People are choosing to learn in different ways from a much more diverse range of sources. Meanwhile, most L&D infrastructure is still geared for the same old thing – managing formal training. This webinar deck covers:
- What the wisdom of the crowd can teach L&D professionals about learning
- 3 ways to reconnect L&D’s requirements to learners’ expectations
- How to leverage the new learning ecosystem to make L&D more efficient, effective and agile
2. Agenda
30 mins: Leverage the New Learning Ecosystem
1 What learners can teach L&D about learning
2 Connecting L&D requirements to learners
3 How to leverage the entire learning ecosystem
4. Learners make their
own choices now
Workers spend 14+ hours each
month learning on their own…
…but just 2 to 3 hours per month
learning at the direction of L&D or HR
Source: Degreed, Bring Your Own Learning, 3/2015
Question: How many hours per month do you spend learning at your own direction / at the direction of your L&D or HR department?
1
14.4
2.7
5. Learners need faster,
easier answers
12%
42%
69%
Google it and read
or watch what I find
Seek out a course
on my own
Ask L&D or HR for
resources
1
Source: Degreed, Bring Your Own Learning, 3/2015
Question: When you need to learn something to be successful at your job, which of the following are you most likely to do?
6. Learners want more
diverse options
Courses ResourcesInteractionsExperiences
Only 23%of workers say they have completed
a course – of any kind – in the last two years…
…but 70%+have learned something for their job
from an article, a video or a book in the last 24 hours.
+ + +
1
Source: Degreed, The Importance of Informal Learning, 7/2014
7. Learners expect to leverage the
entire learning ecosystem
5%
12%
34%
18%
32%
Formal
Training
Informal
Learning
1
Source: Degreed, The Importance of Informal Learning, 7/2014
Question: How much of what you learn for work comes from formal training vs informal learning?
8. L&D professionals have a choice:
Try to change everyone else’s preferences and
habits or change how enterprise learning works.
Takeaway #1
10. Put learners’ priorities first2
Learners want to… so does L&D need to…
orSolve
Find
Access
Value
Create
Manage
Control
Track
Assemble
Empower
Enable
Guide
or
or
or
?
?
?
?
Source: Degreed, 2015
11. Investments follow priorities
83%
71% 68%
23%
40%
5%
36%
16%
LMS Virtual
classroom
Knowledge
mgmt
Talent
mgmt
Social
network
Social
learning
Media
libraries
Video
mgmt
2
Training Experiential Social On-demand> > >
Source: Bersin by Deloitte, Rethinking L&D: Enterprise Learning Trends 2015, 12/2014
Question: Which of the following learning technologies is your organization investing in?
12. Say “Hello” to the whole
learning ecosystem
2
Source: Degreed, 2015
13. There are three ways to connect L&D
requirements with learner expectations:
Priorities, investments, and methods.
Takeaway #2
15. Embrace ALL content
sources and formats
Internally
created
Custom
developed
Off-the-
shelf
User-
generated
Open
source
+ + + +
3
Source: Degreed, 2015
16. Build, buy…and crowdsource,
curate, and assemble
3
hangouts
Word
Top 25 Tools for Learning
LMS Enterprise learning solutionSource: C4LPT, 2014 Top 100 Tools for Learning, 9/2014
17. Track, recognize and
value all kinds of learning
3
150+ ~1
million
4
million
10
million
3
billion
5
million
Adopters Profiles OpenBadges Projects Repositories Endorsements
Source: TinCanApi.com, Who’s using the Tin Can API?, 6/2015; Degreed internal data, 6/2015;
SkilledUp, Do Open Badges Matter To Employers Or Admissions Officers?, 7/2014; Behance, 6/2015; GitHub, 6/2016;
Forbes, Memo To LinkedIn: Please Fix Endorsements, 2/2014
18. New ways of learning demand different
kinds of infrastructure. Content, tools and
systems that empower as well as manage.
Takeaway #3
19. About Degreed
Degreed is the world’s
first continuous
learning platform.
We make it easy for
organizations and
their people to
discover, curate and
track all learning.
20. Go to degreed.com and start tracking ALL your learning.
Get credit for
this webinar.
21. SHRM June 28 - July 1 Las Vegas, NV
Talent Management Exchange July 19-21 Austin, TX
HCI Learning & Leadership September 16-18 Chicago, IL
MASIE’s Learning 2015 November 1-4 Orlando, FL
Catch us at an event.
Employees are looking beyond what their Learning & Development (L&D) departments have to offer. And they’re choosing to learn in different ways from a much more diverse range of sources. Meanwhile, most L&D infrastructure is still geared for the same old thing – managing formal training.
- It’s time to meet - and embrace - the new learning ecosystem.
Today, I want to cover three things:
What the wisdom of the crowd can teach L&D professionals about learning
3 ways to reconnect L&D’s requirements to learners’ expectations
How to leverage the new learning ecosystem to make L&D more efficient, effective and agile
We’ll aim to do that in around 20 minutes. Then we’ll have some time for Q&A.
Learning at - and for - work has changed. Radically.
Everyone knows most learning happens outside classrooms and learning management systems.
- Now we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of just how much.
- And our data - which is shown here - is pretty startling.
According to research we’ve done over the last year, people spend at least 4-5x more time on self-directed learning than on what their L&D departments build and buy.
- Workers told us they're spending more than 14 hours a month, on average, learning on their own.
- But they’re only putting 2-3 hours a month into training provided by their employers.
That should matter to learning and development professionals because it’s the starting point for understanding not just why L&D needs to evolve - urgently - but also how.
- And if you watch and listen carefully, the wisdom of the crowd is giving us three big clues.
For starters, the crowd is telling us they expect faster, easier access to answers.
Almost 70% of the people we asked told us the first thing they do when they need to learn something new for their jobs is Google it and read or watch what they find.
- Less than half say they look specifically for a course, but they’re inclined to do so on their own.
- Fewer than 12% said they ask their L&D or HR department for courses or other resources.
- Just this month, the head of leadership development at one of the biggest food and agribusiness groups in the US told us his employees look first online. They only come to L&D if they can't find what they need.
My own informal polls of corporate learning professionals say pretty much the same thing over and over again.
- We are all “just Googling it”. And not just because it’s expedient. We’re doing it because, in many cases, it’s all we really need.
- In fact, by a 3.5 to 1 margin, people tell us they believe their own self-directed learning is more effective in helping them be successful at work than the training provided by their employers.
- These are adults; they have a good idea what they need.
- And in many cases, they say they don't need a day-long course or even a 2-hour workshop or a 1-hour video. They just need some targeted articles and a few short video clips -- just enough to get started.
But often, we also do it because it’s not clear where to go for resources.
- Almost two-thirds of L&D professionals in a CrossKnowledge survey said that less than 30% of their employees use the LMS for non-mandatory learning
- And when CrossKnowledge asked why, one person summed it up nicely: “The LMS is poorly organized, there is a lack of promotion to the business and the content is dated.”
Another thing they tell us they need is more diverse options for learning.
70% of employer-provided training and development is still formal, instructor-led classes and traditional e-learning courses, according to ATD’s latest numbers.
- Bersin by Deloitte, Chief Learning Officer... All the other data says the same thing: L&D is stuck on classes and courses.
- More flexible virtual classes, on-demand courses and MOOCs are all good steps toward making courses more accessible.
- And lots of organizations are certainly pushing in that direction.
But it is not enough. Less than a quarter of the people we've surveyed tell us they've completed a course of any kind in the last two years - not at college, not online, not professionally.
- So innovative new formats like micro-learning, videos and gamification are great, too; they're much more in-tune with people's habits now.
But just swapping long-form courses for snacks, fun and games still misses the bigger picture.
- There’s an obvious limit to how much you can learn in 60 seconds
- And just slapping points and a leaderboard on the same old content doesn’t fundamentally make it any more relevant or any better.
- All of these new methods require a very different approach to design and development; they’re not quick, cosmetic fixes.
But more importantly, learning is not an "either / or" proposition; we all learn through a constantly changing, increasingly diverse and incredibly fragmented mix of content and feedback and experience - both planned and ad-hoc.
- Our attention and preferences do follow the path of least resistance, though - to informal learning.
- More than 70% of the people we've surveyed say they've learned something for their job from an article, a video or a book in the last 24 hours.
Unfortunately, most of that informal learning activity is outside the view of the L&D or HR function.
- Because it's happening outside of the old, traditional L&D or HR systems.
- And because informal learning is rarely tracked, it's also rarely valued by conventional L&D or HR processes. But it should be.
Informal learning should be valued because if you take the 70/20/10 model at face value then what it says is most organizations only have visibility into a tiny fraction of their learning, development and capabilities.
- In fact, half of workers told us that at least 60% of what they learn for work comes from informal learning.
- And almost 90% said they would prefer to be given credit for their own learning than learn at L&D or HR’s direction.
That means valuing informal learning could be a big, under-leveraged tool for building learning culture
- If I can’t see what my peers are learning about, then I can’t read or watch those things myself, I can’t discuss them with colleagues, or ask other people for help.
- Imagine what would happen if IT departments only supported PCs inside company offices now. Or if you tried to run accounting without tracking employees’ T&E. That’s what’s happening in L&D.
The reason that should matter to L&D teams is that without it, you have no line-of-sight into most of what your people are actually learning.
- If you had that, you could be a lot more proactive about solving your internal customers’ problems.
- According to some upcoming Bersin by Deloitte’s research, L&D teams that do a better job measuring all of their learning tend to have more support for learning among managers, better relationships with executives and easier access to funding for L&D initiatives.
So the third thing the wisdom of the crowd is telling us is that corporate learning teams should be leveraging the entire ecosystem of learning solutions that the workforce is using to learn.
Takeaway #1: L&D professionals have choices too:
All of this data is clear: individuals are choosing to learn in different ways from a much more diverse range of sources.
- That's uncomfortable for a lot of people in L&D. But it is unavoidable.
- The good news is we have choices too. We can try to change everyone else’s preferences and habits or do we can change how enterprise learning works.
What if we chose to change how L&D works?
For starters, we'd have to rethink some priorities. Because usually, what the organization needs and what people want seem like they're at odds:
Create vs solve (assemble) - For example, L&D organizations need to create effective learning experiences - efficiently - to meet a wide range of needs.
- Given the choice, most prefer to build the content themselves. Almost ⅔ of the content that L&D organizations use is custom-built in-house (Bersin).
- But learners just want to solve their problems. We usually don’t care how or where the content comes from.
What if L&D professionals crowdsourced, assembled and curated more of that content from employees and subject experts instead of just building or buying it? Or used both created and curated content in one place for a well rounded learning plan?
- It would be way more scalable. And potentially higher quality.
Manage vs find (empower) - L&D teams spend a lot of time and money trying to manage the ever-growing mess of LMSs and Sharepoint sites and custom portals and external content…
- But learners just want to find the right learning and development opportunities fast
What if CLOs invested more in deploying better tools for finding the good stuff?
- I bet a lot of people would be a lot happier. And learn more.
Control vs access (enable) - Employers say they want to provide personalized learning, but when push comes to shove, control and security almost always seem to come first.
- Meanwhile, employees just want to access what they need whenever and wherever they want.
- Most of them can’t. Email at all hours is OK, but learning needs to be super-secure?
What if L&D teams spent more time with IT people to find better solutions for accessing and sharing learning, not just locking it down? …We would probably see better learner engagement.
Track vs value (recognize) - And just about every CLO says they want to track and measure the impact of learning
- But most of the time, they only really track formal training
- So workers can’t get recognition or visibility into their career paths.
- And managers don’t have a handle on what their employees know and can do.
What if more of those CLOs embraced more comprehensive, holistic solutions that make it easier to get value out of all kinds of learning?
- Managers and employees could have better, more productive conversations about development
- And a lot more people would see the value learning brings to your organization
The difficulty is that while the way we're all learning has evolved, the way many L&D organizations invest haven't really.
Right now, most L&D infrastructure - the tools, the technology, the content, the processes, the organizations - is set up for the old command-and-control, one-to-many broadcast approach to L&D.
- We build and deliver programs and courses, they consume them.
- As a result, L&D teams rely primarily on authoring tools, LMSs, SharePoint sites, course libraries and virtual training platforms; all tools for broadcasting.
But remember, the data says the L&D department is not in control anymore; learners are.
- So the people and processes, the programs and content, and the tools and technology systems all need to reflect this new reality.
That doesn't mean you don't need the traditional tools-of-the-trade anymore. Of course you do.
- But you should also balance them out and start to experiment with the entire ecosystem of solutions that the workforce is already using to learn.
- Solutions that enable and empower continuous, informal learning at least as much as they manage formal training.
Those things are out there already.
- And it’s much, much more than just LMSs and SharePoint sites and course catalogs and videos.
From our perspective, the learning ecosystem should include a rich mix of three kinds of things:
- Content - but not just your proprietary content or the stuff you’ve traditionally bought
- Tools for creating and making use of that content, and not just the conventional ones
and Systems for tracking and leveraging all of that learning, regardless of the source
And if you look back at what the learners are doing one more time, you start to get a pretty clear picture of what that could look like.
Takeaway #1: L&D professionals have choices too:
All of this data is clear: individuals are choosing to learn in different ways from a much more diverse range of sources.
- That's uncomfortable for a lot of people in L&D. But it is unavoidable.
- The good news is we have choices too. We can try to change everyone else’s preferences and habits or do we can change how enterprise learning works.
What if we chose to change how L&D works?
Look past proprietary or vendor content. Embrace alternative formats and sources.
First, the content...
There are at least five possible sources of content...
In today’s fast-moving business world, the course is no longer the sole way of creating and distributing content. And neither, importantly, is the L&D department any longer the only source of learning content. There are at least five ways of sourcing content, and most organizations use a combination of them. It can be commissioned from an external provider, created internally, generated by users, developed as “off the shelf” material by a third party, or be freely available over the internet. - See more at: http://blogs.infor.com/infor-certpoint-learning/2014/05/learning-content-aint-what-it-used-to-be-.html#sthash.KBLwkdkY.dpuf
Your employees are already using open and user-generated content alongside your proprietary and vendor content.
- The five biggest MOOC providers now have two-thirds as many registered users as the five biggest established corporate learning vendors. And they’re only 3 years old!
- TED Talks videos have been watched more than 1bn times.
- And each Harvard Business Review stories gets shared around 1,200 times on Twitter and Facebook alone.
- Those are just a few examples, though. Our community has catalogued over 225,000 courses and 3m informal learning activities - videos, articles, books, events… - from more than 1,200 different sources.
So look past your proprietary content and traditional vendors.
- Help your people to embrace diverse mix of alternative formats and sources, too.
the field sales team at Stanley Black & Decker regularly creates videos on how to pitch a particular power tool that colleagues can view on their smartphones. Although typically only 2 to 3 minutes in length, these snippets help viewers sell better by providing key tips precisely relevant to their context of work (sales), to the organization (Stanley Black & Decker) and to a particular situation (pitching a tool against a competitor’s). - See more at: http://blogs.infor.com/infor-certpoint-learning/2014/05/learning-content-aint-what-it-used-to-be-.html#sthash.KBLwkdkY.dpuf
Second is the tools...
Your employees are already using new tools to crowdsource and curate their own learning. Things like blogs and Twitter and Quora and yes, Degreed.
- In fact, only 4 of the Top 25 Tools for Learning, according to a survey of over 1,000 learning professionals by the C4LPT, are enterprise class products. Only one is an LMS.
- 4 of the top 10 are consumer social networks: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.
That means lots of L&D professionals are already using these tools for themselves!
- But few are fully leveraging them in their work.
So do more than just build, buy and push content.
- Crowdsource, curate and assemble it for your learners ...and enable them to do it, too.
- V&B Curatr http://www.curatr3.com/case-studies-vb/
- unum learnpatch.com/2012/10/how-the-ld-team-at-unum-use-curation-to-organise-and-share-information/
- Salesforce elmezine.epubxp.com/i/430475-dec-2014-jan-2015/42?
- www.curatr3.com/curation-in-learning/
And the third thing is the systems for measuring and valuing learning…
- Workers are already using new technologies and systems for tracking and valuing all kinds of learning, not just training.
So are vendors.
- There have been around 150 adopters of xAPI to date, according to the standard’s creators
But corporate adoption has been slow. When I ask people why, everyone says they’re still kicking the tires, learning or trying to figure out how.
But the choice isn’t just between SCORM and xAPI anymore. And your employees are already embracing new solutions.
- Here at Degreed, we’re closing in on ~1m user profiles
- Pearson’s Acclaim unit, which is built on Mozilla’s open badges, has issued more than 1m credentials, including from Adobe, Autodesk, IBM, Microsoft.
- There are actually well over 4m+ people with Mozilla open badges in all - and 14,000 organizations issuing them
- GitHub has 9.8m registered IT professionals with 23m+ repositories of code
- And there have been more than 3bn LinkedIn endorsements and hundreds of thousands of people have added certifications to their profiles.
Taxonomy - https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/openbadges/lDfY5oU1kdk
So there’s no excuse anymore. You should measure more than formal training.
- And you should be recognize and valuing all kinds of learning.
- TELUS - Dan?
- CapitalGroup - Diana?
- NHS - tincanapi.com/adopters/ or site.watershedlrs.com/watershed-first/three-things-know-nhs/ or www.slideshare.net/mobile/RusticiSoftware/tincan-webinar-v9
- Sears blog.saltbox.com/blog/2014/09/03/how-sears-used-the-experience-api-to-transform-the-training-organization-for-250/
Microsoft - http://www.fastcompany.com/3046941/most-creative-people/say-hello-to-the-university-of-microsoft
So the last thought I want to leave you all with is that new tools, content and technologies are essential for re-engaging learners and reconnecting L&D to business.
- And snack-size learning, fun videos and gamified learning are only the beginning.
But embracing these new approaches is not about pandering to employees.
- It’s not even really about employee engagement.
- It is about running L&D better.
Leveraging new tools for creating learning can make you more efficient
Leveraging new forms and sources of content can make L&D more effective
And leveraging new technologies to empower continuous learning can help L&D teams be more agile, responsive and scalable.