5 e-learning trends for 2023

It’s a bigger part of industry training than ever before: but what happens next for the world of e-learning?

Accelerated by the rise in remote working, recent years have seen e-learning providers like Norwell EDGE revolutionise the ways in which workers acquire the knowledge and skills needed to do their job safely and effectively.

Enabling training that is adaptable to organisational needs and providing new levels of accessibility to training material, the number of energy companies turning to e-learning platforms grows year on year.

Norwell EDGE is leading the way for e-learning in the energy industry, continuing to draw on emerging trends and developments to improve how workforces learn.

Here are 5 of the top e-learning trends dominating training in 2023.

Continuous & micro learning  

It’s now clear that a ‘little and often’ approach to e-learning works. Legacy online courses would tend to overwhelm users with information to the point that in some cases as little as 2% of that information would be retained one week after the course.

In contrast, micro-learning and a continuous learning approach continue to appear as ever-present educational trends.

No more having to invest time into sifting through long-form courses to extract meaningful knowledge: these smaller chunks of information are digestible and better remembered by learners. With the vital importance to operators of effective skills training and widespread understanding of safety-critical concepts, access to better, long-term learning tools can be invaluable.

Norwell EDGE courses provide learners with bite-sized insights, providing quick, memorable information every time they undertake one of our courses. 

Gamification

Gamification turns potential information-overload into interactive learning. In a now established digitalised landscape, most learners expect some form of gamification within their learning to make training more engaging.

Rather than committing to long hours of uninterrupted reading for occupational training, gamification combines the best of problem solving, job-specific scenarios and e-learning to break through the boredom and help users take learning material into the real world.

In line with other digital trends, gamification is designed to keep users engaged as they move through learning content.

That’s why gamification scenarios are seen throughout Norwell EDGE e-learning content through Virtual EDGE. Lifelike, interactive gameplay scenarios based on well-centric environments help learners to relate new-found knowledge to real-life operational environments.

Mobile education

In 2023, almost 90% of adults carry a mobile device and 95% use it daily. Mobile devices are therefore a clear, convenient portal for e-learning platforms, feeding learning material even more directly to the user’s preferred environment.

With platforms like Norwell EDGE fully optimised to be used on mobile devices, mobile education allows users to take control of their learning wherever they prefer to learn, whenever they can. By creating better opportunities for teams to learn optimally, employers can achieve significantly improved outcomes for both the learner’s development and the smooth running of their own operations.

With more opportunities to access educational material and resources regardless of physical location, firms can upskill global teams in a way that has never been previously possible, while learners have access to industry and job-specific knowledge regardless of proximity to the workplace.

In high-hazard industries, quality training is a non-negotiable to keep people and environments safe and assets operation. The logistics of the global energy industry, for example, has by nature made the delivery of this training a long-standing and significant expense. As the e-learning provider for the upstream energy industry, Norwell EDGE provides training that overcomes these logistical and financial challenges for the benefit of both operators and teams. The accessibility of training across devices means that learners can now learn outside of the workplace, either during non-operational periods or during travel.

Personalisation of e-learning

E-learners and employers increasingly expect a training experience that is personalised to skill gaps, personal objectives, current circumstances and of course, job role.

Personalised training plans allow individual learners to witness their own growth and development, not least by seeing the practical application of their learning more clearly than ever before.  

Meanwhile, the ability of employers and management teams to gain insight into individual learners' performance makes personal training plans easier than ever to automate, monitor and improve. By using Norwell EDGE, managers can monitor the progress of learners through designated training plans and understand the success of training with direct insight into performance on tests and quizzes.

With personalised plans able to be rolled at mass or micro scales, the progress of learners can be automated as well as reported on, with employers capable of accessing detailed insights into the performance of their wider workforce as well as specific individuals.

AI technology

So far, 2023 has been the year that artificial intelligence became a lot more ‘real’ to the average user. The presence of AI is becoming increasingly evident throughout our work and personal lives and in line with the ongoing trends of highly personalised, smart approaches to training, it is inevitable that AI will play a role in how we conduct training and improve the educational experience.

Future e-learning may use the power of AI to provide learners with personalised ‘tutorial’ experiences designed to guide them through difficult concepts or improve the accessibility of training through smart translation into non-text formats.

As technologies continue to develop and change to shape future e-learning, individual and wider learning habits and preferences will also continue to change. Current trends such as gamification and micro-learning have developed in response to our understanding of human learning trends, and as the attention span of learners continues to shorten, it is vital that e-learning tools continue to become more effective at developing the skills and knowledge that courses are intended to hone.

Get started with the energy industry’s leading e-learning platform

Responsiveness to employee needs remains central to emerging trends across e-learning. As more and more businesses become aware of the training platforms that can support high quality learning throughout their workforce, these platforms, such as Norwell EDGE, continue to respond to and shape industry trends.

To explore Norwell EDGE’s energy industry training courses or to request a demo, click here.