The Changing Face of Learning
Do you ever spend time around young people? As the parent of teenage twins, I can tell you that they learn and absorb information and academic content VERY differently than I did. I loved going to libraries and digging through stacks. At their age I remember researching on micro film and micro fiche. Everything I read was tactile and had different textures and weight to it but was some kind of paper or scanned version of a paper.
Today, I see my children sprawled across their bed surrounded by multiple devices. They read a lot but they only read books when a teacher gives them an actual book. Instead they read on many devices, seemingly at once. They will have their phone out, their computer out, and an iPad out, and they will be working on multiple screens getting input from all of them. To say that I am both baffled and simultaneously concerned about them getting cancer from all of the electronics is one thing, but the point is, as someone who deals with eLearning content all of the time, that this generation absorbs content differently than Gen-Xers.
As a full-time professional voice over actor who narrates eLearning modules on a regular basis, I am connected with a lot of content creators on LinkedIn and I follow a lot of them on Instagram. I saw this fantastic graphic posted by the instructionaldesignlady pictured here. This graphic fascinates me as I work with content for all platforms, but more and more content is going from mobile learning to Ubiqitious learning, so let’s tear into this a bit.
The Shift From Traditional Learning
Once upon a time, companies used to have to gather all of their employees in one spot to train them. If millennials and xenials don’t like interacting with actual paper, imagine how their heads would explode if they had to do back in they day traditional corporate training, or even get on a plane and fly somewhere to be trained, which used to happen, often! HR departments began to realize that they could hire folks like me to narrate their training modules, and this training had a great value, because now days of work did not have to stop and large groups of people did not have to be moved to one location to get this training done. I still am hired to do plenty of traditional eLearning on a fixed computer or network, it still happens a lot, and there is still a lot of very creative training like this.
M-Learning Emerged
A few years ago I started to notice a big shift to mobile learning. I attended an eLearning Guild conference in San Diego in June of 2017 and the entire focus of the conference was on everything mobile! Now companies could train the employees anywhere, anytime, and why not have fun in the process. Gamification became a big buzzword. At that point, we went from just being narrators as voiceover actors, to really giving the content creators and instructional designers the characters for the roles that they needed.
U-Learning is the New Rage
So what is the trend now? As the instructionaldesignlady says, “Ubiquitous learning is the highest form of learning that occurs in a variety of learning environments using a variety of digital learning tools. It’s learning interactions that happen anytime anywhere. This is why perpetual learning is the new normal.” So when she talks about perpetual learning, she is talking about my kids with their multiple stimuli, and at the same time the fact that these devises are glued to them, it can happen any time, any where.
From an employers perspective, if you were trying to reach out to your young, blossoming work force and mold them, now instead of having limited time and boundaries, there are no boundaries in this environment and the possibilities are infinite. If U-Learning transcends the boundaries of eLearning, than the only barriers are imagination and budget.
What are the implications of this?
If we’re connecting the dots, this means that there is a lot more training work and specifically U-Learning work for us to create and brand! There will be plenty to be voiced and narrated, and instructional designers will be busy as can be, because as the landscape changes, the need is only increasing significantly. Further, as the technology improves by leaps and bounds, companies want to have the cutting edge training with the most innovative tech for their teams. I watch with awe as see the LMS improve, I see more talent in design, so as the overall creative space is improving, there is more and more room for all of is to collaborate and create outstanding eLearning and U-Learning.
