The Learning Brief #2 🧠
A by-weekly inside scoop on all the hottest events, juicy discussions, and oh-so-many other exciting things happening in our dynamic L&D community. 🧡
Hello Shaker,
Happy Spring! Let’s deep dive to explore exciting events lined up for you, catch recordings of past events, take a look into the projects co-created, collect some resources and see the Shakers taking the stage.
Coming up next 🔎
🗓 Upcoming Events
Our next weeks’ event lineup is here! Join us for super practical, fun and interesting sessions.
Learning Cluster | March 31st: Join Valentina Riccardi to explore how to lay a foundation for building a memorable online session. Got an idea for your session? Perfect, join her and many others and leave with a plan to make your session engaging. Mind you, the spots are limited and we already have a waiting list. So hurry up!
APAC Regional Hub | April 4th: Join Sandy Claps and Shaheen to skyrocket your productivity in this interesting session full of tips and tricks to take your productivity game to the next level.
Immersive Series | April 11th: Join Karen Hartley along with Andreea Gātin for a session on how to create an ideal environment where everyone feels included, and safe to contribute without fear of being embarrassed, marginalised, or punished in some way.
Learning Cluster | April 14th: Join Tom McDowall along with Damla for an interesting session on how to adopt an evidence-informed approach while creating a learning experience for our learners. Get ready to shut all the stupid fluff in the market on how people learn.
See you in sessions and don’t forget to bring an L&D friend! 🤗
🖇New Project
Are you a PART OF A SMALL L&D TEAM, of a maximum of 5 people, WE NEED YOU!
Dustin van Gorkom, Stéphanie , Skye Suttie , Adam Ambrozy and Larissa Menocci started a research project to identify the top 3 priorities L&Ds face at the moment, with the end goal of collectively putting out heads together and compiling best practices and potential solutions.
They have been busy brainstorming, defining assumptions, and gathering qualitative data from interviews. But now they need your help in the quantitative data-gathering phase.
It would be great if you could answer the questions in this survey. It takes less than 5 minutes, promise! It will help all of us to get as close as we can to our common priorities.
A massive shout-out to Vannesa Linden, Maria Barone, Ravena Amaral, Samantha Mueller, Diana Enache, and Stéphanie for their time and insights.
Cool stuff you don’t wanna miss out 🔥
🗓 Past Events
Got caught up with work and couldn’t make it to the session? We got you covered!
Here is a recording of the L&D Backstage with Jamie Martin on Learning Experiences as Culture’s Building Block.
🔥 Hottest Resources
This week’s gems to spice up your work are:
A collection of practical tools and frameworks by Untools to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems to use with stakeholders and your own teams.
A great repository of tools, prompts, and activities from SYPartners covering topics like communication, empathy, ideation, leading, panning and team building.
A new podcast alert for those of you interested in learning more about our brains. Inner Cosmos explores the relationship between our brain and our experiences by tackling unusual questions that illuminate novel facets of our lives and our realities. And it’s hosted by the neuroscientist and author David Eagleman.
For those of you looking to level up your online learning experience design skills, check out this detailed step-by-step guide by Simon Kavanagh on how to use Learning Arches to ‘sketch’ quick first drafts for how learning, knowledge and training can be formatted, framed, (un)packaged and delivered online over any period of time.
Look no further than this repository of AI tools by the Board of Innovation to stack your toolkit with amazing AI tools to make your work more fun and efficient.
🌊 Brainwaves
This week’s topic is all about Microlearning. Join the conversation on our LinkedIn and Slack groups and share what you think about its origin, relevance and how are you using it in your learning design.
Some interesting thoughts already popping in on our Slack and LinkedIn groups!
Community Corner 🧡
🎤Shaker Stage
Let’s welcome Chris Hall, Digital Manager, Professional Development and Knowledge, Macmillan Cancer Support to take the Stage.
Who needs more appreciation?
-I think you'll spot a theme to a lot of my answers here. But for this one, I have to say, instructional designers. They are awesome and good ones can make or break a digital learning project and are so hard to come by. I find myself increasingly concerned by movements within our industry to create software and platforms which simplify creating digital/e-learning. The implication here is that it's all about using whizzy graphics and videos etc. But a great learning experience is so much more than that, and it all starts with great design. As an industry it feels like we become obsessed with fancy new technology and lots of "clicky clicky bang bang" and we forget the need for great instructional design. So many of our courses just become fancy information-giving rather than high-quality learning experiences.
Share a tool, method, or framework you find useful. What is a common myth about your job or field of expertise?
-You've probably guessed by now that I love everything learning design. One of my favourite tools/models is the ABC curriculum design which was created at UCL Labs. It is a great way to design learning which includes a range of learning opportunities and can flex to work for face-to-face, digital or blended learning too.
What is a common myth about your job or field of expertise?
-I've probably covered this at the top. But this myth that anyone can do it. Any expert can deliver training, or design and create training. It's just wrong. It's a myth that lets organisations cut corners and coats when it comes to designing and creating their learning. But it gives us all a bad name. So many people have experienced "click next, click next," e-learning that the term e-learning now has such negative connotations, to the extent that many e-learning developers and designers rebrand it as digital learning in order to escape some of the stigma surrounding the term e-learning.
What does being an L&D Shaker look and feel like for you?
-I'm still very new to the L&D Shaker community. But it looks like a great way to share ideas and learn across organisations and meet people and forge connections with people you wouldn't necessarily meet.
〜See you soon
Till then, keep spicing up your learning! 🧠🧂
Sejaal