The Top 10 Emerging Trends in Government Learning

In 1728, the world’s first long-distance learning experience was established in Boston with written lessons sent back-and-forth from teachers to students via mail.

Fast forward to the modern era of remote learning: today, 98 percent of colleges and universities offer online courses for students.

At GovDelivery, we’re transforming learning for the public sector — whether that’s converting traditional classroom-based training into online resources, or hosting a course on a modern and mobile-enabled platform to fit employee or citizen needs.

And as the leading provider of digital communications platforms to over 1,000 government organizations, we’ve noticed a few things on how the public sector is approaching virtual learning and what’s in store for the future.

Here are 10 emerging trends in government that have the potential to shape how we learn:

Micro-Learning:
Short, targeted online demonstrations or tutorials. The average length of micro-learning pieces are between 4-5 minutes and are moving away from deep attention learning to hyper-learning.

• Client Highlight: With help from GovDelivery, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security created a series of micro-learning videos and integrated real world simulations to help participants apply what they learned to real scenarios.

Flipped Classroom:
This type of e-learning provides the basics before arriving to a live learning scenario. The flipped classroom approach provides a mix of short videos and in-person learning.

Agile Learning Design:
Breaks whole pieces of learning content into bite-size pieces, and builds minimally viable “courses” for attendees. Agile learning provides a means to test small portions of e-learning, get feedback and input and then make adjustments.

MOOCs:
Stands for “Massive Open Online Courses,” and its driving notion is that an online learning experience should provide meaningful, group-based learning available online.

• Client Highlight: At GovDelivery, we helped the FHWA to engage seven federal, state and local innovation teams to create a two-day, onsite course. With combined resources, they saved money and provided an engaging virtual course.

Virtual Action Learning:
This approach makes learning immediately applicable — it uses real projects and leverages technology to create efficiency.

Mobile Learning:
Takes a bite-sized piece of content and makes it consumable everywhere. Mobile learning is scalable, and makes more courses and content accessible for more people.

Wearable Learning:
Soon, we’ll be seeing more and more wearable gadgets that enable learners to reflect on lessons in real-time and serve as digital learning prompts at regular intervals within a person’s daily flow.

• Example: The State of Utah is leveraging wearable tech (via the Google Glass app) to gain real-time public transit information from its users.

Learning Concierge:
With thousands of bite-size learning morsels, how can we pick the right content? A Learning Concierge would answer this question for us, with the notion that experts could curate content for employees and citizens.

Artificial Intelligence:
When machines know what we need to know before we do. Sound a little scary? Keep in mind that we already (sort of) use artificial intelligence in some ways: think Siri, Watson and search engines.

Robot-Assisted:
Think that robot-assisted interviewing isn’t happening? Think again. If robots are already participating in the workplace, someday they’ll be teaching courses and engaging with learners.

Want more information on e-learning trends?  Earlier this month, our Vice President of Learning and Development Andrew Krzmarzick had a chance to present a webinar called “Technology Today Series” hosted by the Texas Department of Information Resources.

If you’d like to view the slides from the webinar, you can click through them below:

We would welcome the chance to deliver this webinar for public sector professionals in your agency — the future has arrived at the intersection of communications and learning, and we want to be sure you’re ready for these transformative trends.

Schedule a consultation now with one of our experts.