{"id":40577,"date":"2022-11-24T21:31:25","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T21:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/articles\/disruption-debate-with-stephen-walsh-content-curation\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T20:49:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T20:49:51","slug":"disruption-debate-with-stephen-walsh-content-curation","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/articles\/disruption-debate-with-stephen-walsh-content-curation\/","title":{"rendered":"Disruption Debate with Stephen Walsh: Content curation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/p>\n

Welcome to the fifth instalment of our new Disruption Debate series, where we speak to leading industry experts to discover more about disruption in the L&D industry. <\/em><\/p>\n

In this post, Lars Hyland speaks to Stephen Walsh. <\/em><\/p>\n

Stephen is a co-founder of\u00a0Anders Pink<\/a>, a content curation tool for learning, and is a well-known figure in the learning technologies industry.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tumultuous times<\/h3>\n

\u201cWe live in tumultuous times, and I think we can safely say that they\u2019re nowhere near over,\u201d said Stephen. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of political upheaval ahead, and we are having to adapt to more change than I can remember at any other time in my life. This is going to lead to a lot of disruption for the L&D industry to deal with, meaning we need to become smarter about the way we deal with this change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Stephen is right – in an age where AirBnB is catching up on traditional hotels and Ubers are even more popular than taxis in some cities, business models are totally changing, and businesses must be equipped with the skills and tools to keep up and avoid getting left behind. So what\u2019s the role of L&D in these times of change?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be about training people in a skill, then you\u2019d be set for life. Now, the half life and relevance of skills is deteriorating rapidly. Automation means that a huge number of jobs won\u2019t exist in a few years. Any work that can be put into a flowchart will disappear, and certain skills will evaporate and be replaced by machines. That\u2019s why organisations and individuals need to learn how to stay agile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staying agile in uncertain times<\/h3>\n

How are organisations meant to stay agile when none of us know what the future is going to look like? Stephen believes that creating endless e-learning courses focused on specific skills isn\u2019t the way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesigning formal learning experiences to train people in specific skills is no longer the best approach for L&D professionals to take – it\u2019s part of the solution, but doing only this is almost backward looking. Instead, it\u2019s our responsibility to help people develop the skills they need to find what\u2019s relevant and stay smart. The idea of \u2018learning how to learn\u2019 has been around for a while, but now it really means something.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what does this mean for L&D? Stephen believes that learning professionals need to become better at finding relevant content that already exists out in the world and make it mean something to learners. HR\u2019s main challenge is to adapt to a working environment more porous than ever before, and Stephen says that if we\u2019re not looking outside the organisation, absorbing the information available to us and acting on it quickly, we\u2019ll all get left behind. Occasionally someone may tweet an interesting link or drop a news story into an email, but how many people really see content shared in this way, and how do people know what to focus on if information is coming at them from all directions?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be integrating learning into the workflow,\u201d said Stephen, \u201cand giving that content context and relevance to ensure it\u2019s not just noise. L&D has the opportunity to be the heroes as content curators in this model – it\u2019s a massive job, but if L&D doesn\u2019t do it, who will?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Becoming discerners of learning<\/h3>\n

At the end of 2016, the rise of \u2018fake news\u2019 came to a head, with several key world figures speaking out against false stories designed to confuse, mislead or manipulate the media-consuming public. Fake news can easily sway people\u2019s views on important issues, highlighting the need for the critical thinking skills to discern what\u2019s real and what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlgorithms, such as those that drive Facebook and Twitter, can help us find and filter content, but they can\u2019t do it on their own,\u201d said Stephen. \u201cBut we still need humans to curate, add context and add value to this content – you can\u2019t automate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same applies to our learning. We can create an algorithm to push relevant content to our learners, but this may not always be 100% successful – it\u2019s important that our learners know how to tell which content is irrelevant to avoid getting distracted.<\/p>\n

Be part of the learning community<\/h3>\n

Stephen believes that being an active member of the learning community is essential if we are to stay agile and smart. We often tell our learners to practise social learning, but as Stephen puts it, L&D professionals need to \u2018attend to their own oxygen masks first\u2019. This means practising what we preach by being social learners ourselves, and by using our own community as a test case to find out what works in the way of social learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of altruism in the L&D community,\u201d said Stephen. \u201cPeople are very helpful to each other. There\u2019s a good culture in this industry, but this doesn\u2019t mean people are always sharing what they know efficiently. The help is there if you know where to ask, but not everyone does.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the most recent Towards Maturity Benchmark Report, 53% of organisations reported that social and collaborative learning is the number one skill missing from their learning programmes. This change starts with us – we as L&D professionals are working towards a common goal, so it\u2019s up to us to find the specific tools and systems to support social learning among ourselves to ensure it\u2019s right for the learners in our individual organisations. Once our own community is in the social learning mindset, we can impart our knowledge onto our learners for the best results.<\/p>\n

How to stay sharp and relevant<\/h3>\n

We wanted to know Stephen\u2019s top tip for organisations looking to keep their learning relevant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest risk to organisations is not staying sharp or failing to adapt to the new skillsets they \u00a0need. It\u2019s L&D\u2019s responsibility to help the organisation stay agile by helping choose the right tools and methods to help people stay smart in each situation. L&D needs to bring relevant content from the outside world into the organisation, and help learners understand how to make sense of this information. We should also be outward looking – don\u2019t totally let go of formal learning, but do look outside and act as a filter for the content entering the organisation to ensure it\u2019s accessed efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen also believes in the power of open source to help today\u2019s organisations stay ahead. \u201cOpen source is an important part of opening up the ownership model of business today,\u201d said Stephen. \u201cIt\u2019s about what you bring to the table now. Learning must be portable and visible to anyone you work with, which is where open source software comes into play as validation for our previous learning progress can be carried with us from company to company. This lets us hit the ground running in any role, and helps managers ensure that all the content we consume is as relevant and useful as possible. This is only going to become more important as the speed of business change accelerates.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to follow Stephen Walsh on Twitter at\u00a0@stephentwalsh<\/a>, or keep up to date with the latest Anders Pink developments at\u00a0@AndersPink<\/a>. Follow us at\u00a0@totaralearning<\/a>\u00a0to be the first to hear about the next instalment of our Disruption Debate series.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"template":"","tax\/tags":[],"tax\/solutions":[],"tax\/topics":[],"tax\/industries":[],"tax\/article-types":[1021],"class_list":["post-40577","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/40577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/tags?post=40577"},{"taxonomy":"solution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/solutions?post=40577"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/topics?post=40577"},{"taxonomy":"industry-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/industries?post=40577"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/article-types?post=40577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}