Learning is a competitive advantage for employees. It is a process of empowering employees with added-value skills. Learning and development encompass the following activities: on-boarding, professional development, leadership development, up-skill, re-skill, skill gap training, e-learning, and more. These activities are set not only to grow the human capital but also to drive better business performances. Before the pandemic (and probably when things are back to “new normal”), huge budget was spent on enterprise learning & development. Why is that? When staff are trained with better skills, they will work more efficiently and ultimately help to drive better business performance. And with the current situation, online learning has replaced F2F learning and is now and has already been “a thing” that organization looks up for a change in their training system.

Online learning is growing rapidly in Southeast Asia (SEA). It has been years since online learning took over SEA market. Several countries across SEA such as Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam gain benefit from online learning as the e-learning platforms help to fill in the gap of teacher shortages problem.

As organizations gradually adopting to online learning, we also see a growing marketing with LMS. According to a report by Market Research, by the year 2027 APAC is expected to be the fastest growing region in term of Compound annual growth rate (CARG) over 19.75%. Due to Covid and other factors such as edtech industry, mobile usage and Internet penetration, several countries in APAC have adopted LMS solutions.

This digital disruption, especially in terms of LMS implementation, does not take place only among education institutions but we also observe the changes among corporate organizations where they utilize LMS for employee training, skill development drives and succession planning. LMS is also helpful as an on-boarding tool for new hires.

We have been impacted by Internet and technology, which also means we have more accessibility to online courses, social media, and all the digital contents. With the rise of Internet and tech, people will demand more flexibility on learning styles and models, which means that online learning will continue to rise

• Personalized & Flexible Learning

Everyone has a unique learning style. Some might retain more information when they watch a video or completed an activity while others prefer to gain knowledge from reading an article. Thanks to AI and analytics system, contents that match user’s learning style will be automatically offered. Personalize and flexible learning can be beneficial for both corporate and academic settings which will drive a transformation on online learning into a tool that could support employees and students to achieve their goals.

• Mobile Learning

Nowadays, people get attached to their phones, tablets more than ever. An increasing number of people accessing to online learning by using mobile devices. This number will keep increasing and this trend will continue to dominate online training delivery. It is important for those LMS to make courses accessible from mobile or table – simply on any devices. The ability to learn anywhere anytime is more real now than ever before.

• Video-Based Learning

Video is being adapted for the new normal in learning and development. Trainers or teacher can now deliver video-based classes and learning contents. And in the field of e-learning, training videos are essential for employers to deliver knowledge to their employees while they are working from home. Rather than sitting through pages of PDFs or PowerPoints presentations, people can now learn all they need through a video. In addition, videos can get to the point of need very quickly, a key attribute in a time of accelerating and significant change.

• Game-Based Learning

Well, literally this means you get to play games during your work hour! Game-based learning in education does not mean that you would sit in front of your working computer and play League of Legends for hours, NO! Games for learning basically means that there are contents that specially designed for education purpose. It will educate the learners within a storyline and interactive content. For schools, those games are often used in educational environment. With older generations, game-based learning are designed for more strategic usage, problem-solving and adaptation.