Learning Technologies 2012

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Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or

[email protected] .

Looking at learning differently: Learning Technologies 2012

This years Learning Technologies and Learning and Skills was the largest in the event's 12 year

history. Kate Graham, the shows official rapporteur, covered proceedings to bring us all the news

from the conference and the exhibition.

When Don Taylor asked if I wanted to be the official rapporteur for Learning

Technologies 2012, I readily agreed. With a stellar line up of speakers, more

exhibitors than ever before and a route through to the Learning Without

Frontiers event next door, I knew this was going to be an unmissable event.

Day one began with a real honour. I was privileged enough to meet withDr. Edward de Bonoprior to

his opening address at the conference. Before researching Dr. de Bono, I had little idea he was

responsible for so much of what we take for granted now. His concepts of lateral thinking, the sixhats are all ideas that have seeped into the zeitgeist. Dr. de Bono is down to earth, humorous and

has real presence. You can see him in conversation with another conference speaker,Nigel Paine, in

the video section of this group.

Now, a Chief Ideas Officer. Who wouldnt want that job? Sadly its a somewhat imaginary role

suggested by de Bono in his keynote. When he came out on stage and started drawing diagrams on

an overhead projector, you could almost hear a pin drop as attendees wondered what he was doing

with this low-tech approach at a technologies conference. But his pared down presentation

techniques enabled us to focus on what he was saying and follow the logic of his lateral thinking

discussion. Within moments, everyone was hooked.

Dr. de Bono set the tone for what was a fascinating conference

programme with his session Meeting the L&D challenge with

smart, creative and innovative thinking. His influence was evident

in several of the sessions across the two days, particularly in what

was to become a key theme; that of challenging the status quo in

learning and development and trying to do things differently.

de Bono uses the term EBNE, which stands for Excellent But Not Enough. Whilst a lot of what we

are now doing in L&D is indeed excellent as witnessed by some of the results driven case studies

showcased during the event challenging the status quo and thinking differently can turn a merely

satisfactory idea into something extraordinary. Provocation is essential so that we challenge

ourselves to do things better. To do this, de Bono says organisations need to find time and space to

think creatively and generate new ideas to improve their approach to learning. He also suggests that

schools and universities introduce Professors of Thinking as its undoubtedly our most important

human skill. Real food for thought which created a great buzz to the start of the event. You can read

some thoughts from attendees of his keynote via the LT2012 group page.

Personnel Today also interviewed Dr. de Bono listen and read a review of the first dayhere.
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Challenge

When asked by ChairmanDon Taylor, attendees agreed that aligning learning to the needs of the

business is their biggest challenge.Laura OvertonandNic Laycockpicked up on this theme in their

session on Business Aligned Learning. Overton used data fromTowards Maturityresearch to

challenge current thinking about learning and performance. She highlighted that we need to think

differently before we can actdifferently. Interestingly, attendees were challenged develop new ways

of driving behaviour that will impact time to competency and business agility and take some real

action when they got back to work. Its always great to be able to take action points away from an

event so I hope those in this session will see what they can do now theyre back at their desks.

Elsewhere,David Wilsonwas analysing the rise and fall of the corporate academyin the session on

Learning Infrastructures. Most of the corporate training academies set up in the past sadly no

longer exist, but a trend is emerging towards setting more of them up in the future. You can read a

research paper on the topichere.

Collaboration

At the same time,Donald ClarkandOke Eleazu were exploring Peer Learning. This was a great

session. Clark explored the influence of peerto-peer networking and collaboration through non-

workplace examples such as the Arab Spring in 2011. Meanwhile, Eleazu described how innovation is

*actually* happening in organisations such as Prudential and Bupa every day. Its often we hear a lot

about in theory but very little about in practice. Eleazu described how often employees in these

organisations are innovating what they do but not sharing it with anyone else. So transferring

knowledge across the workplace has become the focus. Hes worked withFusion Universal tosuccessfully facilitate peer-to-peer learning and supercharge other formal learning interventions.

Read the thoughts ofTraining Journalon this sessionhere.

Joanne Jacobscontinued the theme of collaboration was in her session, Connection, Interacting and

Learning through Social Media. By now were all aware of the growing importance of social learning,

but Joannes session explored one of the trends most important aspects how we identify and

interact with key experts and influencers. Jacobs stressed that as humans we tend to make better

judgements together rather than individually but to collaborate and interact through social

networks we need to trust our contacts and their information. She put paid to the myth that sociallearning is in itself a panacea or makes things easier. Its actually a chal lenge to digest information

that comes to us via social networks and to build useful sources in the first place. But what it does do

is bring people together in a way that would not otherwise be possible. It enables us to question

things and look at what were doing from a different perspective through the eyes of our

networks. You can hear more from Joanne in the video section of this group.

Integrating social networks and peer learning into the workplace remains a challenge for many

organisations.Steve Wheelerstated that there are no realorganisational constraints to adopting

these new learning technologies. What we have are individuals within organisations imposing

barriers. He encouraged his audience to find ways around
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innovation prevention in order to introduce these technologies

and tools.Nigel Painemeanwhile surmised theimportance of this

because, The old approach to learning and development has had it.

New learning is where were headed its based on need,its

business aligned, its a combination of social learning, informal

learning, knowledge management and other more formal

interventions all brought together in a blend. You can hear more

from both Steve and Nigel in the video section and check out

Steves presentationhere.

Engagement

Another key theme that emerged from the conference was one of learner engagement. Mark

Berthelemydid a great job of engaging attendees in his session. Initially we all had to turn around

and talk to each other about some challenges were currently having with engagement in our

organisations. He then played a short video which grabbed our attention and truly did engage the

audience. It was good to see the topic being demonstrated live! You can view a SlideShare of the

presentationhereas well as a short interview with Marks thoughts following his session in the video

section.

Complementing Marks session was theCambian Groupcase study which showed just what can be

achieved with e-learning when engagement is part of the strategy. Theirs was a programme of

learning that was carefully branded with an identity aimed at engaging learners, creating a

connection and encouraging adoption. Within six months of launching their new e-learning content,the Group had a 90% uptake. This impressive feat won the Group a Gold E-Learning Award and Id

encourage anyone to read their case studyhereas its inspiring to see what they achieved.

Ben Hinesprovided a very different perspective on learner engagement in

their Transformational Learningsession. Using the emotions and creativity

that music provides, they provided a metaphor for learning and how teams

work together in organisations. The parallels were demonstrated by a live

five piece wind quintet who visually and audibly demonstrated the

importance of being in tune with one another, listening to colleagues and

also being engaged emotionally with what youre trying to achieve.

Whether thats the performance of a piece of music or the execution of a

business critical project. Hines states that if we want people to change or

learn new skills, theyneed to want to change and emotionally connect to

it. de Bonos influence was in evidence as they used creativity to break

learners out of established patterns to look at things in a different way. Here

are some more thoughts on this particularsession.
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Technology

The closing keynote speaker on the first day explored future technologies

in The Web Within Us: When Minds and Machines Become One.

Ray Kurzweil is an American scientist, author and futurist. In his address,

he explored the inevitable growth of computing power and the coming

singularity as he calls it i.e. when computers have the same intelligence

as humans. Naturally his thinking has its critics but the future he discussed

sounded exciting rather than terrifying and that the progress technology

will make is entirely positive. It was a thought provoking session that had the audiences imagination

buzzing with the concept of artificial intelligence and just what the future might hold. Joanne Jacobs

has gathered a useful summary of Kurzweils thinking and his sessionhere.Henry Stewartalso

provides his thoughtshere.

The second day of Learning Technologies 2012 began with a keynote fromJaron Lanier, the writer

and computer scientist who coined the term virtual reality. He continued the technology theme

from Ray Kurzweils session the previous day by exploring Are we at the beginning of the rise of

post-human machine intelligence?Laniers pared down presentation style (no slides, no

PowerPoint, just him on the stage) and his quite amazing experience and connections had the

attendees intrigued throughout. He urged us to take a long hard look at how we fit in with some of

our own technological developments. His stance is that the technology is nothing without human

input and that we need to be careful with the technology that is evolving around us. We must

control it not let it control us.

Personnel Today provides more insights and a review of day twos proceedingshere.

Learning Technologies eXchange

A new initiative this year was theTowards MaturityeXchange. This

brought conference speakers into the mix on the exhibition floors to

answer questions and speak to attendees about their specialist

areas. It was good to see the experts coming to work through some

of the challenges and questions of the exhibition attendees.

Pictured here is Bob Mosher ofOntuitivesharing his experiences.

Its a great concept and one I hope continues at Learning

Technologies 2013.

Exhibition

In comparison with previous years, the focus on the conference has been less on individual tools and

technologies and much more on the big picture. The sessions examined the strategic use of

technology in learning, and feedback from attendees was that this had been both valuable and

thought provoking. Meanwhile, in the exhibition, more immediate and practical solutions were

available. The stand out themes from over 200 exhibiters this year included mobile learning, cloud-

based technology, gamification and a noticeable shift from learning management to performanceand talent management solutions.
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There was a noticeable increase in the size and stature of some of

the stands too, indicating a certain buoyancy in the market and that

despite wider economic trends, the market for learning technologies

continues to prosper. In terms of attendees, numbers were

evidently up. The crossover with Learning Without Frontiers also

seems to have brought in a mix of attendees from the education

sector as well as the corporate world.

The free seminar programme was well

attended with theatres full whenever I crossed the floor. It seems the

suppliers embraced the concept of trying to present more innovatively

with interactive polls and the live creation of mobile apps. Some

resources from the seminars can be found on the LT2012 group page.

The Chairman of the eLearning Network, Rob Hubbard, even took his shirt off as he launched the

newCampaign for Effective Elearning. Some people will do anything for publicity! If you missed the

presentation you can listen to a recordinghere.

AndTrainingZonecollected some thoughts from the exhibition floor on innovation in e-learning

here. You can also view some other thoughts of exhibitors and attendees in the video section.

The event also provided a lively backchannel and Id like to say thanks to everyone for all the tweets!

Martin Couzinshas provided a great analysis of the tweetshereandDavid Kellyhas curated afantastic list of resources from the backchannelhere.

Inspiration and perspiration

The feedback from attendees was one of overwhelming inspiration. It seemed the keynotes moved

them to think differently about how to achieve their goals within their organisations, and took

encouragement from the case studies which show what can be achieved within a corporate setting.

This powerful motivation was complemented by the solutions and services provided by suppliers at

the exhibition. There is an enthusiastic and passionate drive among vendors to demonstrate the

effectiveness of their solutions and move on from click next e-learning. There was a sense of

wanting to provide practical help for attendees inspired by the conference, but knowing there will

be a lot of hard work to do once theyre back at their desks. Finding time and space to be creative in

our day-to-day roles may be a whole other challenge. But, the conference message is that it is one

which is worthwhile addressing. Don Taylor nailed it in his summary when he said We have to

challenge the status quo because things are moving forwards so quickly - not just technologically,

but in terms of expectations, skills requirements and the resources available to do our jobs. And the

alternative of not challenging the status quo could be L&D becoming seen as unnecessary to

organisations in the future.

And you can check out the videos and other resources on the Learning and Skills Group website.
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Learning Technologies 2012

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