Happy Earth Day!

Today marks the 50th Earth Day, providing an opportunity to consider environmental issues and ways in which individuals can contribute to a cleaner world.

In recent years, organizations have begun to seriously consider the impact their production processes have on the environment and on natural resource reserves. Traditionally, operations and sustainability teams focus on earth-friendly corporate initiatives. But, learning & development can contribute meaningfully, too!

This weekend I read an article, How to Work with Adult Learners: What to keep in mind when teaching your peers.

Applying adult learning principles to peer-based interactions is interesting to me, so I thought I'd give it a quick read. The author was speaking to individuals who are preparing for presentations in meeting type settings. It contained typical advice for individuals new to creating presentations:

• Adults want to know the "why.” 
• They want their prior knowledge to be respected. Relevance is of the utmost importance. 

Good stuff.

In the digital workplace, everything is monitored and recorded. It’s far easier to attribute the impact of an individual employee to the overall success of a company. This means that people analytics plays a huge role in how leaders develop their business strategy.

Performance management, in particular, seeks to optimize a workforce by cultivating talent, enhancing performance and productivity, and driving continued learning. Today’s workforce seeks to develop authentic, meaningful relationships between employees and managers, as well as opportunities for professional development and advancement. Performance management also influences learning and development (L&D).

Trainers must not only support learning objectives, but also business goals. More often than not, our stakeholders include our learners’ managers. Their involvement in our initiatives impact the outcomes we see.

In our experience, if managers undervalue components of a blend – for example, virtual classroom sessions – their teams will lack the necessary support and resources they need in order to successfully participate in learning activities.

The best bet for overcoming leadership leeriness? Training, of course!

Training success relies heavily on the audience. If participants don’t believe content connects to their needs, they will not engage.

And can you blame them? We all feel like we have many projects, tasks, and responsibilities. We simply do not have the time to invest in an event that we perceive as irrelevant.

This post is part of an occasional series “Advice from the Virtual Trenches” where we share real lessons learned when virtual and blended learning didn’t go as planned.

Virtual classrooms have been available to training organizations for over 20 years. As someone who has specialized in this domain during that entire time, I tend to forget that not every organization has adopted virtual training as an acceptable alternative to more traditional approaches.

I was definitely reminded of this recently when we worked with a global organization to implement their first substantive virtual training project.

In thinking about leadership and learning in the era of the four-generation workplace, no shortage of frustrations exists. Technology changes, “cool” workspaces, and operational processes are constantly evolving.

Everything feels more complicated, and learning faces the unique challenge of equipping and empowering our colleagues for success in this new environment. It’s quite simple to chalk up learner disengagement – especially that of the millennial employee – to a “person” problem.

But what if it’s a “perspective” problem?

Virtually There session recap

Twenty years ago, if a student needed information to complete an assignment, they would turn to their teacher, the Encyclopedia Britannica, or a library’s card catalog to find the answer. Today, a very different reality exists for modern learners. We hold the world’s information literally at our finger tips, thanks to the advent of Google and the prevalence of mobile devices and computers.

While technological advancements revolutionized our day-to-day lives, our training programs often live in the past. Many organizations still operate under the assumption that, “If an employee needs to learn something, they’ll wait for a formal training program.”

It’s very exciting to learn about and invest in the latest trends in educational technology. Who among us hasn’t been swept up by the allure of gamification, the promise of curation, and a desire to embed microlearning at every conceivable moment of learning need? 

No matter how enticing these new ideas might be, we are always (rightly) concerned about adoption. If we don’t implement well, these new technologies and instructional strategies will seem like just the latest trend, easily ignored while we all default to our normal, familiar learning mode: instructor-led. 

And, people are generally happy with that. We know how to learn in a classroom. We know how to teach in a classroom. 

It takes a modern learning culture to support modern educational technologies and instructional techniques. Unfortunately, many organizations are living in the past. While training success doesn’t depend on deploying the latest trends, and outdated learning culture can hinder employee, program, and organizational success.  

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the modern classroom. What makes it different? How is it the same?

There’s also been discussion about the fact that the way people learn in this modern classroom has not actually changed at all. Learners still need relevant, timely, and well-designed content. The foundational concepts behind Adult Learning Principles still apply.

I happen to agree with that. There’s a reason everything old is new again. What we used to call performance support, many now call microlearning. Reusable learning objects are also now microlearning. What we used to call “chunking” is now spaced learning. Case studies and role-plays now fall under the umbrella of simulations.

Research and experience have taught us a lot about how people learn, and what strategies in instructional techniques best enable that learning.