The chances are you are offering a good variety of trainings to your learners. There are trainings that are foundational for their role and are offered in a formalised and standardised manner, and others that provide unexpected learning opportunities in informal settings. To help you track and organise your trainings better, and gain an insight into their effectiveness, you can set up the training type feature.

As an admin, you can distinguish formal trainings from informal ones. This categorisation is inspired by the 70:20:10 learning model, which is tool for designing engaging trainings that help not only with achieving learning outcomes but also with increasing employee satisfaction and retention. It shows that most of the learning is actually related to hands-on work experience and job-related activities, as opposed to formal instruction methods.

Formal trainings refer to a top-down manner of education, in which learning takes place in formalised settings with a planned training path and pre-defined outcomes. Think, for instance, of any onboarding content, which features the CEO introducing the learner to the values of the company. In contrast, informal trainings such as impromptu coffee breaks with colleagues or self-directed browsing time for inspiration can offer an organic yet powerful way of soaking up knowledge.
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Not sure how to label your content? Use this cheat sheet:

To be able to categorise trainings as formal or informal, first you need to enable the feature.

Step 1. Navigate to Settings, where you can search for the Training type feature.

Step 2. Check the 'Enabled' box, which will allow the feature to be displayed in Control.

Step 3. Select 'Formal' or 'Informal' as a default type for activities.

This means that your selected training type will apply to all the activities in your Growth platform. If you select 'None', activities are not going be categorised as either formal or informal automatically.

Step 4. Before you can save your changes, you will be prompted to confirm that you want the selected default training type to apply to all the activities in your platform. If you select 'No', already existing activities will not be overwritten by these changes, only new ones that you create.

Step 5. Save your changes

You have the possibility to categories activities individually as either formal or informal in the activitiy settings.

Step 6. Navigate to Content > Activities > find the right activity > Activity settings

Step 7. Find the Training time settings.

Step 8. Adjust the setting by clicking on the little pen icon that appears on hover.

Step 9. Publish your changes.

Formal and informal training types are not to be confused with Core vs. optional or Mandatory content. Categorising activities as formal or informal is meant to be an tracking and benchmarking tool for admins, managers or trainers, with no direct relevance to learners.

On the other hand, the core/optional setting enables certain content to be made mandatory or optional for learners in their learning journey, and also offers a tool for manager reporting. Making certain activities Mandatory means adding it to learners To-do list.

While these are separate settings, you can combine them to further differentiate content and monitor progress.