Distance Learning Software: 7 Tools for Educating Employees Remotely

Distance Learning Software: 7 Tools for Educating Employees Remotely

Zight | April 22, 2020 | 8 min read time

Article Last Updated: September 15, 2023

Distance Learning Software: 7 Tools for Educating Employees Remotely

Virtual learning has been around for many years, but it’s more popular today than ever before…and will likely stay that way.

According to Small Biz Trends:

  • Corporate elearning has grown by over 900% since 2001.
  • 90% of students believe online learning is as good or better than the classroom experience.
  • The size of the corporate elearning market is predicted to reach revenue of $165 billion.

Right now you may be looking to expand your company’s elearning programs (or finally create them). Choosing the right distance learning software depends on your goals and needs.

Will you be creating video lessons?

Building a communication network for collaboration?

Managing a library of continuing education?

In this post, we’ll show you 7 distance learning tools that can help you accomplish all of that and plenty more.

Let’s dive in.

Distance Learning Tools

Blackboard

Blackboard was designed for teachers and students to collaborate and communicate with each other about school lessons, tools, and other educational resources – but many companies have adapted it for their own use.

New employees need to be onboarded and Blackboard makes it easier to engage and assist them as they learn.

All the materials you may have for new hires are stored and accessed through one central hub, keeping everything organized and everyone on track.

Collaboration happens on any device, so employees can learn – and you can teach – anytime, from anywhere.

You will depend on Blackboard to manage a lot of important resources, which is why they ensure virtually zero downtime. Plus, you never have to upgrade it – new features are ready-to-use as soon as they’re available.

Blackboard lets you design high-quality learning materials and make it simple for employees to access them.

WeVideo

WeVideo is an online video editor for professionals who aren’t video editors. Which makes it perfect for HR managers or other department heads to create their own video lessons for a variety of learning and training options.

It’s pretty fast for video editing software – you won’t have to wait hours for big files to finish uploading. And multiple video formats allow you to post these videos on any site for high-quality viewing.

If you want to add background video or images to a presenter speaking, WeVideo has a green screen feature that lets you easily manipulate the video image to show whatever you want.

If you’re creating a voiceover video or don’t have the time or budget to shoot a lot of your own video, you don’t have to. WeVideo has a massive stock library filled with over 1 million pieces of media, including videos, images, and music.

And WeVideo works on any device – Chromebook, Windows, Mac, and mobile. You can even edit video on your Android or iOS device using native mobile apps.

Since WeVideo is cloud-based distance learning software, it also gives you unlimited storage for all your media files with nothing to download or install.

Plus, WeVideo integrates seamlessly with your existing systems – providing peace of mind without a drop in productivity.

Prezi

Prezi is the alternative to Powerpoint that’s shaking up the business world and making presentations much easier to execute.

A Harvard research study found that Prezi was “more engaging, persuasive, and effective than PowerPoint.”

Presenters in the study performed a high-stakes presentation for the audience in 3 different ways, orally, with PowerPoint, and with Prezi.

Presenters said that Prezi gave them more tools and was the easiest to use.

Audience members overwhelmingly preferred Prezi over the other two forms of presentations.

According to the survey participants:

  • Prezi was 12% more organized than PowerPoint
  • Prezi was 16% more engaging than PowerPoint
  • Prezi was 21% more persuasive than PowerPoint
  • Prezi was rated 25% more effective than PowerPoint

And the audience believed that presenters using Prezi seemed “more knowledgeable and professional.”

The reason why Prezi performed so well in this study has to do with one particular feature that PowerPoint simply doesn’t have:

Zooming user interface, or ZUI.

Instead of static slides delivered in a linear order – like In PowerPoint – Prezi lets presenters “zoom in” on specific details of their presentation and then “zoom out” to show the full picture. You no longer have to hunt through slides to find the content you’re looking for – you’re free to navigate anywhere in the presentation.

You can create beautiful charts and graphs in Prezi, and after revealing the data, you can zoom in to reveal the stories behind the data with supporting media such as text, images, and videos.

Prezi is a powerful distance learning tool that uses a drag-and-drop editor for creating dynamic presentations that keep your employees engaged while learning.

Bridge

Bridge is a scalable solution for building engaging learning programs.

Bridge wants to help you make people the center of your business with their learning and development platform.

For example, instead of creating one-size-fits-all training, you can create role-based training that helps new hires or individuals changing roles adapt their new position and get onboarded effectively.

Often, employees aren’t inspired to learn. They may be indifferent, unmotivated, or intimidated by what they have to learn. But you know they need to learn to do their jobs. However, learning under “obligation” rarely delivers the results you’re looking for.

Bridge helps you inspire employees to see the learning and training you create as an “opportunity” for growth – with real career pay-offs.

Bridge enables more than just top-down training for employees. It also allows peer-to-peer learning that’s highly social and easily accessible – leveraging the knowledge of other employees, not just upper management.

Bridge also takes it a step beyond employee learning.

You can use Bridge to chart the learning paths of company leaders in all departments, not just the C-suite.

Sometimes you pour a lot of time and effort into training lessons but still fail to engage or educate employees. That’s why Bridge features data-driven insights that allow learners to provide feedback on the content you create or curate for them.

None of these features would matter much if employees don’t remember their training lessons, which is why Bridge includes intermittent quizzes to help employees retain and use what they learn.

And if you’re worried about creating your own content, Bridge comes with 20 pre-made, ready-to-use courses covering topics in HR, compliance, conflict management, and plenty more.

Bridge is fantastic distance learning software that more companies should consider using.

TalentLMS

TalentLMS is an award-winning learning management system (LMS) that helps companies create and manage employee training material.

TalentLMS was built for people without any technical expertise – cutting down on complexity and making it easy for you to create training videos, lesson plans, and entire courses. Everything is stored and tracked inside a central hub so you don’t have to hunt for different shared docs, random emails, or use outdated information.

Employees can access TalentLMS using any device, so learning can continue out of the office. All progress made by learners will be saved and synced so they can pick back up where they left off next time they log in.

A lot of TalentLMS is customizable so you can cater to different interests, languages, and needs. You can also white-label it with your custom domain, logo, and theme.

To help you make better decisions, TalentLMS produces visual reports about virtually everything happening inside your elearning hub. Keep stakeholders informed and ensure you’re staying on top of learner needs and your company’s objectives.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an elegant solution to a complex problem: sharing files. And it’s become one of the biggest file-sharing services in the world.

You may not need a full LMS or better presentation software.

Perhaps you only need a cost-effective solution for sharing learning tools and resources. Or, you have an LMS and training materials already, but you need a good place to park all the learning materials and your current system isn’t cutting it.

Dropbox was built for teams, employees, and managers to help them stay organized and focused.

Learning happens in a variety of ways and you may use a number of different resources to facilitate education. Dropbox lets you store traditional files, cloud content, Dropbox-specific docs, web shortcuts, and nearly any other type of data. This includes files from other services like Google Docs or Microsoft Office files.

Since Dropbox is cloud-based, everything is synced across all devices. And with Dropbox Spaces, you can see your files alongside your presentations next to your to-do lists and any other tools you use to move learning projects forward.

You can also connect other popular tools like Slack and Zoom to store and access conversations next to your other learning resources.

Dropbox is a distance learning tool that lets you organize, coordinate, and communicate everything you need with everyone who needs it.

Zight (formerly CloudApp)

Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a visual communication tool and distance learning software used by many professional educators.

Creating videos and other forms of digital, visual content for employee training is easy for anyone to start doing with Zight (formerly CloudApp).

And the reason Zight (formerly CloudApp) places so much emphasis on video creation is because it’s the best tool for learning, both from a knowledge retention and learner engagement point of view.

  • The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text
  • 65% of people are visual learners.
  • 40% of learners respond better to visuals compared to text alone.
  • visuals have been found to improve learning and retention by up to 400%.

Zight (formerly CloudApp) lets you teach the way new and existing employees prefer to learn.

Record your screen, voice, and webcam to give employees a rich learning experience.

When learners submit their work, you can give them visual feedback through screenshots or image snippets with annotations.

Instead of typing up long explanations, you can show how something is done with an easy-to-create GIF.

Zight (formerly CloudApp) also integrates with tons of apps for maximum productivity.

And this cloud-based visual communication tool is easy to learn and master. It has a straightforward user interface and allows you to start making content the moment you access it.

Discover More Reasons Why Zight (formerly CloudApp) is Essential Distance Learning Software

Zight (formerly CloudApp) has been ranked by G2 Crowd as one of the top sales enablement tools and we continue to help companies improve communication and training with one of the easiest-to-use visual content tools available.

53% of the Fortune 500 use Zight (formerly CloudApp) to quickly create and share visual content with their team, including industry leaders like Basecamp and HelpScout.

Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a distance learning tool packaged in an enterprise-grade app that’s inexpensive, simple, and effective.

Discover why Zight (formerly CloudApp) is essential distance learning software today.

Create & share screenshots, screen recordings, and GIFs with Zight