

Leading Learning Podcast
Tagoras
The market for continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning is large and evolving rapidly. Competition is growing and learners have more options than ever. The Leading Learning Podcast is for learning business professionals who want to thrive in this new landscape. In each episode, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele provide actionable insights based on their own deep experience and expertise or invite in experts and practitioners to share their perspectives.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 18, 2019 • 21min
191: The 4 Ps of Marketing of Marketing Your Learning Business
Here’s a question: how would you say most people define marketing? Our suspicion - based on a lot of experience - is that when most people think of marketing, they think of advertising, or other forms of promotion. But there's much more to marketing than promotion - and even promotion has more to it than many appreciate. In this episode, we cover the 4 Ps of marketing - product, pricing, place, and - yes - promotion. We consider each P in detail and, of course, each one applies in the context of a learning business. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode191. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

Jun 11, 2019 • 34min
190: Designing Smarter Learning Experiences with Connie Malamed
Connie Malamed – a learning experience design consultant and author of Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals – has been helping organizations create meaningful learning experiences for more than two decades. She’s also the publisher of The eLearning Coach Web site and podcast, where she shares actionable strategies, practical content, product reviews, and resources. She is truly passionate about helping others design, develop, and understand learning to improve performance and effectiveness. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Connie about the role of visual design in learning as well as the impact of cognitive load on learning, including it’s impact on collaborative learning. They also discuss tips for how to work well with subject matter experts and explore the idea of “curated courses.” Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode190. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

Jun 4, 2019 • 40min
189: Working the Nine Shift with Bill Draves of LERN
"In just twenty years, some 75% of our lives will change dramatically. We know this because it happened once before. Between 1900 and 1920 life changed." This is the premise behind, Nine Shift: Work, life, and education in the 21st century, a book that asserts 2020 is a pivotal year where we can officially recognize the transformational change that has occurred where nine hours in your day will be spent entirely differently than they were in 2000. As co-author of the book, William Graves is a respected thought leader, speaker, and true pioneer in the area of lifelong learning. And he currently serves as president of the Learning Resources Network (LERN), the largest association for lifelong learning and continuing education in the world. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Bill about key concepts from Nine Shift and how those have played out over the past two decades. They also discuss the role of learning businesses in the 21st century and the ways in which they are going to need to adapt and evolve in order to continue to meet the needs of learners. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode189. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

May 28, 2019 • 25min
188: Maximizing Learning with Mindset
Here’s a statement to consider: “You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.” Would you say you mostly agree or disagree? And how about this statement: “No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.” Do you mostly agree or mostly disagree? According to Dr. Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, your answers to questions like these can reveal a lot about you when it comes to learning—specifically, whether you possess a fixed or growth mindset. And because mindset impacts multiple levels of what we do as learning businesses, it’s an important concept to be aware of and understand. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff discuss the idea of mindset including Dweck’s research on the topic, how it affects us personally and the impact it has on learners and learning businesses. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode188. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

May 21, 2019 • 55min
187: Learning Out Loud with Michelle Ockers
Michelle Ockers is a learning and development strategist who firmly believes that everyone deserves the opportunity to learn and to unlock their full potential to perform at their best. While she’s based in Australia, the Learning Uncut podcast co-host helps leaders all over the world to build a high-impact L&D function through serving as a trusted mentor, facilitator, trainer, and speaker. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Michelle about personal knowledge management, Working Out Loud as an approach to learning, and what she’s learned hosting her own podcast. They also discuss what learning leaders need to think about when planning their own professional development as well as some of the major opportunities and threats facing learning businesses today. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode187. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

May 14, 2019 • 46min
186: Venturing into the EdTech Market with Ian Chiu
In recent years, there’s been a significant surge in the level of investment flowing into educational technology companies. And with no signs of this letting up in the near future, it’s an investment niche that’s critical to the market for lifelong learning. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Ian Chiu, managing director at Owl Ventures, one of the firms leading a wave of investment in educational technology companies. They talk about everything from the basics of venture capital, to successful business models in the current learning landscape. They also discuss trends that Ian sees shaping the future of edtech and lifelong learning. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode186. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

May 7, 2019 • 26min
185: Revisiting the Learning Revolution
It’s been a while since Jeff’s book, Leading the Learning Revolution: The Expert's Guide to Capitalizing on the Exploding Lifelong Education Market was published but the key concepts behind it remain highly relevant and are fundamental to running a successful learning business. That’s because the learning revolution is far from over, and in fact, it’s still unfolding. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff revisit the core concepts behind the book by exploring the why, the what, and the how of the learning revolution, including their ongoing relevance and continuing evolution. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode185. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

Apr 30, 2019 • 50min
184: A Generational – and Practical – View of Learning with Michelle Ryan
As a long trusted source of education for legal professionals, the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) is committed to providing high-quality continuing education opportunities to a diverse group of learners. And one of the leaders working to ensure this happens is LSO’s director of continuing professional development, Michelle Ryan. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Michelle about LSO’s learning portfolio and how the generational make-up of the learners they serve – and other key demographic factors – translate into what they offer and how those offerings have evolved in the past decade. They also discuss what LSO is doing to ensure their professional development opportunities offer both practicality and accessibility. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode184. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

Apr 23, 2019 • 45min
183: Making Conferences Learningful with Nancy Bacon and Mark Nilles
What do you get when you provide a learning experience that’s truly meaningful? According to this week’s guests on the podcast, Nancy Bacon and Mark Nilles, you create something “learningful”. And when it comes to creating impactful, “learningful” conferences, these two have teamed up to share what it takes in their recent e-book, Conferences That Make a Difference. Nancy is a teacher and instructional designer who has worked for over 20 years in the nonprofit sector. For the past five years, she’s led Washington Nonprofits’ learning program, and she currently serves as the associate director there. She also occasionally writes on adult learning through her blog at ChunkFlipGuideLaugh.com. Mark currently serves as the director of learning and impact at Humentum. His work has focused on developing evidence-based teaching and learning approaches for improved workplace performance. And his perspective is informed by years of training and capacity building for international development and humanitarian relief professionals around the world. In this episode of Leading Learning, Celisa talks with Nancy and Mark about key concepts from their new e-book, including the importance of a conference strategy, how and why to ensure presenters are prepared, and the need for reflection time—both for participants as well as for the internal team responsible for planning the event. They also discuss ways to support continued learning after the conference is over. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode183. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

Apr 21, 2019 • 24min
182: Reach, Revenue, and Impact
There are three goals at the heart of almost all learning businesses: reach, revenue, and impact. Reaching the right audience, generating revenue, and of course, making an impact. And getting each of these areas to work together is key to delivering value and achieving success. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff examine the flexible framework of reach, revenue, and impact. They discuss each area individually as well as the importance of achieving balance between the three and the collective impact they can have on your learning business. Full show notes are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode182. We are grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems. WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs. Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.