operations. With operational learning in place, enterprises can help their employees absorb critical knowledge about new products, workflow changes, and fresh strategies, which will prevent them from business-related mistakes because of ignorance.

The greatest issue in delivering timely updates is that they often get lost among stacks of documents and never get employees’ due attention. In SharePoint, this challenge can be addressed through pre-set automatic notifications and group mailings that will inform selected employees about a new piece of content to note. Every update can go with a check-up program (for example, a test or a task to complete) in order to verify how well employees have grasped it.

If it is about a targeted learning session for a group of employees, learning activities can be launched right within their SharePoint team site, where trainees can learn new materials, check their knowledge, discuss updates with the teammates, and get explanations if needed.

Collaborative learning is yet another trend that becomes commonplace in 2020. As we all got trapped by social distancing along with the lack of face-to-face communication, people now look for human interaction more than ever before. The lack of collaboration between students and teachers, as well as within learning groups, increases the risk of misunderstanding and related mistakes.

Learning expert John Bersin provides impressive numbers while analyzing the difference between solo and group learning. Typically, learners remember only 28% of the information after two days. At the same time, people are likely to remember almost 70% of the same material if it is learned in an interactive context (a Q&A session, open discussion, team debate, etc.).

A collaboration platform by nature, SharePoint has a built-in multifaceted toolkit for collaborative learning. Learners can connect via the collaboration area within SharePoint sites and multiple Office 365 applications. They can also co-learn, share ideas and opinions about the learned content, and get recommendations from colleagues and domain experts.

Soft skill development. Remote work has also highlighted the role of soft skills. The global shift to digital communication has forced even avid introverts to pay more attention to their soft skills and adapt them quickly to the changing environment of digital-first work.

The 2020 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report proves that once highly demanded hard skills are now overcome by must-have soft skills, such as leadership, creative thinking, and communication.

To foster employees’ soft skills, businesses can leverage SharePoint’s social features. Apart from encouraging ongoing collaboration within working teams, they can also invite employees to have a more open social interaction within communities of interest, social sites, and community portals. Employees can set up groups related to their hobbies, off-work activities, and social initiatives, where they can change their usual working roles and try becoming community managers, moderators, and social activists. This can then be translated into relevant working skills and bring visible improvements to daily business activities.

Psychological training. Finally, employers have faced one more challenge associated with the pandemic and the global adoption of remote work. Disturbed by personal health-related fears, locked up in their houses, and left in isolation, employees often report being stressed and more susceptible to overworking.

In this situation, employers often have to add psychological training to the list of learning activities. Some companies hire external professionals, some leverage the previously unused expertise of their HR specialists.

In this scenario, a SharePoint intranet is one of the best channels to spread the word and deliver timely psychological assistance, be it a one-time training on effective time management or an on-demand one-on-one psychological session on stress relief. Enterprise-wide programs can be managed through SharePoint intranet home pages to ensure broad coverage.

Corporate learning is about well-being

These are unique times for enterprise learning. Today, it’s not enough to provide employees with access to the knowledge essential for their soft or hard skills. It’s also important to help employees handle the new style of remote work successfully and preserve an optimal balance of work-life activities and psychological health.

To set up human-centric activities as part of their learning programs, enterprises can do without spending too much effort and budget on custom solutions. It’s easy to initiate learning within a familiar SharePoint-based corporate intranet or start a cloud SharePoint subscription to get a plethora of learning-friendly features out of the box.

Featured Image: LinkedIn Sales Solutions, Unsplash.

Andrey Koptelov is an Innovation Analyst at Itransition, a custom software development company headquartered in Denver. With a profound experience in IT, he writes about new disruptive technologies and innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The post Using Microsoft SharePoint In Remote Corporate Education appeared first on eLearningInside News.

In 2015, the management of the Kennesaw State University in Georgia (KSU) decided to redesign its Foundations for Healthy Living course (WELL 1000). The aim was to address common pain points that haunt many educational institutions, such as unsatisfactory grades and the drop-out ratio, reflected in a high DFWI (D, fail, withdraw, incomplete) rate.

Over just two years, the KSU managed to reduce this key metric for the WELL 1000 course by 48%, from 25% to 13%. To this end, the university used various methods, including tailored curriculums, online learning platform integration, and providing an overall more interactive experience for students.

All these solutions had one thing in common: they were suggested by predictive analytics. The success story of the KSU goes to show that the data-driven approach, adopted years ago by tech giants like Amazon and Netflix, has a place in education, too.

In this article, we take a closer look at the current and potential applications of predictive analytics in learning. Read on to learn how you can harness data in your educational facility and discover best practices that will guarantee a smooth transition into the world of advanced analytics.

What Is Predictive Analytics?

Predictive analytics is a broad term that refers to machine learning algorithms that make informed conclusions based on high volumes of data. In other words, it’s how we apply modern technology to take a look into the future and improve the way we work, live and learn.

Predictive analytics is now more popular than ever, even though the concept has been around for quite some time. The main drivers for the adoption of predictive analytics software include more affordable computing, greater internet coverage, cloud computing expansion, and facilitated access to ever-growing amounts of data.

Powering Smart Decisions

Data-driven decisions have become part and parcel of modern organizations in all verticals, including education. In its essence, predictive analytics helps unearth business insights that nurture data-based decision-making. Here are some examples:

• In online retail, predictive analytics considers historical data to target priority customers and analyze their on-site behavior.
• When applied in healthcare, predictive analytics solutions facilitate risk assessment and make it easier to deliver treatment adjusted not to the average patient but to specific ones.
• The construction industry benefits from predictive analytics at every stage, from budgeting to managing construction teams.

When it comes to the applicability of predictive analytics, education is no different from these sectors. So let’s see how you can use it to analyze and avoid risks, predict student behavior, and ultimately, improve the quality of your education.

Identifying Trends

Just like healthcare and finances, education is driven by numerical data. The chances are that you already have generous volumes of records to feed into analytical tools. Think grades, attendance, graduation rates, course and program enrollment, or even library records.

Finding patterns based on input data is the essential use of predictive analytics. By analyzing data sets from the last few months or years, predictive software solutions help you better understand how students interact with your organization. Which teaching formats bring the best student outcomes? What factors affect an exam’s passing rate? Applying modern predictive analytics methods will help you find answers to these and more fundamental questions.

Identifying Students at Risk

Student success can be attributed to a range of factors. For example, time and effort spent on studying, individual abilities, or resource availability. However, social considerations also impact students’ grades — and, consequently, their outlooks for the future. Teachers alone cannot be expected to take note of all their students’ issues, especially when dealing with large student groups.

Predictive analytics can help determine what makes some students consistently score As and others perform poorly. For instance, suppose a clear pattern shows that those who study an hour daily for a particular course pass the exam effortlessly. This is a clear signal for teachers how to help underperforming students improve their final scores.

Minimizing Drop-Out Rates

It is possible to use predictive analytics to help students stay on track by identifying those who are most likely to drop out. Oracle Fusion procurement training can use this approach by identifying which areas students struggle in and tailoring their course content.

Student retention is one of the main concerns of schools and universities — and for a good reason. One study reports that 40% of undergraduates drop out of college, with 30% of first-year students not even making it to their sophomore year.

Data — when properly interpreted — can set a student who is likely to drop out back on a course to graduation. Thus, predictive analytics indirectly improves student grades but also helps them make the right choices.

If a student finds out that he or she is unlikely to qualify for the desired program based on historical data, a teacher can advise him or her on an alternative. With that knowledge, students who would otherwise drop out have better chances of graduating.

Personalizing the Curriculum

Knowing how metrics like attendance or student engagement pan out over time, you can adjust the curriculum to individual student preferences and levels. In addition, thanks to predictive analytics, you can identify unpopular courses and decide whether to modify or replace them.

Making the educational content more relevant and suited to the needs of your students can make all the difference between graduating and dropping out. This is especially important for freshers, who are the most likely to abandon their studies. If you learn that new students consistently fall short of the first-year requirements, you can act in time to prevent it, e.g. by updating recruitment procedures or adapting the curriculum.

Things Worth Remembering

Here are a few tips that will help you make the best use of predictive analytics tools in your school or university:

• Don’t trust the algorithm blindly. Remember that in the end, you’re in charge. So use your best judgment to decide if a data-based decision makes sense in a given scenario.
• Ensure that data governance rules are in place. For example, not all faculty members need access to all student information. To remain compliant, restrict data availability so that individual workers can only get the information they need.
• Keep students in control of their data. You’ll need their consent to use personal information, so be transparent about it. Demonstrate how sharing that information with you is in the student’s best interest.

Andrey Koptelov is an innovation analyst at Itransition, a custom software development company headquartered in Denver. With a profound experience in IT, he writes about new disruptive technologies and innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Featured Image: Max Hopman, Unsplash.

The post A Peek into the Future: Predictive Analytics in Education appeared first on eLearningInside News.