Learning Trends: How Much of This is Hype?

Occaisonally, my colleague Crystal Busch and I wind up in the same workshop session and when we do, it is always interesting to find how differently two people can view the same experience! The session Learning Challenges: Trends, Challenges and Hype (Elliott Masie) began with an overview of what is changing in learning. Some of the high points:

• Business is changing and that impacts training; in 1994 when  the term “eLearning” was coined, electronic training was mostly compliance training; now it could refer to easy, energized, etc.
• Learners are changing. They are now multi-tasking, more into curiosity-based knowledge (looking up what is of interest to them online) and looking for brief, short segments, not long courses. Also, people aren’t memorizing; Google has trained us to find out what we need to know when we need it. Learners also spend less time in their job before moving on, and so need to get up to speed faster. A related insight was that people are focused on their career--the series and ladder of jobs, not one particular job, so they look at investing in their future.
• Schools are teaching skills needed by business but business still has to fill in the gaps. Personally, this doesn't seem like that positive a trend to me; schools used to teach how to think, not job training, with the idea being that once you learned how to learn and think, you could go anywhere with it.
• The workplace has changed dramatically. More people are working virtually, but finding the person who can help and support them is increasingly difficult.
• Timing – “when” we learn – is important; some people are morning learners, others are evening learners – we often train at the wrong time
• Data – learning is not ready to use the data on training. Learning functions are still pretty much just asking learners what they “like.” (This definitely rang a bell, so much so that I wrote another blog about it here.)

Despite all the new technologies available (he mentioned AI, VR, AR, machine learning), from a learning perspective, rather than focus on the technologies we should focus on optimizing them to help with learning. He gave a great example of using AI to tag content (most people have tons of slides, documents, etc. but they are not discoverable). Another example is using AI for homework / coaching … or even employee selection and promotion.

Crystal was a tough audience for this presenter. "This session was a lot more 'hype' than content, in my opinion.  We T&D professionals bring things to life by telling stories that engage.  Masie discussed how learning is changing – but not because of the elements of learning! Look at the list above and you'll see that it isn't the essentials of how people learn that are changing. The format changes; the workplace setting; the tools. But,  “All we need to have is a new tech and it will all be better” is a FALSE statement.  I'd frame the desire to Google instead of remember an addiction, actually. While it is true that businesses are demanding that we trigger more learning/ behavior change, we have to be cautious not to get caught up in the hype. AI for instance. Yes, we can create AI tools but ... unless they are needed and work better than human-mediated services, mostly it is just cool." She also rejected some of the dicussion about how Millennials learn and work, saying, "Anyone living in 2019 is different.  It’s not JUST millennials, it is anyone living in the now."

One area where Masie, Crystal and I were on the same page was on the role of storytelling. "Storytelling is key to learning." (It's also key to selling, consulting, and many other communication-intensive areas of human existence! Just ask Tyrion Lannister.) Crystal agreed; "We should start by talking about storytelling.  What makes TED Talks great? Why do they have millions of viewers?  They are curated, short, reviewed, and tell compelling stories. The T&D profession could learn a lot from this."

Catch up with more blogs from ATD over on the PM Solutions side of the house. And check back tomorrow for more of our workshop notes. (You're welcome!)