Digital technologies have radically altered the ways that people capture and harness the skills, knowledge and information they need to do their jobs better. We're moving beyond the restrictions of a linear e-learning course into a continuously online world of resources and connections. Learning is more granular, less formal and more mobile than ever.
This seminar discusses the theory and presents striking examples of how next generation learning technologies are already working within the new learning paradigm to offer real benefits for your organisation.
Key learning points:
• Core factors influencing how we work today
• New ways of learning that tie in to learners' expectations: social, informal, mobile learning
• How to empower learners to benefit from the opportunities of the next generation learning environment
• New technologies that provide real impact to learners and organisations alike.
NewBase 19 April 2024 Energy News issue - 1717 by Khaled Al Awadi.pdf
Next generation learning: How new tech are changing the game
1. Learning Technologies Summer Forum
June 2014
www.brightwave.co.uk
Next generation learning:
How new technologies are
changing the game
Meg Green
Head of Production (Products)
2. • Trends that impact organisational
learning.
• What do learners want/need?
• What are the challenges for L&D
departments?
• How new innovations in
technology help bridge these
and provide real benefit for
organisations.
Today we’ll be looking at…
4. "We're seeing more and more jobs that
simply didn't exist five years ago but
were created as a result of employees
driving toward new goals and
objectives."
– Chris Hoyt, a recruiting strategist at
PepsiCo [www.fastcompany.com]
5. Empowered learners, wanting to
enhance their own knowledge…this is
the dream of Learning &
Development…
Right?
What challenge does this trend
present for L&D teams?
6. The game is always
changing
learning needs must be
focused on continual
growth
7. No one has time to learn
during their normal
working day, needs to be
easily accessible, mobile
8. These learners get bored
easily, and know how to
search for information
themselves.
But how quickly can
they find it?
And is it best practice for
your organisation?
9. • Give learners a cutting edge environment where they can
take control, find content that’s interesting to them
• Show learners not only what they should do, but what they
might want to do next
• Not only show them what to do, but ask them what they’ve
done
• See what external and internal learning is most useful and
impactful, and quickly and easily make updates
• Provide instant access, from anywhere, anytime
What if we could…
13. What if we could…
• Provide learners with a specific space to quickly get
up to speed on their new role, with a community
focus
• Harness existing knowledge from experts at all levels
of the business and use that knowledge to help train
new staff
• Motivate and engage existing employees to share
their own expertise, reducing the cost of content
creation
• Create a space to share best practice and coach
people starting in new roles within an organisation
14. Less emphasis
on ‘knowing’, more
emphasis on being able
to find the answer quickly.
Trend:
‘just in time’
learning
16. ‘I know what I need,
I can just find it
myself – I’ll just
google it’
17. • L&D as framework
owners and curators
• Introducing the coach
New opportunities
18. What if we could…
• Create a google atmosphere with
bite-sized, just in time learning, that
achieves larger business objectives
• Give learners additional focus and
attention with 1:1 coaching and
feedback, framed by role-based
objectives that encapsulate formal
and informal learning
19. • Learners are more attuned to technology
than ever before – the emerging workforce
don’t know how to cope without it
• Learners are more aware of the boundaries
and etiquette of online social interaction than
ever before
• Organisations are starting more and more to
use social tools for learning – 66% according
to the latest Towards Maturity benchmark
The good news
22. 1. promote meaningful connections between learners,
even across distance
2. provide instant access to carefully curated resources at
time of need
3. capture learning from individuals for future use by
organisations or learners themselves
4. enable companies to swiftly on-board their ever-
changing staff
5. provide an org-led framework to qualify informal
learning
6. motivate learners to use their own time to better their
opportunities in your organisations
So how can we…?
23. How can a total
learning system take us
a step away from the
traditional LMS and…
• Improve engagement
• Reduce cost
• Increase quality productivity
24.
25. Give learners control of their own learning:
access to what they need to do, plus what
they may want to do
Core training plus additional resources
26. Enable learners to draw their own external,
informal learning into the system
29. Enable benchmarking of formal and
informal learning against tasks and
learning objectives
30. Enable coaching and motivation for
learners, from their peers and line
managers
31. Enable this to happen anytime,
anywhere. Quickly, easily.
32. Organisations can benefit from the
work these employees are ALREADY
putting in, but currently can’t be
harnessed by the organisation.
• Other learners benefit
• Organisations get to keep the
learning for future onboarding
• Orgs get the data to show the work
patterns and informal learning
activity of motivated/engaged
employees
Hi thanks for coming today – my name is Meg Green, I’m Head of Production at Brightwave for our Products division, which is focused on learning systems in particular. Today we’re talking about next generation learning, and particularly how technology is changing the game for how we learn at work – and how we think about learning systems.
We know now more than ever that knowledge is our jobs, and that it is in the best interest of companies to hire knowledge workers in key roles - as these are the people who are going to innovate for an organisation, bring them into new ideas and ways of working. This is especially true for companies who thrive on innovation as a key driver of their business strategy.
Companies seek employees who are constantly challenged, as they will stretch the boundaries not only for themselves, but the company as a whole.
Oftentimes, knowledge workers can even impact and inform strategic role decisions within an organisation, especially those focused on innovation.
The static course is not an option here. These learners expect more, and just like the encycloepedia is unable to cope with changing and refining knowledge – versus wikipedia, the course can only form one small part of this continuous learning chain.
So the question becomes: how do we create learning environments that respond to this consistent pressure to be doing ‘the next thing’ without incurring additional cost?
Additionally, L&D departments can’t always guess what learning is important as these can so quickly change, they must react to the changing needs – therefore learning objectives and paths need to be fluid and changeable without creating an unmanageable administration cost and overhead.
Everyone knows that the introduction of mobile devices, email on phones, new work from home policies and flexible working plans have changed the game for when and how we learn for work. They’ve created a blurred line where any time is fair game for work, and this has only further squeezed the pressure to continue to do learning activities outside of the normal working day.
Knowledge workers think they know what they need to know, and are used to using all sorts of technologies to discover what they want to know. But can they find it quickly? And can they locate what information might already exist within the organisation?
They are used to using social systems that companies have spent million of pounds on, and are very unforgiving if technology doesn’t work simply, the first time.
These challenges present a lot of questions for any learning system. When thinking of what to put into practice it’s important to try and meet these challenges head on. So…what if we could…
It is recognised that more and more people have multiple careers in one lifetime. Sometimes these have a link, but oftentimes not. Fewer people are joining a company out of University and staying until retirement
Organisations have people leaving at all levels of the business
And, building on from the previous point, the most disruptive and innovative are often the most short-lived, and most valuable. Harnessing their knowledge is vital.
Incoming workers are not just new recruits, they are of all levels and areas, which creates very broad and complex on-boarding requirement.
New workers have to learn quickly, and employers can benefit from how quickly they adapt to new roles, especially within the same organisation
Many of these workers will have vast knowledge to share, even on day 1, but also will need best practice advice/coaching from those already existing in those roles
Everyone has more to do, faster. There’s a myriad of self-help books focused on sorting, prioritising work because we can’t reasonably sustain and filter without tools to help us. and recognising a general sense of ‘too much’.
Prevalence of technology, shazam, google culture, morphs the smartest person into the person who can find the answer most quickly.
Here’s the challenge:
What does individual googling miss out on?
Framing learning within larger organisational objectives and best practice
Finding answers quickly.
The coach – mentoring and motivating learners to align but also contribute to the answers
Recognising that expertise exists within
What is the role of L&D in this type of learning? It’s still important to focus this learning towards key objectives and approved business frameworks, but how can this be done while still enabling the learner to find their own path?
How much time do people waste looking for what they need? How can organisations ensure that they still have a way of ‘approving’ content and ways of working? And ensuring this aligns to business goals
In most organisations, the knowledge exists in individuals – how can this be harnessed?
It seems that the best possible combination would be to enable the learner to use skills they already are good at – searching and finding, taking control of their learning, but giving them a framework for progression and focus, as well as ensuring they have quick and easy access to the best resources already out there.
L&D teams can provide that competency and goal-based framework to ensure that people are not only focused, but rewarded for their work and efforts.
Ideally also we would have the opportunity for guidance – just as there’s always a need for framework and direction, there’s also a need for coaching and teachers, to refine knowledge, help put it into practice, all around the individual’s approach and still being led by how they prefer to learn.
So if we think back on the main trends and what learners want and the challenges this provides for L&D teams, we need to also consider the good news factor, and that’s technology.
It’s pervasive, easy to use, and with every year is more adopted by all sizes of organisation.
If we look back on the latest Towards Maturity benchmark, The use of social learning is also on the increase with 63% of organisations allowing access to external social media sites (up from 58% last year). 68% of those organisations are using social learning to build networks inside the organisations; 55% to support learning generation and sharing of user generated content; 49% to support personal professional development.
New technologies in the learning space have emerged to help bridge this gap between how we learn at home and how we learn at work.
If you’re interested in learning more about these in particular, have a look on our website as we have some great blogs on the subject.
If we mix together the advances in technology and the attitude of knowledge workers and the competitive nature of learning, L&D departments have a great opportunity to maximise these and create a real impact.
…
And this leads to the next questions, about how we choose and utilise a total learning system, ensuring it can touch on all the above, and continue to adapt as we as organisations and learners alike adapt.
At Brightwave, we’ve been thinking about this a lot
What are some of the features which can be harnessed and utilised to solve these questions and make the most of the opportunities presented in learning today?
a little over a year ago we introduced tessello, our total learning system, to help solve some of the challenges that we felt learning and development is facing today. And I wanted to show how we’ve put these questions and challenges into features that may help change or better harness how we learn at work, and how we promote learning as organisations.
Learning must keep knowledge workers engaged. Giving them access to what the organisation thinks they need to know, but a wealth of additional curated resources to keep them interested, resources that are continually changing and updating.
Administrators can define the main tiles, providing a framework for learning and helping staff focus on key objectives and competencies.
Learners can quickly see what’s new , and changed.
Key areas are defined for easy usage and reduced clicks, but still providing opportunity for learners to decide what they want to do.
How often does your learning system ask you: what have you done today?
A next generation system should flip these questions back onto the learner, and accept that they may know and have learned things that didn’t stem from the system itself. The system should help capture these, at the point of need.
And should also let the learner capture additional details for reflection and consideration. Doing something is not the only step, but what was learned from the activity?
People love to share online, and we’ve recognised that there is value and efficiency in learners talking directly to eachother, both to strengthen/coach on learning experiences, but also to start recognising experts that exist within the organisation.
Learners can instantly shape the learning for their peers, and point out external and informal learning that is not to be missed – creating a more vibrant and self-sustained system.
As we mentioned, it’s vital that a learning system doesn’t just attempt to replace google, or facebook/linkedIn.
This is our opportunity to create focus and learning objectives – but what we’re also doing is enabling people to draw both formal and informal learning against these objectives, at their own pace, using a myriad of sources and opportunities – opportunities they’re probably already taking, but you may not be capturing.
And we should enable coaching 1:1 within the system, so tasks and learning can be continuously refined and then best practice shared. Points can provide additional motivation, and line managers can engage properly with the full learning spectrum of their direct reports.
If you want to talk more about how we’re doing this at Brightwave, come over and see us on our stand