Drawing Conclusions from LSCon 2015
TruScribe attends many training & development trade shows like LSCon throughout the year in order to connect with learning professionals and better understand trends in corporate learning and communication. Learning Solutions is an annual convention run by the eLearning Guild. Out of all of their conventions this one focuses the most on the design and delivery of content as well as enhancing training and performance.
“LMS” is a 4-letter Word.
It’s not just about people being frustrated with their training platform, because frankly, we’re all frustrated with the software we use in one fashion or another. This frustration is deeper and here are a couple of examples of what we mean. First was the sheer number of new solutions that work with, but outside, the LMS ecosystem. HappyYak is an example of a tool for making video interactive and trackable, but it’s LMS agnostic. It works with the major LMSs, but independently to add missing functionality. This experience echoed something that Elliot Masie shared at an event in February about how LMSs are struggling to push forward on how to handle video. The market for add-on systems is growing – it’s not waiting for your LMS to evolve.
The other sign of LMS fatigue are solutions that have the capabilities to function as an LMS, but don’t market themselves as an LMS. Degreed is a company that focuses on content and facilitating informal learning in an interactivity and analytical environment. Sounds like an LMS to me, but they prefer “Enterprise Learning Portal.” This may simply be a way to differentiate themselves by using different terminology, but it also shows that professionals like yourself are looking for something to augment the current “LMS” model.
Tom Wujec Keynote – The Importance of Creativity
Tom Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk, a leader in 3D Design, at the center of 3D printing. While 3D printing is cool, the relevancy to training seems thin.
Wujec illustrated how Moore’s law (doubling of the number of transistors in an integrated circuit every 2 years) by stating that in 2005 we produced more individual transistors than we harvested grains of rice, on our planet…at a lower cost. Your average smart phone today contains 1 billion transistors. These transistors are computing power and they are primarily being used in sensors, computers, and fabricators. Sensors read and model (or RIP) the world around us, the computers allow us to modify (or MOD) those models, and fabricators let us recreate (or FAB) those models using 3D printing in hundreds of different materials. The ability to RIP-MOD-FAB is an example of how the future of computing will allow a whole new level of problem solving.
Not only is the creation of more advanced technology occurring more quickly, our adoption of the technology is faster and faster. Where it took 3 generations for the telephone to be adopted, 1 generation for radio and refrigeration, and 20 years for the cell phone, tablets have been nearly instantaneous.
Wujec suggests that our training needs to focus on working alongside technologies to solve problems and augment our own creativity. There should also be a focus on training skills like empathy and collaboration, places computers can’t learn…yet.
You can watch a shorter version of Tom Wujec’s presentation on the Future of Design here
And you can watch his video regarding how to make toast here