6

The Future of Learning

Part of what makes working in learning and development so exciting is the fact that it is an ever-changing field with new technologies, challenges, and opportunities emerging every day in both corporate and higher education contexts. When you couple changes in our approaches to learning with changes in the world at large, you get a dynamic and fascinating playground for our work.

There are a number of workplace and education trends and challenges that will keep learning professionals on their toes in the coming years. This chapter outlines many examples, but the additional resources section also lists several resources you can check out for more in-depth coverage.

Longstanding volatility in the business environment. Business leaders continue to be battered by an ever-changing environment, which is influenced by market fluctuations, global opportunities and pressures, increasingly diverse workforce demographics, expanding and changing technology platforms and tools, and political and regulatory uncertainty. These forces also affect learning strategy. These rapid changes require learning on the fly, and L&D must learn to anticipate competency development needs and respond with curated resources as quickly as possible. Education providers need to be able to be more responsive to these changing needs as well.

Overwhelming speed of change and explosion of available information. It is becoming impossible to keep up with our modern environment. Employees desperately need strategies for filtering information and adopting changes that help them to remain focused on the task at hand. Collaboration is key here as employees can share what they find important and help one another stay current. L&D can support employee efforts by providing tools and dedicated learning advisers. In academic preparation for careers, some knowledge may become outdated even before students graduate, so developing the ability to learn continuously is becoming more critical.

Increasing understanding that modern employee performance depends on the connected and collaborative worker. Employees need strong networks inside and outside their organizations, and they must learn how to effectively collaborate both across the table and across geographical distances. Informal social learning and the ability to use technology to connect to resources and people as needed are becoming essential skills. Organizations are continuing to find ways to connect employees through social learning and performance systems, and they will increasingly issue smartphones and tablets (or create bring-your-own-device policies) to enable immediate electronic access to performance support and communications any place, anytime. Learning resources need to be just as connected, collaborative, and portable.

Increasing interest in and commitment to mobile learning. A further implication of the connected and collaborative worker trend is the recognition that in many situations, learners are just as likely to access learning resources on a smartphone or tablet as on a desktop computer. Companies may even be more interested in creating custom enterprise apps for learning and performance support. Learning resources need to be accessible and usable on smaller devices and in short spans of time. Learning projects that require a greater investment of time can also be supported by mobile follow-up and support materials.

Expanding attention on customized, personalized, and adaptive learning. While these terms have different meanings, they all focus on a more learner-centric view of learning—ways of delivering to learners the exact modules they need in an appropriate timeframe. A learning environment takes that one step further by giving learners control over the resources they select.

Ever-evolving technology. Any look into the future should try to anticipate how newer technologies might support learning and performance. The items that are immediately emerging at this writing include wearable technology, the Internet of things, and 3-D printing. Designers are imagining how to make access to resources even more efficient with wearable computers and specialized devices. The Internet of things movement considers how connecting data flows from separate sources might make decision making easier (or even unnecessary as algorithms process data and respond accordingly). Three-dimensional printing can make physical resources handier, allowing for the creation of unique props for learning. In addition to these emerging areas, advances in mobile learning are a continuing trend, necessitating shorter bytes of learning support on smaller-screen platforms. All of these open up possibilities for new resources and activities for learning that can be incorporated into a learning environment.

Continued commitment to measurement of outcomes. Both employers and employees are interested in ensuring that they demonstrate outcomes from the investment in learning. There may be more interest in “badging” strategies (which document skills and capabilities) than in academic credentialing, which has proven to be an unreliable indicator of knowledge base and skill. A measurement strategy related to learning environments, therefore, might need to include ways for learners who are following their own paths to document their skill building along the way.

Deepening focus on engagement. Employers understand the value of having engaged employees, and they are instituting workplace policies and practices that support engagement. Being able to learn and develop on the job is a big part of what engages employees; so learning strategy is critical to an organization’s engagement efforts. It’s important that employees are quickly brought up to speed when they begin a job, and that they are well supported in continuing to deepen their knowledge base and skills, both independently and in collaboration with others.

Continued focus on analytics. Big data is here to stay, and the learning and development field is not immune to its influences. Learning leaders must understand analytics and work to define appropriate, proactive, and impactful measures that support decision making and planning—well beyond simply reporting activities and outcomes. Using data to customize learning recommendations is especially important.

Decreasing willingness to invest in employee development. Employers want to hire people who are already skilled for the job, and they don’t want to pay for development that makes employees more marketable to other employers. This puts employees in the awkward position of having to manage their own development, without necessarily being granted the financial resources or time to do so. In this environment, L&D organizations need to support employees by providing guidance for self-development, especially the kind of self-development that costs little or nothing in terms of real currency. Promoting learning environments can be a robust yet inexpensive way to advocate for employee development.

Increasing investment in leader development. Employers view leader development as a critical need, and it is the one area in which they are willing to invest time and resources. They hope to ensure the organization’s future and entice longer-term leader commitment by ensuring continuous development for up-and-coming leaders. Leader development requires experiential learning and other nonformal strategies of learning on the job. L&D can add tremendous value by understanding and supporting these kinds of learning processes in the leader development context (as well as in other contexts).

These additional trends affect people working in higher education environments:

Shifting value of degree programs and lessening of confidence in colleges and universities to prepare workers for the workplace. It is unclear where we expect employees to gain the skills they need if not through academic programs. New systems of workforce development may come into play, and there are a number of options on the table that bear watching: increasing use of badging, competency-based education that focuses on validating specific acquired skills, certification programs from reputable vendors and academic institutions, apprenticeships with leading practitioners or industry mavericks, and mentoring and coaching strategies. Program designers in college and university settings are under pressure to demonstrate the value of educational goals and outcomes. Education is less about transmitting bodies of knowledge and more about developing lifelong skills, although both are important. This has implications for course design as educators seek to create relevant and challenging learning activities to ensure educational outcomes with long-term impact.

Contextualized learning. To deepen learning and improve retention of knowledge and skills developed in a degree program, higher education instructors are increasingly moving toward contextualized activities. This need requires designing deeply engaging application activities and developing more partnerships between schools and businesses.

Open educational resources. Integration of open Internet-based resources as content for courses continues to grow, especially as resentment deepens for expensive firewalls surrounding published materials, and concern grows over textbook costs for students and subscription services costs for libraries. Like their corporate counterparts, academics are recognizing that the quality of resources openly available on the web makes compiling customized reading materials much easier. A designer’s ability to find, filter, and curate materials becomes more valuable.

Open learning and domain of one’s own. More higher education instructors are finding value in having students compile their learning assets outside a closed course management system, so they can continue accessing the networks they build and the materials they create even after graduation. Encouraging open and connected learning also prepares students more effectively for lifelong self-directed learning.

IMPLICATIONS

To provide value in this kind of environment, learning professionals need to expand their reach and support learning in all its forms. Developing a deep understanding of social learning, informal learning, peer-to-peer learning practices, performance support, experiential learning, organizational learning cultures, and similar approaches enables learning professionals to devise comprehensive strategies that utilize what is already available in the environment to support ongoing learning.

This approach to supporting learning requires new skills: Internet savvy, curation skills, networking and collaboration capabilities, business acumen, comfort with changing technology, and consulting and influence skills, to name a few. Learning professionals need to manage their own development in exactly the ways all learners must manage it—by finding the right resources, following the leaders, collaborating with peers, and keeping their fingers on the pulse of what’s next.

Valued roles in the learning and development space are also shifting. Pundits are predicting that organizations will value learning coaches—people who can help others solidify learning goals, find appropriate resources, and effectively apply learning in the workplace. This is a more customized, one-on-one role than we have seen in the past. Learning professionals need to be effective curators as much as effective designers and facilitators. The ability to build relationships, promote learning in the workflow, and identify quality resources will also be necessary to be successful in the emerging L&D environment.

THE ROLE OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Learning environments by design—or other approaches that are equally comprehensive and diversified—are becoming the future of learning strategy. A learning advocate’s ability to locate relevant resources and guide learners to engage with people and activities that help them develop can be more valuable (and more timely) than his or her ability to design an effective course. Formal programs aren’t going away, but they are only the beginning of learning—a way of grounding key concepts and skills that can be infinitely built upon as emerging knowledge and practices come to the fore and the work environment shifts.

This book has provided frameworks and process advice for crafting learning environments. The processes of envisioning, finding, curating, assembling, and cultivating learning environments engage and align with the living, ever-evolving nature of the recommendations you are making. Whether you are creating a blended learning hub, a knowledge exchange, a learning resource portal, a collaboratory, or some combination or new form of environment, the concepts discussed in these pages will help ground your work and create a strong strategy. The learning environment components chart (see Figure 1-1) provides a checklist of potential materials and activities for inclusion in the environment and acts as a reminder of all the ways that learning can be supported in the workplace. The learning environment blueprint helps you conceptualize and communicate your recommendations for supporting learning in dynamic modern workplaces.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Even if we perfect the ability to instantly transfer knowledge and skills through an implanted microchip in our brains, learning will always be as necessary to life as breathing. The digital age provides us with access to documented knowledge, people, emerging practices, new ideas, amazing tools, and so much more, which promises to help us keep up with a world that evolves minute by minute.

Learning leaders can provide real support by helping employees access the best resources and collaborate with one another in learning and revising work practices every day. I hope the learning environment design framework assists you in strategizing learning in our modern world.

The learning environment design strategy is ever-evolving, and additional resources and iterations have been posted to www.L4LP.com. I welcome feedback and suggestions at [email protected].