Nanolearning

    ITG develops and delivers NanoLearning

    Within the corporate work environment staff are expected to continuously perform at a high level, stay current in a rapidly changing work environment, maintain high levels of productivity and minimize the amount of time applied to learning and development. How are corporations able to effectively manage the flow of information, customize training and communication programs, enhance employee development to improve results and minimize the time impact typically associated with training, the key is ITG’s implementation of a NanoLearning environment for your organization.

    What is NanoLearning?

    NanoLearning is a disruptive approach to training, communication and development that mimics the effectiveness of Social Media but adapted for corporate consumption and distribution.

    ITG works to help develop a program for your organization that deemphasizes lengthy hourly or daily commitments and distributes the information in limited size lessons on a regularly scheduled programmatic basis directly to email, without requiring logins, complicated navigation and complicated “user path” training typically associated with Learning Management Systems.

    Your employees simply receive an email with a lesson, complete the course and move on to the next activity, more importantly typical lessons only take 4-6 minutes to complete! ITG can help provide you with a platform develop content, comprehension checks, satisfaction surveys, embed media, or complementary services to develop new courses, and customize existing courses to meet your corporate development needs.

    NanoLearning Proccess

    NanoLearning is predicated on a simple intuitive process that expects that end users should only consume limited amounts of information in a single lesson in order to ensure maximum retention and applied benefit. To illustrate this principle in action, try to write down the contents of the following scenarios:

    1. The last post from your best friend on a social media platform or a quote from an admired person.
    2. The dialog of your favorite commercial.
    3. The script from your favorite TV show.
    4. The screenplay from your favorite movie.

    For most individual’s scenario 1 will be significantly easier than the following items, however the challenge is not simply based on the size of the content, but also how the content is delivered. From an early age people are conditioned to give special attention to text-based information, since words can convey information that even pictures and video are not always able to appropriately capture.

    Video and images can aid in the learning process, but sometimes these mediums of communication have limited effectiveness when applied to skill development and training as they are not interactive, generally too long to be effective, and users may “tune out” content in favor of other concurrent activities or deadlines. Ultimately your corporation may face the challenge of how to deliver effective training and development that resonates with users while minimizing interruptions to normal business operations.

    The NanoLearning Principles

    NanoLearning emphasizes four core principles in the delivery of training and communication:

    1. Lesson Plans must consider how much end users can absorb of the topic
    2. Individual lessons will be limited in how much content can be added
    3. Information is conveyed on a regular programmatic basis without end user prompting
    4. All content is couple with simple comprehension checks to confirm understanding

    NanoLearning and Quality Management

    ITG believes that NanoLearning is an additive approach to how to emphasize competency in a management system implementation.

    Take for example commonly developed Quality Training material that discusses your organizations approach to a quality management system. ITG often sees this information dispensed as part of a new hire orientation program or on a scheduled annual basis, typically as a 30 or 60-minute introduction. In the case of a new hire the new hire orientation may also include training on corporate activities such as filing expenses reports, completing timesheets, or getting access to corporate resources. Many times, information on corporate benefits, history and unique operating practices are dispensed. Finally, the new hire is introduced to their team to learn about the job they were hired to perform, the unique tools and resources used to deliver work.

    Now ask yourself throughout this process that typically is crammed into the available time of corporate managers, how effective is our new hire development and onboarding process?

    While this scenario is specifically geared towards new hires consider the applicability to the last organizational change made within the company or the newest application deployed to help improve staff performance. Good intentions aside many of the all-important decisions on training, competency and skills development are dictated not by what the end users need to be successful but the time available to managers and the intent to “fix it as we go”.

    The desire is to instill a singular approach to achieving work and objectives, however the actual results tend to vary widely. NanoLearning is an approach that can help to deliver the desired consistency, does not require dedicated special trained course developers, and can be rapidly rolled out across not only to an organization but to a specific process or activity.

    Why not use NanoLearning to create a quick compliance course on harassment? Alternatively your organization is about to release some new features in your current software, why not provide a short training on key features instead of an email with a word attachment?

    NanoLearning Environment

    ITG’s believes that NanoLearning is what standard contributors envision each time they try to define the importance of staff competency. While obtaining a specific degree, certificate or credential can be paramount to your organization’s success, collectively individual accolades, can have catastrophic consequences if the employee does not have the competency to effectively implement the learned information.

    Visualize instead a NanoLearning environment in which your most highly competent staff members are able to put together a lesson plan that includes a total of nine 4 to 6 minute lessons on how to perform a specific task or process. Your staff members do not require extensive training on how to develop e-learning course since the approach is modeled after common word processing tools and can quickly incorporate already developed content in the form of policies, manuals or videos. Your staff can create a lesson plan and lessons as quickly as the same presentation deck that is currently used, but now they set a schedule for the information to be delivered directly to email three times a week and over three weeks the end user actual absorbs what is expected. Your key resources no longer have to “schedule” time or deliver the same content multiple times freeing up your team to deliver more, in addition no more lengthy e-learning courses, recorded webinars or static videos, but purposefully driven lessons that deliver results.

    Nanolearning and other training mediums

    Will NanoLearning completely replace all other training mediums such as on the job training or mentoring?

    The answer is probably not, however NanoLearning will help to make those mediums more effective as you can predictably ensure greater consistency and calibration within your teams, allowing for more focus on analyzing and improving performance.

    Let ITG evaluate your current environment to determine if NanoLearning might be an approach to help reduce the overhead placed on your most valuable staff to deliver recurring training, improve end user performance through calibration on your most important business objectives, and remove the fear of capital expenditure size investments in learning management systems and resources to deploy effective training solutions.