LMS Insights
Bringing Learning to Learners: Embeddable Widgets
How to use in-app training widgets to deliver learning where your learners live, breathe and work every day
Introduction
“Super” stores such as Super Target, Walmart Supercenter, Costco, etc. have become our go-to shopping destination. They’re incredibly convenient—visiting just one store to buy groceries, electronics, clothes, toys, you name it—and a major timesaver.
Some savvy LMS providers are now applying this “convenience concept” to learning through embeddable widgets. Read on to learn how they can supercharge your L&D’s effectiveness.
Destination Unknown: Why Destination Apps Cripple Training Productivity
If you read me “Bringing Learning to Learners” LMS Insights, you’ll know that far too many corporations waste thousands of dollars (even hundreds of thousands!) on unused learning content. It’s a crippling problem.
One of the reasons why unused content is still draining L&D budgets is that there are far too many “destination apps” or sites for learners to visit when trying to get training, such as:
- The LMS
- Salesforce (for sales teams)
- External partner or customer training sites
- Internal SharePoint portals or intranets
- And more
Often, training is dispersed across multiple enterprise locations and can be incredibly hard and time-consuming to find. So learners just don’t bother looking for it.
Enter the embeddable widget—aka “in-app training widgets”.
A Direct Connection: How Embeddable Widgets Seamlessly Deliver Learning
As I mentioned earlier, a few LMS providers are now using embeddable widgets to bring learning directly to the learner, instead of having them visit countless destination apps.
Think of this scenario like Costco, where you go in for wine and cheese, but also pick up a new coffee maker, a DVD, and some flowers—which are all conveniently placed along the aisle on your way to the wine section.
ExpertusONE’s embeddable widgets, for example, allow customers to put their training catalogs in places where their learners spend the most time: websites, social media sites, intranets, SharePoint, Salesforce (or other CRMs), and even emails. Better yet, they can custom-tailor the catalogs to specific learning groups.
This convenience results in higher levels of engagement and better training adoption—which leads to:
- Highly trained employees, partners, or customers
- Better overall employee/partner productivity
- Increased customer satisfaction
“In-app training widgets exist in varying degrees of sophistication. Many LMSs have an API concept where they can display calendars, courses, training history, content recommendations, promotions, and gamification in other portals. If complicated, the feature gets talked about but rarely used. Some have made this easier than others, like ExpertusONE. I would say those who have fully widgetized (automated) it would be in the top 10% of vendors.”
—John Leh, CEO & Lead Analyst, Talented Learning, LLC
Widgets at Work: Capturing Learners at “The Point of Least Resistance”
Following is an example of the time-saving power of embeddable widgets at work.
Let’s say you’re a training manager for a software company and you’re rolling out a new version. Before embeddable widgets, you’d have to send out an email or alert saying go to the LMS, login, find this new release course, register, take the course and then you’re good—you’ll know how to use the upgrade.
With in-app training widgets, you can simply embed a link to the required course in an email. So learners just see the link, click it and immediately start learning. In other words, embeddable widgets capture learners at “the point of least resistance” to training.
Here’s another example…
Maybe all of your partners are on LinkedIn. You can now just embed course links right there. The moment they log in, they see their training. No promotion is needed. No extra steps to begin.
In-app training widgets save time and eliminate the need to make people jump through hoops to learn, such as having to log in and remember multiple passwords for multiple learning destinations. They simply integrate learning with what people do and where people go on a day-to-day basis.
One Less Pain: Resolving Poor LMS Usability with Embeddable Widgets
Another major pain that embeddable widgets solve is a challenging LMS interface.
Legacy LMSs are notoriously cumbersome to use. So many employees, partners, and/or customers steer clear of them. However, with a targeted widget embedded into their platform of choice, such as Salesforce, they don’t have to learn or navigate a new system to train—or even seek it out. They just see it, click it and begin. Problem solved.
Summary
Embeddable widgets are really all about the learner and user experience. The convenience of bringing learning to learners, in a forum that they frequent and actually care about, raises training engagement, relevance and context
