Can it be that time again? Another month of my life gone, another Big Question from the Learning Circuits Blog. And the questions don't get any easier do they?
The problem with predictions is that they're almost impossible to make with any certainty. And if they cover too short a period, then it's easy for people to check back and prove you wrong. The good thing about ten year predictions is that absolutely no-one will remember that you made them.
It's easy when projecting ahead to imagine a future which would be entirely of your liking. Wishful thinking is fun but it's hardly useful. Better to look back ten years first to see whether any meaningful changes have taken place in workplace learning. Now that's brought us back to earth with a bump. Beyond the cosy confines of the classroom, technology has come on in leaps and bounds, we've had two bubbles and two recessions, the future of the world has shifted eastwards, and our planet's become uncomfortably hot (although it doesn't seem that way sometimes in England). But has all this excitement been reflected in frantic activity in L&D? Don't be daft.
So, safe in the knowledge that I'll be retired by then, I'm going to be a party pooper and suggest that workplace learning in 2019 will look something like this:
- Formal learning will still be going strong but somewhat de-emphasised. Much of it will never have started up again when businesses eventually recovered after the recession.
- A fair proportion of this formal learning will still be delivered in classrooms, but supported by self-paced content, work-based assignments and coaching.
- No-one will still be using e-learning to deliver lessons that go on for hours. There'll be plenty of rapid content and in a wide variety of forms, including audio, video and slide shows. Much of this will be used for performance support and much of it will be delivered via mobile devices.
- In bigger organisations we will see activity at the top end of e-learning - serious games, virtual worlds and the like - and no doubt some publishers will enter this arena to provide this type of stuff off-the-shelf.
- Smaller organisations and those with more enlightened management philosophies will be routinely taking advantage of social media. The command and control mentality is not going to go away quietly and so I'm not optimistic about the widespread effect of social media. I certainly can't see L&D being heavily involved.
- Pretty well all trainers will be engaged with technology in some way. The die-hard Luddites will have been made redundant and never re-hired or simply retired.
Having got that out of my system, that's actually quite a lot of progress. Perhaps I'd better rethink.
Clive - after reading your vision of what it might be like in ten years' time, I looked back ten years to look at what it was like then, and whether I predicted anything of what it was like now.
ReplyDeleteI didn't. The huge growth in communication and collaboration is "unprecedented", in the true meaning of the term.
Your points:
Formal learning still strong - learning is still a social activity and so you may be right.
Learning still in classrooms - not sure, I think that online collaborative process will have taken over.
Rapid e-learning - chunked up learning, shorter, more effective - yes, perhaps.
On the rest you are probably right.
Enjoyed your post!
Clive-
ReplyDeleteI agree that technology will become more invisible in the training process. Just like we don't think much now about whether we're talking on a cell phone or a landline phone, in 10 years we will have some material that can be delivered on a computer or a phone or a yet-to-be-developed mobile device.
I also agree that classroom training isn't going anywhere - and I think that's not all bad. While social learning types tend to give it a bad rap, there can be a lot of power in putting people in a room and letting them work through a problem together - and learning how to do things effectively is at it's root a business problem.
Great post!
Clive
ReplyDeleteSince you have stuck your neck out regarding the future, I have had to do the same for a course that I am taking.
Here is my wild guess in answer to the following question....
“Today's children/pupils are going to be young adults in a different world. What major changes do you expect to see in 5-10 years?”
Global changes - more concern over the environment, over-population and the interdependence of countries and people. Recovery from the financial crisis would have taken place and the lessons that should have been learned will have been forgotten. The global market will have recovered and the World will be even flatter than before. Collaboration and communication tools will be ubiquitous, small, portable and everyday.
Schools will be still be concerned with learning and teaching, still regarding most learning as a collaborative activity where students construct their own learning, but with many opportunities for on-line learning which will individualise the curriculum to some extent. The pressure to maintain our knowledge and understanding of the world through Industrial Age compartmentalisation will have eased and we shall see the breakdown of discreet subject areas and a more global conceptual approach to learning.
Companies which rely on command and control structures will be superseded by those with light units and flatter structures with expertise shared commercially across company boundaries. Daniel Pink's Abundance, Asia and Automation will seem out of date in a world concerned with the non-abundance of food and the flattening beyond just-Asia, but the interconnected-ness of business and services provided from anywhere in the world will reach levels not imagined. The "High concept, High touch" approach will be produced not just in the developed world, but anywhere. The developing world will be challenging the former developed one on all fronts.
A great post. I believe your predictions would most likely happen.
ReplyDeleteTechnology today is a huge part of education and I guess much more in the future.
However, I hope the old ways of learning won't be vanish since its the right way to exercise our brains.
Mr.Shepherd i have a very good time reading your post. I agree with you that formal learning will still be going strong, i also agree about learning in class rooms (why not, in some cases it might be more effective than e-learning). And i absoluteley agree with you about rapid e-learning and m-learning.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot!