An Anatomy of the Modern Learning Professional

It's that time of year again: the month where people start producing technology / trend predictions for the world of learning in 2017.

I've become sceptical about these lists. In the last couple of decades there's been no shortage of new technology, but the learning industry itself seems to have changed very little. We have become adept at using shiny new tech to do the same old things (such as trying to force-feed people stuff that doesn't help them in any obvious way).

What has happened is a dramatic widening of the gap between the way we learn & get things done in everyday life, and the way we learn & get stuff done in organisations.

In real life if I want to know something I Google it, and if I want to know how to dosomething I YouTube it. In organisations I still need to ask the person standing next to me what to do, all the while subjected to a barrage of pointless 'educational' content, dumped from a great height, using the latest technology. When people say they 'haven't got time' to do their learning, that's telling you something.

Education and learning are so now utterly divorced that it is sometimes hard to imagine a reconciliation. Higher education is still struggling to use the technology of the 1990s to do what they did in the 1890s.

In 2017 I am hoping for change: but not as a result of VR, mobile or micro-learning. I am hoping that we will adopt new approaches and new ways of thinking about learning, that in turn allow us to design experiences and resources that inspire and support learning in new ways (regardless of the technology to hand).

During the last couple of decades we have begun the process of marrying a new conception of learning to new capability sets. The result has been to redefine the process of learning design and the range of learning formats that we produce. And we have made some progress - the ambition of shifting 'from courses to resources' has spread, since I first talked about it five years ago, and it's not uncommon to meet colleagues who are trying to effect this change.

So I thought this (below) might be a helpful visualisation. Like everything these days it's a work in progress - definitely not perfect - but maybe something like a 'destination postcard' for learning professionals wondering what the future holds.

As a profession, we are a group of people with extraordinary potential: the potential to craft life-changing experiences, or to design resources that help productivity and engagement soar. But we will need to let go of convention, and swim to the surface