Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

For those of you who have heard of LinkedIn Learning or maybe even taken a course, you may be wondering whether there’s really a need for yet another content provider. However, when you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that LinkedIn has done a lot more than build an ocean of content. You’ll see how they’ve connected learners professional experience and skills to content that can enable their continued growth while providing organizations with the critical data required to ignite their talent strategy. However, to do this, we have to think beyond the silo of corporate learning. We have to integrate with the broader talent strategy and ensure we’re seamlessly aligned. You’ll hear all this and more on when you listen to this episode of Learning Tech Talks where I chat with James Raybould from LinkedIn to learn more about the journey they’ve been on and discover what makes their solution unique.

Whether you’ve historically been for or against #virtual #learning, it’s a reality everyone has had to embrace amidst the #coronavirus pandemic. For some, it was business as usual or a relatively seamless transition. For others, it’s been an overwhelming and painful challenge, leaving learning professionals frustrated and learners disengaged. And, just because a lot of what’s been done in the past is bad doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. In this episode I’m joined by Bob Kulhan and Josh Pryor from Business Improv to share our experiences in doing virtual learning well. And, whether you’ve been doing virtual well for a while or are just getting started you’ll find something that will help take your virtual offerings from ordinary to extraordinary.

A lot of things have changed in Snagit and Camtasia since I was first introduced to it during my youthful days as an instructional designer, and it’s been interesting to watch the products evolve and the features advance over the years. They remain laser focused on improving visual communications and making it easy for users. And, despite the massive growth and transformation technology has made, tools like these remain a staple on the laptops of instructional designers and business professionals alike. Check out my conversation with Wendy Hamilton to learn more about what TechSmith is up to and how they’re diligently working to help the world communicate clearly while remaining laser focused on delivering an outstanding customer experience.

Reinforcing existing #learning, maximizing the reach of compliance training, strategically streamlining onboarding content, and improving the way you develop your salesforce are challenges anyone in Learning & Development should be familiar with. In a world where so many others are pushing to solve these problems with HD #video, massive content libraries, or complex #ai based technologies, could text messaging actually be the simple innovation you need to solve the problems you’re trying to solve? That’s for you to decide, but you can learn more about whether it might be just the solution you need in this episode where I bring back Michael Ioffe to learn more about the journey he and the Arist team have been on over the past few months and find out more about where they are today.

For as long as many of us can remember, you take a test at the end of a lesson or class to validate and solidify the learning. However, what if science revealed that we should actually move it to the front? The brain is a fascinating and complicated organ that is involved in every one of our functions, including learning. Unfortunately, the complexity can make it difficult for us to truly understand why things work the way they do, especially since what seems intuitive isn’t necessarily accurate. In this episode, Charles Smith shares the latest in cognitive science and highlights a number of counterintuitive lessons about the way people learn. We also take a closer look at how Amplifire is taking those science lessons and applying them to their adaptive learning platform that not only delivers a unique learner experience but provides data and analytics that gives us unprecedented information about our employees.

Creating visual stories that breaks down complex concepts and information into simple, easy-to-follow videos can’t be done by just anyone, right? Or can it? In this episode we’re talking about how today’s technology is enabling individuals to take complex information and concepts and break them into simple, digestible stories your employees will watch. How is that possible? Well, when you combine a repeatable, guided system that guides your expert through the process and combine that with artificial intelligence that analyzes the narrative and automatically chooses and times visuals that tell a compelling story, you have a tool that can rapidly create content that keeps up with the pace of work. Listen as I chat with Paul Meyers and Aaron Alpert shared more about how SimpleShow got its start and how they’re using their expertise and technology to make your life easier.

Overnight our world was turned on it’s head. For many organizations, work has been completely disrupted. The same holds true for many employees in their professional and personal, lives dramatically impacting their emotional state and professional capacity. When chaos like this happens, it’s easy for panic to set in resulting in organizations and leaders scrambling for bandaids at the expense of strategically solving big issues. The reality is, on the other side of this global event is an entirely new normal that every organization needs to be preparing for, and at the core of that new normal are the employees that make our organizations work. Listen into this special episode of Learning Tech Talks when I talk with Matt Burns from Bento HR to talk about how #learning and #hr can better work together to strategically plan for what this new normal will look like in our organizations and how we can proactively prepare for it.

Unless your leaders are deeply steeped in the latest research and learning tech trends, informing them you’re going to change the way you deliver content to be more adaptive is going to do more than raise some eyebrows. The word ‘adaptive’ will mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And, how will they react when they realize that people won’t necessarily all be exposed to the same content? These are just a few of the important considerations you need to make before embarking on this type of transformation. And, even after you start your journey, there will be plenty of challenges ahead as you bring the organization along for the change. In this episode I talk with Nick Howe and Joe Barrow about what to expect when introducing the concept of adaptive learning to your organization and how Area9 Lyceum can help tell that story. After all, while the concept is great and the capability is powerful, you’re going to have to sell it to your organization long before you implement a platform.

It’s been a common practice for years. Recently, it’s even made major headlines. As organizations seek to improve diversity and reduce bias, learning programs and initiatives are frequently at the forefront. Logically, creating awareness about our biases results in a change in behavior and ultimately a better outcome, right? Well, logic and data don’t always match up. In fact, is it possible our efforts may actually be contributing to the problem? In this episode I talk with Dani Johnson from RedThread Research about the research that addresses the truth about Diversity and Unconscious Bias training. Listen in to hear what the research is showing and what steps you can take to effectively improve D&I in your organization.

We’ve all seen a catchy animated video at some point that grabbed our attention. It’s a nice break from the shaky selfie video or stuffy, corporate talking head stuff. You may have even paid to have one made for you because you thought it’d be too difficult or expensive to build in-house. Well, I don’t believe engaging animated videos should be limited to organizations and individuals with big budgets or intense technical skills, and neither does Vyond. They’re on a mission to democratize animated videos and transform the way we communicate through video with a dash of fun. This week I’m talking with Stacy Adams from Vyond (Formerly GoAnimate) about their cloud solution that’s making engaging animated video a reality for individuals and organizations alike. Whether you are looking for sketch animation, animation, or a combination of the two, they’ve got you covered.