What do popular shows like Flea Market Flip, Overhaulin and Property Brothers have in common? They take out-of-date items, homes or cars and make them new and relevant again, sometimes changing them from their original intended purpose altogether.

What does this have to do with training? Good question. Take a look in your LMS. The content there is probably outdated, ugly, far too long and wordy, and the epitome of the dreaded “death by boring slide after slide after slide.”

Transforming Legacy Training

What do you do with all of that legacy training? You have three options:

1. Throw it away and start over. But what are you going to start over with? Using the same old tool with new content is probably not a good idea.
2. Hire a firm to deliver brand new, highly polished e-learning. But budget, along with fiduciary responsibility, might bring that solution to a grinding halt – especially if you have thousands of hours of training to recreate.
3. Take the existing content, apply new technology and transform the existing courses into new courses that meet the demands of the modern learner. Think of this solution as a revitalization.

The third solution might be the best option of the three, but first, you need to understand the nuances and needs of modern learners.

Here are some of the challenges organizations face in meeting the demands of the modern learner:

They’re untethered. People don’t just work from a desk or office anymore. They’re literally untethered. Employers are finding ways to accommodate those different lifestyles, but they’re finding it difficult to reach them consistently and to develop them. In 2014, Bersin by Deloitte predicted that by the end of 2015, as much as 37 percent of the global workforce would be mobile, with 30 percent of all full-time employees doing their work somewhere other than their employer’s location. Twenty percent of today’s workforce is made up of temps, contractors and freelancers. Because this market is growing, today, those numbers are likely higher. (To prove my point, I am writing this article at a park during my daughter’s lacrosse practice. How’s that for a real life example of untethered!)

They’re empowered. Unfortunately, this means that many people feel that they’re not getting the training they need from their employers and have to find it on their own. According to Bersin by Deloitte, only 38 percent of workers say they have opportunities for learning and growth at their workplace, and 62 percent of IT professionals say they have paid for additional training out of their own pockets.

They demand on-demand. We live in an on-demand world, where we want immediate access. It has to be fast and give us the information we’re searching for quickly, or it’s abandoned for another option. Think about it: How many times have you been involved in a conversation, and a topic or question comes up with an unknown answer? What happens? The phone comes out, and you look it up. That’s on-demand learning in action!

They want mobile-friendly content. The “on-demand demand” is enough reason for mobile-friendly content, but there are so many other reasons. More and more companies are initiating bring your own device (BYOD) policies, and the tens of thousands of millennials entering the workforce who are used to doing most of their work on tablets and phones actually expect it. Also, with more and more untethered employees, it’s a necessity.

Meeting the Needs of the Modern Learner

With the invention of the smartphone, the adult’s short-term memory has shortened, and so has our attention span, with a recent much-debated report suggesting that humans now have shorter attention spans than the proverbial forgetful goldfish. With all of these trends working against us, it’s no wonder we need to make a change to those old courses.

If the content is still good and the facts have remained the same, option three is the best: Find and invest in a modern, cloud-based authoring tool with which your team can easily collaborate, regardless of where they are. Make sure its output is not only in responsive HTML5 but also adaptive for truly mobile-friendly courses. Courses that can be shortened should be developed into five- to 12-minute microlearning courses. Make your videos no longer than four minutes long. Add interactivity and vivid background images to keep learners’ attention. Making these changes to your legacy training will give it new life and meet the needs of the modern learner. You’ll see more completions, higher retention and better assessment scores. Good luck!