How can Digital Learning managers ensure their teams have the right skills?

I lead a team of 9 digital learning experts, and one approach that has worked for us is creating regular learning sessions, which we call KSS (Knowledge Sharing Sessions). We take turns to educate each other of what we know. While formal training needs assessment and training sessions are essential, the opportunity to collaboratively learn and crowdsource ideas is great. We sometimes bring renowned experts to join a panel or facilitate the KSS. In addition, we partner with some of the best Digital Learning content vendors around the world and grant full learning access to the team so they have learning embedded in their workflow and can hop on a short course to grab a few nuggets whenever needed.

Digital Learning managers can ensure their teams possess the right skills by conducting regular skills assessments to identify gaps and training needs. Provide opportunities for continuous learning through workshops, courses, and access to relevant resources. Encourage peer learning and collaboration to leverage internal expertise. Foster a culture of innovation, allowing team members to experiment with new tools and technologies. Establish clear goals and KPIs to measure skill development and performance. Finally, stay updated on industry trends and anticipate future skill requirements to proactively prepare the team for evolving demands in digital education.

Ensure ongoing training and development opportunities to align with current and emerging trends, foster a culture of continuous learning, and provide opportunities for cross-training to expand skillsets.

In my role, identifying skills gaps is crucial for achieving our digital learning goals. I believe in a methodical approach, using surveys, interviews, and self-assessments to compare our team's current skills with what we need for our projects. Performance reviews and competency frameworks are also key tools in this analysis. This helps me prioritise the skills we urgently need to focus on, ensuring our team is equipped to adapt and grow in the ever-evolving field of digital education.

It is traditional practice to start with a stated skills gap analysis. Such a starting place usually ends up in unsustainable training design. So the first question to ask is, what should be done so that the training need never arises again? From my experience, skills gap usually arise from rather different root causes, which would mostly be a combination of long-term systemic disabling of continuous self-learning that occurred in the past, and lack of long-term vision on what learning culture looks like in the organisation. Without addressing these, any training design will only provide superficial relief to what could be a deep-rooted individual and organisational problem.

Il faut diversifier les supports pour assurer l'atteinte des objectifs pédagogiques du plus grand nombre. La variété des supports et des techniques d'apprentissage doivent néanmoins répondre à un réel besoin et ne doivent être créés pour être "juste" là. Chaque support devra répondre à des méthodes d'apprentissage spécifiques liées aux profils des apprenants. Par exemple, mettre à disposition un serious game doit répondre à une attente, à une demande ou encore à un besoin pédagogique. Créer un jeu parce que c'est "ludique" n'est pas une bonne approche pédagogique. Ainsi, la diversité des supports : oui. Le cumul de support sans liant ou intérêt démontré pour répondre à un objectif pédagogique : non

Curate an escape room for skills. Where you can run time-bound hackathons and innovation jams for teams to collaborate to solve real-world problems using newly acquired skills. This helps foster creativity, and problem-solving, and boosts team spirit.

While learning styles are not a thing, preferred learning formats can be. It's important in my opinion to try and diversify the formats on one side, on the other side I would also stress that the way that content reaches people is fundamental. So, for example, paying more attention to the marketing side of this, could bring the content to people who in some cases didn't even know they had access to.

Diversity is important as is targeted development based on identified and analysed needs. This could be the difference between your team being ready in weeks or months - or even years. Sometimes in L&D we're not afforded the opportunity and have to jump to solution without the requisite analysis so we should not skip this vital step when it comes to ourselves.

From my perspective, diversifying learning opportunities is essential for team development in digital education. I value the use of online courses, webinars, and podcasts, understanding that each team member has unique learning preferences. Encouraging engagement with various resources like blogs, books, and newsletters broadens our knowledge base. I see great value in mentorship, peer feedback, and communities of practice for practical, real-world learning. Also, I'm keen on empowering my team to create their own digital content, such as videos or infographics. This approach not only caters to different learning styles but also fosters a culture of creativity and continuous learning within the team.

One of my most efficient ways to evaluate the learning outcomes is to create examples that increase in difficulty and decrease in instructor leading of the class. For instance, the first example is done completely as say it, show it, do it. The next example is done by asking the students to guide the teacher. The third example is done as an exercise with no instructor involvement. This validates they understand the learning more efficiently in my opinion than any multiple choice assessment.

If you can't measure the learning outcome, you aren't managing the learning. Data tells a story, and assessing that big picture is going to be critical in outlining your next steps.

Les résultats d'apprentissage ne peuvent s'évaluer que par des mises en situation, c'est souvent ce qui pèche au niveau des évaluations proposées. Une alternative serait d'autoévaluer le niveau de confiance exprimée par le collaborateur pour la réalisation de la mission, avant et après l'acquisition des nouvelles connaissances.

Evaluating outcomes is easier if the analysis has been done at the outset, i.e. the consequences of things remaining as they are. If we understand what we expect our intervention to achieve (in terms of performance and capability) then we can track if and how we're getting there.

The easiest way to evaluate a learning outcome is to have a specific & measurable learning objective before you begin. If you find it difficult to determine if your training was effective, your learning objective likely wasn’t clear on either what performance you needed to see over what period of time (immediately after the training, 1 week after, 30 days after) or in what environment (remote, onsite). It’s also possible your skills gap analysis was missing information. Re-evaluate, re-strategize. Supplement your training or learn for the next time.

Recognizing and rewarding the teams' learning efforts is a necessary step in building a culture of learning. However, it's important to recognize and reward not just the wins, but also the 'failures'. Getting out of one's comfort zone and trying something new should be celebrated regardless of the outcome. This way, you take away the fear of failure and create a psychologically safe environment which is a must-have for any high performing team.

It's important not to reward time spent learning but outcomes of time spent learning. In my experience, effective learners can be the most efficient ones. They are driven by improved performance and will do so by taking on challenging work role modelling effective colleagues. Often the least effective learners are the ones who take all the courses but don't seem more capable as a result. So recognise and reward what matters most.

Digital Learning Managers can help their teams stay on top of their skills by having them choose one of their learning projects to present to the larger team. When presenting, they should discuss the learning needs addressed by their project and how they chose the solution they are presenting. If your team is large enough, they can compete in various categories and earn badges to post on social media. The team I work on does something like this quarterly. It contributes to team engagement and everyone walks away having learned something new.

Absolutely love this approach! ?? It's so important to cheer on the team's growth – makes all the hard work worth it, doesn't it? ??

Finding the right cadence to recognition and reward is key. But the celebration should be meaningful and not across the whole team unless it's a team recognition. Grouping top performers into the greater group minimizes the extra effort they put forth. Recognition is yet another learning tool that can be both motivating and gratifying.

Aligning development to team and individual plans is an important step. Helping team members to gain awareness of perception from stakeholders is important to this too so find ways of giving exposure to team members and eliciting feedback from key decision-makers.

The ADDIE model is so important in instruction. Over a three year period I rewrote significant portions of a class eight times due to changes in the business and ensuring the instruction follows the needs of the business.

Digital learning is an exciting field with new software and new trends emerging all the time. As a Digital Learning Manager, it is important to stay on top of emerging trends and discuss them with your team. Encourage your team to participate in LinkedIn groups, take courses, and share relevant articles or videos with each other. Support your team as they continue to develop and improve their skills in areas that interest them. Provide opportunities for team members to share their new knowledge with the rest of the team. Keep yourself accountable to providing dedicated development time by putting learning plans in writing.

Right digital skills are important for team optimal performance. When a team lacks digital skills or have one person who has the right digital skills, the team's performance will slow down while the person will burnout. To ensure that your team have the right digital skills the following should be implemented: 1. First, review your team's digital skills finding their individual's skills gaps. 2. Plan for one to two weeks intensive training for digital learning. In education, teaching is chronological, from known to unknown. The training should start from basic digital skills to advanced skills. 3. Draw up a-day monthly digital in-house learning schedule which will last for at least four hours. 4. Ensure the schedule is maintained monthly.

ILPs (Individual Learning Plans) in high schools and colleges are a bit of a misnomer as they are bound by the education system that controls them. However, in the corporate world, there is all kinds of freedom to work with individuals on their Individual Career Plan. A wise manager will facilitate this process even if the career path is somewhat outside of the scope of the company goals.

En mi experiencia establacer un marco para la colaboración es muy relevante para instaurar prácticas colaborativas dentro del equipo. Reuniones fijas, de esquemas fijos en donde tengan espacios para comunicar sus avances y reportar desafíos son relevantes a la hora de propiciar el trabajo en equipo. Así, todos y todas están al tanto de que existe una instancia definida para la colaboración entre áreas.

Collaboration is key to successful growth in any manner. Let your weakest link be a well educated one, and they'll soon not be the weakest link. Education is dire for anyone to progress in their career. Collaborating on every level will ensure that better progress.

La colaboración y comunicación son herramientas valiosas cuando se tiene un equipo, ya que les otorga valía, confianza y motivación para involucrarse en diversos proyectos. Logrando de esta manera alcanzar con mayor seguridad cualquier meta que de planteen.

Collaboration and communication are pivotal in skill development for the team. Involving team members in every stage of our learning initiatives, from planning to evaluation, is key. I believe in clear, consistent guidance and support, coupled with constructive feedback. It is also essential to keep everyone connected and informed. This approach is not just about imparting skills; it's about building trust, rapport, and a sense of ownership among team members, ensuring they feel accountable and engaged in their own learning journey.

Avec mon équipe j'ai tout de suite mis en place un outil de planification et de suivi de projet qui nous sert de support aux réunions d'équipe. Nous nous inspirons des méthodes agiles telles que SCRUM pour optimiser au mieux nos points et rester le plus factuel possible. Cela ne nous empêche pas de partager nos sautes d'humeur à la machine à café !

One of the most important questions you have to help answer for a learner is: What's in it for me? Or, why should I care? Unless we answer that, we never quite get the kind of engagement we want to see. Explain why a certain skill is important, how it's relevant to their role and personal development, and then everything else follows from that.

In my opinion, as a digital learning manager, ensure our team has the right skills by using comprehensive assessment of their current abilities and identifying any skill gaps. From there, we can develop personalized training plans, and provide access to relevant resources and courses. My primary responsibility is to ensure that our team has the necessary skills to effectively carry out their roles and contribute to the organization's goals. Also, proactively fostering an environment of continuous learning and development to keep pace with evolving technologies and industry trends. By taking these proactive steps, we all can help our team stay relevant and adaptable in today's rapidly changing digital landscape!

One of my methods for teaching is to utilize the psychological thought that the brain remembers the first and last thing stated in each conversation. So, teach something, change topics, come back to that same something to reinforce.

Learning something is much better when it's done peer to peer as you get points you might have missed and also you get new perspectives to ideas that have generated within your head. I call it the "LSD Model of Learning", where L - stands for Learn S - stands for Share D - stands for Develop/ Do This is such a beautiful and effective method to learn new avenues.

Sorry, but I am back to discuss terminology. A CLO is responsible for the overall status of an organization's learning culture - do the systems enhance the people. Given that learning is a change in the neuro-patterns of the brain, what exactly is a 'Learning Manager'? Just as an LMS should really be a LCS (content) learning managers do not manage learning, they manage content. You can't make someone learn. But you can create engaging content that better facilitates an individual's learning process.