Five trends for brainstorming on learning innovation

Disclaimer: written with dictation software

Last week I lead a brainstorming session for the learning innovation stream at work. It is based on the methods of the corporate GPS by the district of creativity. That method works pretty well because at the end of the afternoon or table was literally full of yellow sticky notes. the GPS brainstorming works with one central question and six themes. The central question was our department's motto "better learning for a smarter workforce", and one of the teams or trends is an open category. I wanted to share with you the five trends chosen.

We learning
We tend to have individual development plans, individual learning, individual assessment, leading to individual behavior and individual performance. for the large majority of services however individual performance doesn't matter. Unless you are an artist or a blacksmith, what counts is the performance of the team. There is not so much you can do just on your own. So this trend investigates what we can do to help the team learn better, and how to assess the competence of the team rather than the individual.

Gesture, touch and voice
This year we expect major breakthroughs in the interaction between people and computer systems. Just look at these videos of Microsoft's project not tell or debt TED video on sixth sense. so far in the learning we have worked primarily with audio and vision. What can these new interfaces do for learning?





More with less
There is increasing pressure on the learning and development department to do more with less, to become more productive. That demand becomes stronger in an economic crisis, but never ever goes away. The credo more with less is not only valid for the production side of learning programs, learners also need more relevant learning and have less time for the learning activity.

Not computers
This trend is about using any learning technology, but not the traditional computer or laptop system. Think about mobiles, think about TV, think about tablets, think about RFID tags, think about e-readers, think about augmented reality goggles, anything but computers.

Learning friendly
For this trend, try to get content out of your head, and focus on creating a learning friendly environment where the context and collaboration aspects are suited for optimal learning. What makes an organization in learning friendly environment?

I'm using a trial version of the site teepin.com to capture all ideas for our innovation work. So far feedback from people has been positive, and the ideas keep streaming in.