The role of the Millennial workforce has grown significantly in the area of instructional design and eLearning, and has led subsequent employees to follow a standardized motivation to thrive in their career field. The workforce belonging to the previous generations were given limited resources and training material, and as a result they often felt insufficient professional growth. A professional is expected to consistently train and learn new knowledge along the way to keep up with the modern trends and to work their way to the top. This wasn't always possible for pre-Millennial generations.
Millennials have attributed to the development of instructional design and eLearning, which has enabled them to build new skills and knowledge. This has helped them with tapping into their true potential and work their way to the top while working in various positions, rather than working for a single job role for several years. They are constantly participating in online courses in order to meet modern workplace needs and requirements.
Millennials are now the largest segment in the workplace, making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce. Their influence is far reaching. Some highly influential factors include their exposure to a wide range of communication, adeptness in technology, and, in many cases, having lived tentative and experimental lives. They strive to maintain a connection with their peers and leaders and they often want to hear feedback on their performance so they can improve their skill set. Furthermore, Millennials steer clear from linear learning and prefer a blended learning approach to build their knowledge base and accountability as they advance in their careers.
The Role of the Millennial in Improving the eLearning Industry
The generation born between 1981 and 1995, originally known as Generation Y, is enamored in breaking barriers and stereotypes to move forward in most life aspects. Starting from their early education to workforce development, Gen Y has often demanded the world cater to their needs, and to come up with a modern approach that would accommodate their learning requirements in every phase of their lives. Over the years, this tech-savvy generation, now more commonly known as Millennials, have incorporated eLearning into their schedules, and it has allowed them to expand their learning approach significantly. ELearning allows employees to build their skill set over the years and it has unleashed several lucrative career opportunities for them.
Most of the corporates have resorted to introducing eLearning into their training programs, and it has helped them expand learning opportunities for employees to help them thrive in their departments. Clients are often requesting tech-savvy employees that can accomplish a specific task for them in a specific span of time, or the increase in demand of consumers across the world has enabled businesses to use an instructional design approach for teaching their employees to stay up-to-date in the process.
The main objective of eLearning is rather focused on training the employees and entrepreneurs. It helps them build a learning approach that they could follow to succeed in their career as well as to cater to the ever-so-growing demands instigated by the consumers. Employees need to stay updated on the trends in their industrial sector so they could implement it into their performance for securing maximum feasible outcomes.
Ways Millennials Are Influencing Instructional Design
Now that you have familiarized yourself with the traits and characteristics of Millennials and the learning styles they follow, let’s take a look at the top 5 learning strategies to implement in their eLearning modules:
1) Offer responsive mobile learning
It is no surprise that Millennials are likely to check their smartphones at least 43-45 times per day. The pioneers of instructional design and development should take this fact into consideration and develop exclusive responsive mobile learning solutions that would allow them to learn and train while they are on the go. It would give them the flexibility to learn while they are traveling and it would build their knowledge base along the way.
2) Use microlearning
Millennials have short attention spans, which is why they are likely to retain short-term learning effectively in comparison to long-term learning. Implementing microlearning into an learning module can help with decomposing large chunks of learning into smaller and digestible learning, which can be easily retained by a learner.
3) Integrate social learning
Studies have shown that the population of Gen Y is likely to spend 5.4 hours per day on their social media accounts. Therefore, it's necessary for instructional design developers to integrate social learning into their learning module for securing its objectives. A good start would be to create forums and communities on certain social media channels that would result in collaborative learning and knowledge sharing.
4) Engage with gamification
Gamification is a new tool in instructional design, and it plays an imperative role in boosting learner engagement. This learning module is fundamentally inclusive of games and puzzles that stir the cognitive thinking of a learner, and allow them to learn a specific learning module easily and efficiently.
5) Video-based learning
According to research, 72% of the Millennial population is likely to use video-based platforms for improving its knowledge base and training, which is why instructional design learning modules should be inclusive of videos, and they should resort to offering videos in rich media formats so a learner could learn effortlessly.
In conclusion, an eLearning hub can certainly leverage video-learning, gamification, social learning, mobile, and microlearning for securing maximum outcomes from the eLearning process. To start exploring and creating interactive eLearning using these 5 strategies, contact knowbly™ today.
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