Bringing efficiency to business operations is not only smart, it is essential. We have been in business long enough and in enough sectors to have seen first-hand that when you free up staff from repetitive, time-consuming tasks, productivity increases. That’s why bot technology used in schools can help retrain and upskill workers.
Currently, our company develops technology used by education companies and school districts to increase student engagement with learning material. Our technology also frees up teachers to be more efficient workers. Here’s how: we have bot technology that adds customized, just-in-time tutoring to learning content like lessons on mathematics, science and language arts.
Bots as Tutors Bring Efficiency to Teaching
For educators, bot technology brings efficiency to their teaching because the bots take over portions of instructional and intervention functions. When a bot helps a student work through a problem, it gives back a little time to the teacher which in turn becomes more time for the teacher to interact directly with their students. After all, every student in the class wants her attention.
Every student in the class might need a little (or a lot) of help in learning how to solve a math problem but there is only one teacher to give the unique, customized support the student needs. Our bots, however, are always on, never tiring tutors and they will repeat and rework through a problem with a student as many times as needed. Bots are always there exactly when and where the student needs help.
Interestingly, there is a parallel lesson to be learned from how our bots are used in school to how bots can be used in the business sector for online skills development, retraining, upskilling, and lifelong learning. And, at this moment, we need a lot of retraining of adult workers.
Bots are Equally Adept in Retraining Adult Workers
We might have not recognized that the jolt of moving an entire nation of children and teenagers to online learning is the same jolt that occurred in business. Businesses weren’t wholly prepared for the workforce shift, even though we adults have our own computers and phones and we consider ourselves adept at using them. Workers, however, need training in technology, management, and working in remote teams. The problem is that we are mistakenly applying the same principles of training adults that we’ve always used when, in fact, the learning needs for workers have evolved.
A report from Citrix finds that 82 percent of employees and 62 percent of human resource directors believe workers will need to reskill or upskill at least once a year to remain competitive. The risk of not retraining our workers is significant. Today’s employees are more likely than ever to change jobs when they feel unfulfilled or overwhelmed. The American Psychological Association reports that “More than two in five intend to change jobs, up from one in three in 2019.”
There’s another factor at play here, and that is the typical adult’s short attention span. Herein is the reason why techniques used to tutor young children are so effective for adult learners. It’s also the reason why micro-credentialing and badging have gained in popularity. We adults are simply unable to be patient and sit through the same slow-paced, rigid training programs we’ve seen for years and years.
We can use the example of bots in K-12 education to apply to professional training and upskilling. Bots are excellent tutors in education and they are equally adept at making workplace skills training more engaging and effective. Bots enrich content with interactivity and on-demand tutoring. Bots make learning more personalized not only by giving the learner endless opportunities to work through problems but by also giving the learner control over pacing.
Just Like K-12 Students, Adult Learners Have Varied Learning Styles
Asynchronous, self-paced learning is enhanced by integrating bot technology in the exact same way that our Knomadix bots are embedded as tutors in K-12 curricula. You see, we already recognize that children have different learning styles and there are countless amazing examples of schools and curriculum that allow this kind of learning to take place. But, to this point, we haven’t really applied this principle to professional settings. That needs to change.
If we apply what we know works for K-12 students to business training, we suspect satisfaction would increase dramatically. Workers would find mandatory training to be more enjoyable and engaging and thus be more likely to retain the information they are supposed to learn. From an economic standpoint, when skills and competencies improve, businesses are more efficient and workers are more satisfied with their jobs, which means they are more likely to stay at the company.
And just like in schools, engaged satisfied workers (or students), help the entire system run more effectively – working hand-in-hand with bot technology.
