Giving Learning a Boost | May/June 2018 by Training Industry Magazine

M A Y/J U N E 2 0 1 8

GIVING LEARNING A BOOST

REINFORCEMENT STRATEGIES | 16 Combating the Forgetting Process

AUGMENTED REALITY | 28 Extending Your Training Reach

MAXIMIZING RETENTION | 40 Brain-Based Principles for Learning

BUSINESS

PERSPECTIVES

MANAGING

WORLD-CLASS

TRAINING

PERSPECTIVES - KE N TAY LO R

This edition of our magazine explores a variety of ways to handle one of the top challenges of a learning leader: sustaining the impact of the training investment that we make. Sustainability is top of mind for many training and development leaders, which is a good sign that the field understands that one-and-done training is quickly becoming unacceptable in an environment where investment dollars can be hard to come by. Sustaining the impact of training to change behaviors and improve the performance of our employees can take many forms. Ultimately, it comes down to identifying the key behaviors that we are trying to change, and then using the many available tools to help reinforce what has been learned. The core of a successful training reinforcement plan starts with understanding the frequency with which the new skill or behavior is used in the job setting. This frequency helps us form the reinforcement strategy. The most successful reinforcement strategies embed post-course activities into the job, which helps to reawaken the concepts covered in the initial training. These activities can take many forms, such as a practice exercise, reading notes, talking to a mentor or coach, doing a simulation or playing a serious game. The efficacy of

different forms of reinforcement can be debated, but really any form of focused revisiting of the content will help bring back the experiences from the initial learning. Another element of a best-in-class reinforcement strategy involves varying the post-training activities and spreading them out over significant time periods. Some training organizations have exercises that take place up to six to eight months after the initial training.

IT COMES DOWN TO IDENTIFYING THE KEY BEHAVIORS THAT WE ARE TRYING TO CHANGE, AND THEN USING THE MANY AVAILABLE TOOLS TO HELP REINFORCE WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED.

As leaders in the training and development world, our challenge is to ensure buy-in for the complete learning experience: the pre-training, training and post-training reinforcement activities. Talking to key stakeholders about the learning experience and securing their buy-in demonstrates our commitment to delivering real impact, rather than merely checking another to-do off our always lengthy to-do lists. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts about the point of views shared in the magazine and any topics you would like us to tackle in future editions. I hope to see you at TICE this year at the end of June in Raleigh, NC. Ken Taylor is the president and editor in chief of Training Industry, Inc. Email Ken.

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CO N T E N TS

TA B L E O F VOLUME 11

ISSUE 4

MAY/JUNE 2018

FEATURES

16 REINFORCEMENT STRATEGIES

28 AUGMENTED REALITY

40 BRAIN-BASED LEARNING PRINCIPLES

WHY POST-TRAINING REINFORCEMENT CANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BE OVERLOOKED By Derek Smith

Combat the forgetting curve with more learner-focused strategies to increase application.

6 MUST-HAVE MOBILE LEARNING ELEMENTS TO TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION

ENABLING INFORMAL LEARNING: INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND LEARNING

EXTENDING YOUR TRAINING REACH WITH AUGMENTED REALITY By Alexander Salas

33 36

ORGANIC LEARNING: GOING BEYOND THE L&D BUBBLE

By Ryan Jenkins

Drive talent development by understanding the training needs of emerging generations.

By Kacie Walters

Utilize knowledge management strategies to improve employee performance.

esign a plan for a future with augmented reality in all aspects of learning and development.

By Lorin Yeater

Nurture continuous learning by harnessing the organic nature of informal learning.

ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT COACHING HAS ARRIVED By Dr. Matt Barney

Support learners on their learning journey with the help of an artificially intelligent coach.

BRAIN-BASED LEARNING PRINCIPLES FOR MAXIMUM RETENTION IN THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM

TRANSITIONING TO A VIRTUAL WORKFORCE

By Cynthia Clay

Increase retention in the virtual classroom with these six brain-based learning principles.

By Nancy Nagdeman

Enhance productivity in virtual employees with the adoption of interpersonal skills.

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I N THIS I S S U E

THOUGHT LEADERS

PERSPECTIVES

GUEST EDITOR

11 13

By Ken Taylor

Sustaining the impact of the training is top of mind for L&D leaders.

By Matthew Murray

Drive performance by connecting learning to meaningful workplace moments.

SCIENCE OF LEARNING By Srini Pillay, M.D.

By Julie Winkle Giulioni

By Sam Shriver and Marshall Goldsmith

Reinforce training with the help of microlearning and training transfer.

SECRETS OF SOURCING

LEARNER MINDSET

WHAT’S NEXT IN TECH

CLOSING DEALS

COMPANY NEWS

Revive the disinterested brain by involving learners in designing learning.

PERFORMANCE MATTERS

BUILDING LEADERS

Improve training’s impact by giving those responsible for it a boost.

By Doug Harward

High-performing training programs embed reinforcement into the design.

By Michelle Eggleston

Improve employee development by enhancing the manager-employee relationship.

By Eric Sharp

A shift in mindset and the use of new technology can help sustain training.

INFO EXCHANGE

CASEBOOK

MEASURING IMPACT

Pfizer increased engagement by implementing training more relevant to employees’ job rolls.

Picking the right tools when creating an evaluation plan can show training’s business impact.

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FOLLOW THROUGH

As the articles in this issue demonstrate, building boosts into the sustain phase of your learning journeys is critical if you want to drive performance-based application. Learning professionals have moved beyond thinking in terms of pre-work and post-work, with its assumptions that the learning event in the middle of the journey is what counts the most. We recognize that knowledge reinforcement and continuous learning in the final phase of the journey can make a significant difference in the lasting impact of our programs.

A LEARNING BOOST IS NOT A JOLT OR A NUDGE, BUT A SURGE. One of the challenges we have as learning architects is how best to design those reinforcement and application boosts. There are two common design approaches to the sustain phase that appear to be diametric opposites: the Seamless Integration and the Grand Finale. If we tease out the best components of these two approaches, we can achieve a third design construct that is crafted around the meaningful workplace moments of our learners. THE SEAMLESS INTEGRATION This design approach maintains that the means to successful learning is to embed reinforcement into the workflow, as close to the point of application as possible. In this scenario, the learning boost is a just-in-time reminder, nudge or recalibration that prompts the learner

to reflect on the skills and methods they learned earlier in the journey and apply them to the real situation they now face. The Seamless Integration approach to the sustain phase is designed around quick hits and resources: micro-sims, context-specific learning nuggets, popup videos, Quick Reference Cards, mini diagnostics, etc. Some of these might be pushed out to learners in a structured way; some might be pulled by learners as and when they need them. The persistent drumbeat of the Seamless Integration approach makes complete sense. The problem is that your sustain resources can be dismissed as “nice to haves” by your learners once the program is less front-of-mind and they are back in longue durée of their work patterns. The energy of the learning journey can dissipate in the sustain phase, trailing off into irrelevance as learners gradually forget the key points in the flurry of workday activities. THE GRAND FINALE The Grand Finale design overcomes that problem by building up to a peak at the end of the learning campaign. As narrative design tells us, and as popular media demonstrate, any learner journey or compelling story should end in a climax, the culminating apex of energy, intensity and impact. The elements of the program come together in a rising crescendo and a milestone event. There’s no danger of your sustain phase running out of steam in this model; it concludes with a big, memorable experience.

Very good! But what comes next for the learner? Do we just depend on reminders and takeaways? And how does the learner translate this big experience back to the more mundane practicalities of worklife? Have we reached a stalemate here? THE MEANINGFUL MOMENTS Perhaps not. We can avoid the dilemma by reconsidering how we think of our learning boosts, mapping our sustain activities to the moments of everyday work behavior that are most important. Meaningful moments don’t have to be high-adrenaline situations or revelations. Most of us expend and recharge our energy in micro-bursts. Meaningful moments can be daily habits that are contextually significant and carry impact. As Chip and Dan Heath suggest in “The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact,” we can shape the peak moments in our learners’ worklife and connect our learning reinforcements to these personalized, high-impact situations (an annual review; a first time; a first day; a recognition; a stretch assignment; a threshold achievement). Being more intentional about how we align our learning boosts to elevated moments can enhance their effect. In this scenario, a learning boost is not a jolt or a nudge, but a surge. Matthew Murray is the digital learning leader at PwC. Email Matthew.

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SCIENCE OF LEARNING SRINI PILLAY, M.D.

THE LEARNING CRISIS: REVIVING THE EXHAUSTED AND DISINTERESTED BRAIN

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn,” said Benjamin Franklin. Truth be told, I am unconvinced that people within organizations are in a learning mindset at all. Given that workplace engagement worldwide is 13 percent, why would anyone want to actually learn? In theory, learning provides an opportunity to grow, share and get better at what we are doing, but it is also a massive energy drain that is currently difficult to afford. If we want learning to stick, as Benjamin Franklin suggests, we have to involve people. The tips below are ways in which we can “involve” people so that we can boost learning. INVOLVE YOUR AUDIENCE IN LEARNING DESIGN As professionals who frequently deliver and design learning, we tend to leave our audiences out of it. But when we do, we risk losing them altogether. People differ in how they want to learn. For instance, not all people like classroom or online learning, and they may want learning to be delivered in different ways. Some learners may want learning to be tied to their current strategies through group facilitation while others may prefer podcasts or videos. Action: Ask learners what they want and provide a platform for individualized learning. Alternatively, you could provide multiple modalities for learning, since this can help the brain hold onto the information. Even in the latter case

though, involve people. When they see themselves in the learning experience, they are more likely to be engaged.

IF WE WANT LEARNING TO STICK, WE HAVE TO INVOLVE PEOPLE. MAKE LEARNING SUBLIME The paradox of learning is that most of it is forgettable. Yet, there are forms of learning that can stick more than others. One distinction to make is between the ordinary and the sublime. Ordinary learning (audio or video “information”) does not make much of a lasting impression on the brain, but sublime learning does. As it pertains to language, sublimity refers to a certain loftiness that captures your heart. For example, a movie scene in which you hear “I want the truth….” followed by, “You can’t handle the truth,” is instantly memorable. The intensity, brevity and instant resonance all engage the brain’s learning capacity. Compare this to terminology like “lean manufacturing,” and you’ll instantly see why organizational learning suffers. One key characteristic of sublime content is that it is typically associated with more than pleasure or reward. It is associated with awe, fear and terror, too, but even the fear and terror are not what we usually think of. Action: Use “sublimity” as a criterion for acceptable learning. Compare and contrast how people hold onto sublime versus non-sublime design. The use of music, movie clips and the drama of

brain changes could be a great way to start sublime learning. CONSIDER ELIMINATING LEARNING ALTOGETHER In a recent discussion with an investor, I heard over and over again, “People do not want to learn. They just want to be entertained.” While I could not personally resonate with that, it was helpful to consider that he might have been correct. Entertainment is a context for learning, yet it is highly restricted in the workplace. Here, I am not referring to edutainment even, where learning is coupled side-by-side with entertainment. The learning should be embedded in the entertainment. Action: As an example, our company teaches innovation through our “Corporate Kitchen” program. This program combines eating with innovation. It’s simply 10 minutes of a learning preamble about an innovation technique, followed by simply dining with colleagues. At the end of the meal, having “tasted” the innovation technique, leaders are better positioned to have had a multisensory understanding of what this technique allows. Boosting learning is becoming a challenge, but these unusual techniques will likely take learning to a different place than usual. Dr. Srini Pillay is the CEO of NeuroBusiness Group. He is also assistant professor (part-time) at Harvard Medical School and teaches in the executive education programs at Harvard Business School and Duke CE. Email Srini.

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PERFORMANCE MATTERS JULIE WINKLE GIULIONI

BOOST THE IMPACT OF TRAINING BY BOOSTING THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT!

In a typical organization, some of the most under-the-radar rock stars responsible for driving business results are those in the learning and development (L&D) function. These folks work quietly behind the scenes evaluating needs, isolating gaps, developing resources, deploying solutions and supporting individuals who are in the process of growing their skills and capacity. Yet, most discussions of improving training itself center on such things as evolving technologies and modalities, the latest brain research, platforms and learning philosophies. But, if we really want to give training a boost, we need to give a boost to those responsible for it. And there are countless ways to make this happen, starting with these four R’s. RECOGNITION When was the last time learning was called out at the annual all-hands meeting? While sales, service and all other departments deserve the recognition they receive for the contributions they make, so does training. Learning is the lever that facilitates enhanced performance and results throughout the organization. And while less proximate, the L&D function is equally responsible for enabling those results in many cases. Connecting these dots and recognizing that the role of learning can go a long way toward boosting training. Booster Tip: Invite L&D professionals who have made significant contributions in their department to high-profile recognition events. Not only does it send a message about the role of learning

in the organization, it allows for those individuals to connect more deeply with other key contributors – something that can only lead to enhanced relationships, relevance and results. REDEDICATION Many organizations claim to be “learning organizations,” but what does that really mean? Too frequently, it’s a platitude versus a daily practice. A slogan versus a sincere sentiment. Organizations that elevate the role of learning and position it as a key business driver send a powerful message. They help others understand that L&D offers a sustainable competitive advantage. They increase individual receptivity to and engagement in learning. Rededicating ourselves and our organizations to learning not only boosts the results it can achieve but also the spirits of those responsible for them. Booster Tip: Sure, add “learning” to your values and mission, but don’t leave it at that. Make sure that executives and leaders at all levels live it by attending training, talking about what they’ve learned, and actively and enthusiastically advocating involvement. Because, word on the street is always more powerful than words on a wall. RESOURCES “Doing more with less” is an expression that inspires rolled eyes from most L&D professionals. They’ve heard it and lived it for decades now as their departments have become increasingly lean and stretched thin to meet the needs of diverse audiences.

And then there’s technology, which offers tremendous benefits as well as the expectancy of exponential efficiencies. But, since it’s now possible to do so much more given new tools, platforms and modalities, the expectations placed on L&D departments have only escalated.

ORGANIZATIONS THAT POSITION LEARNING AS A KEY BUSINESS DRIVER SEND A POWERFUL MESSAGE. As a result, more resources are what many training professionals dream about. Boosting budgets (or other resources) speaks to what the organization values while boosting the morale (and capabilities) of those responsible for learning. RECIPROCATION L&D professionals spend their days working to ensure that others throughout the organization have the learning they need. Yet frequently they themselves experience the shoemaker’s children syndrome. To ensure that these individuals can continue to contribute at high levels, it’s essential that we make sure that those responsible for training also receive training. This keeps their skills fresh and their souls nourished – providing a boost for the individual and, ultimately, for organizational results. Julie Winkle Giulioni has 25 years of experience working with organizations worldwide to improve performance through learning. Email Julie.

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2018 KEYNOTES

INSIGHTFUL. ENGAGING. ACTIONABLE.

K. ANDERS ERICSSON, PH.D. THE SCIENCE OF EXPERTISE

Anders is the co-author of “Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise,” and a researcher into the psychological nature of human performance and expertise.

ALISON FRAGALE, PH.D. NEGOTIATION: THE SWISS-ARMY KNIFE OF RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

TIFFANY POEPPELMAN PERSONAL BRANDING FOR L&D PROFESSIONALS

Tiffany is head of sales productivity across LinkedIn’s international offices. She is a personal branding and workplace evaluation expert, and one of Inc.’s 30 Inspirational Women to Watch in Tech.

KRIS GIRRELL

REHUMANIZE THE WORKPLACE: THE NEXT LEVEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE EXPERT Alison is a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and researcher into the roots and consequences of power, status and influence in organizations.

JUNE 26-28, 2018 // RALEIGH, NC

Kris is a coach, consultant, author and expert on emotional intelligence (EI) and the fundamental role EI plays in successful leadership.

BUILDING LEADERS SAM SHRIVER & MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

STRATEGIC SOUND BITES FOR

TRAINING REINFORCEMENT

In a world that is increasingly defined by differences of opinion it is nice to address a topic where there is overwhelming convergence. Strategy! The practitioners who develop strategy, as well as the academic analysts who critique its effectiveness, are in almost universal agreement: “good strategy” is “simple strategy!” Now, almost assuredly, that strategy is never easy to implement or simple to “do.” But it is easy to understand. It’s analogous to an effective sound bite (i.e., takes complicated dynamics and reduces them to their most plausible essence). In that spirit we call on the oftenquoted sound bites of two Hall of Fame basketball coaches, John Wooden (UCLA men’s coach from 1948-1975) and Pat Summit (Tennessee women’s coach from 1974-2012) as a means of suggesting two “reinforcement strategies that have the potential to give training a boost.”

“GOOD STRATEGY” IS “SIMPLE STRATEGY!”

you “hurry” you inevitably arrive at your destination “out of control” (an advantage to your opponent). Consider the implications of that perspective as it applies to the pursuit of effectively implementing a boost strategy grounded in all that constitutes microlearning. As this publication has pointed out on many occasions over the years, trends are distinguished from fads by their transformational potential and documented, ongoing impact. At an absolute minimum, microlearning is a cost-effective and generationally appealing methodology to extend formal learning events by keeping core content “alive” or “front-of-mind.” The caution we feel bears consideration is the “all-in” adaptation of an approach that assumes the “mobile, just-in-time” benefits of microlearning render traditional delivery mechanisms obsolete.

2 | TRAINING TRANSFER “If You See a Turtle Sitting on a Fence Post, You Know it Didn’t Get There By Itself.” – Coach Summit

1 | MICROLEARNING “Be Quick…But Don’t Hurry.” – Coach Wooden Coach Wooden was describing a philosophy he tried to impart when he taught his teams how to play defense. Clearly, quickness is “good.” It provides you with an advantage that forces your opponent to adjust. But when

Coach Summit was responding to a question that asked her to explain “the secret of her success.” She routinely went to great lengths to describe her success as a function of so much more than her (and she would do so with both conviction and world-class humility). As she saw it, her success was a function of the community she worked so diligently

to build during her tenure. There were the players (of course!); the parents of those players; her assistant coaches; the administration and faculty at the University of Tennessee, etc. “Success” was a function of getting all of those diversified stakeholders in some semblance of synchronized harmony. Consider the similarities when it comes to implementing a “boost strategy” for successful training transfer. What percentage of your time would you say is dedicated to “the care and feeding” of non-traditional stakeholders? We have known since the mid-1980s that training transfer is a function of culture (in general) and next-level-manager reinforcement (in particular). On the proverbial scale of 1-10, how effective is your training function at building the kind of community that is necessary to elevate your “turtles?” By its very nature, training is a compartmentalized change initiative. “Trainees” with “a need to know” enter and are expected to emerge having demonstrated the potential “to do.” As such, providing training is but half the battle. The rest relies on your ability to develop and maintain a dedicated undercurrent of extended community. Simple to understand, difficult to do! Marshall Goldsmith is the world authority in helping successful leaders get even better. Sam Shriver is the senior vice president of commercial operations and product development at The Center for Leadership Studies. Email Marshall and Sam.

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WHY POST-TRAINING

REINFORCEMENT

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LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT (L&D) EXPERTS AND CORPORATE TRAINING PROFESSIONALS SPEND COUNTLESS HOURS DESIGNING PROGRAMS THAT ARE INTENDED TO HELP EMPLOYEES LEARN VALUABLE SKILLS, ALL IN THE HOPES THAT IT WILL MAKE THEM BETTER AT THEIR JOBS. THIS INTENTIONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT BENEFITS BOTH THE EMPLOYEE AND THE ORGANIZATION IN A MYRIAD OF WAYS.

The ever-evolving world of talent development has largely moved online, and in recent years it has seen plenty of innovation, making learning about all sorts of topics easier and more effective. In 2018, a lot is going right in the world of instructional design. More organizations are adopting microlearning methods, which give employees flexibility and control over their training. Well-produced microlearning takes long-form content and adapts it for short-form learning, which helps employees remember more of what is being taught.

CAN’T BE OVERLOOKED BY DEREK SMITH

One of the biggest challenges that will continue to dominate corporate training conversations is how organizations and learners can overcome the forgetting curve – the brain’s natural loss of information that isn’t being used. The forgetting curve is nothing new; in fact, the theory was first introduced in the late 19th century by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus gathered data about learning retention over time and discovered that the brain’s retention of information starts to fall drastically within just the first 24 hours. Studies suggest that as much as 90 percent of information is forgotten within 30 days, and 70 percent of that loss happens within one day. When you factor in the $160 billion annual budget that US businesses put into training,

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verbal working memory, which is a part of the short-term memory.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about the findings that Dr. Henry Roediger and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke uncovered about learning reinforcement in the research brief, “The Power of Testing Memory.” Dr. Art Kohn discusses more types of reinforcement to offer after training in the article, “Deploying an After-Training Program.”

seeing 70 percent of that budget wasted after a single day is mind-boggling. Because of the fast rate at which we forget, your organization is probably spending more and seeing less in return. But the impact of the forgetting curve extends well past budget concerns. When you’re training your employees about workplace safety, for instance, having employees forget 70 percent of what you’ve taught them by the next day can be downright dangerous. The good news is that it is possible to counteract the forgetting curve and dramatically increase learning retention in training programs. Let’s explore a few strategies that corporate trainers can apply to start seeing better learning retention and training application with your employees.

CONTENT CHUNKING Content chunking is a concept that was first introduced back in 1965 by Harvard psychologist George A. Miller. Miller hypothesized that the short-term memory could only hold five to nine chunks of information at a time. A study by the University of California found that in the modern workplace, employees are interrupted every 15 minutes, on average. That’s just one reason why, in the reality of today’s work environment, trainers can no longer rely on long-form e-learning courses to serve as a primary method of training. Microlearning has been one of the biggest trends to hit the L&D scene since training first started moving online. Microlearning has been successful

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for multiple reasons, but its biggest benefit is that it focuses on chunks of learning content that have a narrow focus, rather than requiring a learner to only receive training from long, comprehensive courses. When you adapt content for smaller chunks, you’re gaining a level of control over the amount of information your learners are retaining. Effectively spacing out this chunking means that you can offer memorable, comprehensive content that will be better retained.

REINFORCE LEARNING Another effective strategy to overcome the forgetting curve is to test learned material. Many employers require employees to take quizzes over the content they’ve viewed, and while that’s certainly a step in the right direction, there are multiple other ways to ensure the reinforcement of training content is sufficiently preventing learning from being lost. Reinforcement strategies can include having learners write down information, making quiz or test questions challenging, and providing memory boosts for the content. Some of these may sound obvious, but I’ll go into more detail about each to emphasize why they work.

WRITE IT DOWN There should always be some response questions for learners to answer. This would require reviewing and possibly grading their responses, but studies show that writing down information shortly after first learning it works the

Using questions that ask employees to put learned information into their own words forces them to recall and restate information. By writing the information down, learners use more channels to retain that information and understand how to turn learning into application.

THE IMPACT OF THE FORGETTING CURVE EXTENDS WELL PAST BUDGET CONCERNS. MAKE IT HARD Doctors often put medical residents on the spot by asking very challenging, specific questions. These questions aren’t designed to necessarily be answered correctly at the time, but rather to help the resident remember the correct answer afterward. When learners are forced to recall information by having to answer tough questions, two things generally happen. Either the learner remembers the answer and the new knowledge is reinforced more strongly, or the learner gets the question wrong, but the correct answer is committed to memory due to the difficulty of the question. To see learning retention improve over time, the brain has to be challenged so that it better understands information and can apply it to different situations. This is what learning agility is all about.

BOOST THE CONTENT Professor Henry Roediger at Washington University in St. Louis has done extensive research on learning reinforcement, and his findings demonstrate that forced

recall is the best way to counteract the forgetting curve and help learners retain information in the long run. Dr. Roediger led a study wherein he invited students at the University to examine a series of photographs and remember as many of them as they could. Afterwards, one group left the lab, while a second group took a brief quiz where they simply wrote down as many of the photos as they could remember. A third group was given this same quiz three times in a row. When all the students returned to the lab a week later and were asked to recall the photos, they found that the more recall opportunities a group had initially, the more photos the students recalled. The first group (no recall opportunity) remembered an average of 17.4 photos, the second group (one recall opportunity) remembered an average of 23.3 photos, and the third group (three recall opportunities) remembered 31.8 photos. In another study done by Dr. Henry Roediger and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke, they wanted to investigate how repeated

STUDIES SUGGEST THAT AS MUCH AS 90 PERCENT OF INFORMATION IS FORGOTTEN WITHIN 30 DAYS. studying stacks up compared to repeated testing. Three different groups of subjects were given four chances to study or be tested: • Study, study, study, study (SSSS) • Study, study, study, test (SSST) • Study, test, test, test (STTT) Their findings (see Figure 1) were interesting because the group that only studied showed the highest recall of information after only five minutes had passed, but after a week had passed, the group that only studied once and

Proportion of Idea Units Recalled

FIGURE 1

SSSS SSST STTT

0.8

0.7

was tested three times averaged a much higher recall than the group that only studied. When tested one week after the initial studying and testing had been done, the amount of forgetting by the SSSS group was 52 percent, for the SSST group it was 28 percent, and for the STTT group it was only 10 percent. Roediger’s findings in this study show the great importance of providing tests, or any opportunity for recall besides simply going over the information again. Your learners want to retain information that applies to them, but unless the brain is shown that this information is worth remembering, it is likely to let it go. When information is brought to the learner’s mind, the brain begins to acknowledge it as important. By testing with difficult questions that encourage the learner to write, you can significantly increase the amount of information your learners retain. Retention is absolutely crucial in an economy where $160 billion is spent by U.S. businesses on employee learning and training. Organizations simply cannot afford to let 90 percent of those dollars go to waste, but without learning reinforcement strategies in place, that money put into employee training is being flushed away by the human brain’s natural processes. To combat the forgetting process and get the highest level of learning retention out of your training content, be sure to offer small chunks of learning at a time, provide difficult quiz questions, and reinforce the learning with tests spaced out over time.

0.6

0.5

0.4

5 Minutes

1 Week

Retention Interval

Derek Smith is a content marketing specialist with BizLibrary who researches topics in the human resources and L&D fields, providing these professionals with the most up-todate and relevant information available. Email Derek.

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TALENT DEVELOPMENT IS THE SECOND BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING HR EXECUTIVES AT ORGANIZATIONS TODAY, ACCORDING TO BERSIN BY DELOITTE. IT IS ESTIMATED THAT COMPANIES SPEND MORE THAN $130 BILLION PER YEAR ON EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT, WITH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT TAKING UP THE SINGLE LARGEST AREA OF SPENDING.

According to the Inc. Magazine article, “The Secrets of Successful, Fast-Growing Businesses Today--and Plans for Tomorrow,” 61 percent of the 2016 Inc. 500 CEOs and founders prefer to develop employees by providing outside training. However, only 28 percent have a formal leadership development program.

and developing the emerging generations (millennials and Generation Z), is a millennial, and has built a next generation training company, I have identified six must-have mobile learning elements to effectively train the next generation.

The 2016 North American external spend on training courses was $28.1 billion, according to Training Industry. Yet 80 percent of managers who change behavior after training maintain the training six months or less before going back to their old ways, according to Grovo’s 2017 “Good Manager, Bad Manager” report.

THE NEXT GENERATION & TRAINING

Effective training is either nonexistent or not working in today’s 21st-century workplace. The way in which training is developed and delivered for the modern workplace must change, especially if you are trying to train the 60 percent of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1997, who want workplace training to develop their leadership skills. As someone who has spoken to thousands of professionals on the topic of leading

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But first, let’s understand how important training is to the emerging generations.

The number one factor millennials consider when starting a new job is “sufficient training,” according to a recent survey of 1,500 millennials conducted by the software firm, Qualtrics, and venture capital firm, Accel Partners. Training rather than company culture, workplace flexibility, salary, or company perks is what millennials want most when starting a new job and what they use to evaluate whether or not they made the right employer choice. Training is also an organization’s strongest strategy when it comes to retaining millennials. Seventy-one percent of millennials who are likely to leave an organization in

MUST-HAVE MOBILE LEARNING ELEMENTS TO TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION BY RYAN JENKINS

two years are dissatisfied with how their leadership skills are being developed, according to the 2016 Deliotte Millennial Survey. And according to The Hartford’s 2015 Millennial Leadership Survey, 69 percent of millennials aspire to be leaders in the next five years and 60 percent of millennials want training to develop their leadership skills. According to the Qualtrics survey, roughly 80 percent of millennials said that an emphasis on personal growth is the most important quality of a company’s culture. And more and more emerging Generation Z professionals (those born after 1998) are likely to forego a traditional college education to go to work for an employer who offers university-like training. “[Generation Z] students are asking corporate recruiters whether companies will help them get new skills as jobs shift,” says James Manyika, chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute.

Training is critical because it’s one of the few organizational aspects that touches every phase of the employee lifecycle.

Training will be even more critical moving forward because the emerging generations know they will have highly varied and the longest careers of any generation before them. Training will be the lifeblood of their careers, and they’ll be looking to their employer to provide it. As work cycles spin faster, the re-skilling and developing of employees becomes paramount. Cutting-edge companies like AT&T, GE, Visa, Qualcomm and IBM are investing in innovative training solutions to help them pivot into the world of continuous and on-demand learning and development in order to attract and retain millennials and Generation Z.

NEW GENERATION REQUIRES NEW TRAINING

generation who will replace the retiring leaders, it’s no surprise that Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends reported that 89 percent of executives rate the need to strengthen, reengineer and improve organizational leadership as an important priority.

A NEW GENERATION OF LEARNERS REQUIRES A NEW APPROACH TO WORKPLACE TRAINING.

Company perks, recruiting, customer service and marketing are evolving to reach millennials and Generation Z, so why is company training so far behind?

The next generation has a growing appetite for training that isn’t present inside organizations.

With 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day and a devastating lack of professional development for the

The reason millennials are the most highly scrutinized generation of all time is that they put a face to the change that every

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industry and individual is facing in today’s turbulent times. The next generation provides data points into what’s next... what’s next for your business, leadership, communication, marketing, and now more than ever, training.

Generation Z would consume on a regular basis on a mobile device, they will be less likely to engage and retain the information.

Generation Z can learn from experts, managers, and their peers and also contribute their own experience or expertise is impactful and empowering.

2. AGILE AND ACCESSIBLE

The better you understand the emerging generations, the better positioned you’ll be to deliver effective training in 2018 and beyond. Because millennials grew up (and Generation Z is growing up) with ubiquitous connectivity and evolving mobile technology, they think and act differently. A large majority of the emerging generations cannot remember a world where a smart mobile device has been outside of arms reach. That has changed everything for them.

The 21st-century employee is untethered. They are remote workers, bringing their own device or applications to work and finding new ways to execute work and structure their day. Training must be digitally native and mobile in order to be effective for the next generation of learners. It has to be agile and accessible to fit into the active lives of millennial and Generation Z employees.

When mobile training offers collaborative technology and a communal environment it helps to build relationships, diminish silos, shrink geographies, enhance personal influence and promote sharing.

Mobile technology has rewired how the emerging generations socialize, network, buy, communicate, learn and show up to work. Millennials approach problems and learning fundamentally differently than previous generations thus they require an evolved, mobilefirst approach to training.

EFFECTIVE TRAINING IS EITHER NONEXISTENT OR NOT WORKING IN TODAY’S WORKPLACE.

MUST-HAVE MOBILE LEARNING ELEMENTS 1. BRIEF AND BEAUTIFUL There is more competing for the time and attention of the emerging workforce than ever before. The media millennials and Generation Z consume is bitesized thus the training they are likely to consume has to be brief and succinct. They also have a high expectation for technology to be simple, intuitive and beautifully designed. Next generation training has to be beautiful. If the training content doesn’t appear to mirror what millennials and

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Next generation training needs to be delivered in short intervals where learners can easily insert the training in their dayto-day lives. How and when millennials and Generation Z learn is more important than what they learn because the “what” won’t matter if they don’t have enough time to consume it or if accessing the training is over-complicated.

3. INSTANT AND INTELLIGENT Receiving a notification from Google Maps that traffic is heavy before starting your commute is informative and helpful. Information is being delivered instantly and intelligently to the palm of our hand. Why can’t training take a similar form where you receive an intelligent notification about powerful public speaking tips (for example) instantly on your phone while walking to a meeting where you’ll be presenting to a team. Millennials and Generation Z will turn to their smartphone to find just-intime answers to unexpected problems. Information and learning is being accessed much differently today than in years past. Deploying intelligent training via quick how-to articles, videos, or interactive infographics where learners can pull down the content for instant application is ideal for the next generation.

5. RELEVANT AND RELATABLE The accelerated change happening at work and in business means everyone needs to commit to continuous learning. This also means that training has to be hyper-relevant to the specific and evolving challenges millennials and Generation Z face at work. If the content isn’t relevant and relatable for the learner, retention and recall of the information will suffer. Creating mobile training that addresses a relevant need and provides a solution or applications that are relatable for the learner is key for engagement.

6. BLEND AND BIND For the digitally dependent emerging generations, it’s imperative that their training merge digital with realworld activities. Offline, in-person, or classroom training remains impactful and transformational in today’s digital age. A blended approach to training binds one’s learning. Mobile training that prompts, encourages and rewards millennials and Generation Z learners for real-world interaction and application will not only be effective for binding the learning but will provide a much needed in-person element to round out the leaners’ experience. In order to prompt development, sustain engagement, achieve transformation and improve retention among your millennial and Generation Z workforce, integrate these mobile elements into your next generation training.

4. COLLABORATIVE AND COMMUNAL A majority of workplace learning happens via on-the-job interactions with teammates, managers, and in-house subject matter experts. Creating digital communities where millennials and

Ryan Jenkins is an internationally recognized millennial and Generation Z keynote speaker, generations trainer and partner of the next generation training platform, 21mill.com. Email Ryan.

11 Ways to Optimize Video-based Courses for Improved Learning Outcomes Micro-learning Design content experiences which are less than 10-minutes in length

Eliminate redundancy in content delivery modes Use cues and signals to focus attention to important visual and textual content

Explain diagrams with words presented through audio narration

Use diagrams to help learners build deeper understanding

Integrate explanatory text close to related visuals on screens to avoid split attention

Enable autonomous and self-directed learning

Provide performance aids as external memory supplements

Use scenarios and stories for better engagement / retention

Eliminate extraneous visuals, text and audio

Pare content down to essentials

Learn more about the new Skillsoft Leadership Development Program

ENABLING INFORMAL LEARNING INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND LEARNING

By Kacie Walters Knowledge management and learning and development (L&D) are tightly linked in many ways primarily because developing skills and behaviors and sharing knowledge are at the core of why each function exists. L&D strategies have evolved to include many ways to deliver and enable informal learning using traditional knowledge management tactics. This focus on informal learning and knowledge sharing is driving the creation of newer roles within L&D, such as curator, community manager/ facilitator, social learning strategist and collaboration specialist. Knowledge management has been defined by Carla O’Dell as getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time in her book, “If We Only Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice” (1999). Isn’t this the goal of learning –

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improving the flow of knowledge for the purposes of increasing know-how and developing skills? For decades, knowledge management practitioners have strived to capture best practices and repeatable behaviors to ensure others can learn, adopt and even evolve these behaviors and practices to improve company and employee performance. L&D professionals are realizing that formal learning, classroom or e-learning, is just one way to impart knowledge and develop skills but that enabling information flow and informal learning will greatly impact performance and engagement in a more just-in-time, efficient manner. There are four main tactics learning professionals are leveraging from traditional knowledge management strategies:

1. Communities: Congregating people in person or virtually to share best practices, solve problems and continue the conversation after classroom programs. 2. User-Generated Content: Setting up governance models around people sharing their best content and defining processes for promoting user-generated content into formal learning programs. 3. Content Curation: Expanding learning assets to include external content and farming relevant content in support of a particular skill, knowledge area or learning path. 4. Project Debriefs: Proactively capturing lessons learned of what to continue, what to stop and what to change to continuously improve results.

Communities Communities of Practice (CoP) have been a pillar of knowledge management strategies for decades. CoPs are groups usually formed around a common theme, such as a problem to solve, area of expertise, client, geography, gender, race, or role, led by a committed leader within the group. The ingredients of a successful community include: • A solid purpose/reason for meeting that participants find beneficial to them; • A standing, dependable meeting on the calendar, such as monthly or quarterly; • A facilitator or moderator to create meeting agendas and promote discussion; • A scribe to capture ideas and solutions discussed; and • A platform to store content and enable sharing outside of meetings. Facilitators can rotate to distribute the responsibility of leading a community, and, in fact, providing those new perspectives is very healthy for a community. It is tempting to have a learning professional facilitate communities but they are usually more successful if led from within the group. The facilitator needs to encourage active sharing of ideas, problems, solutions, successes and lessons. They need to do this activity outside of meetings as well. Team sites are a fantastic tool to collect and codify some of these areas but communities must be people-focused and therefore involve a social and human element, not just technology.

Communities can also exist as an extension of classroom events to keep the attendees together for continuous sharing and learning from one another.

THE ACT OF REFLECTING AND DESCRIBING WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY IS THE CRUX OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT. These cohorts can extend discussion on a topic raised in the classroom event, provide opportunities to apply newly learned skills in context and enable peer coaching. Communities can live on forever or be temporary depending on the benefit to the group.

User-Generated Content Sharing tips, tricks and best practices in social forums has been a long-standing knowledge management technique. L&D is taking advantage of current technology to enable this kind of sharing to include not only tips learned on the job but also external content employees wish to share with others, such as a great TED Talk, a thought-provoking blog or article or the latest business book. L&D has found a way to leverage these sharing activities to incorporate richer and more recent content into formal programs. Through social technology and communities, shared content can be flagged or “promoted” into formal programs. For example, there are many

TED Talks on effective communication but there may be one that a CoP agrees is the best. This talk can be flagged and formally integrated into an effective communications program. Connecting community facilitators and L&D professionals becomes important to continuously ensure programs are relevant to the audience and to efficiently source and manage content. Sharing content without some sort of governance model can quickly make any learning portal an overgrown garden of weeds leaving the “flowers,” or the best content, difficult to find. Providing clear criteria and governance over what gets “promoted” into a formal, sponsored program will guarantee the best and most relevant content is featured. Good criteria can include the level of relevance to role, skill, business or industry, a leading practice, furthers thinking on the right topic, aligns with organizational goals, promotes additional conversation, comes from a credible resource, among others.

Content Curation Providing links to the wealth of external content that exists and continues to grow at a remarkable rate can be overwhelming to employees. With the number of emails, meetings, documents and links that come at an employee on a daily basis, sharing more as a “nice to know…” easily gets lost. Oftentimes, organizations have access to external content libraries because they are cost-efficient resources to provide employees access to a wide variety of topics and learning events. However, employees don’t have the time to sift through different portals or even hundreds of search results when they

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SHARING SUCCESS STORIES We can learn a lot from mistakes. Sometimes entire knowledge management programs are built around “lessons learned” and how to not commit the same mistakes again. There is tremendous value in that effort but that takes a lot of trust.

knowledge of how to do things well in context.

If a project takes more than a year from start to finish, it is very easy to forget the details of what happened, let alone why it happened. So, conducting this kind of exercise after major milestones can help ensure the knowledge and learning is not lost due to memory lapses or attrition.

It is far easier to get people to share what went right than what went wrong. Focusing on successes helps spread

Success stories can be shared via many channels, such as podcasts, videos, one-page briefs, live discussions, online forums, newsletters, intranets, blogs, articles, lunch n’ learns, training sessions and storytelling sessions. Project debriefs can be captured and shared in similar fashion depending on the culture.

type “Communication” into the search bar, for example.

and share learnings across disparate groups and regions.

• Solution: Describes what we did and how we did it.

Employees need help narrowing down the best resources for them to develop their skills and m a n a g e r s need direction choosing the right resources to recommend to their teams.

The act of reflecting and describing what happened and why is the crux of knowledge management. Establishing a process to capture this kind of knowledge on an ongoing basis is probably the single most important exercise a company can do to codify history and protect itself from knowledge loss.

• Results: Describes what happened and what metrics we impacted.

Curating content, which is what reference librarians essentially have done for years, provides a clearer starting point and shaves minutes or even hours off of employees’ searching time. The role of learning curator has become a valuable role on the L&D team. Making a case for this position can be achieved by showing time saved across the employee population. Curation will only become more important as the rate of content creation continues to explode. Finding, vetting and promoting content is also a sound marketing strategy for L&D. Highlighting curated content tied to a theme is a great way to continue to drive traffic to your learning portal and external learning resources.

Project Debriefs Project debriefs or summaries have been a fundamental way for knowledge management professionals to capture

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THE ROLE OF LEARNING CURATOR HAS BECOME A VALUABLE ROLE ON THE L&D TEAM.

Debriefing and summarizing a project or initiative can be done by the project leader but, oftentimes, it is better to have an external facilitator from human resources or knowledge management lead the discussion to ensure all project team members can participate. This way the activity is guaranteed to happen as many times people move on to other projects or processes and do not make the time to capture lessons from what has just finished.

The structure of a project debrief can be simple: • Situation: Describes the background and business problem.

• Lessons: Describes what we would do again and/or what we should never do again. Usually, debriefs are documents or presentations but videos of project teams sharing their lessons and stories can be more impactful.

Summary Knowledge management and L&D use a number of common tactics to achieve very similar objectives – ensuring employees have the right knowledge and skills for improved performance. Techniques like communities, usergenerated content, content curation and project debriefs can further the learning goals of an organization. These knowledge management techniques, along with others, like expertise location, mentoring and knowledge capture, are being slightly re-purposed in L&D strategies, especially as portals and social collaboration technology becomes more prevalent. Kacie Walters is the vice president of strategic programs at Northern Trust. Email Kacie.

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Structured and unstructured online learning

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In-person events

EXTENDING YOUR TRAINING REACH WITH

AUGMENTED REALITY By Alexander Salas, CPLP

Learning professionals are faced with a rapid emergence of new multimedia technologies that can enhance both engagement and effectiveness. You are probably familiar with technologies such as e-learning authoring tools, HTML5 (web) editors and of course, when used optimally, PowerPoint. However, a new breed of immersive technologies has come to the forefront of learning strategies. The term “immersive” refers to the ability to place the learner at the center of their learning experience. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will be key technologies in the future of any learning professional. Why? Because no other technologies allow you to simulate real work environments and scenarios right where learners work. If we think about it, the key to learning effectiveness in learning and development (L&D) is the ability to equip personnel with the knowledge (what they need to do) and skills (how to do it) to perform well at their jobs. Coincidentally, AR got its name from a performance support intervention created by Tom Caudell and David Mizell while working at Boeing in the 1990’s. Their general concept was to “augment the visual field of the user with information necessary in the performance of the current task.” E-learning and other media (e.g., video, interactive modules, etc.) are great at this, but e-learning is often secluded and buried in an organization’s learning management system (LMS). In cases where workers need to refresh their memories with some specific content, they would need to access e-learning through a desktop or hope that their organization has seamlessly enabled their LMS and e-learning courses for mobile device use. This capability is seldom seen throughout L&D.

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So, what is VR and AR technology? How are VR and AR different than the status quo of learning technologies? VR is nothing new but is now readily available for anyone with a mobile device. It’s also important to know that VR is not AR and vice versa. Virtual reality is a computergenerated version of our reality. It immerses us into its environment by hacking all our senses. During a VR experience you see, hear, move, touch and potentially smell a world within a head mounted display or HMD. The HMD is a screen visor that blocks your vision of the physical world focusing your visual experience to its display. Interactions occur only in the VR environment and users are not aware of their physical surroundings. According to Dr. Ronald Azuma, “AR allows the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world.” With AR, users are interacting with on-screen digital objects, which are positioned over a live camera display of the physical world. Although, it can be experienced through an HMD, the beauty of AR is that it can be experienced on any mobile device without an HMD. As a learning professional, the possibilities of enhancing your learners’ experiences

AUGMENTED REALITY FOR L&D Here are a few cases in which to use augmented reality for L&D:

are endless with AR. This article gives you all the basics and the application tips to boost training in your L&D space.

THE AR FIT FOR L&D Now that you know the basics of AR, here are a few cases in which to use it for L&D.

The possibilities of enhancing your learners’ experiences are endless with AR.

Performance help)

support

(just-in-time

Traditionally, workers are supported with laminated job aids for tasks and functions seldom performed. AR decals can be placed on equipment for this function to enable workers with immediate guidance on the task through their mobile devices. Interactive ILT materials Often in ILT events, trainers like to complement a talking point with digital media like video or a diagram. AR can be used to superimpose these assets on participant guides or disperse them through AR symbols in the learning space. AR can be a great conduit for group activities and social learning.

DESIGN & PLANNING TIPS FOR AR Designing and planning a learning experience with AR is no different than any other learning intervention. You want to ensure the following:

New hire orientation The case for AR in new hire orientation programs is strong. Imagine automating the whole orientation experience for new talent with a personalized touch. This can be achieved with AR infused images or decals distributed throughout your organization as the new talent would explore and learn about departments by simply viewing related content on their phone.

• Your learners have mobile devices (i.e., smartphones) • Know where the Internet dead zones are in your company • Think multimedia experience (e.g., videos, visual content) • Find user-friendly AR software • Start small, perhaps a pilot project

• New hire orientation

Equipment/machinery training

Selecting AR software

• Equipment/machinery training

AR can serve as a training tool for equipment or machine operators. Its ability to overlay digital information over physical spaces makes it ideal for this purpose. Beginner users can stand physically experiencing an equipment simulation while virtually interacting with the equipment.

You want AR because you want your learners to have access to relevant content anywhere they are, not just in the classroom or at their desk. AR authoring software will allow you to use an image of a physical object and overlay information about that object for users to interact with on their smartphones. AR

• Performance support (just-intime help) • Interactive ILT materials

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authoring software must be friendly and web-based. This means you don’t have to install anything on your computer to create AR experiences. This will help you overcome some organizational barriers like IT security. Some apps are even free or provide a free trial period so you can make a sample and demo it to key stakeholders. AR authoring tools also include web analytics to measure user engagement with the AR content. The best AR apps can be found with a simple Google search.

Components of AR authoring A well-crafted AR solution will have images, videos, animations, text and sound. Of course, you would need to think when to use what. For example, when offering AR for equipment tutorials you may want to avoid audio instructions as they may get masked by environmental noise. Interactivity can also be wisely used in AR solutions as in the case of providing a series of questions a user must click to troubleshoot a problem. Another setting in which to avoid audio materials would be in class settings such as ILT unless only a few devices are allowed and used in group settings. Most of the cases where you would avoid audio, you would tend to avoid embedded video clips unless your video is closed captioned.

Multimedia elements Most AR apps will be able to link to or host multimedia elements. Since these apps are web-based, all your image, document and video files would be stored in the vendor’s cloud. This is the best approach as all links to media are automatically configured by the

VR and AR technologies enhance the way learning professionals can engage talent.

software. For example, two leading AR apps in the market now allow you to upload multiple images and arrange them like a slideshow. Once the learning content is uploaded, a good AR app should give you options on how to present the content and the level of interaction required. These questions are helpful to guide your design:

Image mapping • Would the experience be engaging with a slideshow?

• AR project is created in AR authoring tool either as an AR decal, mapped image or object. • Users download and install their AR viewing app to activate AR assets on printed media or live object. • Talent professionals use AR tool’s web analytics to evaluate engagement. Keep in mind this workflow assumes you have done some due diligence with instructional design basics such as analysis of your target audience, environmental constraints and business needs alignment with instructional methods.

CONCLUSION

• Should an intro video play automatically or only when clicked?

Image mapping refers to physical object or image that will be used as a reference point by the AR application. This spatial reference helps the software position the media elements creating the visual illusion of overlays. The image below shows how a clickable video can be placed in association with a camera icon. This can be helpful for training someone on machinery or other equipment.

• Media assets are gathered for the project and the AR authoring tool is selected.

In summary, talent development leaders have AR as a great option to promote mobile learning practices and expand learning practices beyond the classroom. VR and AR technologies enhance the way learning professionals can engage talent. AR offers unique capabilities to engage physical objects with digital information about them. Learning professionals can automate new hire onboarding practices with personalized AR tours of their organization. Finally, AR can be the conduit to more virtual solutions and an easy way to give the workforce access to resources on their mobile devices in their time of need.

• What about using 3D animations for the project?

Design workflow Every design has a workflow and here’s the typical AR workflow:

Alexander Salas, CPLP, is an award-winning e-learning developer specializing in multimedia design for workplace learning. He has over 12 years of experience in the healthcare and IT industries. Alex is also a Udemy instructor on Articulate Storyline and owner of www.stylelearn.com. Email Alex.

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I’VE BEEN TEACHING MYSELF HOW TO EDIT VIDEO. WHILE IT’S A SKILL THAT NO ONE AT MY WORKPLACE IS DEMANDING OF ME, KNOWING VIDEO EDITING PRINCIPLES WILL HELP ME CREATE BETTER LEARNING PRODUCTS, AND ULTIMATELY, BE A VALUABLE SKILL SET FOR OUR COMPANY. SURE, I HAVE A TEAM OF DEVELOPERS WHO KNOW HOW TO EDIT VIDEO, BUT I WANT TO KNOW THE BASICS.

ORGANIC LEARNING: GOING BEYOND

How do I go about learning video editing? Like many of us, I subscribe to several learning platforms, such as Lynda.com, Skillshare.com, and Udemy. com. And I refer to the Final Cut Pro lessons, storyboarding lessons and embedded tutorials inside my editing software. I love taking quick lessons during my downtime. It’s far more efficient and life-style supportive than having to enroll in a university or driving through traffic to take in-person lessons in a dark editing studio. The point is that video editing is a focus for me. It is entirely self-driven. I am leaning into it. I am excited about it. I have a spark.

THE L&D BUBBLE

How do we as L&D professionals encourage this kind of passion in our learners? Currently, we create content that maps to organizational priorities and business objectives. We give our learners a rich and overwhelming array of learning opportunities. But is that enough to ignite the spark to learn something informally and let ingenuity blaze into a newly developed skill set that supports our business goals?

BY LORIN YEATER

There’s a lot of talk in our industry about informal learning (learning that is driven by self-interest, not accountable to the organization). Studies have found that 70 percent of knowledge is learned on the job, 20 percent is through peers, and 10 percent is formally delivered by those of us in training and development (called the 70:20:10 model). But this

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IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN SOMETHING IF WE DON’T VALUE IT.

article focuses on how to get more value through organic learning – that has the organic quality of self-directed learning but is shaped to the needs of the organization. While there are numerous learning approaches, here are some key ideas to harness the organic quality of informal learning to organizational needs.

people’s organic learning process is to replicate best practices from today’s learning platforms, which enable “findability” through robust search.

PREPARE THE GROUND

Findability requires creating a thoughtful and usable taxonomy (a hierarchy of agreed-upon words that describe content) for everything in your learning library. You will want to include both the words your learners use when they search and the language of your corporate business objectives.

It is impossible to learn something if we don’t value it. Value can be quantified in business terms such as, “this learning will help us reduce costs or increase profits,” or in personal terms, “gaining skills in this area will lead to a promotion and pay raise.”

Ask your learners how they find what they want to learn. Sit with them and observe how they use search engines. Then apply those words as “tags” to the learning content they were seeking (and maybe did not find).

CONNECT Set expectations and goals. As L&D professionals, our role is to connect the learning content to what our learners value by: • Setting expectations: “We expect that you will learn these skills to the required level.” • Setting goals and targets: “We expect that our team’s output will exceed last quarter’s production by 10% because of this retraining.” Another way we can connect, or contextualize, our content to our

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Another way to revitalize your content and make it findable is to break it into smaller, topic-based chunks. It may not be feasible to redo your learning modules, but anyone can create a topic outline and include it with the documentation. If your learning module is video-based, include time codes so that learners can zoom directly to their topic. Consider creating a meta-content map of all of your content organized by topics across different modules. Imagine how useful it would be, for example, if a learner wanted to find all the places where “handling objections” was taught, whether it was in a slide presentation, e-learning or webinar recording.

CURATE Leverage what your learners know by asking them to share what they are learning organically. Curate this content by topic, audience or business initiative. Most modern learning management systems have the ability to upload a variety of content types. Create a process for submissions and reward your people for taking the initiative to share what they are learning on their own. A sample content submission form might ask: • How is this content relevant to your position? • How could this content help your team? • How is the content connected to our company’s business objectives? • Does this content have an expiration date? • What is the source and format of the content? • What keywords or tags would be helpful to find this content?

WATER THE PLANTS For most of us, learning took place in school. Then life, family, work and play

got in the way. Sometimes, adult learners need to be coached and reminded how to learn. Instead of underlining, highlighting, or rereading, encourage your learners to practice these proven methods for making learning stick: • After learning something, ask yourself: “What did I learn?”; “What was hard to understand?”; “What seemed unclear?” • Flash cards really do work, if you use only one word per card. Test your understanding of terms in intervals after learning: two days, two weeks, two months. The more you make your memory strain to remember, the more you retain the information. • After going through some learning content, stop and explain it to yourself or another person in your own words. • Think about metaphor and analogy. For example, “This sales methodology is like a GPS. It doesn’t tell me what to say, but it tells me how to find what I need to say.”

CARROTS! Remember when you brought home a “gold star” on your homework and showed it to your parents? Being recognized makes people feel good. What incentives do you offer to people in your organization who take the initiative to learn on their own? Consider offering recognition for: • Submitting learning content to your staff for curation • Sharing expertise with peers • Asking questions and letting everyone see the answers • Making mistakes, conducting postmortems, documenting the learning and making it accessible for all In some cases, competition, through gamification or contests, can fuel a

THE ROLE OF L&D PROFESSIONALS IS TO CONNECT THE LEARNING CONTENT TO WHAT LEARNERS VALUE. sense of esprit de corps and more peerto-peer learning.

HARVEST TIME Everyone benefits, and everyone should have a stake in supporting organic learning. To reap what you’ve sown, gain support for organic learning in the organization from the top down to line managers. The process doesn’t have to be a huge revamp of everything. You can start with small tweaks that make a big difference such as: • Start tagging your learning content

and skills that bring good things to every individual in your company. Throughout the organic learning process, it is our job as L&D professionals to prepare the ground, water the plants and harvest the growth, so that it provides both personal value to the individual learner and business value to the organization. Nurturing continuous learning is boosted when you maximize the organic nature of informal learning. Lorin Yeater is the vice president of learning at ValueSelling Associates, Inc. She creates and produces classroom and online learning products that transform selling best practices from concept to practical application. Email Lorin.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES “Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything” By Ulrich Boser How one learns is just as important as what one learns, and that learning is a skill that can be mastered by anyone. In this book, Boser proposes six key steps to learning better.

• Offer text versions of video content • Break long content into smaller chunks • Give learners a map of where to find related content across different platforms • Provide a focus for organic learners by communicating what they should look for, why they should seek it and when they need to know it

“Informal Learning in Organizations: How to Create a Continuous Learning Culture” By Robin Hoyle A research-based review of the impact informal learning has on an organization’s learning culture. “Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become” By Peter Morville

ENJOY THE BOUNTY I think of learning as a seed. When welltended, that seed grows into knowledge

This book explores the idea of living in an era of findability, where anyone can find anything at any time.

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ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT2 BY DR. MATT BARNEY

COACHING HAS ARRIVED

Do you remember when Six Sigma was hot? Nearly 20 years ago, Motorola University revitalized Six Sigma with modern information technology tools to drive $2 billion worth of improvements to their bottom line. “Digital Six Sigma” required training thousands of Six Sigma experts – black and green belts to design great products and improve existing processes. Training for black belts included four weeks of in-class coursework spread over four months, and in the off weeks they had to apply the learning to an important project sponsored by a senior leader.

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For the green belts, Motorola University used all the latest e-learning and blended learning and won an industry award, but still struggled to help 5,000 people apply the new skills onto their jobs in over 50 countries around the world. This is because each learner is unique, with different skills, challenges and needs, and it was not affordable to help each one transfer their skills to the job in a systematic and personalized way. While it is not a cure-all, new work in artificial intelligence (AI) has substantially addressed this classic training transfer problem by supporting learners in-between sessions with an

artificially intelligent coach. When combined with a real-life, expert coach or teacher, there are two major types of AI that are now being used to help learners practice real-world skills in their jobs as a new form of electronic performance support: expert systems and deep learning “flight simulators.”

1 | EXPERT SYSTEMS

One new form of AI is a new type of calibrated coaching. After completing a short computer-adaptive assessment, each learner can pick a goal and schedule short, tweet-sized suggestions for how and what they should practice. On the mornings and days they prefer,

learners get a push notification they can use to suggest fresh ways they can sharpen their skills throughout their work day. Each e-coaching statement is written by an expert and calibrated like an assessment instrument, so that it can target that unique proficiency level of each learner. In this way, e-coaching is always in that person’s “Goldilocks Zone” - neither too hard, nor too easy, but just right for their current skill level. Further, learners can schedule a second push notification on their smartphone or tablet to remind them to journal about the lessons they’ve learned from trying to apply the artificially intelligent coaching to their jobs. Most learners prefer to capture these private journal entries using the built-in voice-to-text like Siri on their smartphone, another form of AI that makes reflecting on deliberate practice more natural, especially when the learner is tired at the end of a long day. This mobile reminder serves two key purposes. First, it is developmental for learners to reflect on what they learned and refine their mental models. Second, the journal gives the teacher or coach a private, confidential window into how that specific learner is doing,

and whether he or she can benefit from praise, nudging or other forms of support. In the past, teachers and coaches could only do this through methods that felt like nagging by phone, SMS or email spam to learners.

DEEP LEARNING “FLIGHT SIMULATORS”

A second new form of AI leverages computer science advances with deep learning to give people a sort of pocket flight simulator to allow people to practice new behaviors, get immediate assessment and qualitative feedback, and improve before having to perform real job tasks. In this way, the AI provides a safe place to practice difficult, dangerous or embarrassing skills in a private setting where only the coach or teacher can see the result through their web portal. The first such flight simulator has just won the 2018 Society for IndustrialOrganizational Psychology Bray/Howard Assessment Grant, for a prototype designed to measure and improve persuasion. Using the science from eminent professor emeritus, Robert Cialdini, of Arizona State University, the “Instant Coach” has a chatbot interface

AI PROVIDES A SAFE PLACE TO PRACTICE DIFFICULT, DANGEROUS OR EMBARRASSING SKILLS. to help people improve their persuasive appeals before they need to do them in real life. The Instant Coach flight simulator has four different modes. One mode allows the user to simply speak into their phone and get immediate feedback on how effectively they’ve used Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion, and gives concrete suggestions for improvement. Another group of modes are more structured to help a person who doesn’t know where to start, learn how to construct an ethical approach to influencing in a specific situation and measures how much progress they have made. Because AI is developing rapidly, it is very likely that AI will continue to

BEWARE OF AI BIAS Infamously, artificial intelligence has recently embarrassed multinationals – Google’s AI tagged African American people as Gorillas, and Microsoft had to quickly turn off its “Tay Chatbot” because it learned to be a Nazi in less than 24 hours thanks to pranksters on Twitter. Because the machine learning or deep learning forms of AI are based on neural

networks that are digital approximations of human cognition they can form the same sorts of racist or sexist bias that the child of a Klu Klux Klan member would form, though no fault of theirs. Fortunately, there are several solutions. First, the samples that are used to teach the deep learning algorithms must be representative of the rich diversity of the

real world, and not a subset. But this is very hard to do. The second more permanent solution is to compliment deep learning with a psychometric expert system that detects and removes any bias before it can affect the assessment or learning process. In addition to being important ethically, it is also what is required for legal defensibility in pre-employment testing uses of AI assessment.

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CARE NEEDS TO BE TAKEN TO MAKE SURE AI IS UNBIASED. extension of our relationships that we could not have without it. For example, by having each learner journal about the lessons they learned, mistakes they made, or pleasant surprises they found, the coach can remotely praise, nudge or suggest areas for improvement. Similarly, with “Instant Coaches,” that have been engineered to coach in a specific area, a very narrow focus. A coach can complement that narrow focus by looking at the pattern of learner progress over time, and adjust the next lesson or coaching session tailored to what that unique individual had mastered or struggled to improve upon, based on all the activity that has occurred since they last met.

TAKEAWAYS

augment the context and relationship components that are important in training and coaching, to better masspersonalize people’s ability to transfer training into their real jobs and lives.

STEALING JOBS?

Some coaches and teachers are fearful that this advanced AI will someday take their jobs. But a more realistic perspective is that expert teachers and coaches have an irreplaceable role in understanding the context around the learner, connecting with the learner as a person, and providing socio-emotional

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support that no AI can do, and will not be able to do anytime soon. We feel obligated to each other, and only an expert teacher showing unconditional positive regard will be able to appreciate the struggles of a learner in applying job skills, and empathize, providing the most holistic scaffolding for skill development possible. That’s not the strength of AI, and we’re not likely to feel close to machines the way we appreciate our mentors, teachers and coaches. But that’s not the purpose or benefit of AI. The best use of AI is to augment that relationship, where that AI is an

AI is now practical to help address the chronic issue trainers face, in helping support them when they’re not in the classroom, MOOC or e-learning course. It is not a panacea, however. AI will not be able to understand context or social relationships like a real teacher or coach anytime soon and care needs to be taken to make sure AI is unbiased. Regardless, AI can be a tremendous help to close the gap between the class and the workplace.

Dr. Matt Barney is the founder and CEO of LeaderAmp, a digital platform for expert and AI coaching. Email Matt.

ONE SIZE NEVER FITS ALL. Eighty-five percent of our Learning & Development solutions are customized to match each client’s specific training and business objectives. We dig deep to understand your organization’s unique learning goals and talent requirements to deliver solutions that reflect your brand and culture, engage learners, and enhance performance.  Talent  Strategy  Development  Delivery

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Brain-Based Learning Principles for Maximum Retention in the Virtual Classroom By Cynthia Clay

WE NEED TO THINK BEYOND THE CLASSROOM EVENT AND CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARTICIPANTS TO APPLY WHAT THEY LEARNED.

Do you want your virtual training sessions to result in longer-term impact? As trainers, we can learn much from neuroscientists about how to strengthen connections between the neurons in the brains of our learners. These four steps describe the learning process (See Figure 1 on page 42): • Learn it (You are exposed to new information) • Encode it (You begin to transfer that information from short-term to longterm memory) • Recall it (You retrieve it from shortterm or long-term memory) • Apply it (You firmly anchor that new knowledge in long-term memory) The best training applies these steps to ensure maximum knowledge retention and skill development. Here are six brain-based principles that can help you increase learning retention in your web workshops.

PRIME THE PUMP

Get the learning experience started even before the training begins by addressing your learners’ ABCs: • Attitude: Before they arrive at your webinar, send a message welcoming them to the program with positive statements such as, “This web workshop will be engaging, fun, and productive. I guarantee you will take

away practical tools that will help you complete your tasks more effectively.” Your positive attitude prepares their brains for a pleasant, supportive experience. • Behavior: Share the learning objectives and make sure they are focused on results (not activities they will participate in during the webinar). Include a testimonial video featuring a success story from a past workshop. • Cognitive: Provide a challenging case study to show what knowledge can be gained during the session. Consider giving them a quick quiz to test their current knowledge.

CHUNK IT DOWN

Your challenge is to get and keep people’s attention in the virtual classroom. With the trend toward microlearning, shorter content segments are often better. In the virtual classroom, however, you can successfully hold your learners’ attention on one topic for 10 to 15 minutes, as long as you aren’t lecturing the whole time. For example, in a leadership program for remote managers, we show a twominute video featuring an inspiring company where employees love their jobs. We invite participants to ask themselves while watching: “What is the most important takeaway about your virtual team’s motivation?” Participants then type their significant takeaway in a chat pod, which we debrief aloud. We follow that with the learning point that for many, work has little value unless it

contributes to a higher purpose. Then we ask these remote managers to reflect on a new question, “How will you adapt your actions as a virtual leader to help people understand the purpose of their work?” The learning process in this 10-minute content segment consists of a short video, discussion question, key concept, self-reflection and commitment to action. In a 60-minute web workshop, you might have four or five content segments. At the end of each 10- to 15-minute segment, review and summarize, or have participants put what they’ve learned in their own words.

MIX IT UP

You’ve probably heard about the forgetting curve: people forget 90 percent of what they’ve learned within one week of a training session. Our brains are wired to ignore or forget anything that is considered redundant or irrelevant. This filtering function is actually a survival mechanism. We are flooded with extraneous information in every moment. As John Medina explains in his compelling book, Brain Rules, “People don’t pay attention to boring things.” When we design and deliver learning activities, we must introduce novelty, humor and surprise. Think of the last flight you took where the attendant delivered the same safety demonstration you’ve heard a million times. You might have turned to the in-flight magazine for entertainment instead of watching. But

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imagine a flight attendant who makes silly comments and spices up the safety lecture with dry humor. Your ears perk up at the surprise of that first joke. In your virtual training sessions, you may have to work against the tendency of your learners to multitask. You win their attention by the creative use of novelty in the exercises you design and deliver. Use a variety of interaction tools to engage them (chat, polling, whiteboard, drawing tools, video, audio, emoticons and breakout rooms) without becoming overly dependent on a favorite tool. We know that short-term memory degrades over time. One way to “mix it up” is to introduce a skill or concept; discuss and practice it, then put it aside and move to a different topic. Return to the topic later (the next day or the

next week) and add another element. The act of recalling what was learned previously, adding to that knowledge and applying it again, reinforces the brain’s function of moving content from short-term to long-term memory. This learning method is called “spacing” and it demonstrably results in greater longterm retention. When we train virtual facilitators to deliver engaging web workshops, we have them attend three webinars over three weeks. Along the way, they complete assignments to develop a 20-minute practice webinar, returning to their design repeatedly as they learn and apply new concepts. The learning experience culminates in their delivery of this interactive practice webinar that incorporates the techniques they’ve adopted over the previous month.

LEARN

APPLY

MAXIMUM RETENTION

RECALL Figure 1.

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ENCODE

SLEEP ON IT

No, your participants should not take naps during your training sessions. But neuroscientists know that while the waking brain encodes memories, the sleeping brain consolidates memories. One hour of slow-wave sleep allows the brain to move information from the hippocampus (where short-term memory resides) to the neocortex (where long-term memory is consolidated). Slow-wave sleep occurs in between REM (rapid eye movement) cycles as we sleep at night. A one-hour nap after a learning experience might actually be a great boon to long-term retention. Let’s face it, though, it’s not usually practical to let our participants take naps. So how can we capitalize on this learning principle? Because short-term memory degrades over time, there are benefits to ensuring that participants study and learn as close to bedtime as they can. You want the process of consolidating information from short-term memory to long-term memory to begin as soon after the learning event as possible. Instead of scheduling virtual training first thing in the morning, try scheduling it toward the end of the work day. Then provide job aids, reinforcement tools, or articles, and encourage people to review critical concepts before they go to sleep at night. If you have an exam to take, study up until bedtime and then get a good night’s sleep, rather than pulling an allnighter. Cramming for a test rarely works as well as reviewing content in chunks over several nights, “sleeping on it” chunk by chunk.

TEST AND RETEST

Most people dislike tests because they can be stressful. The real value of testing is that it encourages the retrieval and application of information. So, the question becomes, “How can you make testing fun?” One way is to gamify the testing process so that participants are rewarded when they answer correctly and gently redirected for incorrect answers. If you play online games, you probably experience music, chimes and encouragement whenever you do something well. This feedback activates your brain’s reward center. You feel good about the experience and want to continue. When we first developed an online coaching and reinforcement tool, a video coach would appear when the participant answered incorrectly; a correct answer would only play audio. When we tested the prototype, we were surprised to hear that it was an “unfriendly” experience. We redesigned the experience so that the coach appeared on video to praise participants for correct answers.

USE IT OR LOSE IT

This final brain-based principle reinforces the need to actively apply new concepts on the job, for example, practicing a coaching model you introduced. Have participants complete a coaching worksheet to think through how they might apply the steps of the model to an on-the-job situation. Then place participants into online breakout rooms in groups of three. There each

PRINCIPLES FOR MAXIMUM RETENTION AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Prime the Pump: What are you doing to prepare your participants before they get to the virtual classroom? Chunk it Down: How can you ensure that learning activities leverage the ideal length of a content segment? Mix it Up: How can you capitalize on the brain’s need for novelty, contrast, variety and spacing?

person can practice coaching a peer while an observer takes notes and offers feedback. Once every participant has practiced coaching, bring them back to the full group to probe for their insights and observations.

YOUR CHALLENGE IS TO GET AND KEEP PEOPLE’S ATTENTION IN THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM. As designers of virtual classroom experiences, we need to think beyond the synchronous classroom event, however, and create opportunities for participants to apply what they learned, evaluate their results and report back to their colleagues. You might add a social collaboration site like Yammer to the learning mix. Ask participants to conduct the coaching conversation with the actual employee back at work. Give them a reflection worksheet to evaluate

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Sleep on It: What can you do to leverage slow-wave sleep to support the long-term retention of content? Test and Retest: How can you incorporate “recall” experiences in your web training sessions? Use it or Lose it: What must you do to ensure that people apply what they learned before they forget what they’ve learned?

how they did and include a post-webinar assignment to share their reflections with their colleagues. As you incorporate these six brain-based learning principles into your design and delivery techniques, you’ll transform your virtual classroom. Participants will learn, encode, recall and apply what they’ve learned, gaining maximum learning retention.

Cynthia Clay is the CEO of NetSpeed Learning Solutions, the author of Great Webinars: How to Create Interactive Learning that is Captivating, Informative, and Fun, and a passionate advocate of brain-based learning principles. Email Cynthia.

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TRANSITIONING TO A VIRTUAL WORKFORCE By Nancy Nagdeman, M.A.

In the last month, how many meetings did you attend in which someone participated via phone or video? How many team members, clients, vendors don’t reside within the four walls of your work location? More than likely one of those scenarios is a reality for you.

When the World Economic Forum surveyed global HR decision-makers, some 44 percent pointed to new technology enabling remote working, co-working space and teleconferencing as the principal drivers of change. However, the identification and adaptation of the skills needed to be successful in a virtual workplace has been slow to be incorporated into ways of working. Instead there is a tendency to make in-person behaviors fit into a remote environment. This

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type of conduct risks alienating remote workers, impacting engagement and productivity. Learning and development can be a powerful enabler to combat this “one size fits all” mentality. Following the principles of instructional design, there is an opportunity to understand the needs of various populations, identify the competencies needed to be successful, and embed training to support the required skill development. A needs analysis for both the user and environment identifies the size of the remote population, the types of work and interactions conducted virtually and the technology available. It is important to include the co-located employees in the analysis as well since everyone becomes “virtual” the minute they attend a video or phone conference.

TECHNOLOGY Technology has created a fundamental shift in how organizations operate. The widespread use of tools like email, social media and video conferencing enable work to be done without geographic constraints. Therefore, a technology assessment factors significantly into a needs analysis. Items to consider are the types of conferencing tools available, the user’s familiarity with the tools and the meeting norms associated with the utilization of the technology. Utilization and optimization become important factors when changing behaviors from in-person to virtual work. Too often webinar tools are simply leveraged as a conference call mechanism, overlooking the capabilities to share documents and images, use video, and interact and

collaborate in shared spaces. Building a technology training strategy into onboarding plans will empower users to leverage technology in their daily work. Creating job aids for the most common applications also supports end user adoption, especially those who are infrequent users of the technology.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS While the interpersonal skills needed to be successful (communication, teamwork, leadership) are universal,

A successful remote workforce has to adapt to new ways of interacting.

A best practice to incorporate as a first step in an educational webinar is to create an introductory segment focused on “learning how to learn online.” This enables the learners to understand and utilize the webinar tools (e.g., chat rooms, polls, collaboration spaces, etc.) prior to jumping into the classroom portion. This type of primer is also useful in kicking off any type of virtual team. Users are more likely to use the tools if there is a level of familiarity. The review of tools also emphasizes the expectation of participation on the part of the remote participant. A couple of the hazards of a virtual presence are (1) the co-located participants “forget” to include the remote team member in the discussion/ interaction, or (2) the virtual team member disengages by multitasking or can’t interject easily. The expectation of using the tools like video or chat features creates a presence for the remote participant.

the application in a virtual environment does require adaptation. For example, if you are a leader who engages with your team through informal, face-toface interactions, you will need to be mindful of creating a similar type of interaction for the team members not physically located in your office. The design of any leadership or supervisory training should include how to engage, communicate, monitor and support the achievement of goals for remote team members.

The following are competencies that should be developed as part of a leadership development program and identify ways in which a virtual team may require different strategies.

Building high-performing teams This is a requirement for any leader. A shared vision, alignment of goals, strong communication and a recognition/ reward system that emphasizes team achievement are necessary components for this competency. A leader needs to foster collaboration without daily, inperson interactions. One way to achieve this is to establish a cadence of team meetings in which team and individual goals/tasks are shared. Depending on the size of the team, enabling everyone to be heard on some frequency helps to establish the sense of community. The leader should also role model the use of technology by incorporating tools like video to help create a presence for all participants.

Effective meeting facilitation The need to keep everyone engaged, on task and drive for outcomes is even more critical in a virtual environment. As mentioned before, it is easy for the co-located participants to dominate a meeting, making it difficult for the remote

MORE RESOURCES ON VIRTUAL WORKFORCE STOP NEGLECTING REMOTE WORKERS

By Michael Ferguson, Harvard Business Review

This article explores strategies to help engage and motivate on- and off-site workers.

5 ESSENTIAL KEYS TO LEADING A REMOTE WORKFORCE

By Marty Fukuda, Entrepreneur

This article offers five key strategies to help in leading a remote team.

ARE YOUR REMOTE WORKERS HAPPY? HOW TO KEEP TEAMS CONNECTED FROM AFAR

By Vivian Maza, Forbes

This article examines how HR leaders can support, engage and motivate their virtual team.

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participant to interject. Likewise, the urge to multitask or become distracted is more likely if you aren’t physically present and don’t have an expectation to contribute. The learning function

Having a shared sense of purpose accelerates team development. can support this skill development by offering meeting facilitation skill development. Trainers can help the teams create and implement meeting norms, leverage technology and provide coaching on meeting facilitation.

Relationship management Effective meetings are one way to ensure engagement, but relationship management will also need to occur outside those events. Some remote workers report feelings of isolation or a disconnect from the organization’s happenings. For those located in an office environment, they might not connect with their remote peers as frequently, thereby missing opportunities to leverage one another’s support and best practices. To counteract these possibilities, teambuilding activities should emphasize the importance of building interactions like instant messaging, social learning platforms and picking up the phone to connect with each other. The emphasis should include both the how (use of technology) and the why (e.g., building trust, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, etc.). Teambuilding activities can also

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emphasize problem-solving scenarios in which a virtual team needs to collaborate to achieve a common goal. Having a shared sense of purpose accelerates team development.

decreased costs associated with real estate/buildings, etc.

Delivering feedback

The communication and training plans should include an acknowledgement of both the pros and cons of a virtual workforce with strategies for dealing with matters that arise. Being transparent about potential risks enables the leaders and employees to address concerns in an up-front manner.

Leading remote team training should focus on how to deliver coaching and performance feedback without an inperson presence. Providing frequent, specific feedback builds trust and engagement with employees. The use of video can provide the facial cues and overall demeanor that help to convey meaning. Relying too heavily on email communication should be avoided. The training function should create experiential learning opportunities that enable the manager to practice giving feedback without the benefit of an inperson presence.

IMPLEMENTATION After conducting the needs analysis and creating learning strategies to build the skills needed to perform in a virtual environment, it is important to have a strong delivery and implementation strategy. Building awareness and desire to adopt these new skills and behaviors is vital. Everyone needs to understand that a successful remote workforce has to adapt to new ways of interacting. As part of the implementation strategy, include these components.

Describe the business need for a remote workforce Communicate the business decisions behind a remote workforce. Building stakeholder awareness of the need will help diminish resistance and increase support for the transition. Some potential benefits are an expanded talent pool not tied to a certain geography, flexible scheduling to meet client needs, employment value proposition, and

Identify strengths and challenges of a remote workforce

Associated metrics In correlation with the remote workforce business strategy, key metrics should be used to monitor effectiveness. Measure not only business outcomes but identify employee engagement metrics that can gauge the health of the culture/environment.

A team transition plan A team transitioning to a virtual or mixed workforce needs to create a transition plan. Key items to cover are remote worker policy, technology needs, skill assessment and team operating norms. Make sure everyone has the resources, knowledge and skills to be successful in this new way of working. The learning function should plan to offer consulting and coaching until the skills and behaviors are embedded in the organization’s culture. The virtual workforce is quickly becoming an organizational norm. Having a learning and development function ready to implement and support these skills is vital to the organization’s success.

Nancy Nagdeman earned her Master of Arts in education and is the director of educational services at TeamHealth. Email Nancy.

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CASEBOOK

BUILDING A TRUE ROLE-BASED EDUCATION FOR CLINICAL COLLEAGUES THROUGH MICROLEARNING BY STACY HUBIAK

The pharmaceutical industry is driven to find ways to get approved medicines into patients’ hands faster – not only to save lives, but to improve the quality of life for many. The clinical colleagues at Pfizer understand this and are being tasked in new ways to overcome the challenges of drug development. In an effort to expedite the research, development and study of new products for the benefit of patients, the Pfizer organization is stressing more than ever that “time matters.” In looking for opportunities to promote “time matters” in getting affordable medicines to patients in need, we identified one area that would directly support Pfizer’s clinical trial lifecycle – training. A first-class training program was needed and would be a key factor to helping colleagues achieve their goals. After surveying our internal clinical trial community, it was determined that more effective training would help our colleagues perform their roles more efficiently.

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According to our findings, the existing training wasn’t fully meeting their needs and they felt we could do more to prepare them to tackle the tasks required from their role’s perspective. They read the processes, took the required training, but they weren’t connecting to what they were being asked to do. Colleagues responded that they were on information overload and felt a heavy “training burden” without getting to what they really needed to know for their role.

A SOCIAL APPROACH TO ROLEBASED TRAINING In order to improve our training program, changes to our training strategy and approach were necessary. Our clinical staff would need to complete and access training quicker and easier. The new program would have to be more adaptive and flexible. It needed to incorporate a multi-modal approach that would appeal to all learning styles and experience levels.

As colleagues moved within the organization into new roles, they needed a way to learn their new responsibilities quickly and efficiently, as a new employee would in a new hire training program. A new internal, web-based e-learning education site was developed to address this training need within the organization. The new program was designed with the end user in mind. Building it, though, required the socialization and collaboration of not just end users, but leaders and internal stakeholders who would contribute to the content and add relevant stories and examples to fully make the training more robust and effective. Since many of the leaders in the organization were the most impacted by trying to manage changes in the organization and help their teams be more informed, they were more than happy to work with our training team. The line leadership partnered with us to ensure that any required courses would

now be bundled in a way that colleagues could clearly identify with and apply the information directly to their roles.

into a clinician’s world by injecting real-life stories and situations into the e-learning modules.

The goal of this new program was to deliver in-context training utilizing a storytelling approach.

UPPING OUR GAME USING FAMILIAR TOOLS

The microlearning videos, dubbed “mobisodes” for this new program, are essentially bite-sized digital shorts bundled into e-learning courses, but also made available as standalone resources accessible from company mobile devices. The intent was to capitalize on the success of Google and YouTube as learning tools and craft these mobisodes in a manner that resonated with our colleagues. The mobisodes, which are designed as lively animated and narrated videos, are written and delivered in a more informal and fun way compared to what was previously offered. This method of training lends itself to being more “shareable” as these mobisodes, which are hosted on an internal video platform similar to YouTube, can be easily sent to colleagues across the organization. This “just-in-time” training method directly addresses colleague complaints about the previous training not being timely or accessible enough.

To safeguard our success, our training team sought to build a network of subject matter experts (SMEs) who shared our vision and were committed to improving the required training. In partnering with the SMEs, our developers learned the key processes and tasks from Pfizer’s standard operating procedures and listened

THE NEW PROGRAM WAS DESIGNED WITH THE END USER IN MIND.

as the experts described how these procedures are performed from their role’s perspective.

When the program launched at the end of 2016, many of our clinical colleagues were facing job role changes and needed to focus on the medical and technical elements of their tasks. These medical professionals didn’t have time to be sifting through information that would divert their focus. They needed to learn the processes that were crucial to their role – and they didn’t have time to waste.

Their collaboration was crucial in developing relevant, informative courses, but the partnership wasn’t without its challenges. Many experts were not familiar with how to help create this type of training at first and it was often difficult for some of them to communicate their stories. Some colleagues were reluctant because their “old school” way of thinking prevented them in participating and fully understanding how telling their stories could translate into training. Once they participated in the knowledge transfer sessions and saw how these microlearning videos were being created, they were fully on board.

Therefore, the objective of the new training program was to provide a lens

The new program allows colleagues to access training anytime and practically

anywhere. They can take training at their own pace, access course transcripts, related job aids, and other task and process information – all at their convenience. THE RESULTS ARE IN A year after rolling out the initial program for clinicians, the scope of the initiative has expanded to include two other roles, and more are already in development to include key roles across the entire organization. The colleagues and SMEs are now fully engaged and ready to help expand this platform. The feedback has been largely positive – with many colleagues acknowledging that the new training is something they can finally relate to and engage with. They feel that the new materials paint a better picture of their everyday jobs and that they can perform better while meeting the needs of the business and are no longer feeling as overloaded and frustrated by the training requirements. Colleagues are more motivated to take the training and are willing to get involved to help create it. Plans are already underway to build a fully mobile experience to give our colleagues access to supplemental scenarios, to participate in competitions, earn virtual rewards and bonuses, and unlock new learning paths where they can not only challenge themselves and learn more on the job, but also feel more engaged and informed.

Stacy Hubiak is the director in SOP and training, global product development, center of excellence at Pfizer, Inc. Email Stacy.

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MEASURING I M P A C T

MEASUREMENT STRATEGIES USING LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES BY TIFFANY POEPPELMAN

With continuous pressure on business leaders to drive revenue and productivity, there is an increased focus on proving the value of internal investments. One way that learning and development (L&D) partners can help leaders demonstrate impact is through technology-driven measurement and evaluation of key development programs. Evaluation is a systematic collection of descriptive and predictive information that can be used to improve the effectiveness of training decisions. There are several reasons an L&D practitioner may want to evaluate their training programs, including measuring the impact of training on knowledge, skills and abilities; uncovering areas for improvement in the course curriculum and instructor(s); and demonstrating a return on the investments (ROI) made. However, the most important thing to remember is that not everything that can be measured should be measured. L&D practitioners should be focusing on evaluating larger “big bet” programs that require substantial investments of time, money and resources. Here are a few tips to focus and ensure accountability for a training evaluation: • Determine what will be considered a “big bet” business-relevant outcome of the training program (e.g., increase in sales)

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• Outline the knowledge and key behaviors that will drive success for learners (learning objectives)

of new opportunities to incorporate a consistent evaluation strategy into the delivery of a learning solution.

• Socialize the expected outcomes with leaders to secure agreement on measuring impact using a technology solution or in-house tools

IDENTIFYING A LEARNING TECHNOLOGY TO DRIVE MEASUREMENT

• Share the evaluation plan with stakeholders to create accountability and commit to a post-program debrief on outcomes achieved • Gather high-quality data matched with training objectives and conduct descriptive and predictive analyses • Present a clear, visual summary to stakeholders on the results, lessons learned and next steps for the program Effective training evaluation can produce valuable information to improve learning experiences, and to align training investments with changes in business strategy. Yet, while many organizational leaders and learning practitioners recognize the value of evaluating the company’s training programs, the question remains - why isn’t it done more often? Sometimes this gap in evaluation is related to a lack of accountability to do such analyses, lack of awareness on how to effectively measure training, or a lack of resources. Recent advances in learning technologies remove or reduce many of these barriers. Today’s learning technologies provide a host

While some organizations have inhouse tools to deliver and gather data on a training program, today’s learning technology marketplace includes solutions that support the content design and end-to-end delivery of training experiences, personalization and on-demand features to capture the attention of learners within and beyond the classroom, as well as integrated robust reporting and tracking. These offthe-shelf technologies make evaluation, often the weakest part of the training development cycle, more manageable, accurate and compelling. Below are a few such examples. Content design and delivery that track usage data: • Enable content authoring through easy to use solutions • Deliver content and an assessment in one place to fuel reporting later • Offer on-demand, anytime, anywhere access to learning content • Host mobile and social learning • Personalize learning content

Reporting and tracking to show key findings: • Enable live manager dashboards • Track usage of learning materials • Log ratings and coaching conversations over time • Download trend analyses and summary visuals (heatmaps) • Track qualitative and quantitative measurements in one place Engagement IN the classroom to show application of concepts in real-time: • Enable live polling or quizzes • Apply gamification principles in learning • Design leaderboards using teams • Apply virtual classroom methods Engagement BEYOND the classroom to reinforce concepts and apply behaviors:

trainee satisfaction, engagement)?

post-training

• What learning objectives will be assessed in the tool and how will you pull the data for analyses (e.g., exported database, visual summary reports)? • What types of reporting does the tool offer managers to ensure their teams are successfully learning the content? • Does the technology have the ability to integrate with other HR systems or learning management systems to connect and analyze multiple data sets? Be sure to know what is critical and identify what capabilities or areas you can improve to drive the right behavior in your organization. From there, invest in a technology solution that can drive long-term value. Below are some common challenges and best practices for learning practitioners when creating an evaluation plan with new technology solutions.

• Enable automatic reminders

CHALLENGES AND BEST PRACTICES

• Provide engaging reinforcement

1. Overcoming resistance to new tools or approaches. Don’t be afraid to experiment with a platform and its reporting functionality before you fully commit. Be willing to ask the vendor to partner on a pilot program in order to test out the analytic capabilities, gain buy-in and ensure adoption.

• Design flexible pre- and postassessments • Provide a best in class demo for trainees to watch • Design video practice moments and coaching observations • Deliver custom learning content Amongst a crowded range of technology options, L&D practitioners must diagnose and discern which tools will offer value rather than picking the “cool” or “cutting-edge” solution. When selecting a learning technology, be sure to ask the following questions to understand the tool’s measurement capabilities: • How will the learning technology acquire and track data about the training experience (e.g., higher

2. Knowing if the learning technology is worth the investment. Outline what success will look like to remove bias from the evaluation of the technologies. These include determining expected levels of usage, specific ratings on the likeability of the tool, and ease of access/usage of reporting capabilities and dashboards. 3. Ensuring accountability on the training program evaluation. By using the technology’s data and other in-house measurements (e.g., posttraining satisfaction surveys), commit to a post-training summary. Socialize

the measurement approach to ensure team accountability for data analysis and stakeholders. 4. Ensuring effective reporting and clear visualizations with limited time. With the right initial set-up using the tool and vendor support team, you can ensure clear reporting in a limited amount of time and some even come with different graphs and charts, making life easier and securing stronger stakeholder buy-in, memorability and interest in results. 5. Capturing and summarizing comments or learner sentiment data. Many tools also offer the ability to track comments on the learning experience, content, or even assessments. This will allow you to track and adjust training collateral on the go to ensure effective experiences. 6. Using pulse surveys to collect data over time. Many tools will enable pulse data-gathering and collect ongoing metrics about access rates, time in course, pre-assessment attempts, and so on. 7. Integration with other HR/people databases. Too often training data sits across multiple systems and tools, but more technologies are now offering the ability to integrate to other HR systems and tools so that data can be overlaid and connected when looking for trends over time. Be sure to ask the vendor the steps required and time/cost commitment as you begin exploring the products. Measurement is and will continue to be a critical skill and area of opportunity for any L&D professional. By ensuring ROI, you will be thinking like a strategic advisor for any leadership team to know where to invest. Collecting important evaluation data can aid in telling meaningful, influential stories to business leaders and can ultimately shift the dynamic of moving training and development from nice to have, to critical. Tiffany Poeppelman is the head of sales productivity across LinkedIn’s international markets. Email Tiffany.

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CONGRATULATIONS

TOP 20 COMPANIES

Check Out Our 2018 Watch List Companies

The Top 20 Companies are a service provided by Training Industry, Inc. Due to the diversity of services offered, no attempt is made to rank the “Top 20s.”

SECRETS OF SOURCING DOUG HARWARD

6 KEYS

TO EMBEDDING REINFOR CEMENT INTO TR AINING DESIGN

Training reinforcement has become a popular topic among training professionals as it speaks to the fundamental principle that the more we are reminded of something, the greater the probability we will remember it. But in corporate training, developing highperforming training programs is not just about remembering, it’s more about doing. It’s about performance and making sure that those we train can perform a job at a consistent and high level.

TRAINING IS ABOUT TASKS – NOT JUST COMMUNICATING INFORMATION. No doubt you’ve heard of the forgetting curve concept formed by Dr. Hermann Ebbinghaus. His research found that if information is not properly reinforced after the initial exposure then we would ultimately forget an exponential amount of that information in a very short period of time. What many are not familiar with is his other conclusion called the “spacing effect.” He found that learning is greater when information is consumed over an extended period of time, or through multiple sessions as opposed to a single mass presentation. The spacing effect is an important principle because it helps us understand how reinforcement should be designed into a training experience. All too often, training is designed as workshops with little to no practice or reinforcement provided after the initial session. More recent research by Dr. Anders Ericsson has found that those

who achieve a high level of performance do this through reinforcement that is considered purposeful and deliberate practice and repetition. Essentially, it is through the reinforcement of tasks by doing and purposeful access to feedback and information. We must be more concerned with how to design high-performing learning programs using reinforcement as the main component. Here are my keys to designing high-performing learning programs. 1. Start with proper onboarding: Entry-level workers must be prepared to do the job with minimum risk of failure when working autonomously. Making mistakes on the job is not the best way to learn because it puts the learner at risk of losing confidence and puts our clients at risk due to our mistakes. 2. Clear expectations of performance: Corporate training has been too much about telling a worker what they need to know, instead of teaching a worker how to do what they need to do. Training is about tasks – not just communicating information.

immediate – as soon as the task is completed. The more immediate that is, the faster they will improve, and the fewer mistakes they will make over time. 5. Coaching: Effective coaching is about providing directional advice on how to improve. Coaches should provide guidance on what to do differently and areas to focus on for continuous improvement. 6. Embedded on-the-job reinforcement: Repetition is critical to improving tasks. Reinforcement is about critical on-demand information needed while on the job, oftentimes related to how to solve a problem. Reinforcement can be information that is pushed to the learner/worker to update on changes or prevent mistakes, or it can be pulled and accessed as needed. This type of information should be embedded in the day-today routines and easily accessible to a worker.

3. Repetition: Having the learner practice behavior in a controlled environment prior to doing it autonomously on the job is a critical component to high-performance training. Repetition is going to vary depending on the complexity of the task.

From where I sit, reinforcement is not just a popular topic and justification for why we should have learning libraries and on-demand content available. It is the foundation of high-performing learning programs and why we must rethink the economics of training for knowledge and skilled workers alike. We must find ways to embed learning content into the job and design training to repetitiously develop best practices.

4. Immediate feedback: To get better at a job, the learner must have feedback that tells them how they are doing. The best feedback is

Doug Harward is CEO of Training Industry, Inc. and a former learning leader in the high-tech industry. Email Doug.

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LEARNER MINDSET MICHELLE EGGLESTON

GETTING MANAGERS INVOLVED IN

EMPLOYEE LEARNING Managers are an integral part of an employee’s work experience. They communicate information from senior leadership, manage employee performance and workload, provide feedback, and offer appropriate coaching when necessary. If a manager wavers in any of these areas, then the adage “People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers” may ring true. When faced with falling retention rates, managers must grasp the magnitude of the impact that they have on employees – for better or worse. Do you provide enough input to ensure your employees are successful? Do you provide too much direction and micromanage? Managers are one of the biggest drivers of employee engagement, according to Gallup. They help cultivate the work environment and set the tone. Since we arguably spend more time with our coworkers than our own families, we can begin to see why the manager-employee relationship is so significant. A recent LinkedIn Learning report sheds light on how important manager relationships are to employee learning. The research indicates that two-thirds of employees say that they would be motivated to learn if their direct manager was involved. And 56 percent of employees indicated that they would spend more time learning if their manager directed them to complete a specific course to improve their skills. With such influence on employee performance and engagement, managers

must use this to their advantage and become an advocate for learning and development (L&D). Here are a few ways that L&D can get managers more involved in employee learning.

MANAGERS ARE ONE OF THE BIGGEST DRIVERS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT. IDENTIFYING ESSENTIAL SKILLS Managers must help employees identify which qualities and skills they need to cultivate to get to the next level in their careers. This requires having some career coaching conversations to better understand employee career goals and interests. These discussions can provide managers with insight to better motivate and lead their employees. They can also recommend projects and tasks based on interest level when appropriate. SUGGESTING LEARNING OPTIONS Identifying learning opportunities can pose challenges for managers who do not have a lot of formal training available at their organization. Research shows that managers are more motivated to encourage learning when it is tied to a path to promotion and when they have a system that can help recommend learning opportunities. L&D can help in this effort by pointing managers to available resources. This system could be as simple as a listing on the company intranet for recommended external resources or as complex as a learning management system.

FREQUENT FEEDBACK Today’s employees demand more frequent feedback. This shift in employee expectations has changed the role of the manager from a boss to more of a coach. This may be adding more work to a manager’s already full plate, but the outcomes are worth it. When employees receive more frequent feedback, they can improve or change their performance before any negative behaviors become engrained. Waiting for a year-end performance review can be too late to change behavior. ACCOUNTABILITY Creating a culture where employees are accountable for their own performance can elevate motivation and results. Increasing accountability requires managers to set specific expectations and actions to achieve goals. They must also follow up with employees to ensure they are making progress and on track to achieve their goals. MOVING FORWARD Becoming an advocate for learning and development can make a big difference in employees. Managers who are involved in the growth and development of their employees can improve productivity, motivation and yield long-term results. L&D can help foster the critical manager-employee relationship by establishing ways for managers to become more involved in the employee learning experience. Michelle Eggleston is the editorial director at Training Industry, Inc. Email Michelle.

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WHAT’S NEXT IN TECH ERIC SHARP

HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN SUSTAIN YOUR TRAINING EFFORTS

Thanks to the internet and technology, people can learn anything they want, anytime, almost anywhere. And they are. In 2017, over 25 million hours were spent learning on our platform. That’s the equivalent of 4,400 bachelor’s degrees. But because they are inundated with information, employees need help cutting through the noise. To get them to engage, successful organizations are doing more than making content available. They are giving their employees personalization and relevance in their learning and training. So how do you get learning that’s personalized and relevant? You make use of things like curation, design thinking and tools that use machine learning (REAL machine learning, not systems that just hype it!) that can take employee interactions with the system and make adjustments for each individual user. Sustaining the momentum after launch is tough, and you’re not alone in the struggle. Bersin by Deloitte reported 66 percent of enterprise L&D leaders have trouble getting employees to engage with their training programs. Personalization and relevance increase the likelihood of your employees finding the right match of content at the right time, resulting in higher engagement with your training. In addition to personalization, we recommend business leaders make sure the learning systems offer engagement levers, like notifications and reminders.

And remember, if you have a choice to enable these levers or not, enable! Just think about your own personal online habits. You might notice there are certain things that drive you back to the same websites and apps day after day. In many cases, this repeated behavior is encouraged by way of a reminder, likely in the form of an email or pop-up. These notifications provide a one-click option to go back to sites you visit often. Think of your fitness tracker: “You aren’t as far as you usually are” or “It’s time to stand up!” All of these calls to action are driving you towards repeat behavior and habit development. Specific and relevant learning alerts spark the same repeat behavior. Here are two more reasons we think you should empower employees with notifications and reminders: It’s standard. They’re doing it with other tools already – Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Like other tools, it’s easy to turn off. Unsubscribing is easy for those who don’t want to get it all the time. Switching to a social tool (like Slack) or to your mobile device can also help. It’s personal. Personalize their learning for them and notifications allow them to do that. Empower your learners to make the decision to be notified. It’s one thing to get a marketing email trying to get you and one thousand other people to buy something. It’s another to get personalized learning content, based on the skills you’re building, as a daily reminder to learn.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Based on pilot user feedback, Degreed client Xilinx enabled daily reminders for their team to encourage learning. And it’s working. Over 43 percent of employees have visited the platform over five times (repeat behavior) and over 88 percent of their total employee base has logged in (activation).

SUSTAINING TRAINING REQUIRES A SHIFT IN PARADIGM BY YOUR L&D TEAM. Sustaining your training efforts requires a shift in paradigm by your L&D team as well. A holistic approach is ideal in this new world of learning. Rather than focusing on just the assigned training, step up a level to look at a user’s engagement across all training and learning. As mentioned above, engagement levers and the resulting engagement should be the metric used internally to judge the success of training initiatives. Move beyond the knee-jerk reactions to pushing training to your employees. Find ways to make sure training is part of the learning system and brought to employees at relevant times in the process of their job. Your learners will thank you and your engagement will reflect the value of your efforts! Eric Sharp is the co-founder and chief technology officer at Degreed. Email Eric.

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CLOSING D E A L S

COMPTIA EXTENDS IT TRAINING REACH TO NEW PROFESSIONALS WITH CONTENT ACQUISITIONS BY TARYN OESCH

The quick pace of technological innovation across industries and countries means increased demand for highly skilled IT professionals. However, this demand is not being met. “We’re facing significant deficits of skilled workers,” says Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of IT trade association CompTIA (short for the Computing Technology Industry Association). “In 2017, 125,760 tech jobs were added to the U.S. economy, but employers posted job openings for 2.35 million tech occupations.” In a 2017 survey of

THE MAJORITY OF IT LEARNERS PREFER VIRTUAL TRAINING LABS TO TRADITIONAL IT TRAINING MODALITIES.

IT professionals, CompTIA found that 80 percent expect they will need additional training to develop their careers. CompTIA’s goal is to be the starting place for IT talent, so the association is developing “a full offering from training to test prep to certification.” CompTIA recently made two acquisitions that add to its IT training content offerings: gtslearning, which develops print and online courses and learning materials for CompTIA certifications, and the intellectual property of the training content created and published by Logical Operations, an IT training content developer.

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Prior to these acquisitions, CompTIA had a gap in its services for “pioneers,” or people entering the technical workforce either as recent graduates or as professionals transitioning from other careers. “Before these acquisitions,” says Thibodeaux, “we had very little to offer them.” Now, with the content from gtslearning and Logical Operations, CompTIA will help pioneer progress through training and development to ultimately become certified IT professionals.

to the learner’s role – that’s why, for example, CloudTIA is increasingly using performance-based questions based on hands-on simulations in its certification exams. Speaking of which, Thibodeaux says IT certifications are becoming increasingly valuable; in the 2017 survey, almost 75 percent of IT managers rated certifications “as a valuable resource for validating skills and evaluating job candidates.” As a result, CompTIA anticipates having its own exam delivery platform by the end of 2018.

IT TRAINING INNOVATIONS

Cybersecurity skills are increasingly important, and CompTIA is launching a new certification this year called CompTIA PenTest+, which will assess “the latest penetration testing and vulnerability assessment and management skills that IT professionals need to run a successful, responsible penetration testing program.” Also on the horizon is an adaptive competency assessment, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable professionals to demonstrate their level of competency for a job role.

“We’re continuing to see more experiential and project-based learning, live labs and simulations coming online” says Thibodeaux, “and we’ll be developing our own best-in-class tools.” Virtual instructor-led training (VILT) has also evolved, he adds, and “CompTIA is investing in a state-of-the-art studio to bring our products to this market.” The most-preferred training methods for IT professionals, according to CompTIA’s 2017 research, are practice tests and assessments (63 percent), labs and simulations (60 percent), and e-learning (55 percent). Similarly, Training Industry research has found that the majority of IT learners believe virtual training labs impact job outcomes and prefer them to traditional IT training modalities. Having an authentic learning environment that simulates the on-the-job experience can improve knowledge and skills transfer after training. Thibodeaux recommends making sure IT training is mapped directly

As technology continues to evolve, the role of the professionals who manage that technology will also evolve. Certifications, virtual training labs, simulations and assessments – themselves supported by evolving technology – will continue to support and boost IT learning throughout those changes.

Taryn Oesch is an editor at Training Industry, Inc. Email Taryn.

C O M PA N Y N E W S

ACQ UI S I T I O N SAN DPA RTN E R SHIPS Simplify Compliance, a portfolio company of Leeds Equity Partners, acquired Bluepoint Leadership Development, Inc. (“Bluepoint”), a provider of leadership training and content. Bluepoint personnel will join Simplify Compliance, helping to expand its learning capabilities to include best in class leadership training. This is the fourth acquisition for Simplify Compliance since its formation in 2016

The Adecco Group, the world’s leading HR solutions partner, announced it will acquire General Assembly, a pioneer in education and career transformation that offers accelerated learning programs in high-demand 21st-century digital skills. The acquisition will position the Adecco Group as a leader in the fastgrowing up-/re-skilling segment.

BetterUp, the first leadership development platform to connect coaching to sustainable behavior change, is partnering with Watermark, Silicon Valley’s leading community of senior and emerging women executives and entrepreneurs, to make executive coaching accessible to women at every stage in their careers.

Docebo announced its inclusion in the new LinkedIn Learning Integration Partner Program. The integration gives organizations and learners access to LinkedIn Learning’s entire catalogue of more than 12,000 best-in-class learning courses within their Docebo Content Marketplace. It will allow users to access, browse and subscribe to quality learning content directly from their Docebo platform.

Thinkful, the school that brings high-growth tech careers to people everywhere, acquired Bloc, an online education company. This deal enables both companies to accelerate development of new programs, provide technical career acceleration and deliver top talent to employers everywhere. Thinkful and Bloc have a combined 12 years of experience building technical education online. SAP SE acquired Callidus Software, a leader known for its lead to money applications, including sales performance management and configure-price-quote. These applications, marketed under the brand CallidusCloud®, will provide SAP and its customers a differentiated, cloud-based customer relationship management solution.

INDUSTRY NE WS NEW RESEARCH INSTITUTE TO HELP ADULT LEARNERS HARNESS POWER OF EDUCATION

Strada Education NetworkSM, a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening America’s pathways between education and employment, announced the creation of Strada Institute for the Future of Work (Strada Institute). Strada Institute’s research will identify solutions for working adults and inform Strada’s mission impact investments aimed at transforming educational pathways for working learners. INDUSTRY LEADERS COMBINE TO CREATE GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR DIGITAL CREDENTIALS

Credly will acquire Pearson’s Acclaim badging business in response to global

demand for digital credentialing and talent recognition. The partnership between Acclaim and Credly brings two leading organizations together and provides the most comprehensive solution suite for skill recognition, credential verification and talent management. JOHNSON & JOHNSON INSTITUTE ADDS INNOVATIVE ANALYTICS-BASED LEARNING PLATFORM

A new digital learning capability now available from the Johnson & Johnson Institute, a world leader in professional education, provides hospitals and surgeons across a range of specialties with an unprecedented ability to assess and enhance technical skills in robotic, laparoscopic and open surgery with

the goal of improving outcomes and reducing costs. TWO INDUSTRY PLAYERS UNITE TO PROVIDE VR LEARNING SOLUTIONS

Two learning & VR industry pioneers, Aquinas & PeVRformance Group are joining forces with the creation of AquinasVR. The newly created AquinasVR will lead the development and production of VR experiences and content to augment and amplify corporate trainings and help bridge the corporate skills gap. INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING COMPANY NEWS? PLEASE SEND TO EDITOR@TRAININGINDUSTRY.COM

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