RYAN TRACEY – CRYSTAL BALLING WITH LEARNNOVATORS

ABOUT RYAN TRACEY

Ryan Tracey is an E‑Learning Manager in the Australian financial services industry. He is also an Editorial Board Member for eLearn Magazine, a moderator for #lrnchat, and the author of the E-Learning Provocateur blog.

Ryan has worked in corporate e-learning for over a decade, following several years in the higher education market. He holds a Master’s degree in Learning Sciences and Technology from the University of Sydney.

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW SERIES:

‘Crystal Balling with Learnnovators’ is a thought-provoking interview series that attempts to gaze into the future of e-learning. It comprises stimulating discussions with industry experts and product evangelists on emerging trends in the learning landscape.

Join us on this exciting journey as we engage with thought leaders and learning innovators to see what the future of our industry looks like.

THE INTERVIEW:

1. Learnnovators: You have been through a rather unique professional journey… from Environmental Scientist to E-Learning Manager. Could you please explain how the shift happened?

Ryan: Yes, mine is quite an unorthodox pathway, though I find that most of my peers in the L&D profession have “fallen into it” from somewhere else. I was simply getting bored in my job when an opportunity arose for me to join a publishing company. We were selling textbooks into the higher education sector when suddenly the e-learning revolution swept through. Of course no one really understood it as it was all so new. Since I was dabbling in web design at the time, I naively volunteered to take care of the New Media portfolio. I’ve been an e-learning professional ever since.

2. Learnnovators: We keep seeing instances where once successful blogs wither away for various reasons. However, you have been successfully building and maintaining an award-winning blog – “E-Learning Provocateur” over several years. What are the critical factors for sustaining a successful blog such as yours? What are some of the challenges that aspiring bloggers need to look for? Could you share some of the best practices you follow to create, grow, and sustain your blog?

Ryan: I have always maintained that I write my blog for myself. I use it to think out loud, and if others get any benefit out of that, then that’s a bonus.

The biggest challenge for an aspiring blogger is simply getting started. Shifting from not blogging to blogging is the highest hurdle, and I think fear keeps most at bay. My advice is that your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s. When you write your blog, do so from your perspective. What are your thoughts? Your experiences? Your successes? Your failures?

If you’re honest and generous, the vast majority of your readers will be grateful and supportive.

3. Learnnovators: You believe that it is possible to provide engaging, relevant, and authentic learning experiences by creating low cost videos with our smart phones. What would be your advice for producing such low cost and effective learning solutions for today’s learners?

Ryan: I believe that authenticity trumps production value. If an organization were to outsource the filming of a training video, for example, the quality of the work would be excellent, no doubt. For those who can afford it, go for it. But for those who can’t afford it, you can use the video production device in your pocket. Sure, the quality of the output won’t be as good, but if your content is relevant, your audience will be surprisingly forgiving. They don’t expect a masterpiece. What really matters is the learning outcome.

My advice for producing low cost learning solutions like video is simply to do it. Your early attempts are going to be rough; brace yourself for that, but also realize that your first video is light years ahead of no video. Test your work on a pilot group, incorporate their feedback, build on your success and scale it up. Your creative skills will improve over time, and you might even consider buying better equipment and software.

4. Learnnovators: M-learning, you say, facilitates learning in context and in the moment, therefore it must be used to create quick and easy, step-by-step guides. What is your advice on this?

Ryan: I see m-learning from various points of view. One is push. L&D can push content onto the audience’s mobile devices as we do to their PCs, but I wonder about the efficiency of doing that. It might be useful for a field-based workforce such as the sales team, but in an office-bound environment, my experience tells me that most people will wait until they get back to their desk to do their online training.

Micro-learning is a concept that’s enjoyed a lot of attention recently, but it’s important to realize that this typically means more push learning. The step-by-step guides you mentioned are an example of pull learning. When a technician is at an electrical box in a suburban street, for example, he can use his smartphone to look up which wires plug into which ports. A 1-hour online course won’t be very useful to this fellow, so in this sense micro-learning applies to pull learning too.

Having said that, I believe the real power of m-learning is in creating an experience. By this I mean integrating the content with the environment in which the individual is situated. This is real context in real time. I’m excited by the potential of wearable technologies combined with augmented reality to make these kinds of experiences possible.

5. Learnnovators: You say that learning styles have no significant effect on learning outcomes and that the nature of the content probably dictates its most effective mode of delivery. At the same time, you advise learning designers to exercise caution while designing solutions, and take into consideration what could be learning preferences. Can you please explain further?

Ryan: My caution here is in the context of the ever informalizing workplace. Outside of the controlled environment (in which almost all academic research on learning styles takes place), the learner is empowered to do something or not. In fact, much of the thought leadership on adult education empowers the learner by design. My point is simply if someone doesn’t like doing something, odds are they won’t do it. So as we increasingly rely on our audience to assume ownership of their own learning journey, we need to be mindful of their preferences to keep them motivated and engaged in the process.

6. Learnnovators: According to you, catering to the average Joe is imperative for emerging technologies such as Tin Can API, augmented reality, responsive e-learning, etc. Otherwise, you predict that they will meet a fate similar to that met by Second Life. What do you think are the key factors necessary for such innovative concepts to address the average Joe, while at the same time remaining at the cutting edge of technology?

Ryan: There’s nothing wrong with boffins and code monkeys tinkering under the hood, but if that’s where it stays I don’t think it will get very far. There needs to be an enabler between cutting edge technology and its use by Average Joe.

Augmented reality and virtual reality are good examples. The release of Microsoft’s HoloLens and Samsung’s collaboration with Oculus on the Gear VR are great news – but as yet there’s been little for regular L&D folks like you and me to actually do with the technology. Sure we can buy pre-made experiences (or pay a developer a fortune to build a custom one) but I don’t think it will make much of a dent on our profession until someone builds a tool that lets regular L&D folks like you and me create our own AR and VR experiences.

7. Learnnovators: In one of your blog posts in 2012, you said “I look into my crystal ball; I foresee that MOOCs will rock our world, and they will do so in 15 ways…” To what extent do you think your prediction has come true, and why/why not? What is the way forward for MOOCs according to you?

Ryan: The problem with MOOCs is that they were heralded by some as the replacement of the on-campus college degree. This was a commercially driven view that I felt was always destined to fail. Today it is an old-fashioned view, but it remains alive in certain quarters.

What I don’t think a lot of people realized back then was that the emergence of MOOCs was converging with the informalization of learning. Since I am in the corporate sector, perhaps I could see this trend in motion. When some commentators complained about the low completion rate in MOOCs and used it as evidence of their ineffectiveness, I thought they were misguided arguments. Yes, in college the system is designed for students to complete in order to gain accreditation, but in the corporate sector this paradigm is rapidly disappearing. Under a more informal paradigm, it doesn’t matter where or how you learn something, so long as you can do it to the standard required. So it has been no surprise to me to see my prediction about the corporate sector embracing MOOCs coming true, and providers such as edX and Coursera launching offerings that target the corporate audience.

I think it’s important to recognize that MOOCs have effected change in the higher education sector too. While on-campus study will never disappear and nor should it, I believe the disruption that MOOCs have wrought (or perhaps some have feared) has accelerated the evolution of blended learning and pure online offerings from universities – whether they’d admit it or not. And we mustn’t forget that the major partners in MOOC ventures are universities; the soft dollar marketing value for them should not be under-estimated.

8. Learnnovators: You advocate for transforming the Learning and Development department into a performance center, with a focus on improving performance, not only through L&D solutions but by having a holistic view of what is causing the performance deficiency in the first place, and arriving at a solution that addresses the deficiency. What do you think is the possibility for such a thing to happen in organizations around the world today?

Ryan: It is only possible if the mindset shifts. The traditional C-suite expects the L&D department to train all the employees, and to a certain degree the employees themselves expect to be trained. Then of course you have the L&D folks themselves who cling to their power base and just want to do what they’ve always done.

Transforming the L&D department into a performance center requires everyone in the organization to value outcome over activity, and that’s a big deal. That’s not to say that it can’t be done – it has been! – but it’s dependent on the company’s appetite for change.

9. Learnnovators: What prompted you to write the book “Ryan the Lion” for children? We are sure you have a special reason. Can you please share it with us?

Ryan: I’m concerned by the explosion of cyberbullying that has coincided with the popularity of social media, and it motivated me to do something about it. My children’s story is about being happy about being yourself, and I think that’s an important message for people of all ages. You only need to look at the psychology of Facebook users to realize we need to re-think how we feel about ourselves.

10. Learnnovators: How would you define the role of an e-learning professional from your perspective?

Ryan: The role of the e-learning professional has changed over the years. In the early days, the use of computers and the Internet was still quite novel, so the “e” in e-learning meant that you were heavily focused on online courses; in other words, how do we move our usual stuff onto this new medium?

These days however I think the role has changed substantially. It’s much less about online courses and more about facilitating learning. So the new skillset involves community management, content curation, consulting, support, that kind of thing. Of course the specifics of the role will vary depending on who you ask, but for the moment I think the “e” remains meaningful as it is still a specialization.

11. Learnnovators: You argue that all the employees in an organization are experts at something, and should be encouraged to share their expertise. In your view, this isn’t just an expectation: it’s an obligation. Organizations whose people embrace collaboration will prosper, while those who don’t will be left behind. We totally agree with your view point. What is the role of L&D and the organization as a whole to embrace this culture of collaboration?

Ryan: I think the role of L&D is to drive the transition. We need to push back on the endless requests for training, and work closer with the business to design and deliver their own solutions that are more useful to them. The L&D department can’t do it all; beyond the sheer logistics, the Subject Matter Experts are the ones who know the content inside out, so they are the ones who must assume ownership of that space. The L&D professional is the L&D SME, so he or she brings that expertise to bear in partnership with the business SME.

The role of the organization is to foster a collaborative learning culture. This runs right through the employee lifecycle, from recruiting the right people who are willing to share their expertise with their colleagues, through to holding them accountable for doing so. And the onus is on the leaders to lead by example; they are the ones who set the norm.

12. Learnnovators: We believe the current education system was perfected for the needs of ‘industrialization’. What kind of a shift in thinking do you visualize for building a learning system that aligns with the dynamically changing demands of this knowledge age?

Ryan: I think we need to continue to informalize the learning process so that it can remain adaptable in the changing landscape. We can no longer assume that knowledge will remain static for long periods of time; it needs constant maintenance to keep current and relevant, and that requires everyone in the organization to pitch in.

Coinciding with this informalization of learning, however, we need to formalize assessment. If it doesn’t really matter where you learn something, so long as you know it and you can do it – that begs the question: what is it we expect our people to do? That’s what we need to assess them on. How we assess them is another story!

Learnnovators: Thank you so much for sharing your valuable insights and experiences, Ryan. It was wonderful interacting with you. We wish you the very best!