Will Thalheimer Interviewed by Learnnovators

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The LEARNNOVATORS team (specifically Santhosh Kumar) asked if I would join them in their Crystal Balling with Learnnovators interview series, and I accepted! They have some really great people on the series, I recommend that you check it out!

The most impressive thing was that they must have studied my whole career history and read my publication list and watched my videos because they came up with a whole set of very pertinent and important questions. I was BLOWN AWAY—completely IMPRESSED! And, given their dedication, I spent a ton of time preparing and answering their questions.

It’s a two part series and here are the links:

Here are some of the quotes they pulled out and/or I’d like to highlight:

Learning is one of the most wondrous, complex, and important areas of human functioning.

The explosion of different learning technologies beyond authoring tools and LMSs is likely to create a wave of innovations in learning.

Data can be good, but also very very bad.

Learning Analytics is poised to cause problems as well. People are measuring all the wrong things. They are measuring what is easy to measure in learning, but not what is important.

We will be bamboozled by vendors who say they are using AI, but are not, or who are using just 1% AI and claiming that their product is AI-based.

Our senior managers don’t understand learning, they think it is easy, so they don’t support L&D like they should.

Because our L&D leaders live in a world where they are not understood, they do stupid stuff like pretending to align learning with business terminology and business-school vibes—forgetting to align first with learning.

We lie to our senior leaders when we show them our learning data—our smile sheets and our attendance data. We then manage toward these superstitious targets, causing a gross loss of effectiveness.

Learning is hard and learning that is focused on work is even harder because our learners have other priorities—so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much.

We know from the science of human cognition that when people encounter visual stimuli, their eyes move rapidly from one object to another and back again trying to comprehend what they see. I call this the “eye-path phenomenon.” So, because of this inherent human tendency, we as presenters—as learning designers too!—have to design our presentation slides to align with these eye-path movements.

Organizations now—and even more so in the near future—will use many tools in a Learning-Technology Stack. These will include (1) platforms that offer asynchronous cloud-based learning environments that enable and encourage better learning designs, (2) tools that enable realistic practice in decision-making, (3) tools that reinforce and remind learners, (4) spaced-learning tools, (5) habit-support tools, (6) insight-learning tools (those that enable creative ideation and innovation), et cetera

Learnnovators asked me what I hoped for the learning and development field. Here’s what I said:

Nobody is good at predicting the future, so I will share the vision I hope for. I hope we in learning and development continue to be passionate about helping other people learn and perform at their best. I hope we recognize that we have a responsibility not just to our organizations, but beyond business results to our learners, their coworkers/families/friends, to the community, society, and the environs. I hope we become brilliantly professionalized, having rigorous standards, a well-researched body of knowledge, higher salaries, and career paths beyond L&D. I hope we measure better, using our results to improve what we do. I hope we, more-and-more, take a small-S scientific approach to our practices, doing more A-B testing, compiling a database of meaningful results, building virtuous cycles of continuous improvement. I hope we develop better tools to make building better learning—and better performance—easier and more effective. And I hope we continue to feel good about our contributions to learning. Learning is at the heart of our humanity!

The 70-20-10 Framework Gets Its First Scientific Investigation

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The 70-20-10 Framework has been all the rage for the last five or ten years in the workplace learning field. Indeed, I organized a great debate about 70-20-10 through The Debunker Club (you can see the tweet stream here). I have gone on record saying that the numbers don’t have a sound research backing, but that the concept is a good one—particularly the idea that we as learning professionals ought to leverage on-the-job learning where we can.

What is 70-20-10?

The 70-20-10 framework is built on the belief that 10% of workplace learning is, or should be, propelled by formal training; that 20% is, or should be, enabled by learning directly from others; and that 70% of workplace learning is, or should, come from employee’s learning through workplace experiences.

Supported by Research?

Given all the energy around 70-20-10, you might think that lots of rigorous scientific research has been done on the framework. Well, you would be wrong!

In fact, up until today (April 19, 2019), only one study has been published in a scientific journal (my search of PsycINFO only reveals one study). In this post, I will review that one study, published last year:

Johnson, S. J., Blackman, D. A., & Buick, F. (2018). The 70:20:10 framework and the transfer of learning. Human Resource Development Quarterly. Advance online publication.

Caveats

All research has strengths, weaknesses, and limitations—and it’s helpful to acknowledge these so we can think clearly. First, one study cannot be definitive, and this is just one study. Also, this study is qualitative and relies on subjective inputs to draw its conclusions. Ideally, we’d like to have more objective measures utilized. It is also gathering data from a small sample of public sector workers, where ideally we want a wider range of diverse participants.

Methodology

The researchers found a group of organizations who had been bombarded with messages and training to encourage the use of the 70-20-10 model. Specifically, the APSC (The Australian Public Sector Commission), starting in 2011, encouraged the Australian public sector to embrace 70-20-10.

The specific study “draws from the experiences of two groups of Australian public sector managers: senior managers responsible for implementing the 70:20:10 framework within their organization; and middle managers who have undergone management capability development aligned to the 70:20:10 framework. All managers were drawn from the Commonwealth, Victorian, Queensland, and Northern Territory governments.”

A qualitative approach was chosen according to the researchers “given the atheoretical nature of the 70:20:10 framework and the lack of theory or evidence to provide a research framework.”

The qualitative approaches used by the researchers were individual structured interviews and group structured interviews.

The researchers chose people to interview based on their experience using the 70-20-10 framework to develop middle managers. “A purposive sampling technique was adopted, selecting participants who had specific knowledge of, and experience with, middle management capability development in line with the 70:20:10 framework.”

The researchers used a text-processing program (NVivo) to help them organize and make sense of the qualitative data (the words collected in the interviews). According to Wikipedia, “NVivo is intended to help users organize and analyze non-numerical or unstructured data. The software allows users to classify, sort and arrange information; examine relationships in the data; and combine analysis with linking, shaping, searching and modeling.”

Overall Results

The authors conclude the following:

“In terms of implications for practice, the 70:20:10 framework has the potential to better guide the achievement of capability development through improved learning transfer in the public sector. However, this will only occur if future implementation guidelines focus on both the types of learning required and how to integrate them in a meaningful way. Actively addressing the impact that senior managers and peers have in how learning is integrated into the workplace through both social modeling and organizational support… will also need to become a core part of any effective implementation.”

“Using a large qualitative data set that enabled the exploration of participant perspectives and experiences of using the 70:20:10 framework in situ, we found that, despite many Australian public sector organizations implementing the framework, to date it is failing to deliver desired learning transfer results. This failure can be attributed to four misconceptions in the framework’s implementation: (a) an overconfident assumption that unstructured experiential learning will automatically result in capability development; (b) a narrow interpretation of social learning and a failure to recognize the role social learning has in integrating experiential, social and formal learning; (c) the expectation that managerial behavior would automatically change following formal training and development activities without the need to actively support the process; and (d) a lack of recognition of the requirement of a planned and integrated relationship between the elements of the 70:20:10 framework.”

Specific Difficulties

With Experiential Learning

“Senior managers indicated that one reason for adopting the 70:20:10 framework was that the dominant element of 70% development achieved through experiential learning reflected their expectation that employees should learn on the job. However, when talking to the middle managers themselves, it was not clear how such learning was being supported. Participants suggested that one problem was a leadership perception across senior managers that middle managers could automatically transition into middle management roles without a great deal of support or development.”

“The most common concern, however, was that experiential learning efficacy was challenged because managers were acquiring inappropriate behaviors on the job based on what they saw around them every day.”

“We found that experiential learning, as it is currently being implemented, is predominantly unstructured and unmanaged, that is, systems are not put in place in the work environment to support learning. It was anticipated that managers would learn on the job, without adequate preparation, additional support, or resourcing to facilitate effective learning.”

With Social Learning

“Overall, participants welcomed the potential of social learning, which could help them make sense of their con-text, enabling both sense making of new knowledge acquired and reinforcing what was appropriate both in, and for, their organization. However, they made it clear that, despite apparent organizational awareness of the value of social learning, it was predominantly dependent upon the preferences and working styles of individual managers, rather than being supported systematically through organizationally designed learning programs. Consequently, it was apparent that social learning was not being utilized in the way intended in the 70:20:10 framework in that it was not usually integrated with formal or experiential learning.”

Mentoring

“Mentoring was consistently highlighted by middle and senior managers as being important for both supporting a middle manager’s current job and for building future capacity.”

“Despite mentoring being consistently raised as the most favored form of development, it was not always formally supported by the organization, meaning that, in many instances, mentoring was lacking for middle managers.”

“A lack of systemic approaches to mentoring meant it was fragile and often temporary.”

Peer Support

“Peer support and networking encouraged middle managers to adopt a broader perspective and engage in a community of practice to develop ideas regarding implementing new skills.”

“However, despite managers agreeing that networks and peer support would assist them to build capability and transfer learning to the workplace, there appeared to be few organizationally supported peer learning opportunities. It was largely up to individuals to actively seek out and join their own networks.”

With Formal Learning

“Formal learning programs were recognized by middle and senior managers as important forms of capability development. Attendance was often encouraged for new middle managers.”

“However, not all experiences with formal training programs were positive, with both senior and middle managers reflecting on their ineffectiveness.”

“For the most part, participants reported finishing formal development programs with little to no follow up.”

“There was a lack of both social and experiential support for embedding this learning. The lack of social learning support partly revolved around the high workloads of managers and the lack of time devoted to development activities.”

“The lack of experiential support and senior management feedback meant that many middle managers did not have the opportunity to practice and further develop their new skills, despite their initial enthusiasm.”

“A key issue with this was the lack of direct and clear guidance provided by their line managers.”

“A further issue with formal learning was that it was often designed generically for groups of participants…  The need for specificity also related to the lack of explicit, individualized feedback provided by their line manager to reinforce and embed learning.”

What Should We Make of This Preliminary Research?

Again, with only one study—and a qualitative one conducted on a narrow type of participant—we should be very careful in drawing conclusions.

Still, the study can be helpful in helping us develop hypotheses for further testing—both by researchers and by us as learning professionals.

We also ought to be careful in casting doubt on the 70-20-10 framework itself. Indeed, the research seems to suggest that the framework was not always implemented as intended. On the other hand, when it is demonstrated that a model tends to be used poorly in its routine use, then we should become skeptical that it will produce reliable benefits.

Here are a list of reflections generated in me by the research:

  1. Why so much excitement for 70-20-10 with so little research backing?
  2. Formal training was found to have all the problems normally associated with it, especially the lack of follow-through and after-training support—so we still need to work to improve it!
  3. Who will provide continuous support for experiential and social learning? In the research case, the responsibility for implementing on-the-job learning experiences was not clear, and so the implementation was not done or was poorly done.
  4. What does it take in terms of resources, responsibility, and tasking to make experiential and social learning useful? Or, is this just a bridge too far?
  5. The most likely leverage point for on-the-job learning still seems, to me, to be managers. If this is a correct assumption—and really it should be tested—how can we in Learning & Development encourage, support, and resource managers for this role?

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Guest Post from Robert O. Brinkerhoff: 70-20-10: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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This is a guest post by Robert O. Brinkerhoff (www.BrinkerhoffEvaluationInstitute.com).

Rob is a renowned expert on learning evaluation and performance improvement. His books, Telling Training’s Story and Courageous Training, are classics.

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70-20-10: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The 70-20-10 framework may not have much if any research basis, but it is still a good reminder to all of us in in the L&D and performance improvement professions that the work-space is a powerful teacher and poses many opportunities for practice, feedback, and improvement.

But we must also recognize that a lot of the learning that is taking place on the job may not be for the good. I have held jobs in agencies, corporations and the military where I learned many things that were counter to what the organization wanted me to learn: how to fudge records, how to take unfair advantage of reimbursement policies, how to extend coffee breaks well beyond their prescribed limits, how to stretch sick leave, and so forth.

These were relatively benign instances. Consider this: Where did VW engineers learn how to falsify engine emission results? Where did Well Fargo staff learn how to create and sell fake accounts to their unwitting customers?

Besides these egregiously ugly examples, we have to also recognize that in the case of L&D programming that is intended to support new strategic and other change initiatives, the last thing the organization needs is more people learning how to do their jobs in the old way. AT&T, for example, worked very hard to drive new beliefs and actions to enable the business to shift from landline technologies to wireless; on-the-job learning dragged them backwards, and creates problems still today. As AllState Insurance tries to shift sales focus away from casualty policies to financial planning services, the old guard teaches the opposite actions, as they continue to harvest the financial benefits of policy renewals. Any organization that has to make wholesale and fundamental shifts to execute new strategies will have to cope with the negative effects of years of on-the-job learning.

When strategy is new, there are few if any on-the-job pockets of expertise and role models. Training new employees for existing jobs is a different story. Here, obviously, the on-job space is an entirely appropriate learning resource.

In short, we have to recognize that not all on-the-job learning is learning that we want. Yet on the job learning remains an inexorable force that we in L&D must learn how to understand, leverage, guide and manage.

Testing for Instructional Designers — A Common Mistake

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Somebody sent me a link to a YouTube video today — a video created to explain to laypeople what instructional design is. Most of it was reasonable, until it gave the following example, narrated as follows:

“… and testing is created to clear up confusion and make sure learners got it right.”


Something is obviously wrong here — something an instructional designer ought to know. What is it?

Scroll down for the answer…

Before you scroll down, come up with your own answer…

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Answer: 

The test question is devoid of real-world context. Instead of asking a text-based question, we could provide an image and ask them to point to the access panel.

Better yet, we could have them work on a simulated real-world task and follow steps that would enable them to complete the simulated task only if they used the access panel as part of their task completion.

Better yet, we could have them work on an actual real-world task… et cetera…

Better yet, we might first ask ourselves whether anybody really needs to “LEARN” where the access panel is — or would they just find it on their own without being trained or tested on it?

Better yet, we might first ask ourselves whether we really need a course in the first place. Maybe we’d be better off to create a performance-support tool that would take them through troubleshooting steps — with zero or very little training required.

Better yet, we might first ask ourselves whether we could design our equipment so that technicians don’t need training or performance support.

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Or we could ask ourselves existential questions about the meaning and potency of instructional design, about whether a career devoted to helping people learn work skills is worthy to be our life’s work…

Or we could just get back to work and crank out that test…

SMILE…

 

 

The Two-World Theory of Workplace Learning — Critiqued!

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Today, industry luminary and social-media advocate Jane Hart wrote an incendiary blog post claiming that “the world of L&D [Learning and Development] is splitting in two.” According to Jane there are good guys and bad guys.

The bad guys are the “Traditionalists.” Here is some of what Jane says about them:

  • “They cling onto 20th century views of Training & Development.”
  • “They believe they know what is best for their people.”
  • “They disregard the fact that most people are bored to tears sitting in a classroom or studying an e-learning course at their desktop.”
  • “They miss the big picture – the fact that learning is much more than courses, but involves continuously acquiring new knowledge and skills as part of everyday work.”
  • “They don’t understand that the world has changed.”

Fighting words? Yes! Insulting words? Yes! Painting with too broad a brush? Yes! Maybe just to make a point? Probably!

Still, Jane’s message is clear. Traditionalists are incompetent fools who must be eradicated because of the evil they are doing.

Fortunately, galloping in on white horses we have “Modern Workplace Learning (MWL) practitioners.” These enlightened souls are doing the following, according to Jane:

  • “They are rejecting the creation of expensive, sophisticated e-learning content and preferring to build short, flexible, modern resources (where required) that people can access when they need them. AND they are also encouraging social content (or employee-generated content) – particularly social video – because they know that people know best what works for them.”
  • They are ditching their LMS (or perhaps just hanging on to it to manage some regulatory training) – because they recognise it is a white elephant – and it doesn’t help them understand the only valid indicator of learning success, how performance has changed and improved.”
  • They are moving to a performance-driven world – helping groups find their own solutions to problems – ones that they really need, will value, and actually use, and recognise that these solutions are often ones they organise and manage themselves.”
  • They are working with managers to help them develop their people on the ground – and see the success of these initiatives in terms of impact on job performance.”
  • They are helping individuals take responsibility for their own learning and personal development – so that they continuously grow and improve, and hence become valuable employees in the workplace.”
  • They are supporting teams as they work together using enterprise social platforms – in order to underpin the natural sharing within the group, and improve team learning.” 

Points of Agreement

I agree with Jane in a number of ways. Many of the practices we use in workplace learning are ineffective.

Here are some points of agreement:

  1. Too much of our training is ineffective!
  2. Too often training and/or elearning are seen as the only answer!
  3. Too often we don’t think of how we, as learning professionals, can leverage on the job learning.
  4. Too often we default to solutions that try to support performance primarily by helping people learn — when performance assistance would be preferable.
  5. Too often we believe that we have to promote an approved organizational knowledge, when we might be better off to let our fellow workers develop and share their own knowledge.
  6. Too often we don’t utilize new technologies in an effort to provide more effective learning experiences.
  7. Too often we don’t leverage managers to support on-the-job learning.
  8. Too often we don’t focus on how to improve performance.

Impassioned Disagreement

As someone who has enjoyed the stage with Jane in the past, and who knows that she’s an incredibly lovely person, I doubt that she means to cast aspersions on a whole cohort of dedicated learning-and-performance professionals.

Where I get knocked off my saddle is the oversimplifications encouraged in the long-running debate between the traditionalist black hats and the informal-learning-through-social-media white hats! Pitting these groups against each other is besides the point!

I remember not too long ago when it was claimed that “training is dead,” that “training departments will disappear,” that “all learning is social,” that “social-media is the answer,” etc…

What is often forgotten is that the only thing that really matters is the human cognitive architecture. If our learning events and workplace situations don’t align with that architecture, learning will suffer.

Oversimplifications that Hurt the Learning Field

  1. Learners know how they learn best so we should let them figure it out.
    Learners, as research shows, often do NOT know how they learn best, so it may be counterproductive not to figure out ways to support them in learning.
  2. Learning can be shortened because all learners need to do is look it up.
    Sometimes learners have a known learning need that can be solved with a quick burst of information. BUT NOT ALL LEARNING is like this! Much of learning requires a deeper, longer experience. Much of learning requires more practice, more practical experience, etc. Because of these needs, much of learning requires support from honest-to-goodness learning professionals.
  3. All training and elearning is boring!
    Really? This is obviously NOT true, even if much of it could be lots better.
  4. That people can always be trusted to create their own content!
    This is sometimes true and sometimes not. Indeed, sometimes people get stuff wrong (sometimes dangerously wrong). Sometimes experts actually have expertise that us normal people don’t have.
  5. That using some sort of enterprise social platform is always effective, or is always more effective, or is easy to use to create successful learning.
    Really? Haven’t you heard more than one or two horror stories — or failed efforts? Wiki’s that weren’t populated. Blogs that fizzled. SharePoint sites that were isolated from users who could use the information. Forums where less than 1% of folks are involved. Et cetera… And let’s not forget, these social-learning platforms tend to be much better at just-in-time learning than in long-term deeper learning (not totally, but usually).
  6. That on-the-job learning is easy to leverage.
    Let’s face it, formal training is MUCH EASIER to leverage than on-the-job learning. On-the-job learning is messy and hard to reach. It’s also hard to understand all the forces involved in on-the-job learning. And what’s ironic is that there is already a group that is in a position to influence on-the-job learning. The technical term is “managers.”
  7. Crowds of people always have more wisdom than single individuals.
    This may be one of the stupidest memes floating around our field right now. Sounds sexy. Sounds right. But not when you look into the world around us. I might suggest recent presidential candidate debates here in the United States as evidence. Clearly, the smartest ideas don’t always rise to prominence!
  8. Traditional learning professionals have nothing of value to offer.
    Since I’m on the front lines in stating that our field is under-professionalized, I probably am the last one who should be critiquing this critique, but it strikes me as a gross simplification — if not grossly unfair. Human learning is exponentially more complex than rocket science, so none of us have a monopoly on learning wisdom. I’m a big proponent of research-based and evidence-based practice, and yet neither research nor other forms of evidence are always omniscient. Almost every time I teach, talk to clients, read a book, read a research article, or read the newspaper, I learn more about learning. I’ve learned a ton from traditional learning professionals. I’ve also learned a ton from social-learning advocates.

 

Summary

In today’s world, there are simply too many echo-chambers — places which are comfortable, which reinforce our preconceptions, which encourage us to demonize and close off avenues to our own improvement.

We in the learning field need to leave echo-chambers to our political brethren where they will do less damage (Ha!). We have to test our assumptions, utilize the research, and develop effective evaluation tools to really test the success of our learning interventions. We have to be open, but not too-easily hoodwinked by claims and shared perceptions.

Hail to the traditionalists and the social-learning evangelists!

 

Follow-up!

Clark Quinn wrote an excellent blog post to reconcile the visions promoted by Jane and Will.

 

Share!

If you want to share this discussion with others, here are the links:

  • Jane’s Provocative Blog Post:
    • http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2015/11/12/the-ld-world-is-splitting-in-two/
  • Will’s Spirited Critique:
    • http://www.willatworklearning.com/2015/11/the-two-world-theory-of-workplace-learning-critiqued.html
  • Clark’s Reconciliation:
    • http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=4655#comment-821615

 

 

Practice Firms — Giving People Real-World Experience

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Today’s New York Times has a fascinating article on the mostly European concept of practice firms. As the name implies, practice firms give people practice in doing work.

This seems to align well with the research on learning that suggests that learning in a realistic context, getting lots of retrieval practice and feedback, and many repetitions spaced over time can be the most effective way to learn. Of course, the context and practice and feedback have to be well-designed and aligned with the future work of the learner.

Interestingly, there is an organization that is solely devoted to the concept. EUROPEN-PEN International is the worldwide practice enterprise network. The network consists of over 7,500 Practice Enterprises in more than 40 countries. It has a FaceBook page and a website.

I did a quick search to see if there was an scientific research on the use of practice firms, but I didn’t uncover anything definitive…If you know of scientific research, or other rigorous evidence, let me know…

 

 

Safety, Learning Design, and Organizational Culture

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As a learning consultant, I've been called into workplaces to do work-learning audits specifically focused on safety. Unfortunately, what I've seen too often are poor safety-learning practices. People often talk a good game of safety, but their practices are just not effective. Let me give you one example. I was at a manufacturing plant and was told that all team meetings talked about safety. However, what I saw at actual team meetings was a perfunctory exhalation about safety that was likely to have zero effect on actual safety outcomes. Seriously, many team leaders would say something pithy like "10 fingers, 10 toes" and that would be it!!

To be truly effective, safety messages have to follow the principles of all good learning design. Specifically, safety messages have to be context-based. They have to refer to actual workplace situations, and get employees to visualize and anticipate safety-critical situations and the actions that are needed in those situations. Safety messages also have to prompt employees to retrieve these situation-action links and do that in a manner that is repeated in various ways over time.

Recently, while teaching a workshop, one of the participants told a great story about how General Electric has built a set of cultural expectations that propel safety. The author–who wants to remain anonymous–wrote up the following overview of what he/she observed at GE.

I have had the pleasure to conduct training for the field service organization at GE.  One key aspect of the field service organization is safety.  A seemly simple task of lifting a heavy object with a crane can easily result in fatality by a shift in the chain causing the object to swing out of control.  During my work I was impressed with the relentless focus on safety, which was not just in words, but in action.  I thought it would be useful to share an example of how safety is built into their culture.

Each day of a training session, or any meeting for that matter, always started with a safety moment.  This discussion focused on the potential safety issues that could come up, and precautions that need to be followed.  I would start the training by having the hotel facility manager come in and cover the emergency procedures.  If I failed to start any training session in this manner, a participant would, without exception, come to me during the first break indicating that we forgot the safety briefing.  Unlike other organization where I would be asked to show a safety video, and people would count sheep until it ended, this safety briefing was seen as important to all the participants. 

At the start of each training day, and after lunch, a participant would be assigned to share a safety moment in their work that enabled someone to avoid a potential injury.  There was never a problem getting participants to accept responsibility for conducting one of these safety moments.  In fact, after sharing their experience, there was always a round of applause from the other participants.  This consistent practice, and positive reception by individuals of all levels helps to foster a strong safety culture within the organization.

In talking with the author of this observation, I was amazed at how deeply ingrained a culture of safety was in this GE environment. From this example, here are lessons learned–many of which will be relevant even to those who are not dealing with safety, but who are focused on performance-improvement in general.

  1. They focused on specific safety issues and situations.
  2. They focused on safety ubiquitiuosly, not just in training and not just when it was "safety time."
  3. People bought into the importance of safety–they didn't just go through the motions.
  4. There were expecations that safety discussions were scheduled into everything.
  5. Many people wanted to volunteer to lead safety discussions–not just people designated as safety officers.
  6. People really appreciated the safety discussions–and they showed their appreciation.
  7. Management was not the only driver of safety.
  8. Safety messages were repeated, and spaced over time.

Special thanks to the anonymous author and to GE for demonstrating that safety can be inculcated into workplace practice.

Learning Landscape Model Video

The Learning Landscape Model is a research-based model—evolved over the last decade—that can be used to guide workplace learning-and-performance designs, discussions, and explorations.

It is based on the fundamental cognitive architectures of learning, remembering, and prompting as three distinct cognitive operations, all of which are needed to maximize workplace learning-and-performance results. While previous models have often forgotten forgetting or forgotten prompting mechanisms (like job aids), the Learning Landscape is complete. Perhaps more importantly, it is actionable, for example, it can be utilized to have productive discussions between us as learning professionals and our business partners. Finally, the Learning Landscape Model can be used to improve learning measurement significantly over the 4-levels or roi models.

Check out the video of the Learning Landscape Model…

Or utilize this link if your filters don't allow YouTube…

New Management Ideas. Yes, They Should Be Central to Learning-and-Performance.

If we in the learning-and-performance field are serious about on-the-job learning (a much better term than "informal learning"), we need to be serious about how managers in organizations do their work, and specifically about how they guide learning on the job (and incidentally how they use formal training initiatives to enable and improve on-the-job learning).

Recently, a group of leading management thinkers got together to re-imagine management.

Here is a brief blog post on their thinking. It is well worth some reflection.