“We’ve always done it that way” is never a good enough reason to keep doing things THAT way. In-person and virtual classroom training has come a long way, including using quizzes, polls, videos, animations, and digital games to bring content to life. One thing that hasn’t changed though are the supporting workbooks. Whether in printed or interactive PDF form, they are limited by the medium supporting them. Here at RTS Group, we asked how we could reimagine printed and interactive workbooks to make them fit-for-purpose in 2021.  

Our Answer – The Learn System

Learn is our responsive online authoring and distribution platform that brings learning content to life.  

It allows you to utilise the best tools from both in-person and virtual classroom environments to provide dynamic workbooks that encourage learners to interact. Key information is kept accurate and up-to-date across entire networks with a just a few clicks and measure individual and group progress with powerful analytics and reporting. 

Here are six ways that Learn can make a difference with your classroom training resources: 

Reason 1: Easy Access

At some stage, all of us have come away from a training course with the ubiquitous printout, full of useful information that we have every intention of coming back to. And then it gets put in a bag, in a drawer or the back of a notebook and is never seen again. Or we’ve seen the email with the attachment of our interactive PDF that gets filed away as we tackle more urgent tasks.   

Now imagine being able to log in from any smart device into a system where all supporting materials from every course you have ever completed are in one personalised library. With Learn, not only can you access all the information, diagrams, and videos from that course, but you can also see all the notes you’ve made alongside the relevant sections. You can retake quizzes, improve your score and re-fresh your knowledge without the frustration of having to search out the information you need. Welcome to the Learn platform. 

Reason 2: Quick to Update 

When we finally review the course notes, how often is that a crucial information out of date or irrelevant? Often legislation, the technology or data has changed drastically enough to make that information irrelevant. 

Currently, updating workbooks requires a subject matter expert to review and re-write, update information, a graphic designer to re-artwork it and admin time to organise any printing and distribution. This manual process adds more time and incurs extra costs at every stage and if the content needs to be updated several times a year, it becomes an inefficient use of budgets and resources. 

With Learn, changes can be made with a couple of mouse clicks. These changes are published live to everybody in the network instantly.  

Reason 3: Single Source of Truth

Traditional workbooks and PDFs will never be more up to date than the moment the print/export button is pressed.  

Learn provides a single source of truth for all users across all courses at all times, regardless of when a user first attends a course. Learners have confidence and peace-of-mind that they always have the most relevant information at their fingertips. Course materials can be treated as a reference library with continuously re-accessable resources whenever they are needed. 

Reason 4: Reduced Admin Time

The to-do list for anyone charged with running training courses can seem endless. Keeping course content up-to-date, mailing workbooks to correct locations, setting up iPads devices with the correct interactive PDFs, logging quiz results and course completions… the list goes on.  

With Learn these course materials stored and assigned in the cloud, removing the need to manually print and distribute or spend hours syncing multiple devices. Learners access the platform from their own computers, laptops or smart devices and course completion and quiz data is automatically collated immediately after a course has run. Learners can be added to courses in advanced and content locks can prevent them from viewing content until the trainer is ready to unlock that content.  

Reason 5: Analytics & Reporting

Trying to collect analytical information from a printed workbook would be a logistical nightmare. Even with interactive PDFs, analytical reports are generally limited to who accessed the file and when. How then can we judge how impactful a particular section of a course has been with learners? How can we know which sections learners engage with and which sections are ignored or skipped? How can we find out which sections learners revisit in the weeks following the course?

Learn has been designed from the start to generate this information, providing real-time data and insights on how courses are being interacted with. You can use live completion and performance results to create more targeted learning that closes knowledge gaps within your networks and encourage continuous improvement amongst learners. 

Reason 6: Sustainability

Think before you print. Avoid single use coffee cups and plastic stirrers. Recycle and reuse wherever possible. How can we bring this ethos to learning workbooks? Our experience shows that for every thirty training courses we run, it takes an entire tree to create the necessary paper for workbooks and other supporting materials. Add onto this the energy used to transport paper and ink around the globe and then distribute to specific locations and the cost to the planet quickly adds up. 

Interactive PDFs may seem like the answer but often require specialist tablets which contain rare earth elements. These tablets are often used infrequently and prove costly to purchase, maintain and, ultimately, replace.  

Learn eliminates all of that with a system that is 100% digital and responsive across desktop and tablet, meaning existing devices can be utilised as much as possible. And for us clean energy isn’t optional, which is why all our offices and datacentres use renewable sources of electricity.  

What now?

Has that got your attention? Why not book a demo below and see how Learn can make the difference within your organisation.