Although it is not yet understood how COVID-19 will affect the adoption of digital learning, it is clear that the drive for change has already begun. Now it’s time to give priority to learning. Moreover, perhaps a Learning & Development (L&D) narrative in history will reflect the positive results brought about by the disaster.

The impact of COVID-19 on digital learning

As of early March 2020, about half of North American’s face-to-face L&D programs (until the end of June) have been postponed or cancelled. In parts of Asia and Europe, this figure is close to 100%. In order to protect the health and safety of employees during COVID-19, companies have transitioned to remote working environments.

Now, millions of employees actually work in remote places virtually, with a supercomputer at their fingertips, telecommunications service support at home, and many digital tools to communicate, study, work, and shared.

But adapting to this new normal is easier said than done. All functional departments and teams and individuals at all levels are dabbling in uncharted territory, using technologies they have never had before, doing things in an unprecedented way. Unit-level skills training and transformation training for the entire organization, as well as technical and non-technical training on remote working skills, remote management skills and leadership skills, are not only good choices, but also an indispensable part of digital transformation today’s strategy.

But are companies ready for this kind of digital push?

Learn from traditional learning

Overall, the impact of COVID-19 has affected everyone, team, function, business, industry and country. This is especially serious for organizations that rely heavily on face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT) for employee development, skills, and training. Their lack of preparation for different classroom settings makes them eager to find a quick solution to meet current challenges and lay a solid foundation for their L&D interventions.

Now, their core business requirements include rapid conversion from ILT to e-learning, purchase of available courseware from the Internet for delivery, online lectures or virtual instructor-led training (VLIT). However, migrating an existing classroom training program to a fully digital avatar requires more effort than just the application of existing technical solutions in order to provide virtual learning. Rather, they represent a more fundamental rethinking of the learning experience, so that groups of learners can engage in collaborative and interactive social learning experiences (as McKinsey put it). One way is to switch from face-to-face format to online large-scale conversion.

Barriers to Digital Learning

Although this provides opportunities for the development of content and e-learning platforms (the peak of the market during the lock-in period is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 14% during 2019-2025), its rapid adoption is hindered by budget constraints due to the economy Instability, lack of infrastructure, and most importantly, the inability to obtain e-learning content and trainers with expertise in remote training. For learners, the inability to achieve a work-life balance, unfamiliarity with the learning management system, and the overall stress/anxiety caused by the pandemic are barriers that lead to changes in digital learning.

However, the silver lining is when rubber meets the road. After years of encouraging the development of e-learning and virtual classroom methods, the coronavirus pandemic has helped learners and L&D professionals drive an increase in technology acceptance. Global executives are asking L&D leaders to sit in a seat, and this seat has been unattainable before.

The hidden advantages of COVID-19

On the other hand, some organizations have been turning to online training in the past few years and are now taking advantage of the new work environment by investing their L&D into the next round of development.

According to LinkedIn’s 2020 Workplace Learning Report, “After years of resource shortage, the L&D budget is expected to continue to grow-from ILT to online learning-and continue to increase executive support.”

As more and more executives pay attention to their budget allocation, online training has also received more attention than teacher-guided training programs, which shows that online learning has played a greater role in blended learning programs.

In addition to making digitalization the default way to conduct and manage training, the COVID-19 lock-in has also given itself another hidden benefit. By reducing employees’ commuting time in the workplace, face-to-face meetings and other time-intensive activities, it provides employees with a lot of time for work and study (at work or at home), because the most important factor preventing employees from learning is lack of time to learn on the job. According to data from the LinkedIn learning platform, it is also important to note that most learning takes place within a week.

Conclusion

It is too early to see how COVID-19 will ultimately affect the accelerated adoption of digital learning, but it is clear that the pace of change has already begun. Now is the time to prioritize learning, not slow down. Perhaps this is the first time in history that the story of corporate learning and development will reflect the positive results brought about by negative disasters.

If you have any inquiries about Digital Learning, do send us an email at dl@elsa-energy.com or check out our services on our Digital Learning website on how we can help you embrace this E-Learning Journey.

This article was written by our very own Digital Team, Atiqah. Connect with her on LinkedIn.