Review of the OU 'Trends in Learning' Report 2018

Rachel Burnham writes: Whilst at the CIPD L&D Show 2018 on Wednesday, I picked up a copy of the Open University’s ‘Trends in Learning Report’ for this year.  This annual report was launched at the show that day and is based on research from the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology, which gives it credibility and a sound basis.   Today I have been reading through the report and reflecting on its contents and the topics it highlights – I think it is well worth a read - here is a link to download a copy.  You might also be interested in this 12 min podcast from Mike Shaw,part of the CIPD Blogsquad for the event, on the report.

The report is concise and well produced, making it very easy to read.  It focuses on five key topics:

·       Spaced learning

·       Post-truth learning

·       Immersive learning

·       Learner-led analytics

·       Humanistic knowledge building communities

Each section explores one of these topics, includes an example/perspective from an L&D practitioner, plus some links to some further resources related to the topic and some practical and well-focused tips for L&D.  This makes the report very accessible, relevant and useful.   All this and only 15 pages long!

Spaced Learning

The first topic explored is the well-researched finding that people learn better through a series of learning sessions with gaps in-between them, rather than a long intense one-off exposure to learning content.   This approach can be used both for gaining knowledge and developing skills.

This is often a factor in the effectiveness of blended learning programmes or in shorter-bite-sized learning programmes.  

I think this is a really valuable approach for developing knowledge, however, I would first caution that it is worth questioning whether we really need employees to learn such knowledge at all.  For some aspects of work it is essential for employees to have key pieces of knowledge embedded, but there are lots of aspects of work where a more effective approach is for employees to simply know where to easily access the information as and when they need it.  We need to be able to distinguish which knowledge is which and therefore which is the most effective approach to take to enable people to do their jobs well.  A great resource for thinking this through is Cathy Moore’s ‘Ask the flowchart’, which I am constantly recommending to people.

If knowledge or skills need to be built, then let’s invest in spaced learning.  If not, let’s use a resources-led approach.

If you would like to find out more about Spaced Learning and also how it can be used alongside other well-researched approaches such as 'retrieval practice’ – I recommend listening to ‘The Learning Scientists’ Podcast’.  This series of short podcasts provides an excellent introduction to these and other techniques, with examples of both use of these techniques and the research upon which they are based.  

Post-truth Learning

For me this was the most intriguing of the topics identified and is about the need that we all have to be able to distinguish credible, accurate and current information, theories, models, from those that are ‘fake’ or otherwise unreliable.  It also links to the move to an evidence-based practice approach. 

This need to distinguish helpful information is becoming increasing challenging with the sheer abundance of information available to us and the ease of access directly to it ourselves – now we need to act as our own ‘gate-keepers’ and ‘quality-assessors’.  This is something that is a key part of the work I do around curation, whether curation for myself, supporting others in developing their personal curation approaches and when curating for others, perhaps as part of the design of a programme.

One of the conference sessions by Martin Couzins focused on ‘How to curate learning for performance support’ – here is a Wakelet with the tweets from this session – and in the session participants were encouraged to have a go at selecting which resources they would use in a particular context.  This process of ‘filtering’ or the ‘sense’ part of Harold Jarche’s ‘Seek, Sense, Share’ model, includes the need to careful sift material to pick out what is valuable.

The need for us to develop our skills in doing this and to support the managers and other employees we work with in doing this was also something brought out in the Good Practice report ‘Google It’ from 2016, which identified that ‘managers will benefit from guidance about how to evaluate the content they find’ when using search engine’s such as Google.

I am particular impressed with one of the resources referred to in this section, which is a E-book guide to evaluating information on social media – do take a look at this.

Immersive Learning

The third topic identified is something that I have been learning about over the last 18 months, along with my collaborator Niall Gavin @niallgavinuk, by exploring the fast developing fields of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) and how they can be used effectively to aid learning.  You can find out about our learning journey through these links to blogs and resources lists.

The practitioner comments here are clear about the need for us to build our awareness of the potential for this kind of approach before jumping in. I particularly rated the tips of L&D in this section and especially the final one ‘Start small, test it, learn, refine and build’.

Learner-led Analytics

We have been hearing a lot about how we need to be making more use of the data available through our use of technology to support learning and in particular of data analytics for a few years.  During the Show, I attended an excellent session on the exhibition floor presented by Ben Betts @bbetts of HT2 Labs about how data analytics can be used to assess the impact of learning programmes – he presented two very interesting case studies from HT2 Labs work with clients.   Here is my Sketchnote of this session:

And the Open University has itself shared in previous L&D Shows its experience of using data analytics in 2016 talking about ‘the virtuous circle of learning design and learning analytics’ - here is a link to my Sketchnote from this session.

However, the report focuses on the slightly different topic of how analytical information can aid learners be more effective learners and how learning can become more targeted and personalized.   Again, there is some great guidance in the tips about the need to be ‘cynically curious’ when finding out more about this topic.

Humanistic knowledge building communities

I think this is about building social and collaborative learning communities – this is the only place in the report, where I felt that there was a use of unnecessary jargon.    This section explores how technology can be used to support these communities and links to ideas of communities of practice and working out loud (WOL).  The practitioner input in this section is from Mike Collins @Community_Mike, well known for his interest and experience in developing and supporting online communities.  He includes some helpful tips about what is involved in doing this.  

I think this report is a great introduction to these topics and the addition of further resources and the tips gives this report additional practical value.   I encourage you to get hold of a copy and make use of it. 

Rachel Burnham

29/4/18

Burnham L & D works with individuals and organisations to help them learn and work more effectively.  As part of this I help L&D professionals to be even more effective through updating their skills and know-how.  I have a particular interest in curation and the use of digital technologies in learning.  I frequently Sketchnote at events and offer workshops in Sketchnoting.  

Sketchnotes from CIPD L&D Show 2018

Sketchnotes from CIPD L&D Show 2018

Rachel Burnham writes: Yesterday I visited the Exhibition for this year’s CIPD L&D Show at Olympia in London.  I had some great conversations with people that I know from Twitter, with exhibitors and with people I just got chatting to – Sketchnoting is a great icebreaker!   And it was particularly lovely to get to meet some ‘readers’ of my Sketchnotes, who I hadn’t met before - many thanks to you for introducing yourselves. 

I participated in a number of the free sessions taking place on the exhibition floor.  I had made a careful selection to avoid straight-forward sales pitches and was delighted with my picks there was something interesting, thought-provoking and worthwhile in each of them.   Here are my Sketchnotes from those sessions:

Rachel Burnham

26/4/18

Burnham L & D works with individuals and organisations to help them learn and work more effectively.  As part of this I help L&D professionals to be even more effective through updating their skills and know-how.  I have a particular interest in curation and the use of digital technologies in learning.  I frequently Sketchnote at events and offer workshops in Sketchnoting.  

Complete Collection of My Sketchnotes from the CIPD L&D Show 2017

Rachel Burnham writes: I have been fortunate to spend the last two days at the CIPD L&D Show as a member of the BlogSquad.  This is the team of volunteers who report on the conference via social media through Twitter, blogs and video tools (eg Periscope and SnapChat).  During the event my preferred medium is to Sketchnote, which I then photograph and tweet out on the hashtag for the event #cipdldshow, though I also produced a short video, using SnapChat, to capture a flavour of the second day and this is now available on YouTube.  

The conference is fast paced with up to four sessions a day and a number of different options for each of these sessions – all relevant to today’s L&D professionals.  Some sessions such as the ones on webinars and creating your own videos using your mobile phone, which I report on below, were highly practical tips sharing sessions.  Other sessions were more about giving the big picture and sharing stimulating ideas - an excellent example was Dr Liz Mellon’s session on ‘Creating Agile Workforces’.  Whilst others focused on sharing practical experience from organisations - great examples of this were Sarah Lindsell, from PwC, drawing on her experience of creating a ‘Future-Fit L&D Strategy’ and also both speakers in the session on ‘Upskilling your managers to have Effective Coaching Conversations’.    

In addition, there was also the exhibition hall full of stands and lots of free short sessions to attend.   For a flavour of this why not take a look at these two short videos, also produced on SnapChat, by my colleague Mike Shaw – Day 1 and Day 2.   I participated in a session about the launch of the new BSI standards for L&D PD76006 and you will find my Sketchnote about this below.

At this stage, my head is still reeling with the amount of information and ideas bouncing around.  I know it will take me some time to sort through and make some sense out of this.  I will be blogging on my learning and reflections from the Show over the coming days and weeks. 

In the meantime, here are all nine of the Sketchnotes I created live at the Show.

Rachel Burnham



12/5/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Getting off the Skills Merry-Go-Round

 Rachel Burnham writes: The overwhelming key message, from the CIPD’s new report on skills in the UK, is the need for us to get off the ‘skills merry-go-round’ of reports and enquiries into the poor state of the UK’s workforce skills, followed by re-organisation of the various bodies involved, development of ‘here today - gone tomorrow’ policies and initiatives, gradual abandonment of said policies, only for this to be followed in a couple of years by a fresh round hand-wringing and more reports and enquiries, which start a new cycle of poorly thought through re-organisation and policy development.  

The report argues that ‘Bringing stability to the system is paramount. The employer response is almost bound to be sub-optimal given the in-coherence of the policy development process.’   This is pretty strong stuff, coming from the CIPD and gives a sense of just what a mess the whole national skills policy is in.

The report touches on the almost constant state of change in national skills policy and institutional frameworks over the past 30 years – over that time the report reminds us that we have had over 65 Secretaries of State and 11 changes of departmental responsibility.   So, if you feel your head is spinning and can’t quite think who has responsibility for what when you think about recent national skills initiatives, you are not alone!

My involvement in this field goes back over that 30 year period.  For my sins, I was part of a National Advisory Board for the Manpower Services Commission during the time when the Commission oversaw the introduction and then rapid expansion of the Youth Training Scheme (YTS).  This was introduced to provide ‘quality’ training for young people as they started working life, but with the rapid expansion, all aspirations to quality very quickly went out of the window, in the pressure to meet targets for growth – this sounds awfully familiar to the current position around apprenticeships.   I was a youth representative from the British Youth Council at that time and having previously been on a YOP (Youth Opportunities Programme) as a WEEP (Work Experience on Employer’s Premises) was deemed particularly suitable to provide advice on the new youth training scheme.  If you have been involved in any of these programmes you will know how three, four and even five letter abbreviations proliferate! 

CIPD’s new report ‘From‘inadequate’ to ‘outstanding’: Making the UK’s skills system world class’ by Ian Brinkley and Elizabeth Crowley was launched just a couple of weeks ago and is available from the CIPD website.   The report is not for the faint-hearted!   It is not an easy read, but it is all the better for that, as it attempts to honestly make sense of where we are now, why we need to tackle the skills agenda and to put forward some genuinely useful recommendations.  

It is good to see that the report focuses on skills, rather than on just the acquirement of qualifications.  The report identifies that the ‘skills’ it is focusing on are primarily communication skills, numeracy & analytical skills and digital skills, notably using computers to solve problems. It also refers to relating to customers and clients, being caring and being creative.  And the report explains in some detail why the distinction between skills and qualifications is important. Whilst I was pleased to see that the report moved beyond just looking at qualifications, which has been the traditional approach in the UK in policy discussions, I still have concerns that this is too narrow a focus in the skills considered and doesn’t consider the wider range of skills that organisations need for success.  

The report explores the evidence for how we compare internationally on skills development in the UK and also looks at the knotty problem of assessing if we have the skills needed for the requirements of jobs.   There is a long section of the report which examines sometimes conflicted evidence for whether there is under or over qualification in the UK workforce (or possibly both simultaneously).  This is the most difficult part of the report to make sense of because there is no one agreed methodology for assessing this and the different methods in use are giving different pictures.

The report sets out very detailed and thoughtful recommendations on quite a range of areas across this skills agenda from the need for stability, to a need to re-balance emphasis on university education with vocational paths for young people, to the need for quality career guidance.   I think the report is to be commended for these suggestions and the willingness to go beyond easy headlines.

I do have a hesitation.  I still feel some disconnect between the emphasis and language used when skills policy is discussed, as in this report, compared to the ongoing discussions I am involved in about L&D in organisations.   For example, although this report gives a welcome emphasis to skills development, the focus is primarily on qualifications and on ‘training’ to address this development.  So, the approaches to learning within the report, don’t seem to be picking up on current thinking about workplace learning and performance support.  The report does briefly touch on informal learning, and so I would love to explore how much this is just a difference of language or whether there are real differences in emphasis here.   At the same time, I wonder how many people involved in those discussions about modern workplace learning are also thinking about the challenges explored in this report.   It does feel at times as though two very different conversations are being held in parallel, using different language.  I would love to hear from other people on this topic, so do get in touch and let me know what you think. 

If you are interested in finding out more about the issues raised in this report and if you are participating in the CIPD’s L&D Show this week, why not go along to the presentations on the CIPD stand at 15.30 when these issues will be explored.

Rachel Burnham



8/5/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

The Future of the Professions

Rachel Burnham writes: I was very pleased to see that Daniel Susskind is speaking at the forthcoming CIPD L&D Show in May.  Do take the opportunity to hear him if you can.  I was fortunate to hear him speak last autumn at CIPD’s Annual Conference in Manchester on the impact of technology on the professions and found his session engaging and thought-provoking.  In fact, I was so impressed that I bought the book that he co-authored with his father ‘The Future of the Professions’, which I have not long finished reading.  Before this turns into something reminiscent of a razor commercial (& letting slip my age!), let tell you a bit about their ideas.

Sketchnote from Daniel Susskind's session at CIPD Annual Conference 2016

The Susskinds have been exploring what the professions are for and why we need the professions, as well as how the professions are changing, particularly with the impact of technology.  They see the professions as a way of managing access to practical expertise.   In a print-based society they argue that the privileges and responsibilities placed upon the professions made sense and balanced each other out.  But in an internet-based society, where information and knowledge is created and accessible in many different ways, this ‘grand-bargain’ is being increasingly challenged and is no longer sustainable.  They argue that many professional fields are creaking - being too costly, inaccessible to many, disempowering, under-performing and inscrutable. What a catalogue of criticisms!  Think about how many people in the world have inadequate access to good quality medical care – not just in poorer countries.  Think about how access to the law is rationed in many ways by people’s ability to pay. Consider how access to high quality education is stretched thin around the world, at a time when we know that we are going to need to keep on learning throughout the whole of our lives.  

Daniel & Richard Susskind focused their research on 8 professional fields: health, education, divinity, law, journalism, management consultancy, tax and audit, and architecture.   They explore the challenges these fields are facing, how the ‘vanguard’ are responding to these challenges and in particular how they are tapping into and making imaginative use of technology to transform their profession.   Within each profession they identify that there are different priorities in the challenges and differing ways that these are being responded to, so that patterns of change vary between the professions.

From our point of view it may seem a shame that HR and L&D weren’t also studied, but many (if not all) of these criticisms of the professions are often also aimed at our field – indeed often this is self-criticism from within the field.   And when I pondered the sorts of changes they picked out as developments in the these other professions, I could immediately begin to parallel these with changes taking place in our own field such as routinization, labour arbitrage, new specialisms, on-line self-help, personalization, online collaboration etc etc.  

These changes are already impacting on all the professions studied and the Susskinds suggest that they will lead to a substantial and continuing change to the professions, so that these professional fields may be near unrecognisable before too long. They argue that each of these professions needs to be engaging with this agenda and actively experimenting with how to make the most of the opportunities that technology offers to enable us to provide better, more accessible, more affordable services.  But also that each of the professions and wider society needs to be considering carefully what kind of future we want –  a key issue being ‘who should own and control practical expertise in a technology-based Internet society?’ (pp. 304)

I found particularly interesting two fallacies that the Susskinds picked out.  Firstly, that often professionals when introduced to these issues are quick to acknowledge that indeed these are the challenges faced and these are the sorts of changes emerging – but only for other professions not their own!  

The second is in relation to the emergence of ‘increasingly capable machines’ which is how the Susskinds describe the new ways that AI (artificial intelligence) is developing.   This is now developing immensely fast and in surprising ways, so things that only a short while ago seemed most improbable are now practical realities.  Driver-less cars being just one example.  The other fallacy they pick out, is that often we assume that machines/computers will need to tackle tasks in the way a human does and therefore dismiss the likelihood of many tasks being possible for a machine to do.   However, very many of the break-throughs in what machines can do, have come from tackling tasks in a very different way to the way that humans would do that task.   Our imagination is limiting us, from seeing just what might be possible and how fundamentally ‘increasingly capable machines’ will change the world of work and indeed the wider world.

I do recommend that you read this book.  And take the opportunity to listen to Daniel Susskind at the CIPD L&D Show or follow the session on Twitter via #cipdldshow.  There is a lot for L&D professionals to consider in the Susskinds ideas both in relation to our own professional field HR/L&D and also in relation to the professions that we may work with in the health, education, management consultancy, law and other fields.

Rachel Burnham



14 /4/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Learning Every Day – Collaborative Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: If you want to be learning every day, then one of the most effective ways in my experience is to find someone to learn alongside, a practice partner, someone to collaborate in learning with.

I have had two brilliant experiences of this recently.  Over the last three months I have been engaged in collaborative learning about how VR (Virtual Reality) can be used effectively in workplace learning, with my friend and fellow independent L&D consultant Niall Gavin (@niallgavinuk).  We both participated in a webinar on the subject of VR and that kickstarted a series of conversations, which led to us finding out more about VR and giving it a go.  As a result of our collaborative learning we put together a series of blogs, Sketchnotes and video conversations to share what we discovered under the #VRinLearning. 

In a similar way, I have also been learning practical skills of video making and particularly how to use Snapchat for this purpose, with my fellow Manchester-based Mike Shaw (@MikeShawLD).  Learning alongside, can be a great way of learning a practical skill such as video making, where there are skills & confidence to be developed both behind and in front of the camera, which can be difficult to practice on your own.

There are many benefits to collaborative learning:

·       You can pool resources – sharing your insights and helpful resources – thus accelerating the learning process.

·       Practical tips – when you get stuck, your partner can often help you practically problem-solve.  I’m not sure that I would have ever got my head around Snapchat without tips from Mike.

·       Extend your thinking – being able to share ideas and talk them through with another person can challenge and develop your thinking.  This was key in working on the VR project with Niall and seeing Mike’s completed Snapchat videos has inspired me to try out different ways of presenting information.

·       Above all encouragement & fun – learning alongside someone else is just more fun and encourages you to keep going when otherwise you might just give up.   It is great to go to an event such as CIPD’s L&D Show 10^th & 11^th May (for details) with a colleague and share the learning from this together, comparing and contrasting your learning from the event. Or follow the event via #cipdldshow

Why not give collaborative learning a go yourself?  Or share your stories of how you have done this – I would love to hear about your experiences.

Rachel Burnham



8/4/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Agile Learning - Some Further Reflections

Rachel Burnham writes: At the CIPD ‘Leaders in Learning’ event in Manchester last week, Andy Lancaster invited a group of L&D professionals to consider how we might make our learning design process more agile.  This kind of agility is about being more responsive to the needs of our organisations and the learners we work with, being quicker to develop L&D solutions and perhaps also includes an element of flexibility in what we produce and certainly in the way we produce it.  Here is a link to the Sketchnote I created at the event.

We began by exploring why there is a need for L&D to become more agile in the way we approach learning design.   This is of course related to the pace of change in organisations and in the external environment, which requires organisations to become more agile in order to survive and flourish.   I am sure I don’t need to rehearse again the impact of changes in competition, technology, legislation & regulation, plus the challenges of responding to an uncertain world in the context of global markets, austerity in government policies and Brexit. 

L&D needs to keep pace with this and be able to contribute within our organisations to both to enabling individuals to learn what they need to respond to these changes and also to help individuals and teams become more able to create this organisational agility.   Within L&D, we are often working with fewer resources to meet growing needs.  There are risks if we keep working in traditional ways, with long lead-in times to the design of L&D programmes that we will be too slow to respond to emerging needs within our organisations and/or completely miss out on meeting some needs.  There are risks both to the effectiveness of our organisation and also the credibility and future of L&D in this.

Andy shared with us 10 points to help us to move towards agile learning design.   Here are some further reflections from me on each of these points – I may have paraphrased the wording of some of these 10 points.

1.  Determine business needs as top priority and respond with urgency

This is always important in L&D.  The focus of L&D has to be on improving performance in the organisation and enabling the organisation to better meet its objectives – so I was pleased to see this coming first in this list.

When we discussed how we could overcome challenges about changing our way of working to become more agile, the group I was in identified that focusing on the real ‘pain points in the organisation’ could help to generate sufficient support, particularly from senior managers and other key stakeholders to enable us to try this different approach.   Nick Shackleton-Jones, in a session on learning design at this year’s CIPD L&D Show, talked about identifying ‘what bugs people’ ie what do employees find challenging and gets in the way of them doing their job and then finding ways to address these issues. 

2.  Think big – start small

When trying out a different approach it often helps to try out something on a small scale or using a simpler approach than perhaps you would do normally.   This reduces the risk and can make it possible to get the resources or the ‘go-ahead’ to test out an idea.   I like the idea of running lots of small scale experiments which you learn from rapidly.  This connects to the idea of ‘Working Out Loud’ and testing out ‘half-baked ideas’ publicly –  or at least within your organisation and quickly getting input from other people to refine and add to these ideas. 

Many years ago, I worked for a small organisation that was working out how to do preparatory education on leaving home with young people – a bit like doing health education, but on the subject of housing.   We worked as an action learning project and tried out lots of different approaches to this preparatory education on leaving home and how to get it integrated into youth work and schools.   We were often trying different approaches simultaneously.  As there were only two of us working in the project across the whole of England and Wales –– one of our ‘rules of thumb’ when testing out an idea was to work with people who were already ‘hot to an idea’  ie we would search out volunteers.  Once we had tried out an approach, we would then work with people who were ‘warm’ and who perhaps needed a bit more support, encouragement or even challenging to try something out.

3.  Commit to a speedy development process

This is about our attitudes, but also about making it happen.   It would be worth identifying what causes the particular hold ups in your organisation.  I also think that clearing space in the diary now to be able to start on a new project in this different way would be a good starting point.

4.  Include learners in the heart of the design

I want to ask ‘Aren’t we doing this already?’ and of course we should be, but that doesn’t mean we are.  Often we rely on input from other stakeholders and the voice of learners is overlooked.  If you want to explore this further it is worth looking at Towards Maturity’s work in this area or a recent research report from Good Practice intriguingly called ‘The Secret Learning Life of Managers’.  Both of these pieces of work go far beyond asking learners what they would like and explore how learners learn in practice and what they actually do when they are faced with a challenging task at work.   There is a lot of interest now in developing our understanding of how learners learn effectively and in particular how they use technology to do this – there is the potential to develop this understanding much further through the use of learner analytics. 

But this point, also suggests involving learners in creating their own learning solutions and resources.  And so this also links to point 6 below.

5.  Curation rather than creation

The widespread availability of digital content in many different forms – blogs, video ‘how-to’s, infographics, flowcharts & other diagrams, podcasts (audio files), written guides, sets of FAQs – means that another change in L&D is to curate content rather than needing to create all your own content.   Curation involves searching out relevant materials, selecting the most appropriate, explaining why this has been selected and making this easily available to people who will find it relevant (everything from simply recommending it in an email, through to hosting this selection of resources within a digital platform such as a Learning Management System (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Moodle or Blackboard).

Curating content and only creating content when it is specific to your organisation and not available elsewhere, can contribute to agile design of learning.

If you want to find out more about curation, I would recommend looking at the work of Martin Couzins and he can be found on Twitter @martincouzins.

6.  Create your own low cost content

The wide spread availability of smart phones and access to a range of free or low cost digital tools is making it much easier for L&D professionals to produce all sorts of materials in many different formats.  

This can also be extended to getting learners involved in creating their own content.  This could be through participation in communities of practice, perhaps an online group on the organisation’s Enterprise Social Network (something like Slack or Yammer) or thorough a LinkedIn group or less formal ‘Personal Learning Network’ such as via people connected through Twitter or some other social network.  It could be a colleague creating a useful job aid in the form of a flowchart explaining a process initially produced just for their fellow team members.  It could be a short video clip recorded on a smart phone.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Not everything needs to be produced to a Hollywood level of polish and gloss.   Something that is timely and highly relevant to your particular need can have just as much impact. 

7.  Scaffolding social collaborative discussion and learning

This is about using frameworks to provide some support and structure to help people get started in using these approaches for learning at work.  In a way it is an approach to providing a half-way house between a traditional highly-structured approach to a learning programme and a more collaborative approach in which learners have more input and direction of their own learning.   Look out for the work of Julian Stodd if you would like to find out more – he can be found on Twitter @julianstodd.

8.  Don’t be limited by resource availability

One of the potential barriers to agile learning is that we limit ourselves, because we focus on resource limitations, whether that is the availability of rooms, particular trainers or digital resources or finances.  Overcoming the latter was the focus of a session at this year’s CIPD L&D Show ‘Doing More with Less’ with Andrew Jacobs and Stella O’Neill  – here is a link to a Storify of the tweets from this session – look out for session E3.

9.  Learner access any time, anywhere … which includes digital

This is perhaps one of the most challenging areas, as it does require some technical expertise to identify the relevant digital platform for your organisation and situation.   Do take time to think this through.  Take advice.  Think not just about what will work here and now, but what would have some longevity and be sustainable for your organisation.

10.Don’t be a perfectionist – iteratively improve

As an individual this may be one of the most challenging of these tips – I know I always want to have any learning programme I’m associated with to be as good as it possibly can be.  However, that can be at a cost of all the other learning needs that go unmet and the missed opportunities.

As a parent, I have found it valuable to allow myself to not worry about being perfect – I like the concept of the ‘good enough parent’.  I have chosen where to place my priorities as a parent – home cooked food with lots of vegetables and fruit, a bed-time story every night and lots of hugs, but it does mean that the house is dustier than I would ideally like!  In a similar way, we may have to rethink our perfectionism in L&D and decide what can be let go.

These are some of my thoughts on agile learning design.  What does this prompt for you?  What can you being doing differently?

Rachel Burnham

11/7/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.