Bett Show 2019 Highlights: How Technology Can Transform Learning In Organisations. Yours too.

Noa Ohayon Bab | Co-author: Adam Tash

Last week I returned from BETT, which is the first industry show of the year in the education technology landscape, bringing together 800+ leading companies, 103 exciting new edtech startups and over 34,000 attendees from the global education community. 

I mainly wanted to find inspiration and discuss the future of education, as well as the role technology and innovation plays in enabling educators and learners to thrive. Walking around the Excel London exhibition and international convention centre, a gigantic venue full of vendors and booths and attending some of the talks left no doubt in my mind that the 2019 buzzword is definitely CORPORATE LEARNING (thank God blockchain is out ;).

There’s a lot going on in the corporate learning market this year: micro-learning, learning in the flow of work, virtual reality, and much more. This article is my take on corporate learning, with 5 things to do in your organization to facilitate this emerging concept ASAP and stay up to date with current market trends::

1. Upgrade your infrastructure - most companies are saddled with old technology, old learning management systems, and old content - most of which employees don’t like using anymore. While it certainly can be expensive to upgrade infrastructure, it’s actually okay to replace these technologies (and is usually worth it)! With the rapid pace of innovation in the corporate learning field, in just a few years most older technology will become outdated and obsolete – it’s a good idea to stay as ahead of the curve as possible. The main takeaway I took from BETT was the sheer abundance of education technologies out there and the low implementation of them in practice. Many times it is budget issues, regulations and what not preventing higher usage rates of many excellent options on the market, but so many times it’s just a case of giving it a try. (For example try Monday for task management, and if you're a Hebrew speaker join this Supertools group).

Quick-tip: Make sure you are implementing micro-learning experiences. Most employees like learning in small chunks.

2. Embrace micro-learning - employees WANT to learn in small pieces! They often don’t have a lot of time and we can now produce and deliver learning in small chunks as needed in a very predictable, intelligent way. So make sure you are incorporating micro-learning experiences along with traditional high-fidelity longer learning forms when constructing your corporate learning approaches. For your micro-learning experiences, make sure to keep it brief (3-5 min) focusing on one subject, using visuals and media as much as possible (as long as they are relevant and do not distract from your main idea) and keep it lean – if you do these things, you will leave your audience wanting more while increasing learning and engagement along the way.

3. Be creative (and open to) entirely new forms of content – Some new formats for content-delivery are: VR (virtual reality) AR (augmented reality), self-authored videos, live online interaction, and live social media interactions. Of course, face-to-face interaction is still super hot and relevant as well. Here on the left, I am testing out Mission To Mars by Alef Education, which was so FRAEKing awesome. These platforms that create either virtual or augmented reality are still often not ready to scale and are difficult to implement widely – but the potential here is obviously enormous. The level of engagement and excitement that these forms of content-delivery can generate is off the charts. So be ready for this technology to be widely implemented in the future…

4. Customize your Training - The majority of current trends in corporate learning share a common factor: customization or personalization of learning. Generally, internal training used to be designed for mass transmission, the same content for either entire teams or for the entire company. But each employee has specific potential, different strengths and weaknesses, and is also affected differently by different types of education. Customization is often required to make sure all employees are effectively reached. By means of customization, trainings are optimized so that they are able to help each employee more precisely. A tip to start this process is to survey the team members' skills in order to outline specific learning paths for each one. Also, customization provides professionals with autonomy, so they can seek out courses consistent with their career plan. Oh and yes, make sure you have a career plan for each of your employees (and NO, they won’t leave you, they'd stay even longer this way).

Advocate for a culture of learning.

5. Advocate a culture of learning - Your management team likely knows that experienced, skilled talent is hard to find and challenging to retain. Today's job candidates are searching for positions in companies that demonstrate an investment in learning. In fact, the single most common complaint for new hires [ALT1] is that they're not learning fast enough. The most efficient way to up-level skills and create top talent is to provide learning programs, and more importantly – an environment that fosters a learning MINDSTATE. Don't hesitate to offer cool, free versions of productivity tools, have regular peer-sharing sessions at team meetings, throw small events to celebrate even small successes and be open-minded to changing current norms of work accordingly. 

Embrace the concepts of design thinking and experimentation, and you’ll be able to take advantage of these exciting innovations while guiding your teams closer to their best selves. 

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[Noa Ohayon Bab is career development expert, a team leader at eBay, and was sponsored on this visit by the ROI Schusterman Foundation (an international program of global change makers)].