“Learning can be fun, no doubt about that,” Leppänen says. “But often, it’s hard and time-consuming, and it’s then that our cognitive functions are truly tested. A learning experience also evokes emotions, and it’s these emotions that help us remember and retain the learned.”
“A good – if simplistic – way of understanding this is breaking it down into two categories. Things that give me energy and things that drain me of it. Identifying those and applying them together is essential in creating a successful learning environment. A dry lecture won’t help anyone, but a relevant and engaging exchange of information will be, to put into the context of workplace learning, a fantastic return of investment.”
Anyone who has spent time behind a desk can relate. Learning and development design shouldn’t remain stagnant, and one of the key goals in the next phase of e-learning evolution is finding out where the lines of difficulty and effective learning cross. Sami M. Leppänen declares himself a strong advocate for crowdsourcing and social learning, always seeking new and inspiring ways to design meaningful experiences for his target audiences at KONE.
Interaction and social learning can be incorporated into the digital experience which is what we did in our collaboration with Posti. This interactivity is at the heart for the course Bitville designed to advance Posti’s sustainability and climate change awareness. Working with Noomi Jägerhorn, Director of Sustainability at Posti, Bitville gave each member of Posti’s workforce a voice, allowing learners to compare their views and opinions with their colleagues.
The result is a social experience where knowledge and connectivity intertwine.
“The challenge is, how do we sell these new habits and methods that don’t fit in the established mold?”
For hundreds of years, training has followed a similar pattern. The learner is presented with a problem and asked for a solution. That solution is often tied to a ready-made big picture. Regardless of what the learner would find their answers to be, they’re tied to a pre-established case or an example.
This is where e-learning comes in. Using digital courses, anyone anywhere can take part in the experience, often together with a team. As classrooms become intangible places online, learning becomes a social event, where singular observations open doors to larger conversations.
It’s one of the many foundational elements of how courses are crafted at Bitville. It’s not enough to merely present information as a static form of content. The learner needs to feel like they’re a part of the process in selecting what they’re about to engage with.
The learning team at KONE agrees. “If you imagine that your learning experience is a physical location, one of these is a passive experience that requires you to know where you’re going. So, you end up wandering down hallways hoping to find one piece of information that you want or even need. The other is social and loud and full of options on display – it’s something that gives you a chance to choose from a wealth of options right off the bat.”
Table 1. Classification of Learning and Teaching Methods (Sami M. Leppänen & Nestori Syynimaa)
