Benefits of Social and Collaborative E-learning Solutions for Professional Organizations

The demand for e-learning solutions is constantly rising in the corporate sector for employee education, since it provides companies with the best medium of honing the skills of the personnel in the most effective and efficient manner. However, monotonous content, plaid delivery channels and resistance from the learners themselves create barriers for the success of this solution. Social and collaborative learning are two of the most sought after remote learning tools in the corporate sector as they allow users to create an interactive environment for them to learn and fine tune their respective skill sets. As a part of e-learning suites, social learning is a medium that is used to bring learning material to the social environment of the World Wide Web. The most advanced corporate education solutions available in the market today can successfully tap into the potential of the social and professional networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn, respectively, in order to make learning a fun experience for corporate professionals. Learners simply need to log into their Facebook or LinkedIn account and access the requisite content modules through the integrated e-learning application. Upon signing in, they can choose the course material from the modules given in the catalog and can rate the same as per their experience with it. In order to make learning a social experience, social e-learning applications allow learners to recommend the courses or modules to the people added in their friend list on the networking website, thus informing many more about this unique content delivery channel. They can also maintain a record of the number of modules they have finished through the tracking feature of this solution. This unique application can lower the resistance that learners have towards e-learning solutions and make them more responsive to the medium of remote professional education. Collaborative learning is another tool that makes learning an enjoyable experience for the corporate learner. It is a widely known fact that collaboration in a professional organization improves the levels of individual as well as overall productivity. Therefore, collaborative remote learning solutions are integrated with tools that create an environment conducive for sharing information. Some of the integral features of these learning solutions are discussion boards, surveys, podcasts, blogs, polls and wikis. Such tools enable learners to access information a wide variety of sources and even share ideas, experiences as well as resources to make the training session as collaborative as possible. By promoting seamless information exchange over informal channels of communication among the learners, such collaborative e-learning tools make sure that the training session does not remain restricted in terms of resources. Moreover, it ensures that the e-learning platform does not seem monotonous in terms of content delivery, thereby making it more acceptable to the target group. This type of solution overcomes physical barriers and organizational structure to allow learners to present their ideas to a larger demographic. Most importantly, it provides companies the perfect medium to promote innovation, ideation and experimentation amongst the group members. Therefore, it can be justified that social and collaborative remote learning tools can prove to be beneficial for corporate professionals.