Thirty years ago a training course was the principal, and often only, method used to help build workforce capability. Although our solutions are now moving beyond this way of thinking and acting, it is understandable why the “course mindset” emerged as the dominant way to address performance problems.
This traditional “course solution” arose because the principles of schooling were transferred into the workplace. Training courses were adult versions of school classes. They were based on schooling concepts, and assessment was almost always focused on knowledge retention rather than the ability to apply knowledge in the context of the workplace. As such, organizational learning was invariably based on a series of events – courses or programs.
We now understand that school and the workplace are vastly different environments, and that designing and developing solutions to build a highly skilled workforce in the same way we taught schoolchildren will not lead to the desired outcomes.
NEW WAYS OF LEARNING
The changing nature of the workplace, including the unrelenting drive for higher performance and productivity, and the need to innovate and work smarter, has underpinned a general drive for new ways of learning.
Other factors such as increasing complexity, the need for ever-increasing speed to performance, greater teamwork, and the challenge of working in an ever-changing environment, have all contributed to this demand to use new approaches in workforce development.
Each of these has contributed to the need to extend our focus on learning beyond the course or program and out into the workflow.
FROM COURSES TO RESOURCES AND CAMPAIGNS
Until recently, courses were the fundamental “atoms” for any training and development professional. They were what we used to build our solutions. We used instructional theory to develop learning content and a logical sequence for the delivery of that content. We then devised some form of measurement to assess whether the content had been learned. When a new training challenge was presented, we applied our content-centric approach to develop a new course or program, and so on.
We created our solutions in a course paradigm. What was needed were solutions that were created for a performance paradigm.
It is now clear that effective learning needs to move beyond the course paradigm. Real learning is not a series of events but a continuous process of improvement. People learn continuously and our approaches to building and supporting high performance need to reflect these continuous learning cycles.
Jay Cross, a leader in the movement to help people understand that “real learning” is more than courses, wrote the following in the final two articles he published before his premature death in November 2015:
“Ten years ago I argued that most people learn to do their jobs informally, not from training or formal courses. It was a radical message at the time. Most people rejected the notion or chose to overlook it.”
“Real learners are equipped to learn from experience, to work smarter, and to convert their aspirations into realities.”
Throughout his life, Cross’s work highlighted the fact that the move from courses to resources and campaigns (where a selection of courses, resources, and other tools are brought together to create and support a culture of continuous learning) is essential for effective learning.
LEARNING IN THE WORKFLOW
Most learning occurs in the workflow. That’s where people face and overcome challenges. It’s where they find new and better ways to achieve the outcomes they’re aiming for, and it’s where they reinforce the knowledge they may have gained in courses and elsewhere.
Continuous learning requires training and performance professionals to adopt a new mindset that understands learning as a process and not a series of events. They then need to adopt a set of practices to meet the needs of the modern worker.