Marlo Kengen en Petra Peeters zijn docenten Learning & Development in Organisations.

Like almost every year also this year several HAN L&D in Organisations staff visited the Learning Technologies Conference and Exhibition in London. There we connected with many other Dutch and Flemish L&D colleagues in the Dutch delegation. This year we were happy to see the influx of L&D-alumni and even students growing: we’re really starting to cross borders!

With this blog we’ll recap some of the highlights of Conference and Exhibition and share our top (re)sources. Most speakers are bloggers and curators too. Do check out their sites for great content!

Keynote by Marcia Conner
Usually a keynote speaker is the expert who Knows It All and shares her wisdom. This keynote is wildly different. Marcia starts with questions like ‘what are you really here for?’ She sketches the contours of meaningful work: autonomy, complexity and connection, and challenges the audience to check whether they consider their work ‘meaningful’. In this time with AI looming to take over work and jobs Marcia advises us to find our individual Superpower. She tells about her research, and how she found that people report very different ‘states’ when they use their Superpower and are in flow: some feel like they are flying or surfing. Her story becomes almost esoteric and the audience somewhat uneasy: this is not what we expected. But to me it was one of the sessions that kept me thinking: I recognize what she means by such a personal ‘flow state’: I feel playful and mischievous then, ready to prove that I can do something new or impossible. Time to hunt for that feeling more!

“Don’t be a better consultant of strategist, be a better human being.” Marcia Conner

Learning technologies: understanding what’s hot, what’s not and why
Steve Wheeler, David Kelly, Dani Johnson
A down-to-earth session with well-researched findings, I found this session a true treasure grove.

Some of David Kelly’s tips:

• follow new tech that people use in everyday life and use that for learning
• use affordances of various mobile devices instead of responsive design (which makes content fit to every device)
• be aware of how Big Data should, via Analytics, lead to Decisions and be ready to participate in the conversation around these 3 steps
• Artificial Intelligence will become machines and people working together vs competing (just like you use your car to drive instead of trying to outrun it)

All this asks for Learning Ecosystems, that work towards personalisation and where learning tools enable problem solving as well as learning. This demands a focus on learners instead of a focus on trainers.

Dani Johnson of Red Thread Research presented a mass of really useful research on the L&D tech market, if you’re planning to buy a tool or want to get an idea of wants for sale: do check out The Learning Technology Landscape report. In this report you’ll find, amongst others, an overview of functionalities to be found in tools. This point of view can help buyers to choose tools that enable them to realize their goals.

Someone in the audience raised the issue of privacy and identity: who is allowed to measure what and who owns which data? The question was circumvented by a simple statement that those issues are cultural and personal. Well, they probably are, but that does not mean they should not be dealt with…

The L&D Profession: the skills, tools and mind set that L&D needs to succeed
Nigel Paine, Vikki Liogier, Michelle Ockers

With our bachelor profile just redesigned by Marlo this was of course a not to be missed session! Vikki Liogier, Head of Learning Technologies at The Education and Training Foundation speaks about the importance of digital skills for educators and invites us to check out  the role of the ENHANCE Digital teaching Platform. On this platform the foundation offers a number of free e-learning modules to educate L&D professionals in further education in digital teaching skills. She’s looking for feedback on these just launched products, so we promise to try and have our students provide feedback.

Michelle Ockers (yes, Dutch roots) starts her talk with the question ‘Is L&D a profession?’ Criteria for a profession are

• An agreed upon set of ethics
• Ongoing research on theories and practices
• The availability of formal education

Though we all agree that we perceive L&D as a profession, fact is that only few countries tick all 3 criteria. Professional bodies like LPI and CIPD (UK) are important drivers of reinforcing the L&D profession. Important challenges for our profession Michelle notes are performance consulting and supporting performance, data analytics and facilitating collaboration.

We’re proud to represent a (for the time being only in Dutch) L&D bachelor that enables young people to enter the L&D field as starting professionals!

Check out Michelles collection of resources for development of L&D skills.

Games and learning: Stop thinking like an instructional designer. Start thinking like a game designer
Karl Kapp

Karl Kapp is the all time Guru when it comes to gamification of learning. He smoothly translates game principles to a design approach for learning and makes it all sound really simple. Some examples:

• Start designing from the question: what action should the learner take? Answer a question? Write a proposal? Assume a role?
• Create open loops: questions without immediate actions (creates involvement and curiosity)
• Build in challenges and have people fail, only give hints if and when frustration looms
• Don’t pamper learners: things you learn quickly and easily tend to be forgotten as quickly and easily
• Let learners make their own decision as to which (learning) path they want to follow
• External rewards (points, leaderboards) only work a short time. You have to connect to internal motivation too.

And many, many others. Most important take away for me: many tips seem really doable also in ‘normal’ e-learning!

Jedi mind tricks for learning designers
Cathy Moore

You will most likely know some of the following situations: a client who just knows that e-learning will solve the performance problem, a client who is convinced that the learning needs to be fun, that certain content needs to be put in the course, or a client who already has a 200+ slides presentation that you will have to build your course with. However: there is no course, there is only a problem. One of Cathy Moore’s talents definitely is to make working with tough clients seem really easy. And it can indeed be easy, with some of the tricks that she shared in this session. Her action mapping method is really worth diving into. It will help you in designing in collaboration with SME’s and clients, and in focusing on creating experiences instead of presenting boring information. This is Cathy’s mission: to save the world from boring training. Her website is a true treasure trove filled with examples, worksheets and lots of other stuff to use in the learning design process.

The future of work: technology, myths and the importance of learning
Daniel Susskind

With examples ranging from ancient Greek times to Keynes, the second keynote speaker starts with the reassurance that worries about machines taking over is of all times. Daniel is an economist who studies the influence of technology on work, especially the influence of artificial Intelligence. Here’s a link to the book he wrote on the future of professions. Some key points from this session:

• Technology will also replace complex, white collar work. Examples of artificial intelligence outperforming medical, legal of financial professionals already exist. And there is no finishing line.
• Artificial intelligence performs tasks differently from people. They are smart in different ways.
• Artificial intelligence will lead to decomposition of work. It is not likely though that technology will replace jobs of professions.

Have a look at this Ted talk to learn more.

Artificial intelligence chances and threats
Trish Uhl

Trish Uhl updates us on the role of artificial intelligence in our work as L&D professionals. From Susskind’s keynote, we learned that AI will continue to become smarter in complex tasks. There is only one conclusion after listening to Trish: complex L&D tasks are no exception. Have a look at this video for an interview with learning legend Dick Clarck on making our Critical Task Analysis AI. Or read about this case study on a sales training for 6000 delegates with an AI chatbot supporting follow up action plans and reflection.

Want to read more: check the elearning Guild for their research on this topic.

Curation: Wired, not tired: is curation the cure for what ails L&D?
Mike Taylor

To start with: you can see this blog as a content curation: we gathered useful resources during LT19, picked out the cherries and share these with you.

Mike starts out by stating that content curation is more of a mindset than a toolbox. Digital tools (Mike uses and mentions quite a few) are very helpful but curating starts with a curious, open attitude and stamina to follow through on the curation path.

The Seek-Sense-Share model of Harold Jarche shows the steps in curation: finding content, making sense of it and filtering it, and then sharing it.

A number of tools flash by: Feedly, Flipboard, Diigo, ZEEF and more, a got quite overwhelmed.. Some general tips on curation:

• Curate the curators: find sets of resources other curators already gathered
• ‘Strive for 25’: with 25 resources you should be able to cover a topic
• Be ruthlessly efficient: organize your curation activity in time (10’ a day f.i.) and via helpful  tools

A question that did not get an answer: Mike’s angle is about curating freely available internet resources, but what about curating content within an organization? What’s a helpful approach then? Some tips are readily applicable there too, but how to deal with content that changes over time and/or is not accessible to everyone within a company, or should not be shared outside it? Clearly this was not Mike’s topic, but it might be an interesting one for next LT.

Will I start curating? I think it asks for real passion for a topic ánd the willingness to juggle with quite some tools I’m not yet familiar with. To start with, I will check out Diigo, a ‘social bookmarking website’ one of these days, to more easily tag and share valuable links I find myself e-mailing regularly now.

Last but not least: our Making MOOCs simple, social and succesful
In the conference’s last time slot, Petra and Marlo made their first appearance on the Learning Technologies stage. Together with chair Hannah Gore and co-presenter Gabriel Schaepman we presented three perspectives on MOOCs.

First, Hannah Gore presented headlines from her PhD study on engagement in MOOCs. She analyzed huge amounts of data from 19 Open University MOOCs focusing on learner engagement. She discovered a number of super steps, one of them being that learners were more likely to get engaged in the MOOC when interaction was deliberately built in the design. The full thesis can be downloaded.

Gabriel Schaepman shared his experiences with a SPOC (or in-house MOOC), designed for a large audience from insurance company Swiss Re. What we specifically liked in this case, is the role managers took in this learning journey. They were learning themselves and at the same time leading their teams to learn and to improve on risk management. Also, he managed to combine business outcomes with social learning.

Lastly, Petra and Marlo presented their view on what a moderator can do to get social learning in a MOOC off the ground. Click here to read more.

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