Made to measure: Trends in personalised digital learning

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Hi, I’m meg, product learning consultant at Brightwave focused on informal learning and tessello, and today I’m going to talk about personalisation in learning – why it matters and how we can make the most of trends happening outside of the workplace as a starting point. We are in position increasingly where it takes time for these technological trends and proven approaches for engagement to make their way inside our offices and learning strategies. We’ve seen the Towards maturity benchmark this year about embracing change to allow us to take more ownership of issues such as engagement – if you have a moment check out my colleague Steph Bright’s recent blog on the subject – and we need to do just that, embrace the changed and continuously changing expectations of the workforce – and show how this can affect the bottom line for business.
We think one of those important changes is the increasingly prevalent personalisation of the digital experience, which is what I’m going to talk about today!

The one-size-fits-all approach to learning…

…is over. People now expect a greater level of personalisation in all their digital experiences, and work-based learning is no exception.

The answer is moving towards a more made-to-measure approach.

In the world of business to consumer marketing it’s a no brainer. Injecting a personal and targeted touch into any marketing campaign delivers real results. Feels less like selling, more like tailored useful content.

In the world of business to consumer marketing it’s a no brainer. Injecting a personal touch into any marketing campaign delivers results.

Capturing data and using it for a more tailored experience going forward, continuously.

On demand…and relevant.

The gap

Organisations are facing engagement struggles. The battle for top talent is fierce, and creating a sense of common purpose, transparent movement towards goals and personal recognition all play a key role in both performance and retention.

PWC’s ‘My Life connected’ research has shown that traditional learning is out of step with a world demanding lifelong learning – and an interest in the ever-increasing importance of daily continuous connections. You can go to the website listed here to look at all their personal trends across technology.

At a recent Rakuten conference, Lucy Adams spoke to Executive Grapevine about how important it is that L&D moves into a new area of self-sufficiency.
“What we will see is a complete undermining of the traditional learning and development we have today. Billions of dollars are spent on training and development in the US every year, only to have 80% of it forgotten in just 30 days.

Personalising the learning picture increases relevance and meaning for the individual. Traditionally we’ve done this through routing coursework that’s relevant to a role or area of the business as well as level, but now we’re talking about much more than this. Relevant to the specific problem, interest and goal – for any moment and place. And letting the learner manage that digital arena.

Using personalisation to pinpoint my precise point of need and level of learning leads to greater efficiency – in getting up to speed, acceleration of growth and potential. I’m not wasting time going through what I already know.

As soon as things are more relevant and more efficient they’re more engaging. With all these increased expectations from how technology connects us outside work, coming into a traditional LMS with one-size-fits-all courses and low-interactivity and less dynamic connectivity immediately disengages.
We all expect to have more choice and control – and to use what we currently know and understand about ourselves to make better decisions. And I want things that are going to help solve my real-work problems and help me move up - not just a box ticking exercise.

Allowing learners to embed conceptual knowledge within personal life situations and gain feedback from those we trust help builds retention and deeper comprehension.

This ultimately leads to better performance and engaged employees. Keep your top talent, recognise their individual contributions and bring everyone up to speed more quickly.

What specific trends are we seeing that we can make us of in digital learning strategies?
As we’re talking about personalisation, I can think of no better way to showcase this then by taking you through my own personal view of personalisation trends. Things that I use in my day to day life that can play a part in a more instant and learner-centred digital learning experience.

We’ve all become natural curators – online media has made us all able to gather our interests, mix and match depending on mood. Spotify, YouTube,
This also has enabled us to find and follow things that others have curated.

Taking this into the workplace – what can we learn?
An important aspect of personal is a sense of control. Recognising that the learners can be the experts and feel in control of their own learning. not only to provide advice and resources to others, but to think about how best to meet their workplace goals.

Here we can see an example of how trade union UNISON use tessello to collect and showcase user-generated expertise with the weight of experi

All the digital tools at our fingertips these days aim to lay out a great personalised experience for us, to deliver better results. These are examples from two that I actively use, Duo Lingo which many of you are probably familiar with, and CustomFit, which is an app that FitnessFirst provide to their members for creating a custom training programme and goals.
Each case they don’t just chuck me in the deep end, I’m asked to give them some information so I can get a more relevant experience. But this comes from me, the learner, and I can choose to give it or not give it – or not get the recommendations at all and just completely create my own path.
The elements of interest and choice are really important to self-directed learning and goals and this can be an area missing from traditional workplace learning.
Additionally content aggregator apps such as news apps or pinterest will ask you for areas of interest so they can curate and gather the best resources for you – giving you more relevant and useful information to occupy your decreasing free time!

This is an example of a diagnostic that we use in tessello – again to help tailor content individually based on current levels of understanding on subjects.

Off the back of this comes recommended learning to help raise understanding and competency in the areas we need and wish to focus on. This allows a blend between what the organisation needs but also what the learner wants.

The importance of personal interest and motivation:
I used to continuously infuriate my piano teacher because if she tried to give me a song to learn I would struggle – wouldn’t practice it, had difficulty learning it. If I picked it myself from an emotional connection or sense of interest, I would practice it more and learn it faster, often at a higher skill level than the one she picked for me. She learned pretty quickly that to bring out the best in me, she let me bring my piece choices into our lessons and structure around them.

We’re very used to this outside of work. Amazon, Netflix, target ads based on previous online purchases.
The patterns of human behaviour have a more consistent ability to show me similar things I might like – for example the ‘people who looked at this eventually bought’ I find incredibly useful to judge what I’m about to buy.

The power of aggregated raw peer feedback – more valuable than top-down recommendations sometimes? I find that outside work this is definitely true. We trust who’s ‘been through it already’.
And this is something that can definitely be applied to workplace learning

To create that emotional experience, enable learners to connect their own personal experiences back to their objectives.
Capturing and collecting in the moment again is becoming much more the norm. We rely on technology to capture and then churn back data to us personally so we can then make the most of it going forward.
This also means connecting us to other people and sharing those experiences for the best learner outcome.

Automated Coaching and feedback is incredibly prevalent in our current digital experience, from immediate feedback on translations in Duo Lingo and feedback on my food choices in MyFitnessPal…

Personalisation isn’t all about data – it’s also about the human touch and enabling those connections for more meaningful, personal learning environment. Forums that we follow, experts we locate and advice we seek.

This gives learners access to goals and understanding how their own personal journey fits in. Everyone works better when their hard work has visibility. Having badges and external recognition also gives an expertise stamp to certain individuals that can then provide training for others.

Immersive learning – and an element of seeing how your decisions impact real life. Colin is going to give a great example of this in his session.

Performance support

We start to see a shift to point of need problem solving. This is as personal as it gets. Learner focused

Then think about how to align those learner problems and goals within the wider structure of performance management.

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-jewelbots – helps teach kids how to code – and connect together, learn together
What about…
-device that recognises support notes you need for higher performance in a meeting
-quizzes you on subjects of interest while on the train
-points you to nearby people with expertise in your interests

Gives you recommended learning given your personal and biometric situation.

Made to measure: Trends in personalised digital learning

Brightwave Group

Made to measure: Trends in personalised digital learning