The world of continuing education is complex. Whether it is to earn and maintain certifications, work toward building a more competent and confident workforce, or simply learn new skills, it is often difficult for learners to navigate large course catalogs to find the training best suited to their needs. From the perspective of employers, it can be tricky to ensure that workers are focusing on the content that best prepares them for their positions.
Sometimes, complex rules and specifications govern the types of content a learner must complete to hit a benchmark, such as meeting the required hours for a certification. In other cases, the learning path to an objective is less prescribed or tailored to an individual company rather than an outside governor. In both these instances, learners and their employers benefit when it is easy to find, enroll in, and complete the most relevant training options.
Given the need to bring learners’ attention to the most important content, a learning management system (LMS) should offer the ability to provide recommendations. Recommendations functionality enables the learning management system to suggest content to a given learner automatically. There are several possible options for how these recommendations can be triggered. Some include:
Companies incur expenses in offering continuing education and training to their employees. The more efficiently training can be found and completed, the less time loss a company faces. When employees are easily able to identify the training that is most relevant to them, companies aren’t paying for unnecessary content and incurring time loss. Since many employers depend on their employees to manage their continued education, it is in a company’s best interest to ensure their learners can select the correct content without wasting time and money on courses that don’t meet their needs.
In a traditional higher education environment, students often rely on advisors or other experts to help them create class schedules. Most companies cannot offer this service to their employees, no matter how dedicated they are to on-the-job training or continued learning. When a learning management system provides robust recommendation capabilities, this role can be automated, giving learners the guidance they need without committing resources to provide that support.
