Serendipity and Learning

 Recently we were talking to a learning consultant and they in in turn introduced us to a "Producer". The producer is the person who produces and creates the learning experience end to end. More than anything else, I liked the term. The fact that it is not a trainer or a designer for that matter or a content creator - but a producer - who is the single point for getting everything right in that learning experience.... Yes, we need more producers! PS: It turns out I was late to this party. Met another consulting firm that has producers - so looks like it is a thing!

 A few years back I worked with a consultant as a freelance trainer. They said they were content specialists. And that they would want to work with expert facilitators and so on. And I said yes.  Then they got their client, supposedly understood the requirements and came up with a content pack for 4 hours.  I went through the content and the content was a pot pourri of slides. There was no structure or framework. All the content was unattributed images from Google with a single text line (after all that was the latest in slide design). Every few slides there was an engagement activity (sometimes directly connected with the topic at hand - at other times irrelevant). Then there were quizzes where chocolates had to be thrown to the audience for answering correctly or making the right points. And there were group discussions where the audience was grouped into teams and left to discuss. Then there were role plays.  The entire content was grouped like a bad movie. A set ...

Often, I have prided myself about being ahead in the technology space. And when I say this, I mean, I am a user of most new things. A trier. An early adopter.  On virtual training however, it turns out I was a digital dinosaur - thought in my head I was a digital native. After struggling with virtual training (I did my first true virtual training in 2020), I felt I have got the hang of it and things seem to be working well. The sessions have gone on well, we have got good feedback.  Imagine my surprise when I met someone who was using digital tools far better than I had ever imagined. Part of it was because there are too many digital training tools and as a trainer -investing in any one (or few) is a dent on the pocket, but the second part was that I did not think they were required - and how wrong I was. And no, none of these uses were gimmicky or the digital equivalent of throwing chocolates at the audience) - they were well thought out, creative and very very relevant from ...