Real Learning

As organizations reskill their workforce to prepare for the future of work, personalization powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help drive what employees should learn next. Personalization, unified search, and recommendation engines are essential for effective content curation, according to Deloitte. “In learning and development (L&D), contextualization is the art and science of delivering the right content in the right format for learning, development, and performance improvement at the right time.” Artificial intelligence and machine learning can contextualize content for learners by providing course recommendations based on user behavior.

Informal, peer-to-peer learning is a wellknown driver of new knowledge acquisition in the workplace. What’s new is the proliferation of social media tools and online discussion forums that allow employees to easily connect online with peers for advice. In a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, researchers discovered employees who were connected to their peers via internal social platforms were more engaged and productive.

When you interact with customer service at your favorite brand, you are likely chatting with a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence. While chatbots are increasingly common in customer service, they’re slowly catching on in the education and L&D space. Chatbots offer the opportunity for L&D to provide a more personalized learning experience embedded in an employee’s workflow.

Blended learning experiences take traditional classroom instruction and layer it with online learning, social peer-topeer learning, augmented reality, virtual reality, and one-on-one coaching to create a more blended and engaging learning experience in the flow of work.

To navigate its own digital transformation, teams will need to change as well. Instructional designers won’t be replaced by chatbots, new technologies, and content platforms but they’ll need to rethink how they design the entire learning experience to take advantage of the great features these innovations offer. Digital Learning Centre will empower to do new things and shake up workplace learning, but it will also require rethinking who gets hired onto the team. The role of the practitioner has shifted and now requires new skills like user experience design, augmented reality, marketing, and data analytics.