Rachel Burnham writes: At the start of 2017 I picked out 10 pieces to share
to help L&D professionals modernise their L&D practice, so I thought I
would do something similar at the start of this year.
This time I thought I
would make the focus very firmly on practical tips and guidance to help us to develop the skills, insights and know-how needed to modernise L&D. In
making my selections, I have picked out some of the concerns that have been
part of my focus for the past year. I also
have been mindful of the themes which emerged from this year’s benchmarking
report by Towards Maturity ‘L&D: Where are we now?’ published in November
2017. This identifies the top barriers
to having a learning culture as including:
·
Cost
of set-up, development and maintenance (66%)
·
Lack
of skills amongst employees to manage their own learning (65%)
·
Reluctance
by line managers to encourage new ways of learning (58%)
·
Lack
of skills amongst L&D staff to implement and manage technology enabled
learning (53%)
·
Unreliable
ICT infrastructure (52%)
As before, I hasten
to add that this selection is by no means a best of 2017. There was lots of great material produced throughout
the year – this is my pick of helpful resources. I have
included short videos, podcasts, infographics and of course Sketchnotes,
alongside written materials.
1 1. ‘How
to run successful Webinars to add value to your organisation’ Session: Andy
Lancaster & Michelle Parry-Slater May 2017 Sketchnote: Rachel Burnham
This is a Sketchnote
I created whilst participating in Andy and Michelle’s excellent session at CIPD’s
L&D Show. The L&D Show conference
this year involved a number of very practical workshops which had a ‘how-to’
focus. This one was a practical introduction
to running effective webinars and was packed full of tips and the sharing of
experiences.
2. ‘How
to produce Impactful Videos and Learning Content’ Session: Dr Mark Davies, See
Learning May 2017 Sketchnote; Rachel Burnham
My second selection
is also one of the Sketchnotes I created from this year’s CIPD L&D
Show. If you are interested in learning
to make good quality videos using your smartphone, then Dr Mark Davies of See
Learning is ‘the-person’ to get advice from.
He can be found on Twitter under @SeeLearning. I picked up so many great tips from this
session and keep referring back to this Sketchnote.
3.‘Apprenticeships: Loving the Levy’ CIPD Podcast 127 July 2017 (about 20 mins on apprenticeships)
In April 2017 the
Apprenticeship Levy was introduced. A
lot has been written up about the Levy, what it involves, what the challenges
are and more recently about the seemingly paradoxical drop in numbers registered for apprenticeships. Out of
all this material, I have picked this podcast because it shares some great
stories about the value of apprenticeships both to individuals and to
organisations and challenges some of the misconceptions that apprenticeships
are only for young people or only for less skilled roles or only for
occupations such as engineering. It is
great story-telling – the best kind – real stories of real people.
4. ‘Bite-Sized Research on Spaced Retrieval’ Episode 5 October 2017 The Learning Scientists
(11.5 mins)
This is another
podcast – a new podcast to me – so thank you to Jonathan Marshall @LearningFCO
for the recommendation. This particular
episode explores a piece of research into the impact of spaced retrieval on
learning effectiveness – if you aren’t familiar with the terms ‘spaced learning’
and ‘retrieval practice’ and are in L&D do take the time to listen to this
podcast as it explains them clearly and simply, plus why we need to know about
them and be making use of them.
Plus, if you haven’t
come across Jonathan before do follow him on Twitter and watch out for his very
informative and thoughtful blog posts, in which he shares his learning from his
work as the Head of Learning for the Diplomatic Academy.
5. ‘The Elephant in the Room’ Paul Matthews Training Journal September 2017
I met Paul Matthews
for the first time this year at the CIPD NAP conference in York, where we were
both delivering sessions. We started
talking then about learning transfer – the elephant in the room, as Paul refers
to it and haven’t stopped talking about this since. Learning Transfer is about how we get learning
to really impact on performance in the workplace and links to the other topics
Paul has written about previously – performance consulting and informal
learning. Paul wrote this article for
Training Journal in the summer, but having started writing has been about how
to address learning transfer he has found unable to stop and is in the process
of completing a new book on this subject. Paul can be found on Twitter @PeopleAlchemy.
With the increased
availability of information and resources via the internet, managing this
avalanche of information is an increasing challenge for professionals in all
fields. The term ‘curation’ has been
borrowed from the museums and art gallery sector to describe the processes
involved in finding, selecting, making sense and using these resources. Mike Shaw (@MikeShawLD) created these three
short videos, now available on YouTube, with Snapchat to introduce people to
the idea of digital curation and to explore some of the ways that it can be
used in L&D. Mike and I have been
working together over the last year on developing our curation practices and on
using curation in the design of L&D programmes. Here is a blog I wrote on the subject.
7. ‘Niall and Rachel’s VR Odyssey’ blogs and recordings
In the Spring of
2017, Niall Gavin (@NiallGavinUK) and I began exploring how L&D could make
use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology and we shared
our learning in a series of blog posts and recorded conversations on Zoom and
available on YouTube. The improving
technology in this field, its increasing popularity in the consumer market and
its increased accessibility, is getting more organisations thinking about how
they can make use of these technologies to support learning. The resources we
produced provide a basic introduction to some of the uses of this technology in
L&D.
8. ‘LearningTechnologies: What managers really think’ GoodPractice in association with
ComRes November 2017
GoodPractice has for
the last few years produced a series of research reports exploring what
managers real practice is around learning and how they perceive & make use
of technology to meet the challenges they face in their day to day work. This year’s research report explores their
attitudes towards some of the key technologies available in workplaces to
support learning and uncovers some perhaps surprising positive results in
relation to managers’ views of elearning and other technologies. The free report not only reports on the
results of the research, but includes some very helpful practical and detailed
takeaways for L&D professionals about how to maximise the potential of
technology in organisations. The suggestions
directly address some of the barriers identified by Towards Maturity at the
start of this blog.
9. ‘Future of technology and learning’ Report & Infographic CIPD & Towards
Maturity November 2017
At about the same
time that GoodPractice was producing its report into technology and learning,
CIPD and Towards Maturity were also launching theirs! This report makes use of the Towards Maturity
benchmarking data, and digs in deeper to how L&D is using different
technologies for different aspects of learning eg games, collaboration. It makes a series of recommendations to help
us, in L&D, become a bit more sophisticated in our thinking and practice in
the use of technology to support learning eg by getting us to really think
through how different learning technologies support approaches to learning such
as collaboration and gamification.
10. #accessibilitytipoftheday Mike Osborne series of posts
on Twitter
My final selection is
a recommendation to check out this hashtag (ie search criteria) on Twitter for
a whole array of suggestions, tips and recommendations to support improved accessibility
for learning resources and digital learning.
This is a great initiative by Mike Osborne to improve awareness and
action from all of us in L&D to ensure that learning opportunities are open
to all and don’t exclude people. You
can find Mike on Twitter @MikeOzzy.
I have enjoyed
putting this collection or curation together.
There are so many other great resources out there to tap into. I would be keen to hear of your
recommendations.
Rachel
Burnham
8/1/18
Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and
refresh their skills. I do this through:
writing & design commissions; facilitating learning to update knowhow, 1:1
and bespoke ‘train the trainer’ programmes; and the use of Sketchnoting to
facilitate learning.
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