Trends in learning_finalCOLOUR_JON2

for learning and development within organisations
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom
Call +44 (0) 300 303 0122
Email open-business@ouworldwide.com
Click www.open.ac.uk/business
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
open.edu/openlearn/cipd2015
facebook.com/theopenuniversity
linkedin.com/edu/the-open-university-12659
Trendsinlearning

Trendsinlearning
deliveryanddesign
Technology is changing the way we live, interact and learn, creating exciting and endless possibilities for
learning and development within organisations. These opportunities not only impact on the ways people
are learning and engaging with education, but also on how learning can be designed and delivered to
make it even more effective, efficient and responsive to changing needs.
The Open University’s (OU) Institute of Educational Technology is at the forefront of identifying and
developing new ways to use technology to learn. Each year, we capture the new trends and opportunities
in the learning world.
The following pages highlight some of the key trends and insights we
are seeing and expect to develop over the next year and beyond.
TRENDS IN LEARNING ONLINE SOCIAL LEARNING LEARNING TO LEARN DEPLOYING STORYTELLING
USING LEARNING ANALYTICS BRING YOUR OWN DEVICES LEARNING THROUGH EVENTS DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT
W. www.open.ac.uk/business T. +44 (0)300 303 0122 E. open-business@ouworldwide.com

Onlinesociallearning
Since 2012, labelled “the year of the MOOC” by the New York Times, massive open online courses
(MOOCs) have been making headlines. The focus now is not on the phenomenon of free courses, but on
how they are starting to transform education by offering ‘nanodegrees’ that teach the minimum skills
needed to enter a new career, or by providing complete degree courses constructed from open access
materials.
MOOCs not only deliver education, they are a giant laboratory for testing
new methods of teaching, learning and assessment. Analysis of the
ways in which many thousands of people are learning online are already
starting to influence the design of courses in universities and workplaces.
A central theme of massive-scale courses is ‘personalisation’. The idea
is that each learner can be given the power to choose when, where
and how to study, and that the teaching adapts to the learner, either
by providing instruction that is matched to a person’s approach to
learning, or by offering supplementary teaching.
MOOCs have enriched learners’ experiences, enabling education to
be delivered at scale, with learners able to access, engage and learn
with a huge global community. MOOCs exploit the ‘network effect’,
which means the value of a networked experience increases as more
people make use of it. The UK’s platform, FutureLearn, alone has had
in excess of one million registrations since it launched two years ago.
We have seen MOOCs evolve from loose online networks that
required learners to know how to navigate the web and where to
engage with their peers, to more structured and instructivist courses
delivered by universities and specialist organisations. But there is still
a way to go.
Challenges exist because users only meet online and generally for a
short time, and the scale of conversation can mean an overwhelming
overload for users not online frequently. Solutions to these challenges
centre around linking conversations with specific pieces of learning
content, creating short conversations with people who are currently
online, and enabling users to review each other’s assignments.
We also expect to see social media trends impact on MOOCs, for
example building links between community members by following
other learners, rating discussion comments and competing with others
to answer quizzes and take on learning challenges.
What does it mean for workplace L&D?
MOOCs and corporate academies are often woven into learning
strategies as a responsive and flexible learning solution.
Assess the skill levels of your L&D team.
If you think MOOCs could form part of
your strategy, it is worth considering
the online capabilities required. 2015
CIPD research shows that 96% of L&D
professionals see supporting learners
online as important, but just 36% have
the capabilities to offer these services.
TIP
MOOC providers include the UK’s FutureLearn (www.futurelearn.com)
and the US platform Coursera (www.coursera.org). Both contain a wide
range of free MOOCs suitable for organisational and staff development,
and can be used as a low-cost way to engage staff in learning and / or to
test commitment for larger programmes of learning.
You may find it useful also to curate MOOCs and other free learning
content to deliver a suite of courses to staff, and build in a system of
recognition for staff that complete such courses.

Learningtolearn
Every day we develop new knowledge and skills, often without even realising, but often we are learning
what others want to teach us. Encouraging learners to manage their own learning enables them to identify
their own goals and tailor their own learning – not only digesting what others want to teach, but having
the confidence and ability to undertake self-determined learning.
Achieving a culture of self-directed learning means enabling staff to
go back to basics and learning how to learn. One of the most effective
and long-term approaches is called ‘double loop learning’ – double-
loop learners not only learn, explore and work out how to solve a
problem, but they reflect on the process and consider how to become
more effective.
Using the OU as an example, double-loop learning is embedded
across courses, and includes encouraging students to determine their
objectives and goals, learn, put their learning into practice, reflect on
whether how the learning impacted and if the course of action and
outcomes were in line with their goals, and then look again at what
could have been done differently for implementation in the future.
ePortfolios are a good way to capture this.
Double-loop learning is also embedded at an institutional level, using
analytics and course feedback to evolve and improve course design
year on year.
This type of learning is an approachthat can work across any subject
and profession and captures the increasingly popular “mindfulness”
approaches to personal and professional development, which see
individuals encouraged to become more self-aware of their own
behaviours, needs and learnings. Encouraging learners to share their
knowledge and insights with colleagues can also serve to not only
reinforce their learning, but inspire and engage those around them.
Engaging staff in learning can be challenging, but learning to learn
and particularly double-loop learning can drive and increase not only
engagement in learning but also the sharing of knowledge across
organisations.
In both learning and everyday work, encouraging staff to look back
at particular challenges, how they overcame these (by deploying
new learning or their own knowledge) and what they could do
next time, will help to cement existing learning and foster new
learning. Organisations are increasingly finding value in staff sharing
these experiences with other staff, widening the impact of learning
investment and staff experience. You may, for example, also find
value in awarding particular staff “champion” status on specific areas
of expertise and learning. This develops status and makes learning
appealing and, again, increases the impact across organisations.
Encourage staff to take control of their
own learning. Ask them to review their
current position and future goals, develop
objectives based on these and identify
learning that will meet these goals.
TIP

Maximisingengagement
throughstorytelling
As people, we respond best to a learning structure that can be personalised and helps us to embed and
revisit our understanding. Stories and case studies provide this, however often learning content focuses on
mastery of facts and figures rather than a narrative.
Narrative in learning broadly consists of structuring a series of events
from a particular point of view to create a meaningful whole – writing
up an experiment, reporting on an inquiry, analysing a period in
history are all examples of this.
The importance of a narrative to deliver structured, memorable
learning is even more important in an online world where resources
are constantly growing and are scattered across multiple sources and
mediums. We expect to see this trend increase in prevalence over the
coming years. A good example of this in action is the Introduction to
Cyber Security MOOC on Futurelearn, with leading technologist Cory
Doctorow acting as a guide through the course drawing on his own
experiences, successes, mistakes and how he has learnt from these.
This first-hand experience makes for a powerful learning experience,
bringing in real-life alongside theory.
Here at the OU, we are also increasingly looking at using serialisation
in learning to create drama and maintain engagement. Take, for
example, the “duff duffs” at the end of British television soap opera,
Eastenders, signaling a climax or cliffhanger at the end of an episode;
this same principle can be applied to blocks of learning.
Studying a course in small chunks of a few hours here and there is
enhanced and retention increased by ending those chunks with a
climax or drama that teases people enough about what is coming up
to engage them in the next piece of learning.
Examples include the OU’s Forensic Psychology: Witness
Investigation, which runs like a crime drama in the format of a crime
investigation. Learners have to wait until the following week and are
fed nuggets of information and clues through social media in the
meantime. This gets them talking within the learning community and
keeps interest for the next week’s learning high.
Storytelling is a tool that can be tailored by organisations to deliver
learning that fits needs and maximises engagement and, therefore,
impact.
L&D teams can work independently or
with learning providers to commission,
develop, repurpose or curate learning
content in a way that delivers story-led
courses and materials tailored to the
needs of organisations.
TIP

Using learninganalytics
incoursedesign
Learning analytics enable education and training providers to respond to how people are learning, where
they are succeeding, stumbling or falling, to develop courses and support that enhance the student
experience and maximise successful learning outcomes.
Traditional education has relied on physical monitoring of student
progress, outcomes and feedback. Online learning has opened doors
to so much more, giving us - as learning providers - access to seeing
how students engage with their materials and learning environments,
precisely where they may be successful or challenged, and predict
future student behaviour. Using this insight in course design makes
for a powerful tool in placing the learner experience at the centre of
course design.
When used by organisations, learning analytics for course and L&D
programme design can be seen as a form of double-loop learning,
referred to in the Learning to Learn section in Trends in Learning
Delivery and Design. In effect, the single-loop is the approach to
learning, and double-loop the use of analytics to reflect on and
enhance teaching and learning effectiveness of courses.
Learning analytics will continue to grow. As an example, at the OU we
gather a range of analytics from learning data on how students are
progressing, to monitoring engagement in online communities and
activities. This provides us with an indication of students’ commitment
and potential success, and we can combine it with back-to-basics
insight from student and tutor feedback.
We expect organisations to increasingly use and / or demand learning
analytics in learning design, as more data is gathered about learners
and their behaviours. You are probably already using analytics in your
learning provision, starting with the basics such as numbers studying,
completion rates, and perhaps staff feedback.
Through online learning, you can monitor
even more detailed analytics to assess
commitment to – and engagement in –
learning. For example, understanding the
number of times and for how long staff
log in to their online learning, whether
they engage with online materials, surveys
etc, individual test results, particular areas
of skills and so on.
TIP
As well as enabling you to identify particular behaviours and strengths,
you will be able to see areas of high engagement, low engagement,
drop-off points and hurdles, and even tie in these results to annual
staff assessments, goal creation and reward and recognition, as well as
embedding such analytics into future learning design.

Bring yourowndevices
While sometimes a distraction within the classroom, encouraging use of mobile devices within a learning
environment can produce significant benefits.
When learners bring their mobile devices into the classroom, they
bring with them huge potential to enhance theirs and others’
experience.
In effect, learners come equipped not only with individual
technologies that they maintain and improve, but also their personal
learning environments and social networks. Tutors shift from being
providers of knowledge and resources, to acting as directors of
technology-enabled networked learners. Learners’ personal collections
and networks connect learning inside and outside the classroom, and
become resources for the classroom.
This kind of technology use changes the relationship with the tutor,
who becomes a facilitator, encouraging learners to reach out to their
networks and online resources to research, ask questions and gather
insights, and manage the sharing and use of this within the classroom.
Staff are increasingly supplied with their own technology, such as
tablets and phones, for work. These tools can be further deployed into
the learning environment.
Encourage staff to use their mobile
devices within both learning and
workplace environments to research
and solve problems, and to share
such knowledge. Online communities
developed within organisations can aid
such sharing of knowledge, for example
private LinkedIn groups or purpose-
built community tools such as Yammer,
through which staff can share queries,
insight and solve problems.
TIP
Contact the OU
The OU offers both off-the-shelf and tailored learning solutions
to suit organisational needs. Learning content is designed to have
positive impacts for organisations and modules can be hand-
picked to create a flexible learning pathway that benefits the
individual as much as the business, through the option to lead to
accreditation.
If you would like to find out more about how The Open University
can work with you, call +44 (0)300 303 0122 or email open-
business@ouworldwide.com to talk to a member of the account
management team.

Learningthroughevents
Event-based learning delivered in compact events over a few hours or days creates engaging and exciting
opportunities for communities of people gather to solve problems.
Event-based learning is not new, but technology has meant this kind of
learning is not simply confined to those physically in attendance, but
can be successfully extended to virtually bring together participants
from around the world, enriching the learning and event potential.
Examples of community events include:
Hackathons – groups of computer programmers and experts in
their fields gather to collectively solve a problem
Citizen science – where everyday people contribute to national and
global science observation projects, for example Springwatch
Events give learners focus and something to reflect on afterwards, and
can be applied within almost any setting. People are able to learn from
each other, through interactions, online research, etc.
Event-based learning has huge potential for organisations and, in many
cases, is already being deployed.
Enable managers to make time for
event-based learning, for example half
days to bring staff together to consider
and solve a real or realistic problem.
This can also be built into away days.
Such days do not need to be confined
to staff; by combining the mobile
device tips above, you can open up the
experience to external online audiences
by allowing staff to use their own
social networks and online research
skills to feed into your event problem-
solving. This enriches the experience
of staff and opens up the possibilities
of external knowledge informing your
organisation’s and staff practice.
TIP
Contact the OU
to suit organisational needs. Learning content is designed to have
positive impacts for organisations and modules can be hand-
picked to create a flexible learning pathway that benefits the
individual as much as the business, through the option to lead to
accreditation.
If you would like to find out more about how The Open University
can work with you, call +44 (0)300 303 0122 or email open-
business@ouworldwide.com to talk to a member of the account
management team.

Dynamicassessment
Everyone’s learning potential and style is different. The principle of dynamic assessment is that it is
important to assess students’ potential to learn rather than simply measure what they have just done.
Dynamic assessment is undertaken by an in-house or external assessor
to identify any barriers to studying and to apply an appropriate
strategy to overcome the difficulties. Such strategies can be measured
and responded to by looking at the effect of an intervention on
a learner’s performance, and can be carried out by a human or a
computer-based tutoring programme.
Dynamic assessment is a two-way system, not only helping learners
but also informing organisations about topics and skills that many
learners are finding difficult. It can be used to complement learning
analytics in increasing the understanding of learner behaviour and in
informing future course design.
Maximising student success and experience is an important part of
delivering effective L&D programmes that engage staff and deliver a
return on investment for organisations.
Embed dynamic assessment into your
L&D programme design. This can be
done by engaging with learners prior to
embarking on courses to identify any
barriers they have, this can be around
learning capabilities or barriers such as
time, confidence etc. The next step is to
plan an intervention that will counter
any barriers, for example if ability is an
issue addressing this through additional
learning, or if time is a challenge,
working with learners to identify a
study plan. Learners can then be tested
on these areas before their embark on
learning and afterwards, to review the
impact of the intervention.
TIP
Contact the OU
to suit organisational needs. Learning content is designed to
have positive impacts for organisations and modules can be
hand-picked to create a flexible learning pathway that benefits
the individual as much as the business, through the option to
lead to accreditation.
If you would like to find out more about how The Open
University can work with you, call +44 (0)300 303 0122 or email
open-business@ouworldwide.com to talk to a member of the
account management team.

The OUteam
Ouraccountmanagementteammakethingshappen.They’recommittedtoworkingwithorganisationsto
understandbusinessneeds,andthencreatinglearninganddevelopmentsolutionsthatbestaddressthoseneeds.
Your account manager will work with you to develop accredited or non-accredited learning solutions for
your organisation that are scalable and cost effective.
Read the following profiles to learn more about our team and how they can help your organisation.
Karen Fairbrother, Head of Account Management
Karen’s areas of expertise include financial services, managing clients across multiple sites, international sales, and
working across diverse and disparate teams.
Karen has “too many years” of experience to mention and particularly enjoys nurturing strong working relationships.
Karen explains: “The Open University is an expert in distance learning - we’ve been in the business for more than
40 years, and have the pedagogic expertise to complement this level of experience that you would expect from a
university of our stature. We offer our clients cost-effective solutions that meet their business needs.”
Balvinder Johal, Head of Business Development (Healthcare sector)
With more than 20 years’ experience, Balvinder’s expertise includes strategic workforce development solutions,
bespoke programmes and qualifications, and management development. Balvinder enjoys helping organisations to
navigate the complex world of higher education, and acting as a single source for all higher education-related needs.
Balvinder says: “The Open University is a formidable organisation, ideally placed to help organisations address today’s
business challenges. Our ability to offer world-class, innovative, flexible L&D solutions combined with a team who
believe in The Open University’s mission makes us a unique proposition for organisations.”
Jackie Baker, Corporate Development Manager, Scotland
Jackie brings more than 30 years’ experience to her position at The Open University, including developing solutions in
the health, social care and engineering sectors. Jackie loves the variety of her role (especially supporting organisations
through processes and procedures), and rising to the challenge of providing a world-class flexible learning experience
for organisations with minimum impact on the workplace.
Jackie says: “In a nutshell, I help change lives. I’m the single point of contact and trusted advisor for my clients, and I
do my best to ensure that their dealings with us are as pleasant as possible.”
Paul Armer, Corporate Development Manager
Paul brings 25 years’ experience to his account management role. His areas of specialism include healthcare
leadership and management, and widening participation. Paul’s clients include local education training boards, trusts
and voluntary sector organisations. His experience includes working with organisations to implement programmes
related to end of life care and dementia care. Paul has also helped to train medical staff who wish to become
consultants.
Paul says: “I’ve spent most of my career in the NHS, as a learning and development manager and facilitator. I use this
experience to help my clients find resources that really meet their needs and benefit patients, service users and staff.”

Stephen Davies, Corporate Development Manager, Wales
Stephen has 35 years’ experience, and has spent the past 20 years working with universities and organisations
to provide learning and development solutions. Recently, Stephen worked with a professional body to define a
postgraduate qualification specific to its industry. The new qualification will benefit both current and new employees
entering the profession. Stephen says: “I enjoy engaging with clients and developing solutions that exceed their
expectations.”
Emily James, Corporate Development Manager
Emily works closely with clients to fully understand their needs, and support them in finding solutions that will
directly address those needs. She works with both public sector and private clients. Emily particularly enjoys seeing
staff members grow in confidence and reach their full career potential through the solutions that we offer. Emily says:
“I love the fact that The Open University is making such a valuable contribution in the workplace, and that I’m part of
a university that’s helping people to develop themselves, and organisations to grow to reach their goals.”
Natasha Hall, Corporate Development Manager
Natasha is responsible for developing tailored learning and development solutions for private sector corporate clients.
Her specialisms include financial services, as well as business development and relationship building. Natasha enjoys
nurturing new and existing relationships, and delivering training solutions that encourage personal development
and empowerment. Natasha says: “Our solutions allow for minimal staff extraction and immediate application of
learning.”
Sonal Patel, Senior Account Manager
Sonal Patel has ten years’ experience at The Open University, and is dedicated to ensuring that clients feel valued and
supported. Sonal’s experience includes working with a large county council to provide sponsorship on a social work
programme. Sonal says: “Our pedagogy supports collaborative working and personal development. I enjoy regular
contact with clients, making a difference and making them feel valued.”
“We genuinely care about our clients, and put them at the heart of
everything we do.” Emily James, Corporate Development Manager, The Open University
Find out how we can help your organisation. Visit www.open.ac.uk/business for further information

Trends in learning_finalCOLOUR_JON2

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Destacado

Destacado (8)

Similar a Trends in learning_finalCOLOUR_JON2

Similar a Trends in learning_finalCOLOUR_JON2 (20)

Trends in learning_finalCOLOUR_JON2