5 Key Takeaways from Masie’s Learning Trends & Challenges
It was great to receive a curated video of Elliott Masie’s briefing on the Learning Trends and Challenges in 2017. Living down under I was fast asleep during the live stream so it’s always great when industry leaders share their insights to the rest of us on a different time zone.
Elliott took some time to consider how learning is changing in 2017.
He talked about how these days we are spoilt with content consumption. All day long we are “learning”. Even if that’s poking around on our mobile phones – we are accessing new information and connecting with others to a whole new level.
His number one takeaway request for the briefing was the knowledge that we are moving into a time where our learners are ahead of us. They want targeted, personalised, short bursts of information. They want to access expertise in a variety of different ways.
In the old days we took our workers to where classrooms, teaching and learning were. Our job now is to meet learning where it is.
My key takeaways from the session were:
1) We need to become agile and challenge our rituals. Rituals can kick in when designing programs – start with the outcomes in mind before your rituals overtake and you look at logistics and planning everything else.
2) Machine learning is a hot topic and will start to merge with Augmented Reality and much more.
3) Personalisation is still key – consider how we can hone learning to the ability of our learner, in the format, duration, sequence that fits them best.
4) eLearning has been very helpful to the world of compliance – but compliance has made eLearning a format that learners don’t love. Maybe L&D Leaders should consider more simulations and other formats for compliance.
5) Last but definitely not least! My favourite topic mentioned was curiosity. To quote Elliott, “curiosity – without it there ain’t learning!” Without curiosity, yes our learners can tick boxes and say that they showed up. But to really show up, we must engage learners and create an environment for curiosity to really build the learning muscle. Elliott thinks we must move from viewing learning as a single event towards ongoing segments which support curiosity. This could be particularly key with a global workforce and for learners who have English as a second language, and need time to take on deferred curiosity.
That point on curiosity reminded me of our model of learning transfer – often you find ineffective transfer is concentrating on Compliance, Control and Content. Our preference is to tackle learning transfer is with Curiosity, Creativity and Context. Elliott – we’re with you!
Many of these themes will be covered at the Learning 2017 conference (Florida, USA, October 22-25th). I’d love to be there but will be keeping an eye on the great curated content that comes out instead. Not only will Academy & Emmy award winner John Lithgow be at Learning 2017 talking about Storytelling, but Michelle Obama will also be taking to the stage! Elliott will be interviewing Michelle about a variety of issues including how best to create learning environments for all children of all backgrounds. With a whole host of other speakers it looks to be a great event.
Elliott ended his briefing by urging us all as Learning professionals to ensure we are subscribing ourselves personally to learning and curiosity and then start to embrace curiosity for your learning initiatives.
If our approach to learning transfer has ever peaked your curiosity, now is the time to learn more about what we could help you create for your organisation.