Glossary
Digital Training
What is Digital Training?
Digital training leverages digital learning systems to deliver virtual training content and experiences. Also known as online learning or e-learning, it provides learners with a high degree of flexibility, interactivity, and accessibility. Although digital learning content can be — and often is — consumed remotely, this is not strictly necessary.
Common examples of digital training include:
- Self-paced training programs that blend multimedia and interactive elements into a training experience that learners can engage with at any time and from anywhere.
- Webinars.
- Virtual instructor-led training programs where the instructors and learner communicate entirely through the cloud.
- Immersive simulations and sandboxes that allow participants to ‘learn by doing’ and develop practical, hands-on knowledge.
- Multimedia content such as videos and slide decks.
- Microlearning modules designed to be used for on-the-job learning and development.
What are the benefits of implementing a digital training strategy?
Because digital training materials can be accessed entirely via the cloud or the Internet, there’s no need for a physical classroom. Learners and instructors can simply log in from anywhere with an Internet connection. This not only makes digital training more accessible than traditional in-person training, but more cost-effective, as you don’t need to worry about travel expenses or room maintenance.
Digital training programs are also far easier to scale. With a physical classroom, there’s an upper limit to how many students you can support. A virtual instructor-led or self-paced course could, at least theoretically, be expanded to accommodate any number of participants.
For businesses interested in exploring adaptive learning, most learning management systems provide AI-driven personalization out of the box. Rather than shoehorning all participants down the same generic learning path, instructors can make automatic, real-time adjustments to training material based on a person’s performance, learning style, and preferences. These adjustments can be executed at any scale, greatly improving outcomes for both employee and customer training.
Finally, most digital learning tools include powerful reporting and analytics functionality. This allows businesses to not only track learner progress and performance for feedback purposes, but also identify potential bottlenecks and quit points in their training materials. Reports can also be used to demonstrate a program’s return on investment and measure a training program’s overall effectiveness.
Why does digital training matter for customer education?
From a customer education perspective, the most significant benefit of a digital training platform is its scalability and reach. A business can deliver training content to customers in any location and at any time, providing on-demand access to everything from certification programs to guides. If a business is able to create hands-on demo experiences, digital training can also be incredibly useful for sales and onboarding purposes.
Salespeople can easily deliver personalized demos to customers tailored to their specific needs, environment, and pain points. Once a purchase has been made, the customer success team can then use a similar hands-on environment to help ensure their new customer gets the most out of their deployment. In both cases, you’ll also have access to analytics data that you can use to gain a deeper understanding of both your customers and your sales process.
What digital training tools should my business use?
At the minimum, implement an LMS to manage and deploy your training content. We also recommend software that allows you to create virtual training labs for your learners. Finally, it’d be in your best interest to use a learning experience platform (LXP) to keep your training as engaging and compelling as possible.
Beyond that, there are a few additional tools and features you might want to explore:
- Video conferencing
- Messaging
- Content authoring
- Learner assessment
- A training management system (TMS)
