Life beyond the course

Last month I spoke at a conference called Beyond the Course - Rethinking Corporate Learning, which was organised by BSkyB and e-learning developer Brightwave. The event was held at the spectacular Edinburgh International Climbing Arena, and attracted nearly 50 separate organisations, mostly from the private sector. The inimitable Don Taylor did a great job of chairing, and as Nigel Paine attests in his own review, you got the distinct impression that this was an audience looking to ring the changes. Hats off to Brightwave, which has historically made most of its money when clients chose not to move 'beyond the course', for being prepared to challenge the orthodoxies of corporate l&d.

In my session, I shared the model that I developed in my book The New Learning Architect, which shows 'the course' as being just one of four important contexts in which learning takes place at work:

1. So yes, there is formal learning, typically packaged up as courses. No-one was suggesting that the course - with its defined objectives, curriculum, professional content and tuition and formal assessment - was dead or dying, just that it plays an increasingly small part in the mix.
2. Much of the learning we do to develop our skills and knowledge in our current jobs or in preparation for future responsibilities is non-formal. This includes one-to-one learning through on-job instruction, coaching and mentoring; social interaction from conferences, webinars and communities of practice; as well as the stimulation we receive individually through reading, listening to podcasts and watching videos.  
3. Much was made at the conference of the shift from courses to resources, from just-in-case learning to just-in-time. There is no doubt that expectations are shifting as we make increasing use of on-demand resources, whether these are packaged as content or involve interaction with peers and experts. An on-demand learning strategy will include the provision of formal reference materials, increasingly through mobile devices, but will also support bottom-up approaches using search tools, forums and wikis.
4. And then, of course, such a great proportion of our learning at work is experiential - it occurs not by 'learning to' do something but by 'learning from' our own experiences and those of our colleagues. Experiential learning will occur whether or not it is formally acknowledged and supported by employers, but can be accelerated and enhanced by policies and practices that encourage job rotation and enrichment, action learning, formal and informal feedback systems and a culture that encourages risk and accepts mistakes as inevitable.  

Moving 'beyond the course' is a challenge for l&d departments which have restricted their role (or been restricted) to formal learning, but a challenge that has to be faced. Courses are too ponderous and inflexible to meet the majority of the requirements of the modern workplace. Learning professionals have to choose whether to spread their wings and lead their organisations into an exciting new era or find themselves confined to the compliance ghetto.