Shifting design thinking to true workplace learning

Over the past year I have been helping people make a huge paradigm shift from delivering learning in web portals and through other singular delivery channels to a more blended approach to learning design and delivery. While doing this conversion I have been struck by the level of repetition within learning programs and the embracing of whatever trend or fad seemed to have popped up on the usual national industry sites for that year. It was almost like looking through the strata of earth to see each major shift in learning design. The one enduring thing about the learning I've seen though is the consistent misstep of applying pedagogy instead of androgogy to learning design and delivery.

Most people, including our clients, remember learning as 'school'; whichever level they last completed. This means that most of our clients remember going to college or university, sitting through lectures with slides, textbooks, and what seemed like trick tests. Now add to that the ID's desire to make the learning 'fun' and the inundation of the tool and media people to use the latest and greatest gadget or delivery mechanism. What do you get? Well, what I saw was a well-intentioned and repetitive content dump or overly simplified activity set that missed the mark of what workplace learning is.

Workplace learning is not about 'sheep dip' or 'death by Power Point' (sorry Microsoft) or 'fun and games'. Workplace learning is about knowing who your learner is, where they are working every day, and what they have to work with to complete their tasks and meet their goals. It doesn't mean individualized learning for every person in the company or not blending a variety of tools, methods and activities to provide variety to the learning; but it also doesn't mean building for the sake of building either.

To really make the shift from what you remember learning was to what workplace learning really is, you need to build a profile of your learner. I've seen (and used) Empathy maps (Dave Gray has a great one), character profiles, 'day in the life' narratives and other tools. Building and seeing these first allows you, the learning professional, to connect with the target audience. It also allows the learning to be protected from the enthusiasm of the subject matter expert's desire to teach the learner everything, and allows the business to see the value in application of the learning.

Building a profile of how the worker gets to work and what their goals are in doing their job also allows you as the learning professional to get a sense of how much time and what priorities drive everyday decisions. I have built training for forklift drivers, sales professionals, high school principals and leaders of giant companies. I don't know how to do those jobs, but as a learning professional, knowing how they do those jobs, what kind of time they have, and what helps and hurts their accomplishments helps me choose the delivery method, quantity and variety of learning that I choose to build. It also helps me help my sponsor (the management or other group actually paying for the learning) understand how to situate the new task or concept that the learning is supposed to deliver. 

So is what you remember about high school or college or university wrong in the way that it taught you? I don't know. What I do know though is that my working experience was nothing like any of those (even when I taught in a college!) so the way you learn can't be either.