WHEN YOU WANT to learn something, what’s the first thing you do? You might turn to Google, but depending on what you’re looking for, the answers may not be as simple as you think. For example, say you want to know more about social media. If you Google “social media,” you are faced with over 250 million search results. If you try to be more specific and type in “learning social media” instead, the results narrow to about 30 million, which is better, but let’s face it, still overwhelming. The problem is that we simply can’t keep up with the amount of information that’s being created in the world.
Most experts predict that the size of the digital universe is at least doubling every two years (based on a 50-fold growth from 2010 to 2020).1 As a consequence of this content overload, we have become overwhelmed by the constant surge of information, impatient in our need for information “right now,” and distracted by the never-ending stream of websites, apps, and video clips. We spend so much time trying to sift through information that only a fraction of a typical working week is left over for learning.
Yet it is not all bad news. There are ways we can learn to combat content overload if we choose the right learning tools. In this chapter, we’ll talk about different types of learning content and how real companies are putting them to use to help their employees learn, gain expertise, and build skills.
The Moment of Need
While the sheer volume of information out there may prove overwhelming, there are ways for us to learn what we want and build our own learning journey. Think about the rich diversity of sources we can learn from throughout our lives. Excellent learning content is everywhere. Never have we had the opportunity to learn about any topic, from any device, anywhere in the world at such a low or even no cost. And this is only the beginning of the democratization of content, where people have immediate access to the information they need. All this information at our fingertips is a good thing, but only if we can help overwhelmed learners find what they need, the moment they need it.
That moment of need usually happens on the job. For example, say you need to figure out how to use data to tell a compelling story and present it to your boss the next day. You can’t wait for a class on “Telling your Story with Data.” You need the information now. How great would it be if you could easily find what you want without wading through millions of search results?
Interestingly, when we are in our moment of need, Google isn’t the first resource that we turn to. A research study carried out by Degreed in 20162 found that when people want to learn something, they first ask their peers, bosses, or mentors before searching the internet. The last thing they do is consult their HR department or learning organization. The results show that people like to learn from each other as well as from technology. Companies should take notice of these results, and leaders should ask themselves, “When I want to learn something, how do I learn?” It is only by truly understanding how each of us learns that we will be able to build a learning platform that works for each and every employee.
Tim Quinlan, director of digital platforms for Intel,3 understood the importance of individual learning when he was putting together his digital learning strategy for the company. When the time came to present his strategy to his boss, he didn’t use PowerPoint presentations or spreadsheets to show the value of learning. He simply talked to his boss and asked him how he liked to learn. His boss explained that he often searched for information online but couldn’t always find what he was looking for. So, Quinlan asked him to do the same search on Degreed, his proposed learning technology platform. His boss was both surprised and pleased to find what he wanted right away in the form of curated content and learning pathways. As Quinlan demonstrated, the ability to aggregate learning assets and to curate learning content to help employees discover what they need, when they need it, is the first step to building new knowledge and skills.
Consumerization of Content
When combating content overload and helping overwhelmed employees, it’s good to first understand just what types of online learning resources are available and how companies are using them. There is some debate about what constitutes learning content. It used to be that companies provided training in two forms: either by instructor-led classroom training or through e-learning. Learning organizations would either create all of their own learning content or hire expensive vendors to create custom content for them. Kelly recalls that one IT department spent more than $300,000 for a vendor to create a single online compliance course for its employees!
For decades, online learning often conjured up images of boring PowerPoint presentations with voiceovers, or some sort of awful compliance training. But today, there are hundreds of companies using thoughtful and innovative learning content on just about any topic imaginable. Some learning content comes in the form of content libraries that individuals or companies can pay for through a subscription service; other content is free and can be accessed by anyone. Even online compliance training can be entertaining thanks to companies like Second City,4 the comedy troupe, who have contributed to making them not just relevant, but also fun and engaging.
The real benefit to online learning is that new content is being created every day, sharing information on the latest technologies, the latest methodologies, and the most up-to-date research, enabling us to access this information as it becomes available—sometimes instantly. Yet not all of us know about it, even those who consider themselves to be lifelong learners. When the Pew Research Center did a survey of lifelong learning and technology in 2016,5 it found that, while over 70 percent of American adults surveyed considered themselves lifelong learners, and over 50 percent of full- or part-time workers took part in work or career learning, the majority of adults had little to no awareness of the technology and resources available to them. Here is the breakdown:
• 61 percent little or no awareness of distance learning
• 79 percent little or no awareness of Khan Academy (video lessons)
• 80 percent little or no awareness of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
• 83 percent little or no awareness of digital badges
Digital learning content is rapidly evolving, so it is important to understand what content is available, what’s working, and where companies and employees are being successful. Building awareness of these valuable resources is an important step toward improving the quality of learning in organizations. Low- and no-cost quality digital content is now so widely available that organizations simply cannot afford to overlook the learning content available.
Choosing the best content for employees has never been easier. For example, the free online video platform TED (Technology, Education, and Design) provides access to a collection of short (18 minutes or less), impactful talks from thought leaders around the world. Bill Gates (Microsoft), Elon Musk (Tesla), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sergey Brin (Google), and Steve Jobs (Apple) are just a few business leaders who have given inspirational talks on TED. In addition, lesser-known thought leaders speak on topics ranging from Garry Kasparov on artificial intelligence to Brené Brown on the power of vulnerability. Many companies use the videos as part of their learning content offerings to help employees think more creatively and inspire innovation and purpose at work.
YouTube is another popular information source and offers a variety of instructional videos, unparalleled by any other media. For example, David has used YouTube to learn everything from how to change a tire on his bicycle to concepts about data science and neuroscience for work. Millions of people post “how-to” videos on YouTube regularly. Some of the most popular educational and instructional videos on YouTube are posted by Khan Academy.
Khan Academy
The birth of Khan Academy is a well-known story in the education world. It started over a decade ago when educator Sal Khan’s cousin, Nadia, asked him for some tutoring in math and science because she was falling way behind in her class at school. Because Khan lived in Boston and Nadia lived in New Orleans, he would tutor her by phone. His method helped Nadia excel; in fact, she went from practically failing math to becoming the top student in her class. Because of these great results, more and more of Khan’s extended family asked him for personal tutoring too. And so it went until one of his friends suggested that he make videos of the lessons and make them available online, so they could all view the lessons at their convenience and make the whole process more efficient.
Over time, Khan made hundreds then thousands of learning videos and posted them on YouTube, and although Khan was not the first person to post online educational videos, something about his style attracted a huge audience. For some across the world without access to education, it changed their lives.
When Khan Academy became more well-known and even when it went beyond being a hobby, Khan said that the content was crafted from a more personal point of view. It started with some math he knew and then some science, but then he started getting into anatomy and certain subjects he didn’t know as well. Learning about other subjects made it fun for Khan. And it continues to be fun for Khan: “I spend about 30 to 40 percent of my time continuing to make content, and I consider that the best part of my job. I consider myself the luckiest person because it’s what I like. I don’t know any other job where you can spend 30 to 40 percent of your time learning new things—and use that knowledge to help others.”6
As his audience grew, Khan became passionate about providing learning to those who otherwise might not ever receive any education. He attracted some big investors like the Skoll Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Google, who all saw his offering as a real catalyst for change in the world of education. More than 10 years later, the Khan Academy, which is a nonprofit, has delivered more than one billion lessons online. The content is all free and is used by eight million learners monthly around the world.7 It has evolved to include lessons on math, science, arts, humanities, economics, and test preparation, to name a few. Overall, Khan has succeeded in revolutionizing education in a way that has drastically changed the way we learn and absorb new content.
The “Flipped Classroom”
What Khan has done has extended far beyond student education and learning. His approach has influenced corporate learning in a big way. His videos have enabled some teachers to “flip” their classroom8 where students are instructed to watch video lectures on their own then use class time for discussion and guidance. This concept has challenged what corporate learning could and should be.
Some companies have already applied the flipped classroom to corporate learning. Through this model, employees derive the “knowledge” part of learning in their own time, at their own pace, by watching a video (like Khan’s cousin Nadia did). Companies then bring those employees together, in person, and use that valuable time to interact with peers, practice skills, and solve real business problems. The combination of online learning content and in-person meetings is a powerful force for learning and collaboration. In the corporate world, taking time away from work to attend training is extremely expensive and inefficient (think of how much money companies spend on classes, hotels, and plane tickets, not to mention the cost of employees being away from their jobs).
As a leader, if you are going to bring people together, you need to make it count. That means using the time for employees to learn from peers, have meaningful discussions about the content and concepts they have learned, and create solutions to pressing problems. This is just one way to help companies achieve success.
Khan Academy Goes Corporate
The Khan Academy recently started to partner with companies to help their employees and their customers build skills. For example, they partnered with Bank of America to create a program for their customers on financial acumen called BetterMoneyHabits.com,9 and then followed that with a program to help new college grads figure out careers and personal finance. The latter features videos that help young adults think about their careers and weigh their passion against the financial implications of any given career.
The videos Khan Academy produces feature young professionals talking about what it’s like to have a particular career, what skills they need, and how much money they make, which offers a glimpse of what life in the working world is like. Helping new college graduates understand what’s available for them in a job and a career is something that we should spend more time on given that, according to Accenture,10 eight out of 10 new college grads do not have a job lined up at graduation. According to Bank of America research, 60 percent of new college grads place more importance on passion than on their paycheck, but they need to understand the financial realities of that choice as well.
The Khan Academy was not the only learning resource to break new ground. About the same time, a new learning content resource was on the horizon that would further advance the democratization of education on a global level.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
In 2011, something unprecedented occurred: two Stanford University professors launched three online courses (MOOCs) that allowed free access to the same learning content that was made available to Stanford students. This was a big deal, especially because Stanford University is known as one of the most difficult and prestigious universities in the world, where a mere 4.8 percent of 44,000 applicants were accepted in 2016.11
Essentially, it was an experiment to offer self-paced, scalable, accessible, and affordable online learning to anyone, anywhere in the world. When the first Stanford MOOC, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, was launched, 160,000 students around the world signed up.12
MOOCs offer learners access to online lectures and assign homework that is graded by a computer. When the class and coursework have been completed, participants receive a certificate of accomplishment. MOOCs are really the next evolution of the distance-learning model where people learn remotely without having to physically be in a classroom. Two companies were formed because of the first three MOOCs that were offered from Stanford: Coursera and Udacity. The most well-known nonprofit MOOC provider is EdX. During the past three years, over 25 million people from around the world have enrolled, and while completion rates are low (around 4 percent for Coursera) the overall reach is still significant.13
While the original goal for MOOCs was to make education more accessible to those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it, studies during the past five years have shown some interesting trends. According to Harvard Business Review, “Enrollees predominantly are well-educated residents of developed countries,” and many people are using MOOCS to build skills and advance their careers. “Fifty-two percent of the people surveyed report a primary goal of improving their current job or finding a new job—they are ‘career builders.’ Of these career builders, 87 percent report a career benefit of some kind.”14
Since Coursera and Udacity were founded, they have evolved their business models to focus on learning for working professionals rather than just undergraduate students. They connect a company and/or a university together and create learning content focused on a particular topic. For example, Udacity partnered with Mercedes-Benz to create a project-based program on self-driving cars, while Coursera partnered with Google to create a course on big data and machine learning using the Google Cloud.15
This collaboration between industry and education benefits people who potentially want to work for the company that’s sponsoring the learning or break into a new career. For example, say you want to be a self-driving car engineer for Mercedes-Benz. Taking the course created by Udacity gives you an advantage in the recruiting process. This also benefits the company (in this case Mercedes-Benz) since they will attract applicants who already know how to use their products (their new self-driving car). The fact that companies are now realizing they need to get involved in helping build skills for the future is a positive sign, particularly since universities have been struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of new jobs and skills.
AXA, the largest insurance company in France, realizes the importance of providing relevant content to their employees to prepare them for the jobs of the future.16 The organization recently announced a global partnership with Coursera to help foster a self-directed learning model that provides relevant skills to a subset of their employees. One thousand employees will have access to a library of Coursera offerings to upskill in business acumen. Fifty percent of the cohort will get certifications, and AXA employees in 64 countries will gain access to more than 300 courses in topics such as leadership, digital marketing, and data science. L’Oréal is another global company using Coursera to help their employees build skills. The company targets 50 percent of their employees’ learning through self-directed or digital initiatives.17
Still, many companies seem to be missing a big part of how they can be more competitive in hiring and retaining great talent. According to Monika Hamori in Harvard Business Review, “A lot of people who want to become better at their jobs are fending for themselves.”18 Companies are reluctant to invest in talent that may end up leaving to work for the competition. On the flipside, employees see further learning as an investment in themselves and their future. One of the reasons many companies don’t support their employees’ learning through MOOCs is because they lack awareness of the impact MOOCs have, such as low course fees, no travel costs, and less disruption to day-to-day work. If we could bring companies and employees together around how they engage in MOOCs, it would be a huge win-win situation.
Learning Content Libraries
When it comes to online learning content, video tutorials and MOOCs are only the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of subscription-based, paid online learning libraries on the market today. Some of the most popular include OpenSesame, Pluralsight, Safari, Lynda.com, Skillsoft, Creative Live, Treehouse, and Udemy. Content libraries provide hundreds if not thousands of courses and/or video content to help employees learn about topics at their own pace asynchronously. Some content libraries are vast and cover a wide variety of topics and skills, while others specialize in areas like technology. Individuals can buy subscriptions so they can learn on their own time, and many companies buy companywide subscriptions to provide access for all their employees.
Utah-based Pluralsight provides a content library of learning videos focused on the technology sector. The technical learning content created by experts in the field is video based and helps people build skills in mobile development, web development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, to name a few. In addition to the learning content, participants are also offered skill assessments, learning checks, and discussion boards.
Recently, Google partnered with Pluralsight as part of an initiative to tackle India’s skills gap challenge.19 According to NASSCOM, India’s IT training association, the Google/Pluralsight partnership is helping 3.9 million people in India update the technology skills they need to stay relevant in the workplace. In addition, the partnership is focused on helping skill new developers for the 150,000 new tech jobs that are coming online within the year.
Microlearning
Microlearning is the opposite of typical corporate training; instead of sitting for eight hours in a classroom, microlearning serves bite-sized learning content, usually lasting only a few minutes and easily accessible by mobile phone. New York City–based technology company Grovo is most well-known for microlearning. According to the Association for Talent Development, 92 percent of organizations currently using microlearning plan to do more of it, while the 67 percent of organizations not using it plan to start using it.20
Companies adopt microlearning content because it seems to work. First, people can fit short bursts of learning into their work routine without having to take time out to go to a training class. Microlearning also helps people to get just enough content to help them with the task at hand. Finally, microlearning is useful for reinforcing learning and helping people recall content and concepts. A number of companies have embraced microlearning, including Gap, Chevron, and PepsiCo.21
According to Maksim Ovsyannikov, former vice president of product for Grovo, microlearning was developed so that content could be more concise and with specific takeaways. In about five minutes or less, a typical piece of microlearning content attempts to:
• State a problem
• Summarize why it is important
• Propose a solution
• Give an example of how this solution can be applied
• Summarize and quiz
Ovsyannikov gives this example: “Imagine a new manager who is about to conduct her first one-on-one. An insightful microlearning lesson can give her valuable information on effective one-on-ones quickly and in the moment of need, right before she is about to walk into this type of first interaction.”22
According to Ovsyannikov, there are two great misconceptions with microlearning. “First is the misconception that it is not possible to deliver broader areas of knowledge via microlearning, and that microlearning can only be used to microlearn.”23
That is not accurate. Microlearning can be effectively combined into learning pathways where bits of knowledge are delivered daily over a period of time. As such, the learner can acquire a skill that is not tied to one piece of microlearning, but instead is gained through a series of microlearning lessons delivered in the same path.
The second major misconception with microlearning exists among the content providers, some of whom promote the message that if the content doesn’t come from them, then it doesn’t count as microlearning. This is an inaccurate interpretation given that microlearning can be developed by anyone who follows sound instructional design principles. This involves simply shortening the content to make it more concise, while constantly testing and summarizing the knowledge being delivered.
Ovsyannikov goes on to say, “Almost anyone can build microlearning; in fact, it is easier to build microlearning content than traditional learning content because it is more agile and more iterative.”24
Curated Content
With all the different types of learning content available, the big question becomes: How do companies and employees figure out what to choose? Curating content is a great strategy for helping employees find what they need just when they need it. Let’s take an example. Say you want to learn more about cybersecurity. You could try googling it, but you have a colleague, Julie, who works in the engineering group at your company, and she is a subject matter expert on this topic. You ask Julie what she thinks are the best learning resources surrounding cybersecurity. In response, Julie puts together a list of courses, conferences, certificates, books, podcasts, websites, experiences, journals, and articles that she thinks are the most valuable sources of information.
Now imagine that you have technology that will let you put these resources in a guided digital pathway so that anyone who wants to learn about cybersecurity can also see the list of resources that Julie put together. That’s curated content. Instead of employees guessing which resources are the best, they learn from someone who is an expert already.
The great thing about curated content pathways is that they open learning in a whole new way. Not only can learning professionals in the corporate learning organization curate content on various topics, but also employees who are already subject matter experts are able to share their expertise. This means that all employees can get involved in learning and teaching others. Empowering employees to choose pathways of learning that make sense to them is a powerful way to close the skills gap and build on their expertise.
MasterCard has been using the power of curating content for several years. The company came up with a creative way to encourage all employees to share their expertise. They held a contest where they challenged employees to identify a topic they were passionate about, and then create their own pathways of curated content to teach other employees about the topic. When all the submissions were in, the top three pathways were chosen, and the curators were awarded prizes for their efforts. It was fun and competitive, but most importantly, it got everyone engaged in the learning process and created exceptional resources for the benefit of all of their employees.
Curating Content Using Machine Learning
Imagine a scenario where every employee in the world has access to personalized learning, and that learning helps them build the knowledge and skills they need throughout their careers. Just a few short years ago, the idea that one day everyone could have access to the learning they needed when they needed it seemed like a fantasy. Now, with the rise of machine learning, it’s entirely possible for anyone to have a personalized learning experience. Now you can have relevant learning content served to you and your employees every day based on your interests, on who you are, on what you do, on how you like to learn, on what skills you want to build, and on who you know. Think about what this means.
That was the dream, but it’s gradually becoming a reality through machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), and it gives computers the ability to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. In other words, the computer learns how to learn. So what role does machine learning play in corporate education? Its uses are twofold. First, it helps personalize the employee’s learning experience by learning the type of content being consumed by that user and second, it codifies the skills and knowledge being gained from this content.
Machine learning organizes and recommends learning based on your interests. Think of what Spotify has done for music or Netflix for movies. The more you watch or listen, the more the technology learns about you. The more it learns about you, the better it is at giving you more of what you want, or might want. This allows you to discover new music based on your preferences (in the form of customized playlists) and inspires ideas about what movies you might want to watch next (through suggestions and recommendations).
“Machine learning is not just about content recommendations,” says James Densmore, director of data science at Degreed. “I get a lot of feedback from people thinking that machine learning is about building better recommendation systems, when in fact the ultimate goal is to understand why we are recommending a given piece of content. Is it the format (course versus article), the length, the frequency of consumption, the author, or something else?”25
IBM’s supercomputer Watson illustrates nicely how machine learning works. Watson was famously able to beat humans at the quiz show Jeopardy because of its ability to process thousands of questions and learn how to play the game. Machine learning is at the heart of so much of the technology we use today, yet we’re not that aware of it because it’s working in the background. Many of the biggest technology firms use machine learning for many of our day-to-day tasks. For example, Amazon recommends products on every page; Google shows you ads that it thinks are relevant to you (and sometimes asks you if they are right, thus getting more data); and Facebook uses face recognition to identify people in pictures you post.
When you apply this to learning technology, as we are doing at Degreed, machine learning allows learning to be curated automatically. It gives you a selection of learning content that is personalized and relevant. You can receive a feed of new learning content to consider on a daily basis, and learning pathways are recommended to you based on what you want to learn and what the system is learning about you. It does the processing so you don’t have to wade through thousands of pieces of content. You can focus on learning. It then enables you to analyze the data so that you understand what skills your employees are building.
Think about how efficient this process is in comparison with the typical “needs analysis”—the manual process used by many learning professionals to ascertain employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities. While regular needs analyses can provide useful information when it comes to designing new content or programs, it is time consuming and rarely meets the needs and demands of the employees taking part.
With machine learning in corporate education, we can collect and analyze the data to truly understand what employees are learning. The data can tell you what content your employees are consuming, which content and modalities they prefer, and most importantly, what skills they are building. There has never been a better way to get insights about your learners—not what your employees say they want to learn, but what they are learning.
Creating a Digital Learning Strategy
Many companies are rethinking their learning strategy with a view to incorporating more digital components to create a culture that encourages continuous learning. In her book Stretch: How to Future-Proof Yourself for Tomorrow’s Workplace, Karie Willyerd26 discusses how to stay current in the workforce. She says, “It’s not that you have to drop everything you are doing and go reskill yourself. It’s more that it’s important to keep learning all the time.” She likens learning to staying in shape physically, in that it’s better to exercise moderately over the course of your life rather than try to run a marathon and then quit.
Willyerd says, “Individuals and companies need to set up platforms and ways for people to be constantly learning to set a culture and tone and expectation around continuous learning. That’s probably the only way that you can keep up. It’s counterproductive not to pay attention to this, and then go through a major restructuring and hire all new people only to have them become obsolete as well.”
Ask yourself how you learn every day. Do you search for content on Google and watch videos online? Most people, including your employees, learn from a variety of informal sources. So, when you are creating your digital learning strategy to incorporate digital learning assets into your offering, think about the following questions to help you develop your plan.
1. What is a digital learning strategy?
A digital learning strategy is the process of incorporating digital learning assets (videos, online learning, courses, blogs, articles, and books) to help people learn. But, digital learning is more than that—it encourages us to think about learning in a different way. There is so much content for learning available to people now, and the rate of change is so fast, that we can’t be bound by old models of learning (like classroom training) to satisfy the required skills today.
A digital learning strategy provides us with the opportunity to direct people to digital assets we have developed, or that already exist, and make that content more on-demand. Having a variety of digital asset types also considers all the different ways people like to learn: Kelly loves to read books or listen to podcasts to learn; David prefers to watch videos and read articles; and others may like to take a multiweek online course. So, it is a good idea to build a plan into the digital learning strategy for how these digital learning assets should be offered to employees.
2. Why do organizations need a digital learning strategy?
One reason it’s so valuable to have a digital learning strategy is that it provides learning to all employees—not just the chosen few. It also enables companies to react more nimbly to shifting priorities as well as specialized learning needs that can’t always be accommodated with the resources available.
When a digital learning strategy is deployed, it instantly becomes a global, scalable benefit for all employees, proving to them that the company is investing in them and their skill development—all the time. Instead of employees having to go through the learning department to develop a particular type of learning, they have thousands of learning assets at their fingertips whenever they need them.
Many companies spend most of their learning budgets on leaders, managers, or high-performing employees, and then leave the rest of their employees to fend for themselves. Having a digital strategy helps reach all employees, and it provides the company with a competitive advantage: employees are more likely to stay in a company that invests in skill building and further learning.
3. What type of digital content should be included?
Here’s where a little analysis and iteration comes into play. When Kelly was at LinkedIn, she and her team were trying to decide which content to include in the digital strategy. LinkedIn was just starting the learning organization, so the team hadn’t created content yet. To get learning content to people quickly, the team partnered with a few leading content providers that had libraries of digital content.
Kelly and her team chose three of those content partners. During the first year they tracked the usage of this partner content to see what employees were using to learn. They also included some of the free content, such as TED Talks and YouTube videos. That worked well for creating the first digital strategy. But over time, as LinkedIn learned what was working best for its employees, the company dropped some partner content and added some company-specific digital content to the mix.
4. How do organizations know what their employees are learning online?
The key to finding out the impact of the first digital learning strategy is to try to obtain data on what employees are consuming and learning, and then to use that information to refine the strategy. However, it can be time consuming to track and understand what people are learning through such a range of informal learning assets (videos, blogs, and books). Traditional technologies such as LMS are able to track something people registered for (like an event or class), but they are unable to track informal learning and activities.
While it is possible to manually track informal learning, it is a very arduous process. It is even more difficult to get to a personalized view of each employee’s learning. New technologies like Degreed have solved the personalized analytics problem by providing a detailed view of how people engage with digital learning content, much like fitness trackers have automated gathering personal fitness records.
How to Help Overwhelmed Learners
In this chapter, we’ve talked about the sheer amount of content that is available for learning. We’ve also talked about the different types of content, how companies are using them, and how you can create a digital learning strategy. There’s no doubt that we are all overwhelmed by the amount of learning content out there. Below are some ways you can help overwhelmed learners at your company.
1. Curate content
There are a few ways you can curate content. However, there is a huge distinction between curated content and aggregated content. An example of aggregated content is when you do a Google search on a topic such as “social media” and you get hundreds, if not thousands, of search results. You still have to sort through all the results and decide about what is most relevant to you, and that takes a lot of time. Curated content, on the other hand, is a way to give an employee only the best and most relevant pieces of content for that subject area. It means narrowing down the choices so that people are not so overwhelmed. There are a few different ways to provide curated content.
Curated pathways of content
One way to curate content is to provide a “pathway” of learning. This means that instead of just choosing one learning asset among a few, you create a collection of assets that can either be consumed in order (or not) depending on the goal.
For example, you have seven learning assets in the collection. You might get a video to introduce the subject, then a portion of a class or book, a podcast, two articles, and even an assessment to see how well you’ve comprehended the topic area. This “pathway” can be incredibly useful for prescriptive learning for topic areas such as sales training or management development, but it can also be very helpful for onboarding new employees to a company or into their functional groups (sales, engineering, and marketing).
The flexibility of learning pathways is also a plus in that you can use pathways created by others, modify existing pathways to make them more relevant for your audience, or create a completely new pathway.
Social curation
The idea that learners like to learn from both peers and experts is nothing new, but social curation makes this learning come to life. Imagine that you are an engineer at a company and you are trying to learn about the latest technology. Then you find curated content from an expert or a peer who already knows much more about this technology than you do. Instantly you have content from a reliable source that is relevant to what you need to learn. And, with social curation, you can not only consume this content, you can add your own, rate it, or recommend it to others. This is the power of social curation.
Machine-curated content
Some learning platforms use machine learning to understand what content you are most interested in and what content is most relevant to you. For example, if you are interested in learning how to get better at giving presentations, the learning platform can then serve up five relevant pieces of content to you per day based on what it knows about you. If you consume the content, it gives you more of that kind of content, but if you dismiss it, it tries to find more relevant content for you. The more you use it, the more it learns about what you like and what’s most relevant to you.
2. Recommend content
Another great way to help the overwhelmed learner is to make recommendations about relevant content. For example, a manager could easily share existing content that they think would be incredibly useful to their team by simply recommending it. They can do this through an integrated learning platform that will easily track what content they recommend, and how and when people consume that content. The platform will capture team discussions around that content.
3. Do not create new content
When thinking about creating content, many people naturally jump to creating something new and original. In some cases, that may be the best approach, but given what we know about the overwhelmed learner, creating new content may not be necessary.
When Kelly attended an offsite for a tech company, which brought together a large number of learning leaders to coordinate their content strategy, they soon discovered that there were 15 different, but similar, courses on the same topic—in this case the topic was project management. This happened because people didn’t have a view into all the content that was out there (even in one company, let alone across the internet). Many different people had created content that lived in content management systems, web servers, learning management systems, on wikis, and on people’s computers. This is not a unique problem for companies. Having an integrated learning platform helps solve this problem.
When you think about creating content, find out if that content already exists either at your company or free on the internet. If you do this, you can then spend time creating content that is specific to your company or your expertise rather than duplicating content that is already high quality and serves the purpose.
4. Encourage employees to set learning goals
When employees set goals around their learning, they focus on what they should be spending their time on. For example, say Jenn wants to focus on learning more about business strategy. She could set a learning goal to outline how she might acquire this skill (books, podcasts, classes, mentoring, etc.). Then she could track her progress against her goal and even gain certification for that skill upon completion.
5. Let employees own their career development
Instead of mandating training from the top down, many companies encourage employees to own and direct their own learning and career development. Willyerd says that one of the overarching imperatives to understand is, “It’s all on you! There is no magic person behind the curtain who is thinking about your career and planning for it and making sure that you get everything you need, whether it’s the learning that you need or the experiences that you need.”
Willyerd goes on to say, “A manager is incented to put whoever is best or most productive onto a project, so if you don’t speak up and look for the experiences or learning you need, you will miss out.”27
While organizations can put together tools, processes, and guidelines to help people develop, it’s up to the employee to do what it takes to get what they need. In other words, employees need to take advantage of all the content that is available and understand that while managers may guide them, they are the ones in the driver’s seat.