...and Perform'

A practical guide for evaluating and implementing Online Experiential Learning

London, UK – Monday 17th June 2013 –Towards Maturity has released a report entitled, ‘Online Experiential Learning: Helping Individuals Practise and Perform’.  This report examines the benefits of Online Experiential Learning*, shares Towards Maturity’s recent industry research, and provides case studies from several leaders in the field including Toolwire, a learning solutions provider specialising in online immersive learning environments.

Earlier this year, the Towards Maturity 2012–13 Benchmark report highlighted that twenty percent of organisations are already using online experiences such as games and complex simulations – and this figure is on a steady rise.

“Employers recognise that critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills are key capabilities needed by today’s workforce,” commented Sarah Frame, EMEA Director at Toolwire. “The need to improve such skills is driving the demand for engaging and authentic training tools that can deliver benefits such as re-usability, scalability, consistency, and integrated assessment.  This training approach shortens the time to productivity and competency and can be applied across a broad spectrum of industries including healthcare, social work, engineering, law, call center training, technology, and more.”

The recent Insight Report revealed that delivering effective workplace training is a major challenge for many companies.  Over 95 percent of organisations seek to ‘improve the sharing of good practice’, but only 25 percent achieve this goal.  In addition, 94 percent of organisations seek to ‘speed up the application of learning back into the workplace’ but in reality only 23 percent are successful.

Laura Overton, Managing Director of Towards Maturity, added, “When it comes to helping individuals practise and perform, classroom-based role play or the simple scenarios offered in the self-paced course is just not enough.  Our study suggests that organisations experienced in their use of Online Experiential Learning are seven times more likely to use these environments to help staff understand the consequence of their decisions. They are three times more likely to use role playing and rewards and twice more likely to focus on natural assessment and storytelling in their learning design. And this approach is paying off - over three quarters of the experienced practitioners report that their staff have the opportunity to practise in context and are now more qualified as a result.”

This free report can be downloaded at http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2013/06/05/online-experiential-Learning-Towards-Maturity/.