Learning Insights ….

Kineo, the e-learning company, have issued a new report on e-learning insights based on interviews with “learning leaders” to identify key emerging trends. I’m not going to repeat the report but will look at a few of their ten key insights:

1. Learning is pervasive. Learning is continuous, collaborative and connected and most learning lives outside a learning management system. This has implications for the learning architecture and intervention models adopted by Learning and Development departments.

I see this as a key insight. Not as some new trend in learning but rather as something that L&D is (finally) waking up to. Most learning at and for work occurs through working: by solving problems; collaborating with others; being challenged and being observant. Much of this learning occurs vicariously and by serendipity and well outside much of the activities and service offers of L&D functions. The weaknesses were always that organisations were failing to understand that all this learning was going on and that staff weren’t being recognis

ed for making this learning happen. In addition, learning and knowledge was being lost because no attempt was made to capture it, staff were not always making best use of it as learning wasn’t either intentional or the main goal and also that employees had under-developed capabilities in “learning to learn“. What *has* changed is that digital technologies, especially digital working, has made such learning and knowledge more visible and these informal learning processes more transparent.

4. Design higher empathy learning. …It is not so much about meeting learning objectives as about empathy with the learner, their position, their challenges and personalising their experience.

Which I take to mean L&D should seek to get the right knowledge to the right people at the time they need to use it … No argument here and this may well prove to be a crucial focus for future developments around predictive learning analytics; knowledge management and knowledge resource development and work/ learning integration.

7. Informal learning must not become chaotic. There is a danger with the pervasive nature of learning and the wide range of informal opportunities that learning can become chaotic.

Is an interesting pronouncement but I’d argue not a key issue as most workers will be seeking to get the job done to the best of their abilities. L&D should be concerned with developing an enabling infrastructure, establish baseline (learning to learn) competence in employees but then largely get out of the way.

10. Where web technology goes, learning will follow. It is difficult to overstate the degree of change in web technology.

This seems to me to point to a shift from LMS  to Personal Learning Environments/ Networks that span the boundaries of any organisation and where significant components are owned by the employee – see Jane Hart’s post here

Its an interesting a useful report.

[Image of the ZYPAD, rugged wrist wearable computer from Arcom Control Systems licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported]