CHAPTER 15

We Need It Personalized, Accurate, and NOW!

Lisa MD Owens and Crystal Kadakia

The term modern learner seems to pop up everywhere. But who is the modern learner, what do they want, and how do they affect talent development professionals and their work?

When we hear about today’s employees’ desires for development opportunities, some wonder how and why we should cater to their demands. L&D is frequently overwhelmed by simply managing learning topics that are deemed mandatory for the organization—from onboarding to compliance. We know that the world around us has changed exponentially. Now is the time for L&D to radically change our training basics—how we design and deliver learning—so we can better meet the needs of the people and businesses we serve. With the explosion of new evidence about the science of learning and how the brain works, as well as the (overwhelming) profusion of digital tools, L&D is primed to make a gigantic leap to deliver learning products that drive change in employee productivity and skills in the workplace.

How do we in L&D do this without adding more to our already full plates? We go beyond webinars, computer-based e-learning, and blended learning. We go beyond creating one excellent learning pathway for each skills gap that needs to be closed. We start delivering contextual bites of learning in and out of the flow of work as different learner personas face their five moments of learning need. And, we upskill ourselves and set new goals based on newer learning design models, such as focusing on user experience or delivering learning clusters.

That’s a mouthful! Let’s break it down so you can be part of the growing movement of today’s L&D organizations who are vital to business and employee success. First, let’s define the modern learner.

Who Is the Modern Learner?

Based on work by Jane Hart, Josh Bersin, and others, we define a modern learner as someone who needs to learn fast in an ever-changing environment and will access a wide variety of resources to get answers.

Modern does not just mean millennials or Gen Z. Modern learners are defined both by their external environment and by their approach to learning. It’s anyone in a job where things change quickly. And, especially since 2020, that seems to be all businesses. A modern learner is also someone who proactively seeks continuous learning through the best means for the challenge at hand. Because it is shaping up to be driven by the context and the learner, modern learning does not just mean introducing flashy new tools or following standard, fixed rules for every design (for example, “Everything must be micro!”).

Modern learners need something fundamentally different from what L&D has normally provided, in part because of how many things have shifted in recent years—from the type of work being done to where and how it gets delivered. Time pressures have increased to grow capability, and the access to a wide variety of technology at home has increased demands for more options in the workplace, making it easier to meet learners where they are at work.

But it’s not just generations or employees who are changing their expectations. The shifts in business have driven higher demands on employees (Figure 15-1). The pace of change has increased, as have the demands to work remotely, even globally, while fostering soft skills that build teamwork. The shifts in workplace demographics mean that employees, managers, and leaders have to learn more about one another’s generational differences before they can effectively transfer their knowledge to others on the team or in the organization. And that flow of information is not a one-way street from older to younger; it’s also going from younger to older. Add to all this that every job has become less hands-on and more digitally enhanced. We see it everywhere from Napa Valley vineyards, where field workers use electronic systems to manage the harvest, to the doctor’s offices where physicians record our vitals on a laptop instead of a paper chart.

These shifts have driven leaders to change their business strategy to survive. L&D must shift too, or risk becoming the proverbial leader running after their group yelling, “Hey! Wait for me!”

Given these shifts, employees need a wider range of learning assets that offer a “both/and” approach so that they can learn and do their jobs (Figure 15-2). It’s not as trivial as L&D simply meeting changing expectations; these pressures call for a fundamental shift.

Today’s L&D offers choices so employees, managers, and leaders can learn at the speed of business change. Rather than sticking to a formula or their standard go-to toolkit, today’s L&D professionals must consider and change their design strategy for each learning challenge. Let’s take a look at three methods for modernizing L&D.

The Five Moments of Learning Need

In 2011, Bob Mosher and Conrad Gottfredson elevated and brought attention to the amount of learning that happens after employees leave the classroom or complete a program. Although other models and frameworks, such as CCL’s 70-20-10, look at informal learning delivery methods, Mosher and Gottfredson put their focus on when and why learners learn outside the classroom. They looked into what they called “informal intentional” learning as well as “unplanned informal” learning, and ultimately delineated the five most common situations in which employees need to learn. They termed this the “Five Moments of Learning Need” (Figure 15-3).

Rather than locking L&D into particular delivery methods, these five moments empower L&D to thoughtfully consider what situations might arise for a particular capability and then strategically choose the best way to meet the learner with learning material. In addition, this model helps give equal importance and weight to formal program design and what is provided afterward, both formal and informal. Whereas in the past L&D focused primarily on the “new” moment of learning need by elevating the importance of learner context, Mosher and Gottfredson helped empower a fundamental shift toward a more modern “learning in the flow of work” approach.

Nine Elements of Modern Learning

Even if L&D has followed all the prescriptions for modern learning, you may still hear negative feedback. Rather than including prescriptions, we suggest including nine elements or characteristics in a training program to make it feel better to participants. The elements are accessible, autonomous, chunked, current, experiential, “for me,” hyperlinked, MVAK (multimedia/visual/auditory/kinesthetic), and social. L&D professionals can determine how to include these elements based on their learner research. You will find the upgrade tool on this handbook’s website at ATDHandbook3.org.

These nine elements, based on Jane Hart’s work, reflect the modern learner’s need for personalization, up-to-date content, and the now of training delivery. By focusing on characteristics, rather than being prescriptive, they leave room for flexibility as new technologies are introduced. In addition, more traditional methods can be included, while still creating strong modern learning designs.

In L&D, we often think we have to add lots of technology to keep the training engaging. We all agree that technology-enhanced training is intrinsically more interesting. But in truth, even an old-school live training program or a training manual that is chunked, accessible, social, and personalized “for me” can be a big winner.

On the other hand, simply building a learning program around the latest technology can flop if the program lacks those same elements. For example, some designers have tried chatbots, only to fail. They may blame culture as the downfall, but a deeper dive can reveal other missing components. One might think a chatbot is, by definition, “for me” because it responds to the learner’s comments. But is it really? Or is it simply delivering a predetermined set of branching options that don’t meet the learner’s needs? Or does the learner have to go to a different platform to engage with the chatbot? That would make it difficult to access in the flow of work. As with any training design, it’s always best to do early testing on small parts of a new, digitally enhanced learning program to find out how your learners will respond.

The Learning Cluster Design Model

Building on the latest neuroscience and work like Mosher and Gottfredson’s, the Learning Cluster Design (LCD) model was developed to address the shifts that are pushing L&D from a traditional approach into the digital age. While learning design models focus on designing excellent training, most assume that the goal is to design a single deliverable—be it a class, course, set of videos, e-learning program, or learning path. But modern learners and our businesses need more. Learning happens in a variety of ways, times, and places related to a particular need and based on learner choice in the moment.

The LCD model posits a new modern learning goal for L&D: to focus on making a difference back on the job through a new deliverable—a learning cluster (Figure 15-4). A learning cluster is a set of learning assets, selected with the business need and various learner personas in mind, that span the five moments of learning need. Rather than focusing on delivering and guaranteeing performance at the end of a single program, the model enables L&D to look at how a collection of learning assets can, together, contribute to performance where it counts—on the job.

It also comprises five Actions that L&D—not managers, IT, or recruiting—is best suited to do based on its expertise in how learning happens. The LCD model is nonlinear, and L&D practitioners can start at any Action, based on each unique situation.

The Actions create a memorable mnemonic: CLUSTER. Here’s a brief overview of each:

•  Change on-the-job behavior. The Change Action sets the goal for the learning cluster (called a strategic performance objective). This goal articulates the connection between learners’ on-the-job performance and the desired business results. This is one of three early Actions leading to the Surround Action.

•  Learn learner-to-learner differences. The Learn Action identifies learner personas within the target learner group whose behavior change will have the greatest effect on the desired business impact. Persona definitions go beyond demographics and job type to explore contexts of when, where, and how each persona will most likely need to learn. This Action guides strategic choices in the Surround Action.

•  Upgrade existing assets. The Upgrade Action applies the nine elements of modern learning to quickly improve current programs. As a bonus, the ideas for new learning assets identified here will jump-start the work in the Surround Action.

•  Surround learners with meaningful assets. The Surround Action combines the work and insights from the other Actions to intentionally select social, formal, or immediate learning assets to build a learning cluster that meets the needs of each learner persona. Taken together, these learning assets should deliver both the desired behavior change on the job and the related business results.

•  Track transformation of everyone’s results (TER). The Track Action identifies those measures—qualitative and quantitative—that will indicate the impact of the learning cluster. Then it tracks these measures and turns the results into a story about the impact of learning. Use the results for further improvements.

Three Needs for Business and Learners

Let’s take a closer look at personalization, up-to-date content, and the now of training delivery—the three needs for business and learners.

Personalized Training

Customization and personalization of training comes in many forms, but all center on being driven by learner choice—not L&D or SME wants and needs. David Rock, in The Brain at Work, described how to create a “towards” response from an individual by using the SCARF model to ensure that status, certainty, autonomy, respect, and fairness are included in the approach. Learner choice is all about building a sense of autonomy, creating magnetic learning experiences that draw the learner in and invite usage.

There are options for both complex and simple personalization, and you can improve personalization based on two compatible approaches: learner personas and social, formal, and immediate (SFI) learning touchpoints.

Simple or Complex Personalization

Customization and personalization can be simple or complex. For example, a more complex type of personalization may use artificial intelligence technologies to monitor what an employee is doing and offer up learning assets that can improve their performance. For this type of personalization, we suggest you talk with several software providers and run a trial on a small, but real project. These technologies are changing daily, so referrals, supplier interviews, and online reviews are your best bet for finding something that will work for you.

On the simpler side, personalization might be a personal invitation or nomination to participate in a learning program. Often, customizing can be as simple as giving learners a choice of what and how they want to learn, with some guidance on where to start to ensure learners are not overwhelmed.

Learner Personas

Typically, we define learners as a group, such as first-time managers. However, within that large group are several smaller subsets of people who have distinct differences based on things that go beyond demographics. There are many different approaches to developing learner personas. For example, the LCD model suggests that L&D consider these differences when developing three to five learner personas that then connect directly to the design of the learning cluster:

•  Learning need differences (for example, loves to learn or not, is self-aware, or knows how to learn)

•  Performance gap differences for the topic being taught

•  Life-at-work differences (such as location, when they need to learn, time constraints on learning, and the availability of mentors or in-the-moment cohort coaches)

•  Differences in their five moments of learning need

You can find the Learn Learner-to-Learner Differences Tool from the LCD model on the handbook website (ATDHandbook3.org). No matter the approach we use, by digging a bit deeper to better understand our learners, we can uncover what will truly help them change their behavior in the workplace so that they perform better, developing and growing on the way.

As you dig deeper to better understand your learners, consider how different learner personas will react when faced with their moments of learning need. Where will they be physically located when they learn the first time (new) or when they have to apply what they learned? What resources will they have on hand to solve a problem? How much time will they have to solve that problem or to learn more? Different groups need different things—by providing for their needs, people at your company will feel supported in their personal development.

Three Learning Touchpoints

Marketing managers look for touchpoints where, when, and how they can be visible to and reach customers. The LCD model reapplies this approach to L&D and identifies three learning touchpoints. Similar to the CCL 70-20-10 framework, LCD surrounds people with useful learning assets that support their learning: social, formal, and immediate.

•  A social learning touchpoint involves other people and can range from training with others face-to-face to simply getting the opinions of others via the comments section on a social media platform. Learners are looking for anything from validation of content truthfulness or applicability to inspiration from others.

•  A formal learning touchpoint is defined as something with a start and a finish, and for which L&D could provide a certificate upon completion if desired. This formal touchpoint tends to cover 90 percent or more of the products produced by today’s L&D organizations. We hope to see that number change as L&D modernizes and provides learners with a broader range of learning assets that tap the social and immediate learning touchpoints.

•  The immediate learning touchpoint is defined as a learning asset that is available 24/7 (or whenever in the workplace) without extensive searching. Typically, immediate learning assets include online jobs aids, wikis, searchable databases, active discussion boards, and e-learning programs that are both bite size and menu driven.

A unique concept in the LCD model is to create a strong tie between learner personas and the learning assets L&D chooses across the three learning touchpoints. The Venn diagram template gives a quick overview of the set of learning assets and the learner persona each asset will best serve (Figure 15-5). It’s common for learning assets to fall into two of the three touchpoints. For example, a self-study online course is a formal learning asset, and, in this case, was designed to be chunked and menu driven so it could serve as a post-course job aid immediately. What learners find helpful is to have choices to meet their learning needs, using social, formal, and immediate learning touchpoints. You can find the Surround Learners With Meaningful Assets Tool from the LCD model at ATDHandbook3.org.

Staying Up-to-Date and Accurate

Keeping our training material up to date is not easy. Some L&D organizations schedule regular yearly or biannual reviews of programs. Others count on the training facilitators or an owner or a team to decide when a learning asset needs updates. Still others wait until learner ratings dip too low, and then rejuvenate the program.

However, these approaches all require L&D staff to be experts in the topic being trained. L&D is not always the expert, especially on technical topics and the capability to develop and maintain modern learning. Rather than doing it yourself, use approaches such as reusing, building an update infrastructure, crowdsourcing, and self-sourcing.

Reusing

Reusing takes advantage of each class to update materials. For example, SME instructors could update the materials as they prepare for the next delivery session. Or you could use the output from activities and exercises—have learners highlight out-of-date screenshots and instructions and give badges or awards to those who find them. Don’t worry that out-of-date materials look bad; we all know how fast things change and most employees like to fix problems for the good of all. Another example is to use an open-ended activity where learners discuss issues from their day-to-day work and apply what they’ve learned. This can also provide material for case studies in future courses.

Developing an Update Infrastructure

Don’t forget to take a look at your internal L&D processes. Do you have an avenue for feedback for the learning assets you put out there? A major telecommunications company we interviewed told us how they built a system of SMEs throughout the organization who were given a direct line to the L&D training team. People in the organization knew their training-connected SME contact and would feed all the change data to that SME, who then fed it to L&D. That’s a strong update infrastructure.

Crowdsourcing

Are you still taking responsibility for developing all the content at your organization, only to find employees using external resources from an internet search? Crowdsourcing means working with the resources available, rather than inventing from scratch. When designing content or learning assets, explore what employees are already commonly referencing. If possible (within legal constraints or through purchasing), include these assets in your design. Another infrastructure approach is to internally crowdsource. Many organizations have internal informal experts and thought leaders that are underutilized. Social community platforms like Slack or Teams can help identify these experts as well as more formal means like establishing communities of practice. These experts are great for L&D to collaborate with to keep assets up to date. Develop a list of these informal experts as a go-to resource for your L&D team.

Self-Sourcing

An evolving system is to seek out people within the company who want to do more. There are always people who are temporarily underutilized who want to expand their network or continue to hone some skills. Tapping these people to monitor the current state of content—even if it is only to review the crowdsourced comments—is a boon to L&D staff and helps keep employees more fully engaged. There are also those who have strengths that can be beneficial for L&D to collaborate with. For example, marketing and communications talents can help build a newsletter or share communication ideas. IT can help develop searchability and accessibility solutions. Sometimes, individuals in these spaces are passionate and interested in using their talents in another avenue.

The key is that it is no longer normal or feasible to keep everything up to date without engaging others. What’s counterintuitive is that the more people we engage in our learning work, the more others in the company appreciate what L&D offers.

Deliver NOW! Deliver More, Faster

With the new goal of modern learning shifting from delivering just a single class or course to delivering multiple learning assets or a learning cluster, you might be wondering how to keep up. Delivering more, faster has several angles. First, the business wants L&D to start delivering learning assets quickly when a need arises and to deliver more with less (that is, less staff and less budget). Second, when the moment of learning need arises, people want some learning assets to be available to them immediately, because they may not have time to wait for a class to be offered.

Deliver Learning Assets Sooner

If you have a great training program sitting on a shelf that meets the current business need, but is feeling a bit dated, don’t throw it out! While a single learning asset, such as a course, is not the only thing learners need, you’ll get a quick start by modernizing an existing asset. Although we have a lot of methods to design and deliver learning, we often struggle with a consistent approach to upgrade training initiatives fast. One solution is to look for ways to add two or three of the Nine Elements of Modern Learning to make it more interesting. (Do not add all nine elements—that would be overkill.) You can learn more about this process by referring to the LCD model.

A second idea is to construct a roll-out plan. Surround learners with multiple learning assets that will help them in the five moments of learning need. Determine which assets are a priority to deploy now and which can come later. Leadership will be pleased to see various learning assets rolling out over a planned schedule. Further, L&D, business leaders, and learners have greater confidence in the results because the learning is supported over time both in and out of the flow of work.

Deliver More to Solve for the Business Pain

The Change and Track Actions in the LCD model help L&D deliver more for the business and, ultimately, the employees. The Change Action starts with focusing on the desired end result in the workplace. The learning objectives for each learning asset seek to aid in delivering that workplace behavior change. The desired change is captured in the form of a strategic performance objective (SPO), which takes a form similar to Figure 15-6.

The key to success is to have in-depth discussions to discover the behavior change that is desired on the job. Often, people think they know what they want to see, but an L&D professional with good interviewing skills can uncover the real underlying issues and needed changes. This goes beyond defining knowing something or being able to do something. This approach drives doing something different in the workplace, and the multiple learning assets at each of the Five Moments of Learning Need support the modern learner as they develop. The difference on the job is what the business cares about the most, and by keeping our focus there, we orient our designs appropriately. You can find the Change On-the-Job Behavior Tool from the LCD model at ATDHandbook3.org.

Deliver More for Learners

Learners face two big issues: The lack of time for training and learning, and the need for learning now when the moment strikes.

So many learners say they don’t have time for training. One way to help them is to provide learning assets at the immediate learning touchpoint. Usually this means providing learning assets online in a place that is easy to find or search. Content is often chunked based on learners’ most common moments of learning need on the job. This goes beyond formal learning assets and supports self-learning and learning in the moment of need. A nice shortcut is to take a formal e-learning program, chunk it, and use a menu-driven format with descriptive titles to help learners get to the one or two screens that they need right now.

Another way to help learners deal with their lack of time to learn is to make formal learning shorter. This doesn’t mean to succumb to the pressure to take the wonderful one-day class and make it half a day. Instead, it involves reorganizing the content so that learners get only what they need. In other words, let’s stop teaching them what they already know. We have to identify what 80 percent of the learners already know, cut that content out of the program, and provide an alternate means for the 20 percent to learn it ahead of time. Inevitably, this leads to a great strategy for chunking content for the learners. We might think of this content as remedial training, but in truth, it’s a form of personalization that respects differences in experiences and knowledge. Be aware that within a single target audience, different groups of people will fall into that 20 percent category for different parts of the content.

Final Thoughts

Use the concepts in this chapter to make the fundamental shift toward modern learning design. Rather than a piecemeal approach, use them to help you build a comprehensive learning strategy that meets business and learner needs for a given learning gap. While the norm is to jump from new trend to new trend by considering and adopting a new thought process to designing learning, you will be prepared with a sustainable approach that gets you results for the future.

About the Authors

Lisa MD Owens is a learning expert who combines her engineering mindset with a deep interest in instructional design and learning sciences to create training that moves businesses forward. She is co-author of Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM and the Learners as Teachers Action Guide. Her writing is based on new research, and her experience as president of Training Design Strategies, as well as serving as the dean of learning sciences emeritus at Procter & Gamble.

Crystal Kadakia is the leader of the LCD Group, as well as an independent organization development practitioner. The LCD Group offers workshops to upskill L&D on the LCD model and also consults on L&D initiatives. She is co-author of Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM and the author of The Millennial Myth: Transforming Misunderstanding Into Workplace Breakthroughs. She spends most of her time as a consultant and speaker, helping organizations make sense of and determine strategy for complex changes related to culture and talent. She has a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and a master’s in organization development.

References

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Davis, J., M. Balda, D. Rock, P. McGinniss, and L. Davachi. 2014. “The Science of Making Learning Stick: An Update to the AGES Model.” NeuroLeadership Institute, August 15. neuro leadership.com/portfolio-items/the-science-of-making-learning-stick-an-update-to-the-ages-model.

Degreed and Harvard Business Publishing. 2019. “How the Workforce Learns.” Degreed and Harvard Business Publishing. get.degreed.com/hubfs/HowWorkforceLearns2019_final.pdf.

Deloitte. 2017. “Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends: Rewriting the Rules for the Digital Age.” Deloitte. deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/central-europe/ce-global-human-capital-trends.pdf.

Greany, K. 2018. “Profile of a Modern Learner [Infographic].” Elucidat, August 15. elucidat.com/blog/modern-learner-profile-infographic.

Kadakia, C., and L. Owens. 2020. Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.

Mosher, B., and C. Gottfredson. 2011. Innovative Performance Support: Strategies and Practices for Learning in the Workflow. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Mosher, B., and C. Gottfredson. 2012. “Are You Meeting All Five Moments of Learning Need?” Learning Solutions, June 18. learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/949/are-you-meeting-all-five-moments-of-learning-need.

Recommended Resources

Kadakia, C., and L. Owens. 2020. Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.

Learning Cluster Design Group. “Learning Cluster Design Model.” Blog. learningcluster design.com/blog.

Mosher, B., and C. Gottfredson. 2011. Innovative Performance Support: Strategies and Practices for Learning in the Workflow. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Williams, K.B. 2019. “Learner Personas: Beyond Demographics.” TD at Work. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.