Improve Customer Training Experiences with Learning Paths

Organizations are always looking for ways to improve the customer training experience. Once you’ve reached a critical mass of courses, often a next step is to group them in different ways. This can make it easier for users to find related courses on the same topic, and for admins to create a set of courses for a particular user group.

Skilljar admins are able to do this by creating Learning Paths to help guide users through their training experience. A Learning Path is typically a collection of related courses in your training catalog. You can use this functionality to easily show users which courses are part of the same training bundle, topic, level of knowledge, and more.

How Can You Use Learning Paths?

Here are some of the questions Skilljar customers consider when creating Learning Paths:

• Who is taking your courses? (Customer personas)
• What are the educational takeaways for each persona’s training experience?
• Can a path be created based on job title, job function, knowledge level?
• Are you offering training to the general public, perhaps leading to certification in your area of expertise?
• Is your training for onboarding purposes, to ensure new customers understand how to use your product?
• Do you offer training to explain your products to different users or new product offerings to existing users?
• What would you like customers to accomplish by completing the training?
• What information do they need to know to achieve a training milestone or certification?
• Does the order in which courses are completed make a difference? (i.e. Take Course A before Course B)

The answers could help you divide your overall course library into different Learning Paths.

How Do Learning Paths Improve the Training Experience for Customers?

Suppose you sell hand tools and your educational content offers guidance on how to use them. Learning Paths could be used to set up a training module each for wrenches, hammers, and pliers. Later on, when you introduce new tools like a power drill, you can add a path for these as well. Each Learning Path will offer a set of courses specific to that tool.

Learning Paths work the exact same way for your software tools! Use them to make it easy for users to understand and navigate course content.

• Learners can enroll in a path made up of multiple courses. As they complete one course, they will be prompted to automatically enroll in the next course in the path, without signing in again.
• Expandable views and progress bars make it easy for a user to see where they are along the path, what’s ahead, and get more information on upcoming lessons.
• “Resume” buttons allow Learners to quickly pick up the path where they left off in between learning sessions.

How Do Learning Paths Improve the Training Experience for Adminstrators?

Learning Paths make it easier for training professionals to increase course engagement leading to higher course/path completion rates by:

• Creating targeted Learning Paths using a variety of layouts to better meet the needs of different learners
• Reengaging learners through automated emails triggering an action for learners who have not completed courses in their paths
  

How Are Skilljar Customers Using Learning Paths?

Skilljar customer Solver uses Learning Paths to help focus their customers who prefer a “breadcrumb through the forest” approach to help them find what they’re looking for when they may not even understand this for themselves.

Related: How to Structure Your Course Catalog in Your Customer Education Platform

For Skilljar users like Zendesk, training is offered for customers and partners, as well as employees.  One use case for Learning Paths for Customer Admins is to prepare learners to advance toward earning a Zendesk certification.

Related: Getting Started With Certification: How Zendesk is Creating Value for its Customers, Partners and Employees

Skilljar customer Symphony Talent (formerly known as SmashFly) is developing more tailored, role-based Learning Paths, as well as on-demand and blended training content. They use Learning Paths to not only train customers on its product, but also the industry at large about the recruitment marketing landscape.

Learners are more likely to complete training that’s targeted and relevant to their specific product use. Learning Paths help lead them to the content that’s most appropriate for them, speeding up adoption time and creating eager customer advocates and successful training professionals.

Learn everything you need to know about creating and using Learning Paths in this detailed guide.

Are you a Skilljar customer using Learning Paths in an innovative way? Share your story with us by emailing stories@Skilljar.com.