This November I had the pleasure to participate in person at the 28th annual global conference and exhibition on digital learning and training. The conference gathers annually thousands of learning professionals from 70+ countries. Despite being a global conference, it manages to maintain a cosy and friendly atmosphere, encouraging open discussions between education professionals from all sectors on shared opportunities, challenges and concerns.
Before discussing some of the
sessions I participated in, here’s a quick list of useful links you may want to
check out:
- The Learning Hack podcast
- New World, Same Humans newsletter
- OEB Insights newsletter
- enABLE learning design method, University of Portsmouth
- Virtual Learning Lab, University of Copenhagen
- Donald Clark's blog
Pre-conference workshops
The first pre-conference workshop I attended was facilitated by Saul Carliner, Professor at Concordia University (Canada), who spoke about Curriculum design competency for L&D professionals. Using the Competency framework for L&D professionals developed by the Institute for Performance and Learning (Canada), we worked in groups to address the challenge: design curriculums for higher education, continuing education and corporate training. In our designs, we were prompted to address the following elements: curriculum requirements & potential issues, a list of courses we may want to include, as well as information that has to go in the curriculum proposal.
Saul Carliner on Curriculum design The second workshop of the day
was offered by Carol Damm (Boston College, USA) and Melissa Kane (Brown
University, USA). Entitled “Designing
Humanistic Learning Experiences for Education, Training and Product Development”, the session aimed to engage participants in co-designing a framework redefining
humanistic learner experiences for education, training or product development.
After an introductory exercise,
the facilitators introduced the head -
heart – hands perspective.
Next, the concept of Human-centered design was introduced and discussed from different perspectives/fields including industrial design, user experience design, anthropology and game design (see the images below).
After this introduction, we were split in groups and invited to select a case study and design a framework integrating the humanistic concepts introduced in the session.
Human-centered design from various perspectives
Opening plenary on 1st day of the conference
On the first day of the
conference, the plenary was kicked off by David Mattin, journalist and founder
of the New World Same Humans
(UK), a newsletter on trends, technology and society. His talk focused on the
capabilities of Virtual reality and AI, with impressive applications, such as a
recent complex 27-hour surgery in Rio de Janeiro directed from a hospital in
London. The almost 100 medical staff involved operated in the same
"virtual reality room" together.
Another example was Replika, a controversial
chatbot that simulates a human relationship powered by artificial intelligence (AI),
combining a sophisticated neural network machine learning model and scripted
dialogue content - GPT-3 – giving users the impression of being heard and
understood.
Here is a recent interview
with David where he talks about his work.
Also in the opening plenary, Pär Lager (Swedish Defence University) spoke about how leaders should focus on what their organisations will look like in 5-10 years from now and how roles will change. The main points shared was that for roles which will stay, upskilling will be necessary, as they will become more complex. A series of new roles will also appear in organisations, making reskilling required - equipping staff with new knowledge and abilities. To do that, Pär suggested 5 steps for creating a successful learning culture:
2. Learning mindset – when leaders embrace the need for learning it results in greater growth in their teams
3. Learning needs & learning policy – find out what the teams need and instill learning best practices into their organisation
4. Everyday learning - leaders who encourage learning before, after and on the job experience the greatest success
5. Education & training - create opportunities for in-depth learning through formal opportunities
enABLe – Active Blended Learning method for collaborative learning design
One of the most interactive
sessions at the conference for me was Ale Armellini and Andy Cleff’s
(University of Portsmouth, UK) learning café which introduced the enABLe method. The method builds on UCL’s ABC Learning Design method (see my 2019
post), as well as on Gilly
Sander’s Carpe Diem and University
of Northampton’s CAleRO method. The core principles of th emethod are detailed on the enABLe website. If
you are interested in the application of the method, have a look at this Padlet. All
resources there are available for download and licensed with Creative Commons.
Professor Ale Armellini introducing the enABLe principles
The 90-minute session at OEB was conceived as a team-building exercise to learning design using a series of activities, such as the articulation of our shared values and principles and a step-by-step collaborative approach to storyboarding and activity creation. It was fun, intuitive and unlike many other similar workshops, well scoped for the limited time we had together. See the slides.
Donald Clark on what research tells us about the Metaverse
One of the most exciting session
was Donald Clark’s talk “Learning in VR and the Metaverse: Practical Pointers
Based on the Research”. Donald took the audience through a history
of learning from cave art to printing, touching upon the massive success of
video games, the inevitable shift from 2D to 3D and the use of Virtual Reality
(VR).
He continued by asking a number of important questions, such as, does VR increase learning? Does it lead to better learning? Does generative learning work in VR or does embodied learning matter? What about learning by doing and very importantly, to what extent is cognitive load a problem in VR?
To answer such questions he drew
on older and more recent research, from the work of Richard Clark
(2007) on games, discovery learning and cognitive overload to Guido Makransky’s recent work at the Virtual Learning Lab
at the University of Copenhagen, who developed a research model for learning in
immersive media taking into consideration factors such as interest, motivation,
self-efficacy, embodiment, cognitive load and self-regulation.
If you need an introduction to the Metaverse, listen to this
episode of Great
Minds on Learning: VR & Metaverse with Donald Clark, a discussion conducted in a virtual world exploring “the thought of those who have tackled
the practical and philosophical questions that learning in virtual worlds
raises” from Lanier to Baudrillard and Mark Zuckerberg.
You may also be interested in his latest book Learning
Experience Design: How to Create Effective Learning that Works from 2021
where Donald includes a reflection on a variety of topics from user experience to AI,
learning analytics and learning theories.
He is active on his blog.
How to use
Learning design & analytics in your own practice?
Access the slides here.
