Collection of Sketchnotes from World of Learning Summit 30 & 31 January 2024

Rachel Burnham writes: I spent a very interesting two days at this year’s World of Learning Summit, which was held in January 2024, at Olympia, London. I was fortunate to be able to attend the conference to Sketchnote a wide range of sessions, but of course also enjoyed meeting and speaking with people in between sessions, over lunch and whilst wandering around the exhibition. 

The sessions I participated in were on a real mix of topics – AI and its importance for L&D, skills-based organisations, learning in the flow of work, neurodiversity, reverse mentoring, the advantages of curiosity and developing our digital skills as L&D professionals. 

The sessions that were most effective from my perspective dug deeper – for example Kerry Richardson from Thames Water presented an excellent case study (see Sketchnote later in post), which was about ‘Learning in the flow of work’ as advertised. But she also set out clearly how to run an effective pilot, including focusing the intervention clearly on a business need – in this case reducing complaints with clear success criteria and showed how to cost the results generated from the pilot. There was so much useful stuff in this session – not necessarily new, but practices that are important and often don’t get done. 

Some of the less effective sessions attempted to cover far too much material and so skimmed over the surface. I think it is easier to get more depth if sessions involve just a single presenter or case study or if sessions are slightly longer and I would encourage conference organisers to take this on board. 

 Here are all 8 of the Sketchnotes that I created live over the two days. 

The Opening Address on AI 

Not surprisingly, the first two inputs at this year's conference were on AI and how L&D can be making use of this. My favourite bit was the Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly stages that Trish Uhl outlined that we need to go through in our learning about how to get the most out of AI.

The Skills-Based Organisation 

This is from a session by Asi De Gani and Dani Saadu, who each talked about their organisations' approach to taking a skills based approach to Learning & Development. People I talked to about this session had very mixed responses - some feeling that this was bread and butter L&D and wondering how it was different from a competence based approach, whereas others found it incredibly helpful for the journey that their own organisation was in the midst of. 

Have a look and see what you think. 

A practical look at learning in the flow of work 

Great session from Kerry Richardson, Thames Water detailing how they ran a pilot to add a learning in the flow of work element to the mix using 'Clever Nelly' to pose questions. So many super things about this approach - it taps into both 'retrieval practice' and 'spaced repetition', they focused on addressing a key business needs - reducing complaints - and identified success criteria ie what success would look like, they carried out a pilot and compared with a control group, and costed the results sharing their workings out. Kudos to Kerry and her colleagues for such a rich case study. 

Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world 

I am so excited to be able to share my Sketchnote with you from the session led by Leena Haque and Sean Gilroy from the BBC, titled 'Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world'. Leena described her experiences of autism and of the challenges of school and finding her way into the world of work - she used pictures and video clips to vividly communicate her story. Of course as a Sketchnoter, my favourite bit was when she told us about how she drew pictures at school to process her learning! This is something we can all do and benefit from. 

Sean also explained about the initiatives the network they co-lead had taken at the BBC to address the needs neurodiverse people had identified - training to increase awareness, changes to the built environment and to technology to make it more accessible and to build community. 

I know a lot of people in the session were very moved by this presentation. 

L&D skills for the digital world 

Here's my Sketchnote from Jo Cook 's session 'L&D Skills for the Digital Word' which was getting us thinking a bout the Digital skills we need now and how to future proof are skill sets. 

The curious advantage 

Great conversation about curiosity and how it benefits organisations and how to nurture it. So good to hear Peter Ashcroft, Garrick Jones and Tim Munden discussing this. 

The evolution of reverse mentoring 

This session was co-delivered by Emily Cosgreve from 'The Conversation Space' and Mark Taylor from RSM UK. They shared their experience of using reverse mentoring to stimulate intergenerational conversations at work and they included lots of helpful detail about the way they did this. 

I hope you have found it useful to see summaries of the sessions in Sketchnote format. I am always interested to hear what people think of them. 

If you are interested in learning to Sketchnote yourself or have colleagues who would find this of interest do get in touch – my next open workshop is online from 1pm on 29th February. Or get in touch if you would like to commission me to create a Sketchnote for your organisation. 

Rachel Burnham 

2 February 2024

 

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

Skills Development and Deliberate Practice

Rachel Burnham writes: One of the things that has been concerning me for a while in L&D, is that we don’t seem to be paying sufficent attention to skills development. 

In recent years there has been a lot of focus on how we approach the knowledge that people need to be effective in their jobs and a welcome move to making much more use of performance support or resources to address people’s needs and reduce the need for knowledge learning.  There has also been work done on behaviour change through a focus on experience design, habit development and learning transfer.  I made this point in my recent blog ‘5 Ways we could change how we think aboutL&D’. But I think we also need look more deeply at skills development as a profession.

What do we mean by the term ‘skills’?  Here are a couple of definitions of skills that I think are particularly helpful:

‘the ability to do something well, expertise’

Oxford Dictionary

‘the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or peformance’

Merriam-Webster

Both bring out how important skills are to effective performance, which is what we need to be focusing on in L&D.  Skills take many forms: specific skills for specific jobs – taking blood in nursing, operating precision equipment in engineering, managing conflict amongst neighbours in social housing, advising a client on the best pension options for them, designing the graphics and layout for a textbook; and skills that have more general relevance such as problem-solving, project planning, providing feedback, managing our time, communicating effectively with an upset individual. Skills can be primarily physical skills, interpersonal skills, cognitive skills or combinations of these. Some skills are relatively simple and straightforward, others hugely complex and ones which need to be used in very many variable situations and ways to be fully effective.  Many skills take a long time to develop and hone.  Developing expertise is in part about not only having the skills, but being able to judge when and how to apply them in very different situations.  I think skills are really important to effective workplace performance.

So, I have found myself wondering whether we are giving skills development the attention it deserves, so that we can support this as well as possible within our organisations and the clients we work with.  I think some of the workplace qualifications in wide use don’t sufficiently focus on skills development, over-emphasising knowledge.  Some of the new thinking, around approaches to improving performance in the workplace, provide a needed corrective to traditional education and ‘content-dumping’ approaches, with increased emphasis on performance support or the use of resources and how we engage employees to care for the things that matter to the organisation.  But that still raises questions for me about how best to support employees in developing skills.

I think we could do better.

I had the chance to participate in the eLearning Network’s Connect event in November last year.   One of the sessions I took part in was led by Toby Harris and he was making some related points in his session ‘Beyond the Point of Need’.  Here is my Sketchnote of his session:

He recommended the book “Peak Performance: How all of us can achieve extraordinary things’ by Anders Ericsson and Robert Peel, which describes Anders Ericsson’s years of research into how people in many different fields have achieved outstanding performance and developed their expertise.  

In the book, he identifies ‘deliberate practice’ as the key to this development of expertise and in particular looks at how this leads to the formation of ‘mental representations’ which enable high levels of performance.    Ericsson is very clear in distinguishing what he means by ‘deliberate practice’ and how this differs from the purposeful practice which we may already make use of.  

I have set out in this Sketchnote the key factors which Ericsson uses to describe what ‘deliberate practice’ is:

I think there is much to be gained from exploring the implications of Ericsson’s work.  

It raises lots of questions for me.  For example:

·       What are the most effective ways, that we in L&D can support people to develop their skills?

·       Does it make a difference if they are new to an area of skill or wishing to enhance an area of skill – Ericsson suggests it does?   I want to pay more attention to these kinds of boundary conditions (ie in what circumstances does a particular approach work or not work).

·       What part can formal programmes and self-directed learning play to develop expertise in a particular skill or set of skills, including the use of resources? What might a formal programme look like that is based on ‘deliberate practice’?  How can we encourage & support individuals to use ‘deliberate practice’ in their self-directed learning?

·       How do we help people to develop the ‘mental representations’ that Ericsson suggests are needed for expert performers more speedily and reliably?

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who is already applying these ideas of deliberate practice in their work to aid skills development.

Rachel Burnham

2/2/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

5 Ways We Could Change How We Think About L&D

Rachel Burnham writes: At this time of year, I often curate a set of resources that I think are helpful for developing L&D and enabling L&D professionals to modernise our ways of working.  This year I have decided to do something different and instead take a step back to focus more generally on how we think about L&D.

  

Whilst some in the L&D profession are forging ahead trying out new ideas and experimenting with approaches based upon well-founded research and evidence of what works well, we also are part of a profession that is slow to change. Many continue to use methods and practices that we know are not as effective as they could be - methods and practices that are not meeting the challenges facing organisations or individuals.  

Here are five areas that I think we need to work on as a profession.

1.  Evidence-based

Whilst this approach has been adopted recently by CIPD, there is still a lot of muddle and confusion around about what this really means.   I think getting more in our profession familiar and confident using an evidence based approach can help with three challenges:

·       Tackling the pervasive influence of learning myths around subjects like learning styles, left brain/right brain and so on.

·       Encouraging a focus on effectiveness and what actually makes a difference to performance.

·       Building an appetite for making use of data analytics that is practical in focus.

2.  Looking at a wider range of jobs and sectors

So often the case studies, research and examples explored in L&D conferences, articles and podcasts are from the same rather narrow fields of employment.  It is time that we started to look more broadly beyond the knowledge worker or service sector and also consider the needs of other types of worker, sector and size of organisation.

 

When we are only hearing from this relatively narrow field, important though it is, we risk considering only these needs of these kinds of organisation and that the ideas and solutions presented only are effective in those situations.  If we want to tackle the long tail of L&D that is mostly still only using face to face delivery of content-heavy material, then we have to ensure that our examples, our research, our practices can meet these needs of a diverse range of job roles and organisations.     

3.  Less black and white, more nuance

I think we are running a risk of being too simplistic in some of our thinking about L&D practices.  Of making ‘blanket –judgements’ about ways of working.   ‘This is good’, ‘this is not’.  This is current, up-to-date, the latest thinking and this is not.

For example, I notice in each at the time of the Learning Technologies conference and exhibition a slew of articles about the latest technologies and a corresponding slew of articles defending face to face delivery.  

When it isn’t either or. 

We need to be so much better at being nuanced.  Not just about about the respective values of using technology and face to face, but across the whole field.  It is not helpful to run down the whole of education.  We know that context matters.   So let’s get much clearer about what works when, and in what circumstances, for who and at what point in their career and what the limitations are.   Let’s identify the boundary conditions for approaches, rather than portray each approach as the answer to everything. 

4.  Connect ideas

There are some amazing ideas being developed and explored in L&D.  New ways of working and new (well, newish, in some cases) models and practices.  Many have slightly different focuses and emphasis.   When you begin to be exposed to the range of approaches to performance consulting, models of learning, alternatives to face to face, learning at the point of need or in the flow of work and so on (and also their critiques) – I think a lot of people in our profession, who are new to these approaches can feel overwhelmed and over-faced.  ‘Where are earth do you start?’ 

It would be great to see some more linking up of these ideas, some more comparing and contrasting of them, so that they are not just used piecemeal, but more systematically. We need help to work our way through the thickets of new ideas and research, to weigh up what is of value and work out which ones  link together and are worth taking action on.     

5.  We neglect skills at our peril

I think there is some very interesting thinking around at present about knowledge – mostly about how we make much better use of resources or other performance support tools to reduce the need for knowledge learning.   There is great work on behaviour change around – work on habit formation and learning transfer to support this.   But I think we need to be also paying attention to how to effectively support ‘skills’ development. 

I think we have taken our eyes off this area a bit, yet it is hugely important.  High level skills can be challenging to develop and continue to be important in many areas of work.   Although we critique learning programmes for ‘mere content-dumping’ and a reliance on knowledge transfer done badly, we haven’t really focused much on how to develop complex skills effectively.  Skills that are needed in this wider range of jobs and organisations that I think we should be looking at.  

So, these are the 5 areas, which I think we could usefully focus on, to help shift thinking within our L&D profession, this year.  What do you think?

  

Rachel Burnham

13/1/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.