The way people learn has changed. At one time fleet drivers would be educated through on-the-road training alone. Technology enabled such training to move online, but technology continues to move fast—and the way people want to learn has changed, mirroring how we take in information for other sources.
By understanding the way people learn and how people want to learn, those in charge of managing fleet risk have a much better chance of engaging employees in driver training and ensuring that the training content is understood, retained and applied by the driver.
“The modern learner doesn’t have much time and wants to learn things quickly,” said Gray Harriman, eDriving’s Director of eLearning. “The modern learner isn’t interested in content that is irrelevant to his or her needs and will switch off if the content isn’t engaging.”
Harriman said fleet managers could be wasting money as well as their own – and their drivers’ – time if they are delivering training that is easily forgotten. Here he shares his tips for fleet owners who want to make sure their driver training helps employees to learn better and recall more.
Repeated exposure to concepts/learning over time helps to reinforce key messages in learning material. “Issuing review modules to learners before the critical memory fading time helps to ensure they have retained the concepts, increasing their application and leading to safer driving,” Harriman said.
Storytelling helps deliver content contextually which is more likely to be retained by the employee. “People are very bad at remembering facts, but excellent at remembering stories,” said Harriman. “If an employee is simply told the facts about why something is unsafe they are likely to forget those facts. Show them an example of how those facts can be played out in real life and they’re more likely to take them in and remember them.”
Only content that is highly relevant to the employee should be delivered. “If the message relates to what the employee does regularly, it’s highly relevant to them,” Harriman said. “If learning modules are ‘triggered’ by the employee’s behavior, even better. That’s highly targeted training that is based on a person’s needs.”
Learning that occurs in small, easily digested modules is highly appropriate to the modern learner. “People learn better if the learning is in smaller chunks, with a clear objective,” said Harriman. “We know the modern learner doesn’t have much time, so making the most of three- to four-minute bites of learning is important.”
Organizations are more likely to engage learners successfully by understanding their preferred approach to learning, said Harriman. “In the 90s we mimicked in eLearning what was being done in traditional classrooms and, as should have been expected, we experienced the same shortcomings. To overcome this, we began breaking down content into small segments. The results were surprising and very significant; learners experienced increases in recollection, just-in-time access of content, and overall satisfaction with the instruction. Today, the approach is known as microlearning and is the preferred learning approach of millennials.”
The modern learner wants to learn interactively. “People want learning to be visual; they don’t want to see tons of text and nothing else,” said Harriman. “Learners want to see videos, animation and have interactive experiences, ideally in the context of their own behavior.”
Gamification can help to engage and motivate. “More and more companies are applying gaming elements to their learning content to help engage the modern learner,” said Harriman. “We know that these gamification techniques can motivate behavioral change as people want to rise the ranks. Incorporating competition of some kind into your learning approach can help engage and challenge employees.”
Driver and risk managers: find out how eDriving’s Mentor app can help you deliver targeted driver training modules direct to a driver’s smartphone based on their on-road behavior.
