“Then everything changed” with Learning Experience Platform!
Last week, I was watching King’s Speech, a brilliant movie enacted by two of the greatest actors Collin firth as King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as Dr. Lionel logue. The movie is about a King nicknamed “Bertie” who tries to overcome his stammering condition with the help of speech therapist to make himself worthy enough to lead his country through world war II. I was totally immersed in the scene. With Bertie, I was also trying the vocal drill.
Every movie takes us through an experience, but King’s Speech was purely a Learning experience!
Do you think L&D departments are also following the same suit? May not be the case…
I trust, no one can live life, without learning. What you learn, and experience can often determine your success or failure in life. An old proverb says, “Your choices and experiences help create the person that you are, and is the winning formula for success.”
In current times, technology adoption is the most valued trait of an individual and I am looking at possibilities to use a few in my day-to-day operations. In this endeavor, I instructed ChatGPT to prepare questions on learning experience.
The response was pretty overwhelming. More than 2000+ questions for my review. Appending the top 10 from the list to establish my point.
- What is the role of learning experience in life?
- Why is learning experience more important than knowledge?
- What is the value of learning experience?
- Why is it important to learn from your experiences?
- How does learning experience affect our knowledge?
- How do learning experiences change us?
- What does learning experience teach us?
- How do learning experiences shape our identity?
- What type of power comes from learning experiences?
- How do we gain learning experience in life?
I didn’t dare to look for the answers… but overall, the ChatGPT response was quite a disruptive experience for me. I was awestruck!
I realized that ChatGPT has changed the way people, discover information, and learn. Just learn the art of “Questioning” and you have the world in your hand. Across geographies, people love it, and enjoy the journey of seeking answers. Experience matters!
For the last three decades, “Experience” was the key differentiator between success and failure. Look at the success of Microsoft Windows to mobile phones, to social platforms, to digital payments, to ChatGPT; the adoption rate is amazing. It is the experience that is taking the center stage and it has a proven impact in businesses, education and learning.
Let’s look at the learning experience. It was always there and now, it is even stronger.
It’s the fuel to build “Skill” and drive “Performance”.
But do you think all Learning experiences can leave a print on your long term memory?
Imagine if you were a football player, and you were always practicing… and never playing a game for your side.
Is this very appealing?
Is this what memorable Learning experiences are all about?
Learning Experience is different from events. Learning Experiences follows “Peak-end Rule” which is based on moments that reveal interest, trigger sensory arousal and offer measured exposure.
Nowadays, learning experience is the most crucial element of a successful eLearning program. Whenever, I enter a new business conversation, the initial questions that I face are:
- Will the learners be able to access it anytime, and anywhere?
- Will the experiences be automated and offer dynamic learning path?
- My content is enterprise wide distributed across geographies. How will your system handle content, and build experiences for different roles?
- I have integrated systems. How will your platform work with the existing systems and bring the learning experience that we are looking for?
These are all valid questions to consider while decision making. However, learner’s experience is the weakest link in the eLearning chain, and businesses need to consult industry experts to imbibe learning experience in their L&D ecosystem. It is often seen L&D professionals mixing learning experience, with user experience, which can lead to faulty implementation.
First, the strategic importance of insights on skill transformation.
I was recently visiting a technical school of a large engineering services company. The whole team was on the table… administrators, teachers, instructors, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders. I was surprised when they said that they want an OTT style web series for their learners. That sounded silly to me, and I was not expecting this, that too, from experienced L&D professionals giving some trivialized response. I was bit puzzled…
The Director of the Technical School understood my situation and reframed the need, “Will your platform offer a Netflix-like experience in our learning program? Can you explain the platform features that can offer real learning experience for skill enhancement and performance?
At that point, we hit the right chord, and proposed our Learning Experience Platform (LXP). From that point, the discussion was on track for the rest of the meeting. We took the team through various learning interventions that are part of our platform, which may work for their requirement.
The prospect looked interested, and the discussion got extended to content structure, automated compliance journeys, curation of learning paths and many more. The good news is, we are building our first Corporate Netflix for learning.
Enough of my experiences, let’s focus on the global perspectives.
In the recent Digital Credentials Summit, I learnt that L&D leaders are working to integrate education with verifiable credentials, to connect talent with opportunity. But is that so simple?
To build an assorted range of global talent, a diverse set of new thoughts, affiliations, and products are required to power the learning ecosystem that is based on Learning Experience. It’s time that L&D, thought leaders examine the power of the human experience and figure out what makes an experience memorable. They need a system that has answers for the following.
- Does it allow open collaboration and knowledge sharing?
- Does it evaluate the effectiveness of the social learning experience?
- Does it integrate with other existing systems and tools?
- Does it track the outcomes of the social learning process?
- Does it improve skills and enhance productivity?
- Does it rate and prioritize social learning interactions?
- Does it make learning easier?
- Does it offer personalized learning paths?
- Does it benefit the stakeholders?
The answers to these evaluative questions should be sought out by the L&D Managers, who want to invest in an outstanding eLearning system.
That’s not all; L&D managers are also seeking credible explanations for the next set of questions:
- Now that LXPs are here, do we still need LMS?
- Why are some LXPs in the market, so different from others?
- Should we even be calling these platforms LXPs?
This part is quite tricky, and I am lucky to be with a dynamic young team with whom I can bounce my queries, and get credible answers.
Let me narrate the LXP story that was narrated by my Product Chief.
“It was going fine with the LMS till YouTube hit the commoners. People of all ages wanted a more flexible, individually directed, YouTube-like experience. They wanted learning to fit their needs and schedules. Thus the emergence of micro-learning assets, which allowed people access the information as per their requirement. To meet this demand, LMS providers added features like video-based learning, Micro-learning, pathways, micro-credentials, learning nuggets and others.
Then everything changed. It transitioned, rather morphed from LMS to LXP.
At this point, experts added intelligence to the existing system with five main algorithm categories. They are:
- Skills-based learning paths based on roles and skills
- Usage-based recommendations.
- AI-based content analysis for appropriate materials
- GPT integration to supplement learner experience and engagement. Targets personalization for content, learning preference, practice modalities, performance based assessment, aspirations and career goals.
- Learning business rules based on interest and schedule, with suggestive and predictive modeling.
That’s it.”
I simply loved the story, it was simple, crisp, well researched, and comes from the thought leader. Let me take this opportunity to give a brief about our award winning product features.
Our product offers:
- Barrier-free learning.
- Learning in the flow of work with personalized learning paths.
- Organic search function with filter trees for content appropriateness.
- Content structures based on their preferences and skill gaps.
- Dynamic updates to house current information.
- Learner with features like share, rate, and others.
- An open and variable ecosystem to link in-house, and external content.
- Learning compliance and accountability to track the impact of usage trends, individual assets, and learner engagement experience.
- AI-powered learning models to assess user behavior, and aligns learning resources with the learner’s skill set, career aspirations and learning patterns.