What activities do you do every day? What are those tasks that, if you don’t get to them on a given day, can make you feel incomplete? For me, it’s exercise. I’ve battled weight problems my entire life. Early in my career, my jobs took care of my fitness requirements. …
L&D’s New BFFs
L&D can’t do it alone. I’m not just being metaphorical or generically espousing the benefits of collaboration. An L&D team literally cannot operate autonomously within a typical organization. We need help from other teams to get our jobs done to the best of our ability. This isn’t unique to L&D …
My Top 10 Tools for Learning (2018)
How do the tools that help us learn evolve from year to year? That’s the question behind Jane Hart’s annual Top Tools for Learning survey. L&D practitioners from around the world are invited to submit their 10 top tools until Friday, September 21, 2018. Jane will then compile the data …
L&D Insights from Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends Report
I spent half my career working in hospitality and entertainment. While you were off on holiday, I was working to make sure that holiday was as awesome as possible. Even when I worked in L&D with Disney, I would emerge from underground (quite literally in the case of The Magic …
4 tactics for promoting reflection at work
“I’m back to back all day.” How often do you get this excuse from people when they are late to your meeting or haven’t replied to your email? I can’t stand this statement – mostly because it passes blame from themselves to the general workplace. Why would I expect a …
Answers to EVERY question from the #ATD2018 microlearning panel
The 2018 ATD International Conference & Expo played host to the BIGGEST microlearning panel discussion EVER! I played host and was joined on stage by 3 of the most experienced microlearning practitioners in the industry: Shannon Tipton (Learning Rebels), Stephen Meyer (Rapid Learning Institute) and Diane Elkins (Artisan E-Learning). Rather …
5 Must Reads for Modern Learning Pros
Learning professionals come from any and all backgrounds. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t go to school saying “I want to be an L&D person when I grow up.” It just kinda … happened (Thanks, Disney!). This diversity in experience is particularly valuable in this profession, as we …
What is adaptive learning?
I was recently asked to provide a definition for “adaptive learning.” Since the industry doesn’t have a standard definition for … well … anything, here’s what I said: The purposeful use of data, technology and content to provide the right support at the right time and help an individual employee …
The Fallacy of the Social Workplace
Everyone at work has a mobile device with a camera. So what we’re going to do is start a website where they can upload videos they take on the job to help them share their tips and tricks with the entire company. We’ll let people rate and comment on the …
Why is personalized learning so popular all of the sudden?
Did you see the cover of the January issue of TD Magazine (above)? How about the January/February cover of Training Industry Magazine? Personalized learning is the new trending topic in L&D. And it seemingly came out of nowhere. The thing about personalized learning is that it fits in with any …
Do you know Patti Shank? You should …
Do you know Patti Shank? If you’re in the workplace learning field, you probably should. I take that back … you DEFINITELY should! Here, I’ll help you! Her Twitter handle is @pattishank and her website is https://www.pattishank.com. Patti is an evidence-based voice in a noisy, cluttered, often misguided profession. Her …
5 methods of learning personalization
Personalization is the next microlearning. Let me explain. L&D is notoriously trendy. Every few years, a new topic will emerge and dominate the “thought leader” universe. We then see untold number of articles and conference sessions on said topic. Every vendor claims their solution does “that thing too” because it’s …
L&D in 2018
It’s the end of the year. That means it’s time for “thought leaders” to grab a few clicks by predicting the future of their industries – well, at least the next 12-months worth of future. L&D is no different. For the past few weeks, I’ve been repeatedly told exactly how …
Going beyond compliance
It’s almost time to begin another calendar year. For many organizations, this also means it’s COMPLIANCE TRAINING TIME! No one likes compliance training. Employees don’t see the point. Managers are forced to chase people down in the days preceding the deadline. L&D detests how restricted they often can be with …
Kickstart curation in your workplace
Curation is more than a trendy topic. It’s an old-school idea with the renewed power to shift L&D mindset and enable learning and problem solving in more scalable, personalized ways. It can help you keep up with the needs of the business by shifting L&D’s focus from creation to connection. …