Adaptive Learning is not completely new to the educational field, though it is relatively new to corporate learning. Companies that used to be traditional book companies like McGraw-Hill, Pearson have invested heavily in this type of learning focusing on school and college level education. McGraw-Hill purchased ALEKS in 2013. (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces), an adaptive learning platform developed by a team of mathematicians, cognitive scientists and software engineers. They even bought in their new CEO — David Levin, not because he was good at selling textbooks, but because of his experience in running technology companies (Levin worked as the CEO of Symbian Software). Even Pearson introduced an “immersive digital learning tool” called Revel that adapts to the learning of the student and makes learning fun. Their idea is to make the course materials “more compelling than Facebook”.

The results of adaptive learning in primary and college learning is fantastic. According to a study in these situations, students who took the software-based course for the second year, however, improved their scores twice as much between the beginning and end of the year as those who remained in traditional classrooms.

If you have read the whole thing until now, you should have had this question still burning inside your head— “Will adaptive learning really work in a corporate setting?”

The answer to this question too is a resounding yes. There are 3 main reasons that it’s more suited for Corporate Learning.

First.

One of the primary reasons that adaptive learning is lagging in a school level situation is because of the infrastructure. Though most of the schools have access to the internet these days, it’s a ‘far from reality’ situation when it comes to the accessibility of a computer or tablet inside a classroom. This situation is actually quite reversed when you are looking at a corporate learning. Every individual have access to a good internet connection with a personal / work portable computer. The accessibility of these devices, though primitive of a problem is one of the main barriers for this type of learning to work in a primary education scenario.

Second.

In the primary education scenario, the push for more personal computers has met with a resistance. In the context of a traditional classroom, Internet-connected devices are creating more distraction from the learning process rather than aiding it. Studies like the famous 2003 Cornell University, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and OECD reports concludes one single thing — Addition of devices in a primary and higher education classroom situation either worsened the student’s performance or had no effect. But, this distraction from the learning on a personal computer in corporate learning is not new. Learning with a personal device works out perfectly in a corporate scenario since the learner is not new to using the device. He must have already used his computer to learn for a few years either in the company or during school or college. The user has the emotional maturity to keep off from the distractions while learning because of his history of using a personal computer for learning. A survey from the Book Industry Study Group found that 10 percent of college students were taking at least one class through an online platform in 2014. In 2015 that number rose up to 40 percent. By this year it would be easily around 70–80 percent. This implies that a college student has more than 80% chance that he might have used an online learning solution before he joined the company. This probability increases, even more, considering if he has already started learning in the company which is usually online these days.

Third.

Facing the hard truths. Companies want their employees to work efficiently. They would ideally not want to waste any time or money to make their employees learn new things and rather focus on making their employees work for their profits. If there was a magical wand that they could simply use to make all their employees learn what they needed to in the shortest time possible, they would definitely pay millions in getting hold of that device. This implies that employees have to take out time from their busy schedules of meetings, work, travel and what not, to spend on learning a new topic. Most of these times, they look for the shortest and quickest way possible that reduces their time even if it affects the quality of learning. A solution which not only understands the type of learning the employee needs but also integrates the learning as a part of his work, daily commute and meetings, without compromising and even enhancing the learning, will be a boon. An adaptive learning platform which understands and gives right information, right size of learning, at a right time can be that boon.