E-learning trends in 2021

A year behind us changed everything. Education was affected tremendously as well. If we were to ask a question about how COVID-19 will impact the direction of the learning sector, the answer would be easier than you may imagine it to be. In short, it won’t affect education at all. The direction was clear way back, e-learning was always going to be the future of education. But wow… it made it considerably faster. Everyone is rushing, adopting, and investing in as much as they can in e-learning.

As we concluded that learning methodologies are always changing, in the article below we will guide you through our list of e-learning trends for 2021:

#1 Further Shift To Microlearning

You may have already heard about microlearning and started slightly pivoting to it, but the biggest rise is yet to come. Having a lot of employees working from home, it is becoming more and more unrealistic to engage them in long and tricky learning sessions. Some of the issues for it could be found on both sides of the equation. Many companies have furloughed their staff and thus are unable to isolate still working employees for long enough to complete complex training. On the other hand, many workers that work from home are now so much more occupied with work-life balancing, that requesting extensive courses will sound like a mission impossible.

This is where microlearning comes in place – eLearning content is consumed in 5-15 sessions provided in form of video sessions, gamified content or quiz solving. With it, your employee can seamlessly learn any new skill with a few images and text, bit by bit.

The personalized and small courses are easy to complete, and this feature eventually enhances skills. Due to such great advantages and the world situation presented above, microlearning is predicted to gain even more popularity in the coming years.

#2 Adoption of Game-Changing New Technologies

When it comes to disruptive technologies we can separate two game-changing waves. The first one is related to the much more personalized e-learning experience, and the second one is connected to the use of VR and AR.

For many, the lack of human interaction and instructor-led training (ILT) was presented as a main disadvantage of e-learning. The argument was that you just send the content to the learner via a certain interface and it is all set, with no changes, no adaptation that any professor could do in class. With the use of AI and Big Data, organizers of training will be able to offer a unique and adaptive learning experience to their employees. Further advancements of AI will bring even bigger appeal to e-learning as it is expected to bring many benefits in the long run.

Speaking of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), new devices and tech advancement is making them much more accessible and cheaper to use in regular training. Implementation of these in e-learning will allow users to learn through hands-on experience as close to reality as possible.

#3 Social Learning

Learning within a group has always been way more fun and entertaining than studying on your own, but in these turbulent times, it is much more challenging to organize it. Although already used, online communication and collaboration platforms, such as Slack, Skype, Zoom, or MS Teams are helping a lot. It is even expected that this trend will expand even further in 2021. Social media platforms could become a new place for sharing learning experiences so that others could use shared knowledge effectively and improve their skills and business operations.

Platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram could become much more popular in business environments and help in spreading knowledge faster. People educated about specific fields could start sharing their knowledge there so that others could benefit and vice versa. The rise of blogs, podcasts, and webinars shared on the mentioned platforms could encourage more corporate trainers to hop on this train and adapt social knowledge sharing into their e-learning practices.

#4 Gamification

With the pandemic situation, learning has moved to the comfort of our houses and though it has many benefits, there are a plethora of cons to it. It is difficult to keep oneself motivated to learn when you are lying on your sofa with your favorite food in front of the TV. 

This is when gamification in e-learning reaches its glory. It is important now, more than ever, to make learning as interesting as possible, catchy, and attractive to learners. And is there a better way to do it than making a video game that will educate your employees? 

Many corporations have been using this method and the results are amazing! Though it is a rather new concept in e-learning, gamification has been very popular. The reason for such popularity lies in the fact that playing a video game is always associated with fun and free time, and this way the mentioned concept is transferred to learning. To learn is to have fun!