Introducing the never-ending story of learning impact

16 September, 2022| Ger Driesen| 3 min read

The quest for learning impact has always been an important topic, and it will always stay an important topic. New challenges ask for new solutions, and ongoing technological advancements create new opportunities. No matter the role that you have in the learning community – as a learning designer, provider, consultant, trainer or internal professional – there is a big chance that your stakeholders will be interested and challenge you to show impact.

But how to do this? What are the common tips, tricks and pitfalls? How do others approach this challenge? We decided to take a deep dive into this topic and focus our activities on the question: how to keep improving your training (business) for more impact? Let’s explore a bit further via the why, what and how, so you know exactly what to expect from us.

Why we’re going to explore learning impact

Learning impact is a topic that seems to be the centre of attention all the time. It doesn’t seem to be a ‘fashion-sensitive’ topic in itself, but it isn’t a static topic either.

It seems to adjust quite easily to the changing circumstances of economics, society and the way we think about work. Economic impact always seems like a major player, but sometimes (e.g. during and after the pandemic), other societal values move to centre stage in the ‘impact theatre’. When there is change, there are opportunities. And we like to discover or share them with our community of like-minded learning pioneers (learning providers, corporate academies and beyond). So, let’s talk a bit more about our plans.

How we will explore creating impact with training

We will be asking a lot of questions, like we often do. To experts, ourselves, our clients, the community and you! Not completely random but somewhat structured around subtopics. We plan that by the end of 2022, we should come to some conclusions about how training providers can keep improving their training (business) for more impact.

What can you expect in the upcoming months? Various content pieces like blogs, interviews, case studies, maybe a podcast or webinar and more. Also, we will look into some research and review, share and recommend some findings to you. Last but not least, we would love to hear from you! Do you have good (or bad) examples from which we can learn? Share your thoughts on the topics and chime in!

What will we explore about creating impact?

In the upcoming months, we will try to answer one central question: “How to keep improving your training (business) for more impact?”

To answer this question, this topic will be divided into smaller units, and we will explore the following subtopics:
  • How will starting from the learner perspective lead to more impact?
  • How can we drive more impact by getting back to basics?
  • How can an iterative approach help to improve your training?
  • How can adaptive/personalised learning improve the learning impact?
  • How to leverage data to improve your training?

Roy's view on learning impact

“Impact is a broad concept and what it is differs from training to training. Beforehand, think carefully about the objectives you’ve set, evaluate them broadly within the organisation and discover where there’s room for improvement. Based on this, look at your learning technology and the further development of your training.”

Learning trend catcher Loves to connect

Ger Driesen

Would like a direct brain-internet connection. Loves connecting people, ideas and inspiration in the global learning community.

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