Learning scenarios: the future of the learning organizations #lrnwscen wp.me/pJsUl-p3—
Kasper Spiro (@KasperSpiro) April 09, 2012

about scenario planning and learning futures wp.me/pjIiU-eT—
tom wambeke (@tomwambeke) April 09, 2012

The Learning Organization in Four Different Futures
April 5, from 16:30 to 17:30 CET (click here to convert this time to your own timezone)

Please post of comment on this blogpost and fill in your email address (it will not be displayed on the blog nor used for any other purposes) if you would like to receive an invite with the details of how to connect to the session and more information about what we will be doing there.

A transcript is available too.

Most participants of the #chat2lrn placed their employer in the Old Boy category. Many aiming towards the In-Crowd category. Smaller businesses and entrepreneurs were most often placed in the In-Crowd category. Several remarked that the nature of the client organisations they dealt with, dictated how they themselves worked and communicated. Few mentioned the “big data” or “quantified self” categories, which some thought ironic considering the current focus on data gathering and measurement. It was also argued that many businesses in the old boy network, would claim differently

Read the full summary on the chat2lrn website (and make sure to check out their next discussion!).

Missed #chat2lrn on 19/1? check out summary bit.ly/zEPyun Next topic about to be posted!! Join us 2/2 16.00GMT/11.00EST—
  (@chat2lrn) January 29, 2012

Reblogged from Good To Great:

Last week I decided to save up my Find 15 slots and attend Chat2Lrn - a new tweetchat, and my first.

If you've not yet been initiated into the world of the tweetchat, it's a scheduled conversation on Twitter using an agreed hashtag to bring all contributors together.

Last Thursday, 60 people joined the first Chat2Lrn, sending nearly 800 tweets in an hour!

Read more… 715 more words

Has published them on his blog, but has also given us his permission to use them on this site. We will soon use these stories to give each of the four scenarios more “body” on the site. Thanks Bert!

On January 19th they discussed our learning scenarios. There was an introductory post and the chat transcript has been posted online. I look forward to the summary!

From her introduction:

Despite the predictions of great thinkers in our industry, nobody can be 100% certain about what work will look like or how we will be developing skills within the corporations of the future. This can make it very difficult to plan effectively today. As learning professionals we have a certain level of control in our immediate working environment – we can influence our employees, our suppliers, our business leaders even. But all of us are working in an environment where external factors such as legislation, technology, the economy and demographics are constantly changing. These drivers are outside our immediate control but play a critical role in defining the future of work and learning. So how can we prepare effectively for the future of corporate learning when nobody can be certain about what it will look like?

The ubitiquity of sensor networks and what it means for indidivuals, see: hdez.nl/2c is a signal for #lrnscen #quantifiedself—
Hans de Zwart (@hansdezwart) December 08, 2011

Old boy network, In-crowd, Big data and Quantified Self (click to enlarge)

A big thank you to Kasper Spiro from easygenerator for helping to create this picture!

Online Educa Berlin 2011 recap. #OEB11 #Lrnscen wp.me/pJsUl-kS—
Kasper Spiro (@KasperSpiro) December 05, 2011

RT @bbetts Butchering Walruses in Berlin bit.ly/rFoD2L #oeb11—
Ben Betts (@bbetts) December 04, 2011

"Big data"-Ellen Wagner wonders how education will handle the need of comparising data in higher education. Already in use on the net #oeb11—
Norgesuniversitetet (@Norgesuniv) December 02, 2011

Download Two-pager-on-Learning-Scenarios.pdf

Why am I always torn between talks of the Business track & the Education Social ? Can they be joined next year? #oeb11—
Helene Zuili (@HeleneZuili) December 02, 2011

Content curation has potential across all 4 scenarios & different role in each #lrnscen #OEB11—
Laura Overton (@lauraoverton) December 02, 2011

@JulieWedgwood – information overload can cause backlash even in successful social media rollout #oeb11 – #lrnscen implic for enabled orgs?—
Laura Overton (@lauraoverton) December 02, 2011

The overall objective of the study is to contribute to the development of imaginative visions and scenarios of the future of learning in order to support priority setting for education, training and skilling policies.

12 clusters for the future of learning (© European Communities, 2010)

Thanks Tom!

Howdy! The curation of content is also mentioned in #lrnscen: "in-crowd". And it was a key topic in @bbetts session… #OEB11, I see magic—
Job Bilsen (@Bilsen) December 01, 2011

Worst practices in lieu of scenarios informl.com/2008/09/22/lea…. #lrnscen #OEB11—
  (@jaycross) December 01, 2011

#lrnscen the scenarios featuring indivudualised & networking learning also meet the 'need for speed' which I see as one major trend—
  (@mialou) December 01, 2011

#OEB11 Scenarios for the future of corporate e-Learning: participate! #lrnscen wp.me/pJsUl-kF—
Kasper Spiro (@KasperSpiro) December 01, 2011

Individuals are flex/network workers. Data is used to continuously monitor and improve individual performance and it is used to assure competences.

• Individual in control
• Competence development through monitoring / automated feedback
• High talent mobility
• Self compliance (data to proof compliance)

Please use the hashtags #lrnscen and #quantifiedself to discuss this scenario on Twitter.

The organization is structuring and regulating work and required competences. Data drives decisions, also in learning. Performance and competence data is being used to manage the performance of employees.

• Data driven organization
• Outsourcing / franchise models (company = data)
• High volume, high variety (personalised information)
• Structural competence visualization

Please use the hashtags #lrnscen and #bigdata to discuss this scenario on Twitter.

Work is flexible and network based. Individuals organize in communities in order to build and leverage relationships. Learning and development happens through communities.

Characteristics of this scenario are:

• Community of practice: hyper connectivity (also physical) inside community – low connectivity outside community
• Interest/passion driven
• Many repositories of content
• Wide variation of roles
• Development: peer, self directed
• Personal networks, professional connections
• Community is curator
• Personal value aligned (purpose, meaning)
• Subject Matter Experts emerge from community

Please use the hashtags #lrnscen and #incrowd to discuss this scenario on Twitter.

Work is structured by organizations. Work is done through relationships. Learning and development is highly structured and planned.

Characteristics of this scenario are:

• Clear expectations, clear roles
• Organizational driven development
• Structural talent management
• Competency mapping
• Subject Matter Expert focused (authoritative knowledge)
• Planned innovation (business cases, calculated risks)
• Planned careers
• Large structured curricula

Please use the hashtags #lrnscen and #oldboy to discuss this scenario on Twitter.

You can download the slides here (and they should not have the problem with the semi-transparent text boxes that the Slideshare version has).

Two of the groups also had people create an mind map: Laura’s group and Charles’ group.

Blogged about the Learning Scenarios session this afternoon, 'with live recorded audio!' #lrnscen #oeb11—
Job Bilsen (@Bilsen) November 30, 2011

Job has forgotten to add the URL for his post to this tweet. Find it here:
http://www.moocha.nl/2011/11/learning-scenarios/

Willem Manders wrote a piece on Shell’s Learning strategy for a CC-licensed ebook from the Masie Center. It is titled: Learning Strategy at Shell: 2 Parts, 3 Pathways & 3 Horizons. You can download it here.

Learning Strategies

Although this is not directly related to the scenario work, some people might find it interesting reading.

You can design many things in Education. "Learning" is not one of them. Hence "learning design" doesn't work. #OEB11 #OEB11LD—
Alejandro Armellini (@alejandroa) November 30, 2011

2020 Forecast by KnowledgeWorks

They identified the following six drivers:

• Altered Bodies – new cognitive tools because of a deeper understanding of how our brains work – more info
• Amplified Organization – social learning technologies will change the way organisations will organise themselves – more info
• Platforms for Resilience – in a destabilised world, lightweight learning might be all we have – more info
• A New Civic Discourse – ‘educitizens’ will fill the void that school boards and elected leaders have created – more info
• The Maker Economy – production and design will be democratised through open source personal fabrication technologies – more info
• Pattern Recognition – new ways of integrating and visualising data streams will create better ways of measuring and improving learning experiences – more info

Personalised learning cultures: an interview with Jeff Borden bit.ly/w3avT5 #OEB11 #elearning—
ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN (@OEBconference) November 25, 2011

Below some quotes from the publication:

Exploring the assumptions we currently hold—individually and collectively — about the future can equip us to act more effectively in the present.

Scenario building encourages the involvement of a wide range of views, rather than seeking a single answer, so it is a process designed to accommodate multiple values and opinions. It allows people to explore their ideas about the future context without feeling threatened by the need to fix an immediate decision.

The aim of building scenarios is not to try to create consensus, but to recognise and actively involve different points of view.

Those embarking on a scenario-building process must be prepared to redraw, or at least thoroughly review, their mental maps of the world, questioning their assumptions and challenging comfortable perceptions. However willing individuals are to follow this route, it can leave people feeling untethered and insecure.

Scenarios are intended to describe a context. They are not meant to instruct their users on how to respond to different circumstances, but to provide sufficient information for the recipients to imagine being in a particular future, and to think about how they might behave in it.

Scenarios allow [people] to keep different possibilities in mind without being overtaken by the overwhelming nature of uncertainty

When we share scenarios with others, we often learn a great deal from others’ responses. In most instances, feedback from audiences helps us to understand how others see the world: What do they find unrealistic? What is missing? What is not explained or seen as incorrect? What important questions are left unanswered?

Please list the key learning challenges/choices that you specifically or corporate learning organisations more generally are facing which have a longer term impact.

These are some of their answers:

The major challenge is to persuade line management to reconsider the value of learning as a strategic business thrust in a climate where it is seen as largely irrelevant, non value-adding and disconnected from the task of solving business problems. Unless (see above) learning functions can regain their place at the table based on added value, then technology now enables line to pursue the learning agenda without recourse to the function – and perhaps should (ie it bypasses the function). Beyond that, the challenge is to select appropriately the platforms and tools that genuinely will support the corporate learning needs – and then to change form a management of learning to a leadership of learning characterised by enabling and not direction or control. This is a huge ask in transforming the culture of organisations

• Space to set up real innovations without having to show immediate a return on investment
• Finding new modalities of financing learning
• Finding new ways of multiplying learning that go beyond the trainer of trainer formula

• How to handle diversity of learning objects formats.
• Are smart phones feasible for learning at all?
• Do people learn mobile?
• Beside of an eLearning team: Which organisational changes are necessary to ensure eLearning success?

Short and concise learning content, time management, and multitasking We need to become more flexible and develop a wider repertoire of skills and strategies in workplace.

• Slow uptake of new learning technologies by older employees Emphasis on social networks as learning tools
• Corporates unwilling to allow graphics and video files through servers inhibits the development of interesting content
• Time demands on learners – they prefer to get work done rather than spend time in formal learning

• Ability to respond to changes in learning and work due to new technologies and incoming workforce
• Working globally in different time zones

• Transfer of learning data (results, process, interests, skills, portfolio) from one employer to the other.
• Clear statements and expectations on the shared responsibilities for competence development amongst individual, corporation, society
• Is it OK to leave someone behind? (i.e. what to do with ‘waste’ in learning)

• How to create a high impact learning culture in educational institutes.
• How to seduce young people to stretch themselves to more challenging areas in world wide competition.
• Anticipate and adapt more readily to environmental impacts, making quick shifts in the strategic orientation.
• Become more proficient at learning from competitors, transfer knowledge and collaborate on all levels in the organization.
• Developing a culture of continuous improvement.

• Approach to tools and media for all employees of an organization no matter of their general qualification data security especially according to personal data.

• Do we make trainings to satisfy inspection authorities or do we really want to transfer knowledge and skills to the learners?
• Do we still want to ‘manage’ the learners or is it their own responsilibility?

How to handle the on demand request from the organization while maintaining/improving your quality, how to use all social media effectively.

Technology jumps makes the world different.

• Responding to the increasing speed of change – the need to “learn at the speed of business”.
• Sense-making in a world of increasingly fragmented information.

• Full blended learning training offers that the learners feel comfortable about.
• The biggest challenge is the fast changes in our global organisation that grows everyday with an extremely high pace.

A main challenge that learning organisations face is the shift from an episodic to a learning culture. Education systems worldwide are designed as learning interventions rather than ways of life. At the world’s current pace of change, those who can make learning a way of life will be the most adaptable. And we know what Darwin says about the importance of adaptation!

• the ubiquity of technology and it’s effect on learning.
• A labour force entering companies that’s grown up with technology
• A labour force entering companies that’s grown up in a world with almost continuous economic growth.
• A demographic situation in which a disproportionate number of employees leave, which means a drain of a disproportionate amount of knowledge.

• Organizing facilities (coaching, trainers, online platform etc. How can we create a structure in which every professional can be truly held responsible for his own development process).
• Positioning of learning activities (especially learning networks/platforms, do they need a central location inside a company or can they exist anywhere).
• Assessment & Performance (how do we measure the learning outcome and how do we really improve performance).
• Use of new technology (how can we benefit from new technologies in the future).

• Globalization: dealing with different cultures at the same time, making learning available independent of time and place but without losing on return on investment.
• Cost-cutting: the financial crisis has a major impact on the amount of money invested in learning. We are forced to find very creative ways to organise and offer learning without investing money.

Livelong learning.

• Recognition of skills – how do we build skills/qualifications/recognise consistently improving competencies within staff the structure of L&D departments and interconnection with others skills of L&D /HR staff to cope with and harness change?
• Shift to being (and being recognised) as business adviser rather than service provider.
• How can we react faster to change in business and own industry?

Need for learning that fit the need of an individual vs. need for required skills and expertise in the organisation. Knowing the skills and abilities of your workforce and tailor your learning solutions to that.

How to utilize both what other people know and also how they get this knowledge, in a way that is better than other organisations.

Identifying and filling skills gaps; balancing personal and organisational development goals.

One shoe no longer fits for all: How to offer learning more personalized and suitable for individuals?

• The acceptance of virtual learning environments
• The assessment of the learning
• Encouraging employees and employers of VLE effectiveness
• The “time” challenge

What key trends and uncertainties in learning (driving forces) do you see that are likely going to have a large impact on the corporate learning organisation in the future?

These are some of their answers:

• Trend (but more of a certainty): budgets both in corporate training itself, and the budget cuts in education that may affect the skill inflow in corporations
• Privacy: who owns the breadcrumbs we leave behind? Learning is a process of going from underskilled to skilled, do we want to hide that?
• Technology as an enabler
• Duality of society: those who can learn, those who can’t so much (degree of learning agility in both individual and team/organisation)
• Fading dominance of the corporate share-holder owned ‘inc’ towards loosely coupled project based groupings of professionals

• I think that the new generation of employees take a short-term view of their job, they don’t plan to be around with the same company for very long. This is going to affect the way in which corporates invest in their people since the employee is more likely than before to take his or her skills to another employer, once acquired.
• In South Africa, employees over the age of 50 are encouraged to leave the organisation as they become “expensive” to maintain and are generally slow to adopt new technologies and approaches. This results in low levels of corporate experience so there are few opportunities to acquire new skills on the job from someone who has real life, practical knowledge.

• Which eLearning standards are crucial to make content future proof?
• How to handle diversity of displaying devices (iOS, Blackberry, PC)?
• How can we ensure that content is up to date?
• As a company: Do we distribute teachers role to many people (that we constantly have to train), or do we create a editorial team?

• Learning and work merging together.

• Trends that are impacting organisational life and learning culture are networks, social media, and technical (and pedagogical) skills related to being able to utilise them.

• Negatively – the capacity and willingness of learning functions in organisations to recognise that they are not autonomous output creators, but rather guardians of a key expertise to enhance business performance – and to transform accordingly. This will be exacerbated by the increasing pace of information and the lack of tools, methodologies to cope with it
• Positively – The huge opportunity to address through technology the way that people actually learn. Opportunities exist now through platforms and tools to do things previously undreamt about

• How to deal with the different generations and their affinity to new technologies
• How to connect globally, without meeting face2face

• Real-time learning (just-in-time, anywhere, anytime)
• Learning systems that support serendipity
• Concrete structured models that transform informal learning into organisational practice
• Hybrid learning (beyond the traditional workshops)
• Exploring new models that work (MOOCs, ple’s, workplace learning)

• Macro: Global changes and the competition for talent in an aging developed world, the demographic deficit, an a rapid growth of the world population. How to compete in a changing world with the upcoming BRIC countries, sharing the natural resources mother Earth has to offer.
• Micro: Hybrid Educational environments where companies and educational institutes work and learn together, creating a high impact learning culture. Mobile learning, augmented reality and just in time training on the job.
• Uncertainties: declining standards of education in parts of the western world, the worldwide financial problems, governments deficits, choice of students for ‘soft sciences’ because of a lack of interest in technical areas.

• Cross-cultural communication and the respect for different cultures in international teams
• Common use of (communication) platforms
• Mix of Web 2.0 tools for corporate learning in an informal way
• Command of languages (no efficient communication without a good command of languages or translations?)

• Efficient learning and reducing costs
• Facts are available on Google, but understanding how things work needs to be taught

Making learning a more individual experience (adaptivity), bringing learning to the workplace.

Crowdsourcing will be used more pre-present-post as joint event

• Workplace and Informal learning
• Social learning

• Customised learning
• Uncertainties about aligning business needs with training offers

The ubiquity of information and changing demographics of the workforce will have a massive impact on the corporate learning organisation in the future. As information grows more transparent and accessible to everyone everywhere, it is the use or combination of the information that becomes unique. No one person or leader holds complete information. The value lies in the space between people, the organisation’s ability to connect or mash-up these ideas. Equally, new generations are more comfortable using tools and practices that unleash this source of value. Organisations that can encourage, integrate and facilitate this change will lead in the future. The change is so dramatic that it will also require reinvention of the way organisations are structured and the way we define work.

As I learned in earlier economically uncertain years, the global financial crisis definitely will have an impact on learning and development within organizations. A negative effect on spending for learning and development in general, could have a positive effect on applying technology in this field, still considered as a means to reduce costs. The same goes for initiatives that focus on integrating the learning in the daily work. So, learning embedded in the process of working instead of learning as isolated events. In the field of learning technology, the interest in the possibilities of social media will stay on the radar screen for some time.

• Social contextualisation of content
• Online video publishing
• Location based services

New generations: the very different way of learning and dealing with information by the younger generations compared to the “older” generations.

Distance learning

• Economy – global concerns & interconnected economy – no industry is “safe”.
• The role of traditional L&D departments – will they still exist & what will they do? – is overlap with other areas becoming blurred eg OD, Talent, or even business itself.
• Technology – we don’t know what will be the next big thing but when it happens how do we evaluate & embrace it – both in business an in learning.
• Customers & supply chain – customer loyalty the need to respond quickly will be critical but to what? – changing products, changing processes, response to external PR issues.
• Young people lacking skills needed in the business government policy and regulations.
• Relationships with skills providers – HE and commercial when both of them are under pressure, – lack of management commitment/understanding.

Personalisation of learning Content creation by learners and the quality/curation of that content.

Shared knowledge among people (web 2.0) and augmented reality.

Changes in common technologies and how to best exploit these.

Trend: Bring Your Own Device: Learning everyone, anytime, anywhere

I am not familiar with the corporate learning organisation and that is why I am attending the workshop but imagine virtual learning environments to be interesting for future learning, the moderation of such environments and the “correct” use of collaborative learning techniques to ensure a better learning experience.

The following video gives a short introduction:

We always need help to enliven the scenarios. You can be involved too!

Old Boy Network

Read more

In-Crowd

Read more

Big Data

Read more

Quantified Self

Read more

Image by Jim Merithew/Wired.com, CC-licensed. A big thank you to Fusion Universal for creating the video. A transcript can be downloaded here.

Scenarios → Signals → Strategy

He is currently working as Innovation Manager Global Learning Technologies at Shell International in the Netherlands. He manages the learning technology innovation funnel: exploring the opportunity space, proving business value and bringing ideas from proof concept towards full service deployment.

Before his time at Shell he spent two years working as a learning consultant at Stoas Learning in the Netherlands. There he supported organisations in fulfilling their learning ambitions relying on his extensive knowledge of digital pedagogy and state of the art technology. Key customers were the Council of Europe and Shell International.

Earlier he spent some five years innovating educational practice as a teacher, mentor, project coordinator and researcher in action at the Open Schoolgemeenschap Bijlmer in Amsterdam Zuidoost.

Things he enjoys talking about include: technology and society, popular science books, (e-)learning, philosophy, open source software like Moodle or Ubuntu, the Nintendo DS, juggling and civil liberties in a digital world. He blogs at blog.hansdezwart.info.

Laura is the author of ‘Linking Learning To Business’ – one of the first industry benchmark studies with both organisations and learners investigating good practices of successful implementations (Jan 04). She is also co- author of ‘Boosting Business Agility’ (2011), ‘Accelerating Performance’ (Nov 2010),‘The Towards Maturity Impact indicator’ (March 2010), ‘Driving Business Benefits’ (Jan 09) and ‘Towards Maturity’ (Jan 07) –independent reports looking at effective e-learning practices in the workplace.

With over 2 decades of experience of implementing learning technologies in the workplace, she works with government policy makers representing employer interests and has contributed to initiatives associated with the UK’s Sector Skills Councils, the European Commission and has sat on the steering groups of a number of UK government learning technology strategy boards (including the Becta Harnessing Technology strategy and as a member the original advisory board to the Learning and Skills Council (now Skills Funding Agency).

Laura is a Fellow of the IITT and of the British Institute of Learning and Development and is a popular industry commentator having published over 100 articles and case studies. She sits on the steering committee of Online Educa Berlin and advisory board of ELIG and the IITT. In February 2010, she was awarded the Institute of IT Training’s prestigious Colin Corder Award for services to IT training.

From 2002 until the end of 2008 Charles was the Chief Learning Officer for Reuters and Thomson Reuters where he had responsibility for developing the global learning and performance strategy and leading the learning organisation for the firm’s 55,000 workforce.

Charles has deep experience in both the business and learning practitioner sides of performance improvement and effective learning solutions. He also knows ‘what works’ in the world of strategic talent.

His career includes roles as head of the UK national centre for networked learning, as a Professor at Southampton Business School, in senior business roles for global companies, and as an evaluator for the European Commission’s learning, performance and eCommerce research initiatives. He also sits on steering groups and advisory boards for national and international training, learning and leadership development bodies.

Charles has an impeccable record of developing and implementing leading-edge performance solutions spanning more than 30 years. In 2008 he was honoured with the UK World of Learning ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Learning Industry’ award in recognition of his work on performance improvement, and ‘just-in-time’ and informal learning. In 2011 he received the IITT/LPI (Learning & Performance Institute) Colin Corder award for his ‘significant and lasting contribution to the training industry’.

In 2006 Charles was one of six experts invited to be members of the UK Department of Trade & Industry’s Global Watch delegation to the USA on the “Beyond eLearning” mission.

Prior to joining Bersin & Associates, Mallon led the consulting services practice for a major LMS provider, where he and his team assisted hundreds of clients with the integration and alignment of solutions to critical business objectives. He has held several training and development positions with EarthLink, where he was responsible for overall learning strategy for its global call center organization. Mallon holds a Masters Degree in Digital Media with focuses on computer-aided distance learning and on storytelling in digital environments.

Let’s continue by explaining his passion for online learning and the design process. When he finished university and became a teacher in primary school he was searching for a way to let his students actually benefit from ICT in school. It turned out that most of what the software publishers delivered wasn’t exactly that good and frustrated both him and his students. This is why he started studying Educational Science & Technology at Twente University. He made a radical change to corporarate learning when he joined Stoas as an e-learning consultant in 2007. Many tools, platforms and communities came accross. The one which sticked around was Moodle. Since 2009 he has joined Bright Alley, part of Conclusion. Here he is in the privileged position to help big organisations with defining their learning strategy and bringing it into action.