BLOC Podcast

39: Trends in L&D in 2021

December 14, 2021 Episode 39
BLOC Podcast
39: Trends in L&D in 2021
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I talk about three trends that have impacted L&D in 2021. 

  1.  Educators making a career switch into L&D/instructional design
  2. Microlearning
  3. Learning in the flow of work


Here are some links to things I mention in this episode:

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

Thanks for listening to the BLOC!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

Or check out what I'm working on over at https://www.getusefulstuff.com/

Heidi Kirby:

Hello friends, and welcome to the block the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Kirby. And on today's episode, we're gonna start wrapping up 2021. And getting ready for next year by talking about three of the biggest trends I've seen this year in l&d, and some of my thoughts, feedback and advice on those trends. The first trend I want to talk about is the massive trend of educators moving into instructional design. And if you know me, you know that I used to be an English professor in higher ed. And I worked my way into instructional design. My first instructional design job was with NASA of all places. And I've since started to pursue a doctorate degree in instructional design. I've made the switch about four and a half years ago now. And I'm passionate about helping others get into the fields. I'm very passionate about teachers, my mom, my sister, two of my best friends are all teachers. And I just think that they're wonderful human beings, and that there's definitely a seat at the table for teachers in instructional design and l&d. That said, I think there are some not so great pieces of information and advice that are circulating out there. And I want to make sure that I use my platform and my voice to kind of steer people in the right direction so that they're more successful in the job search, right. And so the first thing I want to say is, a teacher is not an instructional designer. That may hurt some people's feelings, but it's true. And it's true, because I've been there. And I've been in both roles. And a teacher is not an instructional designer, the two are not synonymous, you cannot easily and simply make a career jump from teaching to instructional design, simply because you're a good teacher. There's a lot of upskilling that needs to be done to become an instructional designer. And yes, as a teacher, you design instruction, you design and develop curriculum, you design learning experiences. But this does not make you an instructional designer by default. There are theories, foundational knowledge, technical tools, and business acumen that you need to learn. If you're going to market yourself as an instructional designer, you cannot put instructional designer on your resume or your LinkedIn and be telling the truth. If you were a teacher at a K through 12 school, that is a lie. And you should not lie on your resume or your LinkedIn. Because inevitably, what is going to happen is you're going to receive a job offer, HR is going to do a background check. They are going to call the school that you worked for and say that so and so work at such and such school as an instructional designer, and the school is going to say, no, they were x subject teacher, or an X grade level teacher, right? Now you're caught in a lie, and they can rescind that job offer. So do not lie. And say that you are an instructional designer as an educator. That said, there have been a number of people that I've seen kind of pass through my newsfeed, who have given a lot of reasons and skills and soft skills that support why they were a good teacher and give these as reasons why they should be hired as an instructional designer. Coming from the hiring manager perspective, if I see you give me a bunch of reasons why you're a good teacher, that doesn't tell me why you would make a good instructional designer. If you're going to be posting things like that and trying to amplify your transferable skills. Post why you would make a good instructional designer not why you were a good teacher. Because sometimes these posts I'm left scratching my head and going. So you're a really great teacher. So what right, because I am looking to hire an instructional designer and my hiring manager friends are looking to hire instructional designers. If you are no longer a teacher and you want to be an instructional designer, you need to start learning and then marketing yourself as such. The other thing is that I've seen a lot of career coaches and people who generally mean Meanwhile, start criticizing the way that recruiters and hiring managers are hiring for l&d and instructional design jobs. This is super, super problematic, because I've then started to see instructional designers or I'm sorry, aspiring instructional designers start to criticize the hiring managers and recruiters for these positions. You want a fast track to not be hired for a job, start telling a hiring manager what they should or should not do. a hiring manager like myself, I can only give you my experience, right? Get a ton of applications for an open position, right? Every single time, I am going to hire the person with the best theoretical knowledge, the best technical skills in their portfolio, and the most experience that those three factors are what play into my hiring decision. So if you're an educator, and you have not taken the time to make a portfolio, if you've not taken the time to learn some of those technical tools like storyline rise, Camtasia. If you've not taken the time to show your transferable skills in your resume, you're not going to be at the top of the list, because there are a ton of educators who are taking the time to do those things and to upskill. It is not easy. It is not an overnight transition. You cannot take your teaching resume, submit it to 100 jobs, and then be angry about not being hired for any of them. There is work that needs to be done. And just like I had to do when I went from being a professor to being an instructional designer, and just like I had to do when I went from being an instructional designer, to being an l&d Manager, there is upskilling that needs to be done. Those are career changes. I could not today walk into the school where you work and say, Hi, I'm a really great instructional designer. I'd like to teach here. There is a process, there are skills, there are things that have to be done. So I would just like to encourage you, if you're trying to get into instructional design to really think about your posting, and how you're presenting yourself to the world. Sometimes it looks like certain educators are complaining, right? And I get it, the job search is really tough. But do you want a hiring manager to go to your LinkedIn page and see nothing but complaints about the hiring process? Or do you want them to see you exemplifying your transferable skills, sharing projects that you're working on using the technical tools, and sharing theories that you've learned? Because I'm going to tell you, I see a lot more potential in someone who's sharing what they're learning than someone who's complaining about not being hired. So I just want you to really think about before you post, how would a hiring manager perceive this post. The other thing is I've seen it a little bit less often. But I'm starting to see people who've never worked in l&d or ID both on the instructional design aspiration side, and on the career coaching side, talking about the skills instructional designers need to do their jobs. If you have not worked a day in your life as an instructional designer, stop talking about the skills instructional designers need. You lacked the real world experience to be able to have that conversation from a place of expertise. And this is how misinformation starts getting spread. That said, on that note, there are boot camps, masterclasses academies, workshops, coaching cohorts, whatever you want to call them popping up on every corner. They are as common as McDonald's and Starbucks on LinkedIn these days. And not all of them are credible. My friends, my dear friend, Karen North has a great YouTube video on how to vet these different resources that you pay for. But I will say what I've always said, do not pay for anything just to add a line item to your resume. Do not have an intent as to why you're paying for a particular service. There's a lot of free information out there. So if you are just exploring and you're not really sure If you want to get into instructional design or not, don't don't put your credit card information anywhere yet, do do the research for free. And then if you need to upskill in certain ways and take certain courses or classes or whatever, you can do that. But I recently had a friend share with me that she found a coaching program that was 1000s of dollars, and thought about it for a moment, but then also looked up her local university, big name universities, Graduate Certificate in instructional design, and it actually cost the less. So I want you to keep that in mind, too, that sometimes the formal education costs less than some of these programs. But what is the hiring manager going to recognize? If they're looking at your resume? Are they going to recognize the name of a program that you went through that is very specific to the field of LMD? Or are they going to recognize the name of a nationally known University? And what are they going to hold in higher esteem? Think about all of these different pieces parts before you proceed with anything. And before you listen to any advice. If you want to, you can easily find an echo chamber, right. And it's good to have affirmation, it's good to have aspirations. And it's good to encourage yourself and read things that boost your confidence. But sometimes I think that it gets a little unrealistic when you're being offered six figure jobs, guaranteed employments whatever. So that's my soapbox on breaking into ID. And I did want to share that I am helping to kind of set up produce an event with the training, learning and development community www.vtldc.com, and it's happening in January, and I'm getting together some of my best friends in the field. And it's really just to start building that network of people who are credible, who have been in the field who actually still work in l&d regularly. I think that's really important. So I'd love for you to join that program in January or that event in January and tune in and learn more about what we do. We'd love to see you there. Trend number two, this has been trending for a few years now I feel like but this whole idea of micro learning. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of less time away from the task for people who are working on the job, right. And I think micro learning really, really takes that into account and really considers that whoever you're training, their bosses want them to be away from the work for as less time as possible. If you look back at block Podcast, episode 18 from this past year, I talked to Kate Yuda Lova, the founder of seven tabs, and actually I said this past year, I think that was it may have been from 2020. I don't know the years all blend together guys, am I right? The next trend I want to talk about is micro learning. Micro learning has been a trending topic in l&d for several years at this point, and is really starting to kind of be a little bit better defined. I feel like at first it was like we were trying to figure out what was the appropriate time for a micro learning? And the answer has come out since that it depends. There is no sweet spot. It depends on the content. It depends on the audience. It depends on how long you want someone to be away from their work or their task. So I think that it's come a long way in the sense that we have a little bit better understanding of what micro learning is. If you look back at episode 18 of the block, I talked to seven taps founder Kate Udall Lova she created a micro learning platform. If you've ever seen seven taps or tried it out, it's free to try I highly encourage you to at least go play around with that a little bit. But it's micro learning only there are limits to the amount of content that you can put in the different segments and seven taps because it's really trying to find that you know keep that that lid on microlearning and key Keep the learning experiences small. And so I think, in the future micro learning is going to continue. And I want to kind of tie trend two into trend three, and trend three is this learning in the flow of work. I think COVID has really elevated this phrase, learning in the flow of work. And that, you know, it's really emphasizing that the learning experiences should be happening when they're needed. Now, if you've been in ID or l&d for any period of time, you figured this out either on your own or learning about performance improvement, or human performance technology. The learning in the flow of work is not new, if you're in l&d, it's just new to everyone else talking about l&d. Because these types of things include, like job aids, or, you know, having resources that you can look at, while you're doing something, for example, in the software as a service world, I'm a big believer in that you teach the 20% of the software that people will use 80% of the time during the onboarding, but then you provide the resources for everything else in the moment of need. So when someone's about to complete a task that they don't do every day, they know where to go to find the steps for that task and the software laid out for them step by step, that's learning in the flow of work, you know, coming into a new job, starting a new task and having a diagram right back when I worked in retail, there were diagrams of how to set up the new the new inventory, to dress the mannequins and how the mannequin should be arranged and how the table layout should be. And that was learning in the flow of work. And it's becoming more popular in kind of the more white collar office type settings. Because it works really well in the places where you're not sitting at a desk all day, right? Like the retail and factories and warehouses and things like that, like there's no choice, you can't have people sit down at a computer and learn for a portion of their day, they have to learn within the flow of work. And they're finding that that's a more successful way to retain information, number one, but also to keep the time on task. And so I would say that if you've seen learning in the flow of work, you should definitely check out performance improvement and the literature on performance improvement and on human performance technology. Those are things that we've talked about at length and learned about in my doctorate program, that I think are actually really helpful for instructional designers for those in learning and development for two reasons. Number one, they talk heavily about behavior change, and how to really impact the behavior of your learners. And they talk specifically about non instructional interventions, which I think is critically important for people in l&d to know about, because not everything can be solved by an elearning or a training, right. And if elearning or training is the only thing you know how to produce, and the only solution that you're familiar with. That's what you're going to default every to every time, and it's not going to be as successful. So I think that learning more about performance improvement helps in that sense teaches you some of the non instructional intervention teaches you some of the ways to change behavior. And also it gives you a lens that is more zoomed out than the l&d department, right? It has you look at the entire organization. I'm a big proponent of aligning learning goals with business goals, because that's the way that you prove that an l&d department is valuable, right. And so it gives you some of the insight of how to do an organizational needs analysis, to look at the business goals for the whole business and then to look at the learner goals for whatever problem you've been assigned with solving. And then you can then pick the interventions and the learning solutions based on those factors. And you can you just get a more cohesive learning experience that's more likely to change learner behavior. So the connection with micro learning is that learning in the flow of work is very often micro learning is used very often in learning in the flow of work because it's a short quick thing that doesn't take too much time off task and allows for People have to learn in the flow of work. And I think we're going to see those two things, micro learning and learning and the flow of work continue to be trends in 2022. And I think more importantly, we're going to be having conversations around. How do we create these learning experiences in a virtual environment when all of our team is remote, because I think that as the pen pandemic continues, and as companies start to change their policies to be more remote friendly, learning and development is really going to have to get good if they're not already. There are people who are amazing at this already. But learning and development as a whole is going to have to get good at virtual learning and remote learning, and helping people who are in a remote environment feel like they're having a cohesive and consistent learning experience. And I think that's going to be one of the big challenges that we see for 2022. Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.