MWL Newsletter No 95

Here are posts, articles and news about Modern Workplace Learning (MWL) selected by Jane Hart for the week 9-15 December 2018.


From around the Web

Enough with the “Learning Styles” Already!  Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, 8 December 2018

“The notion of “learning styles”– that teaching to students’ preferred learning style will increase learning outcomes– is one of those persistent “neuromythologies” in education that just won’t go away.”


Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans  Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie and Alex Luchsinger, Pew Internet Research,
10 December 2018

“Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will.”


L&D Pain Points That Keep Executives Up at Night  Clark Quinn, Learning Solutions, 7 December 2018

“L&D has to walk the walk and make it work internally. You’ll get better buy-in if you demonstrate with your own team. You’ll also develop the skills you need to use with other folks. Change the nature of L&D practices internally; then sell them outward to the organization. Become innovative and share the innovations. Work, and learn, out loud. Turn L&D into a core contributor.”


The 1 Difference Between Training a New Hire and Coaching a Talented Employee  Bill Green, Inc, 11 December 2018

“So, what’s the difference between these two skill sets? Training is the act of imparting knowledge to another where that person lacks the necessary skills in order to succeed. Coaching is the act of improving and enhancing knowledge that is already intact. When you’re training a new employee, you’re looking to cover a lot of ground very quickly. You want to give them a sense of how everything works. It’s more general knowledge than specialized knowledge. A coach, on the other hand, is closer to that of a mentor. Their job is to see things in an employee’s approach to the work that the employee might not be able to spot themselves.”


Introduction to the Work Technology series  Stowe Boyd, GigaOm, December 2018

“There is no single, right answer to the perennial question, ‘what combination of tools is the best for business, today?’ Each company will have to evaluate the various component technologies in the work technology landscape, and determine what offerings should be included in the company’s work technology stack. A 20,000 person law firm with offices in three countries has very different needs than a 300 person design firm in one city, and both are different from a 50 person software company with a largely remote workforce.”


Learning Experience Systems – just more click through online learning  Donald Clark, 13 December 2018

“For all the talk of Learning Experience Systems and ‘engagement’, if all you serve up are flat media experiences, no matter how short or micro, with click-through multiple choice or worse, drag and drop, you’ll have thin learning. Simply rebadging platforms with the word ‘Experience’ in the middle doesn’t cut it, unless we reflect on what those ‘experiences should be. Every experience is a learning experience but some are better than others. As Mayer showed this does not mean making things media rich, media rich is not mind rich. This often inhibits learning with unnecessary cognitive load.”


The art of balancing autonomy and control   Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Sarah Lebovitz, and Lior Zalmanson, MIT Sloan Management Review, 13 December 2018

“Today, managers recognize that innovation requires a high level of work autonomy for their employees. This encourages curiosity, enables independent thinking, and provides an environment in which employees can experiment and test new problem-solving approaches with minimal fear of failure. At the same time, top-level management and shareholders expect managers to innovate at an increasingly demanding pace, putting top-down pressure on employees to channel this autonomy into productivity. The challenge for managers becomes figuring out how to balance autonomy and control in order to achieve organizational goals without jeopardizing innovation.”


Working in a studio  Seth Godin, 15 December 2018

“The boss in a factory relies on compliance. More compliance leads to more profits. Do what you’re told, faster and cheaper, repeat. This is the history of the twentieth century. The studio, on the other hand, is about initiative. Creativity, sure, but mostly the initiative to make a new thing, a better thing, a process that leads to better.”


From the MWL Magazine

The role of the Modern Learning Advisor in today’s workplace  Jane Hart, 11 December 2018

The work of the modern Learning & Development function is no longer just about designing, delivering and managing training experiences, but about enabling and supporting continuous improvement, learning and development. To do this, therefore, requires a different type of learning professional from the standard roles found in the workplace, i.e. instructors, facilitators and instructional designers.

The role of the Modern Learning Advisor is about empowering self-reliant and self-sufficient modern professionals who make the most of, and learn from all kinds of experiences and opportunities to self-improve and self-develop.”


Modern Workplace Learning 2019:
A Framework for Continuous Improvement, Learning & Development

Modern Workplace Learning 2019 aggregates and updates content from previous MWL books with an added focus on continuous improvement, learning and development. MWL2019 has been produced by Jane Hart, Director of the Centre for Modern Workplace Learning.

The first chapter of this multimedia resource is FREE to view. You can purchase access to the other chapters (shown below) as well as the (textual) PDF version. A paperback version will be available early in the New Year.

Find out more here.


Next MWL Workshop

Promoting continuous learning in the workplace

Online Workshop runs 14 January – 23 February 2019

Continuous learning and development in the workplace doesn’t mean providing continuous training. Whilst it is up to everyone to become a lifelong learner and keep up to date with what’s happening in their industry or profession to remain employable, it’s also up to L&D departments to help individuals become continuous learners. In this 6-week workshop we will look at how you can help and support individuals to become independent continuous learners and provide continuous learning opportunities..


Jane Hart
Centre for Modern Workplace Learning
w: ModernWorkplaceLearning.com
t: twitter.com/C4LPT 
l: linkedin.com/in/C4LPT

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