In today’s highly competitive business environment, corporations must equip employees with relevant, accessible training to stay on the cutting edge.  Classroom-style education is no longer adequate to provide professionals with the continuous engagement they need to learn online and on-the-go. That’s why so many highly achieving companies have turned to Blackboard Learn to bring their professional training to the next level.

Blackboard Learn for Corporations is much more than an LMS. It’s an online learning and professional development solution that engages professionals and drives knowledge retention, which ultimately impacts your bottom line. Watch the video below to see how Blackboard is leveraging our vast experience in education to provide solutions for the corporate market:

According to a recent article from Chief Learning Officer Magazine that was written by Josh Bersin, the principal and founder of Bersin & Associates, less than seven percent of organizations regularly measure the impact of their learning programs.  Though companies have often struggled to find models that analyze learning in meaningful ways, the recent changes in the way we learn, namely informal and social learning, have brought about new and improved ways to quantify the results of that learning. For example, the article mentioned these three significant (and measurable) components of informal learning:

• Activity: the percentage of learners being active and responsive.

• Contribution: the percentage of learners offering new content and how frequently they do so.

With the widespread use of the Internet and social media among young adults, constant connectivity has become a part of their everyday life.  As members of this tech-savvy generation enter the workforce, they will form a new breed of learners- connected learners- who will demand that professional education adapt to the technological trends being utilized every day.

Learning Strategies, an open-source eBook recently released by the MASIE Center, provides advice for stakeholders in today’s ever-changing professional learning environment.  Editor Nigel Paine writes that “in spite of uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, learning strategies are thriving,” and the book features several case studies to highlight best practices in developing those strategies.

The authors, who are senior learning executives in global corporations and government agencies, share perspectives of how their organizations are evolving and implementing unique learning strategies.  The organizations profiled in Learning Strategies include the CIA, Waste Management, Inc., CNN, Shell, and Farmers Insurance.  As diverse as these groups are in their operations and goals, there were several key themes from the case studies that are highly relevant across the professional learning sector:

Recently, the ProEd division of Blackboard caught up with Gary Woodill, CEO and Senior Analyst at Ontario’s i5 Research and author of The Mobile Learning Edge.  With expertise in both technology forecasting and e-learning developments, Woodill shared his insights as to what’s next in social and mobile learning.

Look Under the Radar to See What’s Next Woodill explained that because technology can take time to develop and catch on, looking at prototypes and start-ups is a good way to see what is on the horizon.  “Any technology that we’ll see five years from now is already in development,” he said, adding that most people have not heard of those early-stage products yet.  However, once more people start adopting these technologies, they will reach a “tipping point” and be proliferated throughout the market. So, what corporate learning trends are near this ever-important tipping point?  According to Woodill, social and mobile learning technologies will be the next developments to change the way education occurs in the workplace.  “We are still very early in terms of mobile and social.  We’re just at the tipping point for mobile.”

Education is Going Mobile Woodill emphasized that “mobility is a radical shift,” since professional education often takes place in a static classroom setting.  Though younger employees are increasingly demanding new training technologies that move away from classroom models, “they’re coming into a workplace culture that already exists and has a structure.”  While this established culture is often resistant to change, Woodill concluded that there are progressive CEOs and managers who already understand the benefits of adopting more mobile technologies in their companies’ training protocols.