Content:
The challenges of digital learning
Adult learning is slow. Real future skills are not taught. One reason: recognized experts are often terrible teachers. Expertise does not always guarantee didactic competence. Specialist knowledge is often valued more highly than the actual art of imparting knowledge. Learning platforms that make knowledge available quickly, conveniently and cheaply also fall into this trap. Udemy, Coursera or LinkedIn Learning market content, the reputation of lecturers and participant ratings, rather than learning success. This is obviously a problem: studies show completion rates of between 4% and 30%. Up to 70% of platform subscribers never take part in their course.
Most of the large companies I have spoken to use these platforms. They pay for the subscriptions, but the learning outcomes don’t materialize.
Frank Pomereinke, Learning Designer
How can we bring the art of knowledge transfer to digital learning? I spoke to learning designer Frank Pomereinke, managing partner of the hydra agency, about this.
Hello Frank. Let’s start at the beginning: What is your dream car?
If you grow up in Stuttgart, Böblingen or Sindelfingen, you are practically in the heart of the German automotive industry, with Daimler and Porsche as the defining figures. However, my home was closer to Porsche because I lived near Weissach. The test track where Walter Röhrl tested the legendary Porsche 911 is located there. After school, I used to sit in the bushes with my friends and chase the latest 911s around the test track.
And I’m also at the age when you say: “The 911 is now being added as a second car.”
But during the pandemic, my passion for camping intensified and since then I have owned a T3 camper van that is 40 years old. I take it camping with my children whenever I can. My dream vehicle is this bus because it allows for wonderful relaxation. When you drive a car at 40 km/h over the Brenner Pass to Lake Garda, you no longer have to worry about traffic jams and evening traffic, because you know you’ll be on the road for 10 hours.
This form of slowing down has an enormous healing effect.
2019 and 2022 were absolute top years for the automotive industry. But the pandemic changed many things. The learning industry was influenced by hybrid working from home. Where are we now?
Learning has become even more crucial for the competitiveness of companies.
Knowledge is essential for product development, value creation and the implementation of strategies. It is important to maintain this type of competitiveness in Germany and Europe, as employees are the most important resource in these countries.
Intensive thought is being given to future skills, i.e. the skills required to master the transformation from the industrial age to the network age. Companies need to prepare their employees for these challenges in the best possible way.
The question is: What are these skills and how can they be learned?
Please give us examples of Future Skills.
Future Skills: Self-directed learning and networking
Digital skills and self-directed learning are two fundamental skills for the future. Digital skills are the effective use of tools such as Miro, Microsoft cloud applications and communication platforms such as Slack and Teams.
Self-directed learning requires the ability to search for information independently and to recognize what knowledge is relevant to the job. What are we supposed to do with the numerous teaching catalogs from Udemy or LinkedIn if they are not relevant for users?
Keyword “Creator Economy meets Corporate Learning”. LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter also offer a large amount of relevant knowledge.
Yes, that’s exactly what the third future skill is for me, namely networking and collaborative creation.
There are certainly people in the company who have already solved similar problems and probably also my problem. How can I find this information and build a network? Then you should also document what you have learned and pass it on: “We have now understood how ChatGPT works, which is important for our job now, but perhaps we should also describe it for our colleagues so that it can be reproduced.”
In companies today, we have learning programs and training catalogs that are based on job profiles, assign content and are delivered via a learning management system. Although it is well structured, it is also static.
I call this the “curriculum mentality”. And that has had its day.
Today it’s all about understanding dynamic job roles in depth. In everyday life, they look completely different from the official job description.
Example: During a project where we developed a web-based training (WBT) for a premium manufacturer, we realized that a typical car dealer had eight different job roles in the dealership. And each of these roles has its own learning requirements and is looking for different content in such a WBT.
With many different job roles, conventional training courses cannot achieve much. This is because learners have little time and want to be efficient.
In order to be offered in a personalized way, the content must be modularized. The content must be constructed like Lego building blocks and combined for specific job roles. In order to understand the job roles and learning needs precisely, the training courses must be developed with the target group.
Five years ago, an hour of WBT was simply produced. This no longer reaches today’s learners.
As learning designers, it is a challenge for us to adapt content to the different job profiles. We have to offer a stringent and meaningful learning experience. This requires connectivity and careful transitions.
However, this also means that the better the learner’s understanding, the better you can modularize and personalize, which in turn leads to a better outcome.
The involvement of the learners is, in my view, the central point.
We learning designers rely on “co-creation”. And that is the key to success.
In recent years, not only the focus on the learner has changed, but also other aspects. All stakeholders are also identified and integrated into the process. This is because top management and executives also have requirements that they have to fulfill. They also need to understand the learning needs and be committed to learning. It also means creating appropriate freedom for learners.
That’s hugely exciting, and if you were to ask me, Steffen, what my hobbyhorse is?
Integrate this co-creation process into different learning environments and develop learner-centered solutions. Most of them have understood what they need for their job, and they know it better than HR or SME.
And do you know what happens?
The employees are delighted because they are finally being asked.
That’s right, they are thrilled!
That’s pure motivation! They say to themselves: “Hey, someone’s finally asking me.”
And that is the second hidden component of co-creation. And it’s not new. In the past, we always emphasized that those affected should be involved. And we are currently inventing a new version of this. This process not only gives us better structured and modularized, more targeted learning content, but also a new motivation for learners.
We implemented this in an exemplary way with a pharmaceutical company. In a multi-stage, agile process, we got the learners to the point where they were able to build their own prototypes with SAP scenes on how they wanted to learn. There were knowledge nuggets, ideal for short idle times, and a podcast with motivating voice contributions and so on. Really original things. We then tested and evaluated them and implemented the best ones.
You can imagine how committed the students were. Like “Hey, look at my idea, it’s been implemented.”
As a manager, when I ask an employee: “What do you want?”, the answer can mean that I have to say: “We can’t afford it.” What is your experience of this?
That hasn’t happened to us yet. This is because co-creation involves all relevant stakeholders at an early stage.
For example, in the first phase, relevant modules are identified and alternatives to conventional training and e-learning courses are developed. This is then coordinated with the managers.
In the next step, prototypes are created, tested and evaluated. This is done iteratively and enables adaptations to the needs of all those involved.
The role of managers in co-creation
There is something new about co-creation: the role of managers is changed from “announcer” to “enabler” in co-creation. In order to gain their trust in the creative process, they are involved right from the start. This is necessary precisely because the results are not fully predictable at the beginning and we count on their support.
Before the modules are produced, the budget and resources are determined in order to develop needs-based solutions.
Co-creation is therefore a structured process that combines corporate strategies, employees’ learning needs and available resources. Co-created learning modules should bring a positive return on investment.
Yes, because the potential lies not only in the digitalization and scaling of learning content, but also in many less noticed aspects that become apparent through co-creation.
One example: a client wanted to make its purely seminar-based quality assurance training courses, which were associated with high travel costs for trainers, more efficient. Through the co-creation process, it became clear that the greatest leverage lay with facilitators. They work as a crucial link between learners and trainers. However, there were too few facilitators, which was due to poor training.
Through the co-creative process, we have reoriented ourselves from the digitalization of learning content to the targeted inclusion and optimization of moderator training.
Using learning technology in the right place
What significance does learning technology have both today and in the future?
We are not technology driven. However, as learning designers, we use technology to shape the outcome and experience of learning.
To do this, we need to understand all available technologies and their advantages and disadvantages. We explain different learning formats within co-creation to our clients. We have an arsenal of 40 different learning formats at our disposal, and of course there is technology behind them. A learning format is the use of a specific learning strategy or technology. And the working conditions of the learners determine which formats are suitable.
Adaptation to different devices and screen sizes is another technological aspect. It is possible that learning applications will need to be used on both desktop computers and smartphones. As the development of high-quality, multi-device compatible learning applications is costly, this requires careful technical planning.
It is important to understand the needs of the users and perform a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether the investment in multi-device capability is justified.
Another example for a customer: 80% of the content was optimized so that it could be viewed on iPads in the back office. At the same time, a bring-your-own-device policy was introduced that allowed employees to view certain content on their own devices. We only optimized short “cheat sheets” to be used outside the back offices on personal devices. The bulk of the training was only optimized on iPads to be viewed in the back offices.
Another level is the consideration of accessibility to ensure that employees with visual or hearing impairments can also experience multimedia content. This also requires investment.
The co-creation process provides answers as to where companies should invest in effective learning for their employees.
This is exactly what we offer our customers. This service is currently very successful on the market. We seem to be hitting a nerve with it. It can also be scaled up or down and adapted for customers with major strategic challenges or short-term projects.
To summarize: We maximize the learning investment by using the learner’s motivation as an additional lever.
Last week I spoke to one of the top international trainers for managers. His recipe for success so far: clear instruction and monitoring of implementation. I showed him our co-creation service and he was delighted.
Thank you very much for the interview.
