My first of these events and it was a useful mix of Skillsoft product updates/demos, (industry) experts and user/client presentations. I tweeted a bit during the day but some major takeaways below:
Skillsoft as a company
Like a lot of learning technology companies there has clearly been a push to improve UI/UX of products and inevitably this led to stories of their own ‘digital transformation’, shifts to ‘agile’ development (Percipio updates coming out every two weeks is pretty impressive) and more. These rounds of buzzword bingo included my personal not-so-fave of lots of “Netflix-esque” experiences being mentioned.
That all said, the “beautiful technology and engaging content” mission they set themselves two years ago has, at least in part, been met.
Indeed there was no lack of ambition from the Skillsoft presenters:
and you suspect they are continuing to have success with this. The US equivalent of this, single track, EMEA day conference was a full three days in Vegas(!)
Undoubtedly there are advantages to their scale in terms of the workplace learning space, I was intrigued by what analysis of their different clients’ competency models might show:
I’d suspect the answer would be that many an L&D team are reinventing the wheel and stuck in a cottage industry of creating such competency records.
The content development team said their mission is to “help people achieve their fullest potential through learning” and that, hopefully, resonated with the clients and potential clients in the room! The work being done with MIT on the evidence behind eLearning sounds interesting, and probably a fair few years late.
Percipio vs Sumtotal vs ELSA
The Percipio product has clearly had a lot of investment and looks like it could end the old problem of Skillsoft content being hidden away in ugly client LMS platforms via SCORM/AICC. However, for reporting and the general usual experience do you want this fragmentation of platforms?
Fragmentation came up in one of the sessions…
…and I wonder if, in part, people are using ‘digital transformation’ as a term for throwing the kitchen sink at problems and hoping something sticks. However, I suspect DT means many things to many people, as I hinted at:
Sumtotal itself looks much better than when I last looked at it – which must be at least three or four years ago at least – and seems to have been retrofitted to some of the Percipio model, including the “watch, read, listen, practice” break down of activities/resources. I quite like this approach to breaking the blend down but it does also, reinforce how much this aspect of learning tech is really an evolution of the library world (i.e. the world of my first postgrad!):
The sell for still needing Sumtotal seemingly now being less on the learning side but the integration of that functionality with talent and recruitment components. Indeed elements like the 9-box grid have been given a UI/UX facelift themselves.
ELSA, on the other hand, is an interesting new development in bringing learning more into the workflow. Currently a Chrome plugin, we are seeing more and more of this kind of support tool and there is hope (from my side) that this will improve performance support being exposed away from being buried in a LMS or Intranet:
Leadership development
There was quite a bit on this – not least as a key part of the Percipio content puzzle. There are, of course, mixed views on the value as whilst we are continuing to see increased investment there is arguably little real output:
The challenge I guess here is how bad could things be if we were not investing, certainly I’ve had friends who have burned out in manager roles, in part, due to a lack of leadership development support and guidance. Obviously, you could argue this is less about formal support and more about their own managers being better coaches, etc. Perhaps, all in all, a form of self-fulfilling prophecy?
One of the sessions mentioned research at Google (presumably this) that aimed to show the importance of leadership and management was a myth of the corporate world but actually showed the importance. Perhaps, in England at least, those who really need a confidence boost can get it as a management apprenticeship. The scenario based, video-heavy, learning in Skillsoft’s library reminded me of a (photo rather than video based) eLearning I built with the help of a vendor a few years back and really just reinforced, to me, that context is key with this and the need for realism in the story telling.
Overall, this was deemed a market ripe for disruption and they were pretty transparent on their instructional design approach and belief that this L&M product can be a big hit:
‘Modern learning’
The Fosway Group session was good, as always, on some of the data in the sector and it’s difficult to disagree with the idea that often learning is still delivery orientated and doesn’t get followed up upon, updated, reinforced, etc.
I recently saw a description of magpie syndrome and I fear how much I fall into that trap. My problem is less the need for ‘shiny and new’ but rather jumping from one project to another, plus the day-to-day email deluge, without making the impact as one would like. Do we need to assign L&D time by topic to ensure people are driving the improvement in those areas rather than trying to offer more holistic support?
The session also recalled the need for:
Acquire > Practice > Do
as a model – developed over fifteen years when it was clear blended learning too often focused on medium. Some things don’t change.
Other sessions picked up on the fifteen year point – if we reflect, are we really in a transformation? For example, people said much the same as today when talking about video discs and their potential to transform learning. Personally, I always remember Encarta ’95 with my first PC and how it was perceived as a earthquake for teaching in schools and the encyclopedia industry – *waves at Wikipedia*.
Therefore, perhaps we have no real perception yet on what transformation looks like? My view would be that this is going to be continuous and we just have to acknowledge that.
In the panel session I was pleased to see recognition that lots of people are not interested in the learning opportunities we can make available. This is a tough one as it is about push v pull (as the panel discussed) but also how as a country/culture we need to realise the real transformation is that companies are going to come and go – with reskilling through a career essential. Again, there is a balance here between snobbery, assumption and a need to bring people along for the ride:
The bringing people along piece has surely been a challenge for RBS due to their size and recent historical issues so their client case study was particularly interesting in how they are trying to adapt their approach:
as was how the National Trust is supporting their disparate workforce and volunteers via Skillsoft, including IT technical skills for their IT apprentices.
Diversity
Just a nod to an excellent, no slides used, presentation from Harriet Minter on women in leadership. The session included some stats I’ve heard before and some new in terms of the importance of diversity and evidence of positive impact, with the easiest diversity to implement being gender.
