Technological advancements have nearly changed the face of many an industries within the past decade or so. And, the Learning & Development (L&D) and learning technology industries have followed suite, with more positive transformations taking place in terms of learning delivery mechanisms and addressing the learning needs of the tech-savvy modern learners.

Today, organizations are able to automate and track learning activities across diverse touch points anywhere and in real time, which has clearly elevated the expectations from L&D and employee skilling as a whole. Addressing skills gaps within the workforce and maintaining an engaging learning culture are primary challenges facing global L&D leaders.

Fortunately, L&D has some help in form of the fast evolving technology solutions, among which stands the Learning Experience Platform (LXP). Although the LMS is still the king in terms of providing proven and tested learning delivery mechanisms, the LXP offers a new ‘experience’ for the modern learners that expect simple, efficient and engaging learning environments, much like the Netflixes of the world.

What is an LXP?

An LXP is an advanced, more intuitive and flexible version of your traditional LMS. Where an LMS is still critical for managing organization-wide learning and LXP is designed especially to help engage more with the learning through easy discovery of relevant and recommended content. 

While some LXPs out there also offer AI-powered chatbots and personalized learning, Virtual Reality and so on, the LXP’s role is largely to offer a more self-directed learning approach for the modern learners by curating content, skill building and developing learning pathways, and providing learners with recommended content whenever needed.

Why do you need an LXP?

According to Josh Bersin, the LXP market is on the rise, but it’s unlikely to replace the burgeoning USD 4 billion LMS market anytime soon; although most LMS vendors in the market are realizing the use cases of an LXP and taking concrete steps in that direction.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at why the LXP is making greater inroads in the L&D space. Again, as Josh Bersin suggests, LXP gained popularity not only due to their sleek UI/ UX but also because they address the basic challenge of ‘content discovery’. Although today’s advanced LMS platforms have solutions that are more employee-centric, they are better at ‘learning management’ and focused on business objectives, regulation and compliance training activities etc; whereas an LXP looks something like YouTube, where the learners can easily find relevant content.

LXP looks

This is what an LXP looks like

Let us explore some key reasons that make LXPs so effective for employee learning.

  • Learning/ Content Recommendations

Just like a Netflix or Spotify recommends entertainment content, an LXP recommends learning content by creating personalized learning plans for employees through an AI-driven recommendation engine that uses historical data, learning styles, learners’ likes and dislikes, so that learners always have the most relevant and engaging learning content. An LXP ensures that a learner is never stuck by recommending the next course to take.

  • Great UI/ UX

LXPs make it much easier for employees to navigate, much like Netflix, YouTube etc. Like indicated in the image above, an LXP gives learners the option to search topics, videos and other content, while also enabling learners to pick and choose from most popular topics taken by colleagues for a customized learning experience. Like an LMS, the LXP also tracks the learner’s progress and enables them to view their progress in real time through the learner dashboard.

  • Designed Mobile First

Today, most people access digital media on their mobile devices almost 69% of the time, and with increasing mobile penetration across the globe and availability of high speed internet, it’s critical for organizations to leverage devices that their employees use. Just like an LMS, an LXP is also available as individual mobile learning app for anytime, anywhere learning that offers the same set of features and functionalities.

  • Boost Collaboration

Being largely learner-centric and employee driven, LXPs make for great collaborative and social learning platforms by enabling learners to share popular content, quality learning materials like courses, videos, or even discussions. Using an LXP, learners can make the existing content more actionable by sharing information, thus fostering collaboration and boosting team work and performance.

Takeaway

Although popular learning trends seem to favor the LXPs, there is a case to be made for the relevance and the criticality of an LMS in addressing core challenges faced by global organizations. 

For example, companies still need to track and manage compliance, which calls for some mandatory content to be taken by learners. Similarly, employee onboarding and training new employees just can’t be employee-driven as it has at least some prerequisites. But, more importantly, sometimes the employees just don’t know what they must learn and need the system to preset their learning for them that would help them in their current jobs.

Learning technology has always delivered newer and better ways to enhance the employees’ learning experience by mimicking the experience they have with popular consumer brands. The LMS still remains a go-to solution for organizations looking to align their L&D programs with business objectives, while the LXP offers key learner-centric capabilities, like relevant content, collaboration and social interaction, better UI/ UX as well as analytics capabilities.

Organizations can certainly look at an LXP to resolve long-standing and pressing problems like lack of engagement, underutilized content and ineffective search capabilities. LXPs have earned an important place in the constantly evolving learning technology solutions space. And, in conjunction with the established capabilities of an LMS, the LXP stands to positively impact organizational learning and delivering the desired learning and business objectives.

To know more about an LXP, request a personalized demo of UpsideLMS version X here.

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