8 takeaways from the Melbourne Learning Cafe Unconference

This year's Melbourne learning cafe unconference felt refreshing. The discussion felt different. The theme for the day was ‘Digital Disruption & Learning and Development’.

(Of course, such is the nature of events with multiple concurrent sessions, my takeaways are based only on the sessions I went to.)

1. Digital disruption is difficult to define.

Patrick Crook, CEO of Fusion Labs, began the day. He spoke about how startups often disrupt industries by flipping the norms. These new types of organisations control the customer experience, and the networks and ecosystems of people who make those experiences happen. The next day, when I was discussing the issue with others, I was asked how I would define digital disruption. I realised that it isn't really definable. It's a new way of achieving an outcome using digital technologies but its exact form keeps on changing. The examples Patrick used are just the current forms of disruption.

2. Learner-centred design is key.

This was my takeaway from the ‘learner as consumer’ workshop. L&D as an area is often focused on what organisations need, e.g. compliance training. BUT this can be done in a more learner-centred way by putting the learner's needs first. This flipping of putting the learner at the centre of the learning experience can be disruptive for L&D. If we were to really rethink L&D from the employee's viewpoint I expect L&D programs would be integrated into work and not separate from it. They would be motivating, personalised and flexible. Design thinking and user-centred methods have created innovative and flexible new approaches across many industries, and now is the time to apply these same approaches to learning.

3. Evaluation and learning measurement are becoming more important for L&D.

The week after the unconference I was running a webinar on evaluating learning ecosystems, so I might have been tuned into the comments around learning measurement and evaluation more than others, but it felt like the need for outcome-based evaluation, measurement and assessment of learning was at the centre of the discussion.

Completions of online modules are easy to measure (this is often one of the key selling points for elearning). But completion doesn't measure business outcomes, and learning is an input towards a business outcome. Learning needs to measure its impact on business metrics. During the ‘learner as consumer’ session there was also a good discussion about fostering more discretionary learning through the act of measuring it.

For me it was great to hear this focus on evaluation and learning measurement. It feels like a real shift is happening.

4. L&D needs to support managers more.

A common conversation in workplaces is how we often promote people to line managers for their technical skills then expect them to grow into being people managers. Middle managers often also have their own workload to do while managing their team. One of the greatest barriers L&D faces is line managers’ lack of coaching skills and knowledge about how to develop their team. As learning programs become more holistic and integrated, L&D is expecting more from line managers.

There was a suggestion that we should be promoting those who are great with people and not necessarily technical experts. There was a good counterpoint from someone in the group, who talked about a situation where an organisation had move to ‘pure people managers’. The result was that team members didn't feel that their manager could support them. In strongly technical organisations I've seen this repeatedly. Focusing coaching around technical knowledge and expertise can be a great way to gain the trust and respect of team members and can be a powerful way to increase employees’ self-directed learning skills. Focusing on technical skills is not necessarily a bad thing.     

There is still a lot of work that L&D needs to do around preparing and supporting line managers to be learning leaders. I'm planning a webinar around this topic in the near future.

5. The new mantra for L&D is capability development.

But nobody's really sure what capability development really means. When the group at the unconference tried to define it, it began to sound like competency, e.g. skills, knowledge attitude/mindset. There was some talk about the role of capability frameworks and competency frameworks,and that they were just one dimension of capability development. There was a consensus that in workplaces when we talk about capability we are not just talking about employee expertise, it's also about an organisation’s resources and processes. That gives L&D more scope to have an effect on the organisation beyond just organising learning inventions.

For me, capability is about having the skills, knowledge and attitudes, processes and resources that an organisation needs in the future. Competency is about having the skills, knowledge and attitudes that an organisation needs now.

6. Using social learning at work is different to the way we use social media in our personal life.

This takeaway is from Learning Cafe founder Jeevan Joshi. For me it's a key thought because it makes it clear that we need to think differently about employees’ motivation for using social media at work.

During the discussion around social learning there was a great example from Tennis Australia. They are using Facebook to send messages to their wider community, more people than they can reach via email. They have found that sharing a mixture of content that the community would be interested in and official announcements from Tennis Australia has worked well.

Yammer often receives bad press, but during the social learning session it was good to hear some examples of it working well. These included Yammer being using as a cross-department question and answer forum for customer problems, and an Excel user group.

A couple of key success factors for social learning came up during the session.

• Active senior management involvement. One participant spoke about how the usage of their social networking platform increased by one-third when the senior executive began to do updates.

• Having a specific use, e.g. a group focused around a project, or topics like Excel. I often talk about social learning needing to be structured; being specific is an example of good structure.

7. Using virtual reality in L&D is achievable.

The hype around virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is huge at the moment. Brenda Frisk from EON Reality Australia ran a session that was part presentation and group discussion and part hands-on time with low-cost phone-based VR solutions. VR technology has matured and it is also now affordable. Past barriers included the high cost of headsets, and also that it was time consuming to create the 3D models. Brenda spoke about the fact that most build environments are now modelled in 3D before they are built, and there is now a huge number of 3D assets readily available. It's become radically faster to create a 3D world.

In the small-group discussions most people could see lots of application for VR and AR right across most of L&D. This openness to new technologies was positive. But there were a few barriers pointed out.

• The technology might not be seen to be ‘work like’.

• Many organisations don't have a mature understanding of digital technology and they would not be ready for innovation such as VR and AR.

• There are competing priorities for L&D.

8. Face-to-face training still has a role.

The day finished with a workshop about face-to-face training that included discussions about when to use it and how to support face-to-face trainers in using more technology. It was a great way to finish a day that was focused on digital disruption.

Some of the key points were:

1. Face-to-face facilitators need time and space to practise using new technologies, and perhaps fail. This could be addressed using small control groups.

2. Facilitators need to be supported in using new technologies. The example that was used was the way the producer in a virtual classroom session supports the facilitator.

3. Digital learning has a high upfront investment, which means face-to-face training is often best used when a program might only be run once to a small group of learners.

4. Face-to-face training is best used when the learning has a strong emotional content.

The last thing I want to write about the day isn't really a takeaway, it's more an observation. During the day there was a bit of discussion about the need to talk more about ‘learning’ than ‘training’. This felt a bit odd to me because I haven't met anyone with ‘training’ in their job title for a long time. But then I realised that I still hear learners, subject matter experts and stakeholders talk about training. I believe L&D needs to help everyone in the organisation understand how learning at work really works. We need to be helping managers become learning leaders, and helping employees become self-guided learners who are continuously learning while working.