Improving

Workforce Content Assimilation

and Reducing the Skills Gap

The best of both worlds: instructor-led training, self-paced
learning, and collaboration

Introduction
The pace of change in modern businesses has accelerated and introduced new
customers, new channels and new business models. New technologies are emerging
and changing the way business gets done. In the midst of all this change, human
resource executives and talent managers admit that their workforce simply doesn’t have
the skills necessary to work effectively as technologies, customers and markets change.
Add to that new market expectations, new industry and government regulations and the
demand on talent has never been as high.

This challenge can be alleviated to some extent by hiring new employees who can
augment the existing skill base, but this solution only addresses a small portion of the
challenge. Increasingly it falls to talent management, human resources and training
managers to identify the skills necessary for their workforce to remain competitive, and
to find valuable training partners and/or build the training necessary to provide the skills
and capabilities their businesses need to succeed. But finding training content is only
part of the solution.

For many busy employees and managers, taking time from their schedules to attend
training is exceptionally difficult. A day away means a day behind. Further, many
training programs are dry, dull recitations of long PowerPoint documents, uninteresting
and uninspiring. Many employees avoid training, concerned that they’ll fall behind in
their work or that the time in the training session will be wasted. Training managers and
employees alike must discover training programs that combine top quality content with a
delivery mechanism that combines the interaction and engagement of an instructor-led
class with the depth and pace of a packaged, self-paced program. New solutions must
provide interesting but valuable content in a delivery that is engaging and collaborative.

LiberCloud has attempted to solve these challenges, liberating training instructors by

 enabling re-use of material, and engaging students and training participants through an
interactive, engaging collaborative delivery.

Technological Advancement
As training needs increase, content developers and technology companies have noticed
and responded. While content hasn’t changed all that dramatically, the technology
supporting corporate training has exploded, starting first with solutions like PowerPoint
and electronic white boards, and moving on to web-based learning management
systems, blended teaching aids, concepts imported from secondary education like the
concept of “flipped classrooms” from Khan Academy, and many more. But, as is the
case with many needs, often the technology gets ahead of the customer and misses the
actual solution that customers want. Customers are happy to have more technology as
a component of their training and education, but that technology needs to improve the
exchange of information, engage them in the same way as familiar social media tools
and allow them to collaborate with each other and with the instructor. If training
technologies can’t deliver these value propositions, then what students are left with is
high tech versions of the dry, stale PowerPoint pitch.

Trainers and content developers face a similar dilemma. Technology has made a
number of promises to help them design programs and curriculum, manage content,
develop compelling materials, interact with students, assess their understanding and do
all of this as seamlessly over the web as it does in instructor-led settings. However, the
technological solutions to support trainers and content developers have rarely met their
promises. Too many technologies that claim to offer benefits to trainers and content
developers are actually content managers, capturing and cataloguing training content
but failing to help the instructor make a meaningful connection with his or her students.

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, recognized the shortcomings of
existing training delivery and technology when he wrote “We have to get beyond the
current system of information and delivery, with students taking notes, followed by some
assessment, to one in which students are asked and empowered to master more basic
material at their own pace, and the classroom becomes a place where the application of
that knowledge can be honed through lab experiments, individual and group exercises
and projects, and discussions with the professor.” In other words, technology should
exist to engage the student, augment and supplement the learning experience and
create new collaboration and interaction with other students and the instructor. And, this
kind of interaction and information sharing must happen regardless of the student’s
location, regardless of the student’s technology platform of choice.

© Felice Curcelli - 2013 2

 The best of both worlds solution
While many corporate managers and employees grew up in an instructor-led classroom
and have experienced the same in traditional corporate training programs, they are alert
to a lot of other possibilities. Many use social media frequently, and expect to receive
information in far more bite-sized chunks, and to be able to exchange information with a
number of fellow students and colleagues quickly and easily. Beyond social media,
there are a number of technologies and capabilities that creep into our consciousness
and should become building blocks of new training delivery. For example, consider the
TED Talks.

Hundreds of thousands of people watch TED Talks every day, some for entertainment
but some to learn new ideas or skills. TED Talks, Khan Academy and other recorded or
multimedia programs demonstrate that video is an expected component of a training
program, yet few trainers adequately incorporate video or other interactive, recorded
content in training delivery. Further, with the advent of social media sites like blogs and
Pinterest, people are familiar with the concept of not only consuming content but also
creating and authoring content. For many, the idea of a “one way” training interaction is
discouraging, because they have opinions, ideas, case studies and content they’d like to
share with the instructor and with students.

And, where there’s content there’s sure to be opinions, reviews and feedback. We are
all familiar with the ability to leave comments, make suggestions and provide reviews.
As we conduct life online, increasingly our training programs and interactions should be
tailored to allow us to interact and collaborate. These and other features will increase
engagement, which can lead to greater participation in training programs, increased
comprehension and more retention of core concepts and material.

What trainers and learners alike need is a content development and collaborative
platform that contains the content that trainers need to communicate with the
collaboration that students have grown accustomed to, that offers a “best of both
worlds” approach, the activity and interaction of an instructor-led class with the depth
and pacing of a packaged training program, available anywhere, anytime.

• For trainers and content developers, simplify training content development, allowing
trainers to share useful content, repurpose content and build assessments to gain
insight into student comprehension. Enabling a range of training delivery methods,
allowing trainers and content developers to build fully self-paced programs delivered
over the web, to blended training settings combining instructor-led training and

© Felice Curcelli - 2013 3

 integrated mixed media content, to traditional instructor-led classroom settings.
Allowing students anywhere, in any location, on any web-enabled platform to access
interesting, engaging material and collaborate with other students or the instructor.

• For students, create an entirely new learning environment, encouraging

collaboration, interaction with instructors and fellow students and creating an
engaging relationship between the instructor, the material and the class. Training
should create interactions, a two-way conversation between the instructor and the
student, which raises engagement, which in turn increases comprehension and
learning. Ultimate benefit to students and instructors is not just collaboration or
engaging content, but in the fact that students learn more, and learn faster, because
they are active participants rather than passive receivers of information.

• This optimal platform allows trainers to create interesting, engaging content with
built-in tools that allows teachers to record lessons so that teachers do not have to
repeat themselves, thus saving precious time, while achieving consistency of
delivery and overcoming the “bad days” syndrome. Students can access the
recorded videos at any time.

• This virtual animation studio, embedded in the platform, allows instructors to

incorporate completely new content created “on the fly” when elaborating ideas by
drawing or sketching or by annotating existing material or assessments. While some
of the technology exists, it requires a skilled instructor to connect various devices
and software to be able to do this. So, what’s needed is a simpler way that allows all
instructors to capture these moments by being an integral feature of the platform.
Imagine a teacher being able to annotate a test from a student providing visual and
verbal commentary, and, yes, encouragement as well.

• While improving training in the classroom is important, the global nature of

businesses demands the ability to extend training and content to individuals in
different locations and in different time zones. Content can be created anywhere,
repurposed and reused by fellow instructors and delivered to students anywhere.
From the most basic training content to the most robust multimedia presentation, any
student in any location has access to the same content, and the same interaction
and collaboration as students interacting one on one with an instructor. For trainers
and for training managers, this power is truly liberating, because it means that any
student can interact with excellent content and great training delivery, no matter
where they are.

© Felice Curcelli - 2013 4

 Conclusion
Previously trainers, content developers and talent managers had to settle for narrow
solutions, targeting instructor-led programs that did not scale, or self-paced programs
that were not engaging but reached many participants. The new solution solves
challenges for all of the key participants in a training setting:

• For trainers, it liberates the trainers and content managers by providing content
management tools, supporting reuse of great material and repurposing of existing
content. It extends the reach of a trainer, allowing one trainer to reach a wide range
of participants in different locations, time zones and even different technology
platforms. It simplifies content development and accelerates and vastly expands
content delivery, while increasing participant engagement.
• For HR executives and talent managers, training delivered through the platform
ensures that your employees receive the instruction they need, when and where
they need to receive it, in a manner that engages them, increasing retention and
ensuring better application of the information.
• For students or trainees, it turns a passive, one-way lecture into a compelling two-
way conversation, encouraging collaboration with other students and the instructor,
improving interactivity and putting authoring tools in the hands of the student. These
features ensure that learners are active participants, interacting with the material and
the instructor, annotating content and in some cases even creating new content.
These interactions lead to better comprehension, greater satisfaction with the
training program and better, longer-term comprehension of the materials.

It’s a best of both worlds solution because it supports instructor-led training, blended
training and packaged, distributed self- paced training. It is a completely new way to
think about training content development and delivery that offers benefits for every
interested party in the training process, and creates interactive content and spurs
collaboration that engages students while liberating trainers.

© Felice Curcelli - 2013 5