Published weekly, the MWL Newsletter provides news and articles about Modern Workplace Learning (MWL) selected by – and with commentary from – Jane Hart. Sign up to receive the newsletter by email.
From around the Web
20 February 2017
SOCIAL LEARNING AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORKPLACES from Cisco Blogs
“..energizing an organization with digital social learning puts learners in the driver’s seat and gives them ownership of their own educational path. Learning becomes digitized, not just digital. Rather than merely transferring current training assets to an online platform, learning content is pulled through curation, facilitation, coaching and experts. … A continuous learning enables personalized learning on demand, empowering employees to learn what they want, when they want.”
JH: This blog reiterates my own thinking (and writing) about L&D’s role in building a “best-in-class digital workplace experience”.
OPINION: IT’S TIME TO RECONSIDER THE POWER OF LEARNING OBJECTIVES – Barry Johnson, People Management
“Modern learning facilitators talk about being ‘learner centred’ and the need to have clear learning objectives. Objectives now belong to the learner – not the facilitator. And that means imposed traditional objectives are naive, objectionable, arrogant and patronising. Wow.”
JH: Barry makes a very good case for re-thinking instructional (or training) objectives which are now commonly referred to as learning objectives
21 February 2017
LIFE AT SORTABLE (3): BOARD GAMES AND MINDFULNESS – Jamie Good
JH: This is Jamie’s 3rd post in his “Life at Sortable” series where he ‘works out loud’ and shares his experiences as the Training Manager in a fast-growing startup.
22 February 2017
WHY SELF-IMPROVEMENT SHOULD BE A GROUP ACTIVITY – HBR Review
“A dangerously flawed assumption undergirds these explanations. They infer that an individual’s development happens…individually. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite our common cultural notion of “self” improvement, the most successful efforts to self-improve have other people at their core.
JH: The article provides advice on ways to build a “self-improvement team” to ensure personal change efforts stick. This could become an important aspect of supporting self-organised professional development too.
23 February 2017
…BUT SOME MANAGERS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS – Mark Britz
“Operations managers have learned through experience too that they can impact performance without L&D .. Sorry L&D, this won’t change with evermore new and flashy technology and approaches, more course offerings, mobile learning, microlearning, or games and gamification. These are mostly seen as add-ons in the corporate world, more push into the world of work but not of the world of work.The only way to shift course and have organizational learning be on par with other functions and departments is to become more a function of the work and become primarily department-less.”
JH: A hard-hitting post from Mark that reinforces my own thinking that L&D now needs to focus on the social and informal practices happening in they day-to-day activities of the employees they serve.
24 February 2017
THE LMS IS QUICKLY LOSING GROUND – Carol Leaman, Chief Learning Officer Magazine
“Put simply, LMSs don’t deliver the learning experience today’s employees demand, or the business results executives demand. Despite that, a few years ago the general consensus was that financial investments in LMSs prohibited them from more spending on something new. Today? Goliath has a fight on his hands. ..The rules of engagement have shifted. The most forward-thinking learning professionals are moving on it, and quickly. They understand that leveraging advancements in learning technology make them strategic enablers to the C-suite. And they’re not letting legacy investments in LMS hold them back.”
JH: Carol looks at the newer types of LMS that support the delivery and tracking of more modern types of training.
L&D SHOULD SUPPORT PEOPLE LIKE A SPORTS TEAM – ALL DAY, EVERY DAY – – Dennis Callahan
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
“If you’re in L&D and not a full-time facilitator or instructor, you probably spend most of your time with managers and SME’s, not individuals who need the skills you’re helping to build. As we shift to more focus more on individual learning, we will see more L&D people working with individuals and teams rather than SMEs and managers. L&D will continue to be connected with managers and senior leaders but will play a bigger role in the lives of employees.”
JH: Thinking of the role of L&D as a coach would help individuals with continuous learning rather than intermittent training. The latter doesn’t work with athletes, why should it for employees!
Poll of the Week
Gamification is all the rage but does it work? What do end users really think? I am writing an article for the MWL Magazine focusing on the end users perspective, so please let me know what you think by taking this short Twitter poll HERE. Poll closes Thursday 2 March.
From the MWL Magazine
BEYOND TRAINING – THE IMPORTANCE OF WORKWIDE LEARNING by Jane Hart
“There is a lot of talk about lifelong learning – but most of it focuses on lifelong education – that is continuously taking courses throughout your life … but lifelong education is only part of the answer. Rather than talk about lifelong learning, what it is actually more appropriate is to talk about lifewide learning … If we apply the concept of lifewide learning to the workplace, we might talk about workwide learning.”
COMPANY TRAINING/E-LEARNING IS THE LEAST VALUED WAY OF LEARNING AT WORK: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR L&D? by JaneHart
In this article Jane Hart looks at the results of her 5-yearLearning in the Workplace survey and considers what this means for L&D departments. She analyses the results by age and country to see if there any significant differences.
Upcoming MWL Workshop
SUPPORTING MANAGER-LED LEARNING
Intro to MWL: 27 Feb – 10 Mar
Supporting Manager-Led Learning: 13 Mar – 17 Apr 2017
When it comes to manager-led learning, there is a huge opportunity to work with managers to help them recognise, value, encourage and support the learning that takes place everyday as a natural part of work – both individually as well as in work teams and groups.This 4-week online workshop looks at how you can help managers, individuals and teams learn from their everyday work as well as support collaborative problem-solving and innovation.
Book
LEARNING IN THE MODERN WORKPLACE 2017 By Jane Hart
Jane Hart’s new book – presented in the form of a number of short, succinct sections – builds on the material in her previous book, Modern Workplace Learning, to provide new models, frameworks, guidance and examples as well as links to over 140 new resources for you to delve deeper into how to support learning in the modern workplace. It also contains a 30-page Appendix containing the Top Tools for Learning 2016 lists to provide a complete set of resources. Cost: £15 (paperback) £12.50 (PDF). Site licenses available.
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Jane Hart
Centre for Modern Workplace Learning