2020 turned the spotlight on learning and development (L&D) more than ever before, and companies need new tools to adapt. In this year’s L&D Global Sentiment Survey, acquiring new skills emerged as the no.1 priority with a historic 13% of votes. Never have so many respondents from different countries and L&D backgrounds agreed on one priority – and the reasons are obvious. 

As the world’s economy undergoes a churn, employees need new skills and the right skills to stay at the top of their game. Companies, too, must invest in right-skilling to stay competitive amid a period of economic recovery. As an L&D professional, you need to relook at your strategy and toolkit, maximizing the learning management system (LMS) to ensure greater engagement, retention, and more effective skill development. That’s where cutting-edge video capabilities in your LMS could make a difference.

Video is a Crucial Learning Enabler in 2021

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that video is at least as effective as in-person instructor-led sessions in terms of learning impacts. For corporate L&D, this means you can scale your learning programs, enable content reusability, and – most importantly – overcome remote learning challenges in 2021. 

Further, In an employee engagement survey conducted by Forrester, 75% of respondents said they would rather engage in video learning than reading text (emails, online articles, or physical documents). Video content resonates with our senses in a manner that text alone cannot, and in the last few years, online video has become a mainstream mode of content consumption. Millennials and Gen Z have grown up on a YouTube and Netflix diet, as it were, and expect a similar experience when it comes to workplace L&D. 

In 2021, with younger generations occupying an increasing share of your workforce, cutting-edge video capabilities are a must-have. Millennials are 2.7 times more likely to use video to learn a new skill than reading a book. And in addition to on-demand content, LinkedIn 2020 Workplace Learning Report mentions live streaming/live video as among the top ten trends that will impact L&D in the next five years. Therefore, not only do you need a video roadmap tightly interwoven with your L&D plan, but you also require advanced video capabilities to extract the full potential of your content.

6 Reasons Why Your Current Learning Management System (LMS) Might be Falling Short 

The LMS is the central technology driving your L&D strategy, helping to plan the course design, deliver content across platforms, track learner progress, create reports, and essentially keep the company’s skill development engines running smoothly. What it isn’t, however, is a dedicated video management platform with all the tools and features necessary for immersive video learning experiences. 

LMS solutions are great for delivering PDFs, documents, sheets, and other text-based learning materials, but they could fall short of delivering video-based training content optimally. This could be because of five reasons:

1. The system might lack bandwidth management and last-mile connectivity features. As the LMS isn’t purpose-built for only video, it could struggle to playback high-quality content in remote locations with slow internet speeds. This is a problem for both distributed teams and the current home working situation. 

2. Video capabilities in your LMS may be limited to standard, scheduled content. Learners today, demand much more flexibility, such as video-on-demand, live broadcasts, and even audio-only content. Video delivery has to be extremely convenient and tailored to the learner’s lifestyle (for example, availability outside of work hours) to encourage engagement. 

3. Videos in an LMS are typically non-interactive in nature. This is a missed opportunity, as the ability to navigate through video content, look up specific portions, answer a quiz, etc., would dramatically improve learner engagement, satisfaction, and retention. 

4. Video data from your LMS could be incomplete, as the system deals with a wide range of data insights without any particular specialization. For example, LinkedIn recommends video completion as a viable metric to measure engagement – but do clicks count as course completion? You need granular data on the exact percentage of participation to finetune course content. 

5. A traditional LMS will not be able to support user-generated video content (UGC), or, in cases where UGC is possible, the tools and processes are way too complex for a lay employee. This deprives you of the collective knowledge available right within your organization, through video mentorships, internal coaching, etc.  

6. Finally, you have to be able to scale video delivery from 1000 to 10,000 concurrent viewers or more, so that learners don’t face downtime. 

To address these gaps, LMS needs to be complemented with a video management platform so you can deliver the complete value of e-learning. 

How a Video Platform Augments your LMS 

A dedicated video management platform integrates with your learning systems and introduces essential features that transform the learner’s experience and unlock the full potential of eLearning in the era of video. This means you can:

• Offer zero-buffering playback – The platform creates multi-resolution versions of the course content that will be streamed based on the available bandwidth on the employee’s device. 
• Provide learners with flexible access – With videos hosted on a public cloud like Amazon Web Services (AWS), learners can log in from any device, including smartphones, from any location.
• Enjoy greater capacity – AWS infrastructure also means that you can scale video storage infinitely and run thousands of concurrent streams without compromising on video quality.
• Secure video access – You can set granular permissions to manage how the workforce accesses video content, restricting certain content to one business unit, team, or even an individual.
• Go beyond basic search – The platform lets you search through all the video content — including words that appeared on-screen, as highlights, or words spoken during the video. This means your entire content library is searchable, and not just by video title, author, or description.
• Drive microlearning – Chapter and section markers break down content into short, memorable segments, enabling a microlearning experience for employees. 
• Enable just-in-time learning – Learners can retrieve the exact knowledge they need to complete a task during work, instead of being led by an instructor through the whole course. 
• Enhance interactivity – You can embed quizzes, forms, and calls to action inside the video, capturing the learner’s attention at strategic points. 
• Measure training effectiveness using analytics – The platform reveals both micro and macro video analytics, from user-level video consumption to broader trends around topic-wise engagement. You incorporate this data into LMS reports and realign the training program. 
• Democratize video creation – Using the video platform, employees can express what they have learned and share their perspectives through UGC. You can ensure that only authorized users are equipped to create videos, and can distribute content across the workforce. 
• Explore new content options – It facilitates video consumption via video on demand, live streams, or podcasts. Employees can select the experience they desire, for maximum impact. 

These are the key features to keep in mind when selecting a video platform that could prepare your L&D strategy for the needs of 2021-2022, working alongside your LMS. 

Action a Video-Enabled L&D Strategy in 2021

At kPoint, we partner with leading L&D professionals to strengthen their content creation and delivery capabilities. The above features are at the core of our platform, and we also utilize AWS cloud infrastructure to provide users with a resilient, uninterrupted learning experience at any concurrency, without stretching your infrastructure costs. 

As we enter a new phase in corporate L&D, companies need cutting-edge video tools that help employees learn the right skills, retain knowledge better, and gain from an adaptive learning experience. This will translate into heightened employability and better business outcomes for corporates, enabling ROI that your LMS cannot achieve by itself. 

Start your video-enabled L&D journey today! Contact us and do share your comments below to kickstart the discussion.