How the Covid rapidly changed the way we use on-line training tools?

The COVID-19 pandemic was a cold shower on schools, universities and business schools and have had a significant impact on the daily training. Some, or all, of their traditional face-to-face courses quickly needed to be transformed into online versions to allow students to study from home. More or less all of them have since then been forced to rush the digital training transformation. Even if some schools had already started the process, the need for on-line training has been faster than anyone could have foreseen. 

Already before the pandemic, there was an array of perfectly working conference tools that were easily available at a very low cost; digital tools like Teams and Zoom etc. Given the urgent need to find a replacement for the traditional way of training, many schools found these tools as a comfortable, simple fix. However, the biggest obstacles turned out not to be the lack of bandwidth, computer performance, or even economical boundaries… Today it’s hard to remember that many people hadn’t even tried video conferencing before covid.

The real challenge was to make teachers and students comfortable with the new digital classroom.

The lack of a digital pedagogic strategy, and digital training method competence may be important clues to the increased number of student dropouts during lock-down.  In order to make a digital classroom training efficient, and with a long-lasting learning effect, you need to apply a whole new set of pedagogics and a strategy that must be adjusted to the available tools.

And even if we soon will be able to return to the classroom again, the pandemic has still shown us the benefits of online distance training and meetings. They are here to stay - the training landscape has changed. Traditional face-to-face training will certainly also have to be modernized and why not using digital tools?
For example, we will see even more blended training models with a mix of digital and online experience. Therefore, it is now about time for schools and organizations to focus on their training strategies, new set of pedagogics and learning methods to optimize it for the new landscape.
StageIT helps organizations develop training strategies and methods and provides tailored-made digital training. In every project we need to look beyond technical restraints and look for meaningful training techniques.

In the interesting e-ManTRA project that we are currently involved in, we are developing two digital training tools - both proposed training tools are based on game principles with the purpose of reducing school dropouts and enhance long-time-learning effect by using entertaining challenges. And perhaps - also giving a business advantage for those organizations that embrace the new innovative world of on-line training. 

Coming up: 

• Building a Digital Card Game for Transport manager training, and a super-exciting Digital Escape Room Training aiming to validate participants Transport management competences in an action-filled game where you are taking the role as a Transport Manager under pressure.
   
• Continue to follow our work in the e-ManTRA project page