In her post, Anne-Marie Scott highlights the need to be thoughtful and deliberate about learning technology choices, recognizing that the market cannot always provide and explore the capability to innovate as a sector for specific needs. Anne-Marie recognizes the challenges like budget and resources associated with investing in learning technology development and proposes interesting options to consider.
I work in a provincial credit union, with about 500 employees; an environment different from Anne-Marie. In my role, I nurture a specific interest in fostering an ecosystem mindset where, as employees, teams, and an organization we see ourselves as part of a wider ecosystem that co-exists with a multitude of sub-ecosystems; recognize our individual and collective inter-connectedness; and acknowledge that new learning, value and potential lies both within and beyond existing boundaries. This approach has helped us leverage resources from a range of partner organizations in spite of our significant budget and resource constraints. Given this context, I found Anne-Marie’s argument that “we should be embracing as normal the notion of a wider ecosystem of learning technologies; a constellation of digital things, more or less loosely joined.”, deeply appealing.
Anne- Marie’s example of simulation activities as a piece of learning technology that is tied to course contexts and pedagogical outcomes, reminded me of a time in 2019 when informed by my prior work experience with using Virtual Reality for training welders; I wanted to develop a virtual walkthrough of a credit union’s member experience with simulations on how that experience can be made meaningful. The project did not gain approval and was put to bed as a concept. Revisiting my proposal in 2022, I am glad the project did not take off. Had we implemented that technology, it would have become obsolete in less than the time our credit union took to build and roll it out. I am still reflective on this, and trying to figure out what have I learned from this that will inform my future proposals.
One of the questions Anne-Marie raises resonated deeply with me, “Are there common development frameworks or components that we could adopt?” I see that as a great way of leveraging what is available and within reach within our wider ecosystem. It is resourceful and quick and could be leveraged with existing IT resources.
Reviewing the need for learning technology developers from my setting, a few questions emerged. How sustainable would this be? For example, in Chapter 2, Section 2.2 of The Future of Jobs Report 2020 published by the World Economic Forum, training and development specialists are seen as decreasing in demand while organizational development specialists are increasingly in demand. Most IT jobs are positioned to transition into cloud computing, engineering data, and AI-related jobs of the future. A relatively small portion is projected as transitioning into product development. How do we consider these projections given the current pace of change? When adopting an ecosystem approach, what could stop us from partnering to achieve shared goals? For example, while IT personnel may not have the required capabilities to develop learning products tied to program outcomes, a partnership between IT and Learning and Development teams can achieve just that. Another question that comes to my mind is how will adding specialists for learning technology development impact the IT team’s ability to learn, grow and adapt solutions to differing organizational contexts? How will developing and adding more learning products into the learning environment impact employee adaptability and synthetization skills? Are our current challenges met by adding more people resources or by enhancing the responsibilities and skill-sets of existing employees?
I am intrigued by Anne-Marie’s post, appreciate the recommendations, and can see the relevance from the context it is presented. I would recommend small to medium scale organizations consider questions specific to their context and make informed decisions.
Sharmila Vijayann