2022 Report: The State Of eLearning — from elearningindustry.com by My Learning HUB
What does the future of L&D look like? My Learning Hub surveyed 291 L&D professionals to get their perspectives on the state of eLearning.
Key chapters
From DSC:
Below are several observations re: our learning ecosystems — and some ideas on how we can continue to improve them.
It takes years to build up the knowledge and skills in order to be a solid teacher, faculty member, instructional designer, and/or trainer. It takes a lot of studying to effectively research how the brain works and how we learn. Then we retire…and the knowledge is often lost or not passed along. And the wheel gets reinvented all over again. And again. And again.
Along these lines — and though we’re making progress in this area — too often we separate the research from the practical application of that research. So we have folks working primarily in learning science, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and related fields. But their research doesn’t always get practically applied within our learning spaces. We have researchers…and then we have practitioners. So I greatly appreciate the likes of Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain out at RetrievalPractice.org, Daniel Willingham, Eva Keiffenheim, The Learning Scientists, James Lang, and several others who bridge this gap.
Perhaps more researchers, faculty members, teachers, trainers, instructional designers, principals, provosts, etc. could blog or be active out on social media.
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Along these lines, we need to spend more time helping people know how best to study and to learn.
If that type of thing is ever to be learned, it seems like it’s often learned or discussed in the mid- to later years of one’s life…often after one’s primary and secondary days are long gone.
Instead, we should consider putting these easy-to-understand posters from the Learning Scientists in every K-12 school, college, and university in the nation — or something like them.
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To provide the most effective engaging learning experiences, we should consider using more team-based approaches. As appropriate, that could include the students themselves.
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We put way too much emphasis on grades — which produces gameplayers who seek only to do the minimum amount of work necessary to get the A’s. Doing so creates systems whereby learning is not the goal — getting a 4.0+ is.
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As we are now required to be lifelong learners, our quality of life as a whole goes waaaay up if we actually enjoy learning. Many people discover later in life that they like to learn…they just didn’t like school. Perhaps we could place greater emphasis within K-16 on whether students enjoyed their learning experiences or not. And if not, what might have made that topic more enjoyable to them? Or what other topics would they like to dive into (that weren’t’ on the original learning menu)?
This could also apply in the corporate training/L&D space as well. Such efforts could go a long way in helping establish stronger learning cultures.
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We don’t provide enough choice to our students. We need to do a better job of turning over more control to them in their learning journey. We turn students off to learning because we try to cram information that they don’t care about down their throats. So then we have to use the currency of grades to force them into doing the work that they could care less about doing. Their experience with learning/school can easily get soured.
We need to be more responsive with our curricula. And we need to explain how the information we’re trying to relay is relevant in the real world and will be relevant in their futures.
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So those are some ideas that I wanted to relay. Thanks for your time and for your shared interests here!
Adapting L&D programs for the past, present and future — from chieflearningofficer.com by Calvin Coffee
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, employees ranked learning and growth opportunities as the number one driver of thriving work culture — an increase from ninth in 2019. As demand for learning and development specialists nearly doubled over the last year, the need for successful L&D in organizations is as significant as ever, with new work environments and a massive skills gap looming.
With a massive reshuffling of talent and the increased role of hybrid work due to the pandemic, pools of learners and their skills may be entirely different for learning leaders to understand. “People are signaling satisfaction with their workplace with their feet. Having poor retention is a business problem,” says Laura Roberts, senior director, corporate leadership at Jobs for the Future. One of the best ways to increase employee retention is by simply investing in employees to foster an organizational culture built on growth and training opportunities.
6 ADA accessibility trends revealed in our mid-year 2022 report — from blog.usablenet.com by Jason Taylor
Excerpt:
We just published our mid-year ADA web and App report created by the UsableNet research team reviewing all lawsuits filed in federal courts under the ADA and California state court under Unruh. We review the cases to identify where a digital property, including websites, mobile apps, and video, is the subject of the claim. Our bi-annual reports let UsableNet inform our clients and provide them with the most up-to-date advice for planning their digital accessibility initiatives.
Here is my main take on some key numbers based on what we have seen in 2022 and what’s driving those numbers.
Highlights and key insights from TICE 2022 (Training Industry Conference & Expo) — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker
Excerpt:
[From June 21-23], I attended and presented at TICE 2022 (Training Industry Conference & Expo). This is the first time I have attended any Training Industry event. It was also the first time the conference has been back to in person since the beginning of the pandemic. This is a local conference for me, hosted in Raleigh, NC, about 30 minutes from home. It was great to meet up with several people I had previously only met online.
As with other conferences, I try to review my notes afterwards to pull out a few key insights. This helps me remember what I learned, and helps share the ideas with those who couldn’t attend.
Shannon Tipton shared a worksheet and process for planning “drip-feed learning,” or a scheduled delivery of chunked content to support spaced learning. I liked the idea of treating the drips like a story and keeping people engaged by making them curious about what happens next.
The Metaverse in 2040 — from pewresearch.org by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie
Hype? Hope? Hell? Maybe all three. Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive ‘metaverse.’ They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people’s daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today’s dominant web platforms
The metaverse will, at its core, be a collection of new and extended technologies. It is easy to imagine that both the best and the worst aspects of our online lives will be extended by being able to tap into a more-complete immersive experience, by being inside a digital space instead of looking at one from the outside.
Laurence Lannom, vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
“Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are the gateway to phenomenal applications in medicine, education, manufacturing, retail, workforce training and more, and it is the gateway to deeply social and immersive interactions – the metaverse.
Elizabeth Hyman, CEO for the XR Association
From DSC:
It seems to me that this is one of the types of learning experiences that we will have in the future — i.e., where you can tap into a variety of live/virtual streams of content whereby you can peer over the shoulder of experts using products and/or services.
DC: In our future learning ecosystems there will be the opportunity to view and access a variety of learning-related resources— similar to this service for entertainment-related items.#learningecosystems #learningfromthelivingclassroom #future #learning pic.twitter.com/9ZD9FbnOvR
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) June 27, 2022
From DSC:
An AI-backed platform will constantly search all job postings and present the most desired skills in the marketplace and then how to get those skills. The providers will be individuals, organizations, training providers, traditional institutions of higher education, vendors and more.
Depending upon what happens with blockchain — and if a much more energy-efficient/environmentally-friendly solution can be implemented — blockchain may be a part of that equation.
5 Questions Every Digital Learning Job Seeker Should Answer — from teamedforlearning.com
These questions help you find a job that fits your skills, work style, and career goals. Answer these before you start your digital learning jobs search.
Excerpt:
There are five questions you should ask yourself before you start looking for a job in digital learning. These aren’t your standard questions about salary and daily tasks. Instead, we’re focusing on what you need to know about yourself before you seek out a new role. The answers will help you find a job that’s the right fit for your skills, work style, and career goals.
Remember, when you’re looking for a job, you’re not just trying to find an organization that wants you to work for them. You’re also looking for a work environment that can help you advance your career and meet your needs. So, grab a notebook or open up a blank document and start brainstorming your answers to these questions.
The Future of Education | By Futurist Gerd Leonhard | A Video for EduCanada — from futuristgerd.com
Per Gerd:
Recently, I was invited by the Embassy of Canada in Switzerland to create this special presentation and promotional video discussing the Future of Education and to explore how Canada might be leading the way. Here are some of the key points I spoke about in the video. Watch the whole thing here: the Future of Education.
…because by 2030, I believe, the traditional way of learning — just in case — you know storing, downloading information will be replaced by learning just in time, on-demand, learning to learn, unlearning, relearning, and the importance of being the right person. Character skills, personality skills, traits, they may very well rival the value of having the right degree.
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If you learn like a robot…you’ll never have a job to begin with.
Gerd Leonhard
Also relevant/see:
The Next 10 Years: Rethinking Work and Revolutionising Education (Gerd Leonhard’s keynote in Riga) — from futuristgerd.com
The 2022 L&D Global Sentiment Survey — from donaldtaylor.co.uk by Donald Taylor
Excerpt:
This year’s L&D Global Sentiment Survey, the ninth, shows L&D at a turning point, as the result of two forces. One is the demands of organisations, as they emerge from the pandemic, for more training delivery, very often with unchanged or reduced resources for L&D. The other is the need to deal with the emergency measures put in place in 2020 to deal with the immediate impact of COVID-19.
This sense of practitioners being under pressure is amply illustrated by responses to the free text question ‘What is your biggest L&D challenge in 2022?’ 40% of respondents answered, with the answers painting a picture of practitioners being asked to do more, in difficult circumstances, to support the learning of overworked employees and uninterested employers.
It is tempting to see this as a return to business-as-usual for L&D. Hasn‘t it always been the case that the department needed to fight for the attention of both executives and employees? Behind this undeniable reality, however, there are definite signs of longer-term trends emerging.
