There is a fundamental way of learning that we often seem to overlook; it’s called research. I remember the first research I did as a student for our national weather service, the KNMI. We conducted serious evaluation research around one of the important internal courses they did those days.
Not only did I learn a lot about learning evaluation, but I also discovered a lot about how all the dynamics within an organisation could influence learning results. It made me rethink my ambitions of becoming a learning designer and helped me adjust my learning journey in a rather fundamental way. I think that piece of research was a very important one for the rest of my career. There is so much practical research out there that could help us if we just put in the effort to study the results. And we can do more ourselves.
I’m happy that over the last months, I’ve been engaged in the setup and organisation of a practical research project. This was done along with our client Bohn Stafleu van Loghum (BSL) and supported by HAN University of Applied Sciences. You can find the results in this episode of the Learning Notes, along with some other fine and practical research reports. I hope they will help you to improve your work and inspire you to look at opportunities and possibilities to do some research yourself.
What I learned over the past months is that working together with partners in research is helpful, fun and very rewarding. I can highly recommend that. But first, take a look at the rich resources of this episode.
