What Is “Next-generation Learning”?

In 2014, we observed that traditional, compliance-driven learning wouldn’t be leaving the building anytime soon, but next-generation learning functionality — focused on casual, continuous, bite-size, and user-contributed content — was taking center stage with many buyers. In 2017, these solutions are fully in market. So, what is “next-generation learning” and what does it even mean?

The biggest shift is one of focus. “Next generation” is still learner-centric, but perspectives on what that means and how it’s implemented are shifting from platform to learner experience. We asked about the attributes and elements that embody next-generation learning, and even though there were mixed sentiments, the top three came in as moment-of-need learning, mobile learning, and personalized learning.

When you consider the 2014 data, this is a significant shift. We’re seeing device-focused definitions of next-generation learning receding, and practice-focused or learner-experienced-focused definitions rising to the top. “The foundational element to next-generation learning technology is to not have it be LMS-centric,” said Michael Rochelle, chief strategy officer for Brandon Hall Group, a research and advisory firm focused on enterprise learning and talent initiatives. So, rather than saying “next generation” means “mobile” or “on demand,” next generation is becoming more associated with collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the experience learners have. “It should be a learner-experience platform where several different technologies are brought together,” Rochelle added.

David Wilson, CEO of Fosway Group, Europe’s leading talent and learning analyst group, adds, “We use ‘next-gen learning environment’ to describe a set of learning platforms differentiated from traditional LMS tools by focusing specifically on next-gen approaches, including video, social, informal learning, gamification, performance support, etc. These tools also tend to focus more on learner engagement and experience, often lacking the deeper administrative and reporting functionality found in traditional LMS tools.”

So how would buyers who responded to our survey describe “next-generation learning technology”? Here are a few of their perspectives:

Exhibit 1: What are the three greatest workforce challenges from the list below that your organization must address?

Key Market Themes

Buyers are seeing workforce changes firsthand.

We’ve been hearing about the changing workforce for years now, and buyers are seeing those changes occur in their organizations. One key traditional L&D function — connecting learning to career development — was down 7 percent from 2014 but still the top challenge. Comparing the most pressing workforce challenges to the 2014 answers in Exhibit 1, there is a clear tilt toward the changing realities of today’s workforce — encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing (up 8.1 percent and now the second-greatest challenge) and the growth of the contingent workforce (up 5.1 percent). Meeting the needs of a distributed, mobile workforce is now the No. 3 challenge. Interestingly, employees unprepared for today’s workplace dropped 6.2 percent.

Buyers seem to be missing the boat on engagement.

Using development to improve employee engagement and retention was down 5.4 percent and slipped from second to fourth place in challenges, which to us suggests a significant missed opportunity with the role of learning in employee engagement. Even though it remains the top challenge, it’s concerning to see the use of development to drive engagement and retention has dropped because of its critical role (in our perspective) in these areas. However, as you will see in Exhibit 2, the number of buyers who are focused on using rewards and recognition to encourage user adoption has doubled — this strikes us as a positive sign. How positive? We’ll explain further below.

Learning proactively evolves.

The role of enterprise learning is evolving from delivering information via coursework to connecting people with information at the moment of need and becoming curators of content and facilitators of knowledge. We see buyers embracing this change and focusing on how employees attain and master knowledge, as well as interact with and learn from each other. These are core human desires. Simply consuming content that others have deemed important isn’t. Buyers seem to get this. Encouraging knowledge sharing and collaboration jumped up 8.1 percent to the No. 2 spot of greatest workforce challenges in Exhibit 1.

Furthermore, all of the top opportunities that buyers see in Exhibit 2 — informal and continuous learning, mobile, and collaboration technologies — all touch on this shift. “Collaboration technologies are growing in interest as organizations are discovering that peer to peer and coaching and mentoring is a highly desirable, if not the most desirable, way that employees want to learn,” said Rochelle. “The issues are how do you create a scalable approach to support this form of learning and how do you measure its effectiveness. Enter technology: Collaboration and coaching and mentoring technologies are helping organizations to address both issues in a practicable, simple, and cost-effective way. Look for a continued and sustained investment in these tools as organizations ramp up their informal learning initiatives.”

Exhibit 2: What are your three greatest opportunities with learning management technology?

Mobile increases as a challenge and an opportunity.

With mobile, shouldn’t we be there already? You’d think so, but that’s not what buyers are saying. Meeting the needs of a distributed, mobile workforce remains the No. 3 challenge for buyers (Exhibit 1) and mobile technologies jumped to No. 2 as an opportunity for buyers (Exhibit 2). However, addressing this challenge may be out of vendors’ control. “Mobile is more of an IT challenge than it is an L&D challenge,” said Rochelle. “Many organizations are not ready or equipped to support a “bring your own device” environment. From firewall issues to knowledge management protocols and legal considerations, mobile device learning is not as simple as it sounds and requires most organizations to really think hard about whether they want to launch mobile or not.”

Even so, strides have been made in mobile, using technologies focused on user-generated content and video. “Over time, we expect mobile to grow as a point of access to learning first, and then a learning delivery tool after,” said Wilson. “Where this is happening faster is where we see user-generated content and video being adopted as a primary learning tool. The use of smartphones to capture and share video based learning content is now highly deliverable and has many productive use cases.”

Big changes in user experience.

Most noteworthy changes in opportunities were large increases in buyers expressing interest in consumer-grade user experiences (up 14.2 percent) and predictive analytics (up 8.8 percent). The consumer-grade user experience opportunity, up significantly from 2014, is a reference to the user experience of technology in the consumer market. This is in line with the biggest shift we observed in our data — a growing focus on next-generation technologies and the learner experience.

In tech terms, that means most vendors have user experience labs to accelerate UI and UX design. “But in the business market, there are also other challenges that have to be dealt with,” said Wilson. “Learning activity and teams are often very fragmented. Learning is not a singular thing, it is an umbrella term for many different approaches, goals, and outcomes. Managing that complexity within a complex environment and rendering it through a simple intuitive and engaging user experience is not simple.” What remains to be seen is whether these user experience changes improve learning, or whether they are, as we would say in Texas, all hat, no cattle.

Key Takeaways for Vendors

Learning management professionals aren’t the only voices.

Don’t forget that learning technology buying decisions don’t just happen in the learning silo. Our 2017 results show that strategic leaders and decision-makers who impact learning purchase decisions operate in a variety of functional roles but are most significantly involved in training, learning, and executive management. These results are consistent with our 2014 results but bear repeating. Who the buyer is has a significant impact on what organizations are buying, since all stakeholders impact the buying decision. Leave someone out, and the organization may not purchase the right product — then in a few years’ time they’ll be looking to replace your technology.

Exhibit 3: Decision-makers and influencers span a variety of functions — only a little more than one-third are within the learning silo.

The client business problem is yours.

Because of the multidisciplinary buying decision, vendors need to articulate or focus on business problems to drive initial success and deliver sustainable value over time. Align within the client business, otherwise your technology will be replaced by a vendor that did its due diligence in getting all stakeholders involved.

Exhibit 4: Are you involved with evaluating or researching solutions for any of the following initiatives?

Learning and development buyers influence talent technology purchases.

In 2014, we noted that learning had moved to the center of the talent technology stack. In our most recent survey, that dynamic hasn’t changed; 82 percent of learning management professionals said they influence performance and talent management decisions. Learning organizations have a tremendous amount of leverage in being able to influence HCM and talent management overall. But for some reason this is not being addressed. More and more organizations are driven by talent managers or sales departments in terms of how they’re driving and directing what an LMS will (or will not) do. Today’s buyers know they need to focus on performance and succession (and other elements of the business) eventually, so many LMS-only vendors may find themselves excluded, even if it’s a learning-only buy.

Career development is breaking out of L&D.

Employee engagement solution providers — especially in the subcategory of engagement measurement — have recognized that career development is an opportunity for engagement and retention. Career development communicates the “what’s in it for me” aspect of the employment value proposition and employee experience. One unique approach to applying career development in a very nontraditional way for L&D is a collaboration between Degreed and Fuel50 for eBay. This work includes delivering individualized career pathing, search for stretch or gig assignments, and search for stretch coaching or mentoring, while learning technology is being used to deliver the specific competency development.

“We want to ensure that our clients can have a state-of-the-art growth proposition that is individualized, future oriented, and employee driven,” said Anne Fulton, CEO and co-founder of Fuel50. “Marianne Jackson, the chief talent development officer at eBay, describes it as ‘individualized growth propositions for business velocity.’” If you’re providing learning technology anywhere near career development, you had better look at this quickly before competitors in adjacent categories (such as engagement) do.

Interest in gamification is slowing, but rewards and recognition is rising.

In 2014, we discussed the rise of gamification. In 2017, we saw interest in gamification as an opportunity take a significant dip. In 2014, we pointed out that recognition could drive user adoption. Think these two findings are unrelated? Think again. Use of gamification as an instructional feature seems to have taken a backseat to game-based recognition as an adoption driver for learning technologies. For example, Bunchball’s Nitro gamification tool is driving adoption in the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Jive, and SAP/SuccessFactors Learning and SAP Jam. Also, you’re seeing companies in the recognition space build mutually reinforcing success between recognition and learning at BI Worldwide and Global Engagement Solutions. “Recognizing and rewarding the acquisition and application of new skills is critical for sustained, continuous improvement,” said Peter Psichogios, CEO of Global Engagement Solutions. “Using gamification, badging, and social recognition to reinforce best practices is critically important to support and reinforce great learning.”

The technology and the content are becoming more inseparable.

We believe you can’t separate the content from the technology in e-learning. The industry is certainly moving in that direction, considering Skillsoft’s acquisition of SumTotal Systems and Wiley’s acquisition of CrossKnowledge. The attitude and activity are being driven by market demand. Our findings showed the buyers see ‘better industry-specific content and training’ as an opportunity when it comes to learning management technology. However, even if buyers are hungry for more targeted, relevant content, market expectation may be unrealistic. “The best practice is that your e-learning should be multilingual from a single version and it should be playable on any major smart device — again, from a single version. That same version should be able to dynamically change branding by world geography and be able to alter content dynamically by role, business unit, subsidiary, or geography. Oh, and it should be easy to translate as well as update the content,” said Peder Jacobsen, vice president of learning and engagement at BI Worldwide. Translation: Good luck with that. Vendors need to live with this reality, even as they must moderate some of these expectations.

A better user experience remains elusive, but is it the right focus?

In learning technology, a consumer-grade user experience may be more elusive than the Loch Ness monster. “Isn’t it about time to throw in the towel on that idea?” said John Sumser, principal analyst at HR Examiner. “Online consumer experience is all about driving the user to a single conclusion — buying something. Is that really how you want to train your nuclear plant operators?” At a certain point, it’s worth asking if making applications more consumer-like is a bit of a rabbit hole. Also, we see the focus on user experience as a method to solve the user adoption issue. We posit that poor user adoption is more about not delivering value to the employee nor making it clear, “What’s in it for me?” That’s a failure that often goes way beyond UX.

However, we see an important distinction. When talking about UX from an LMS standpoint, yes, this is a valid POV. However, when applied to all learning tech, the answer becomes more nuanced. The “all-in-one” integrated LMS that does it all is being replaced by multiple integrating systems that form an organization’s learning stack and can become more consumer-like because it’s personalized, relevant, UX optimized, and therefore motivating. Today’s user experience in learning is about having it all, but not from one technology or one vendor.

Mobile is becoming a bigger pain point.

If vendors are reluctant or unable to walk away from the user experience arms race, it’s probably because of mobile. “The modern learner is overwhelmed, distracted, demanding, impatient, and most likely untethered for at least part of their work week,” said Peder Jacobsen from BI Worldwide. “Millennials are now the largest part of your modern learner workforce and they are a ‘mobile-first’ audience. So your e-learning needs to fit into their busy lives (learning snacks) and their devices (great learning on a phone), and the UX needs to stand up to any consumer site going.” As a vendor, it’s not all your fault if your buyers don’t have their act together in IT. But it is your problem. Look for ways to help your buyers proactively engage with IT about mobile to create customer success and accurately calibrate buyer expectations.

Desire for predictive analytics is surging.

But how much of predictive analytics in learning is possible and how much is pipe dream? For all the talk about AI and machine learning making this dream a reality, there is still more heat than light going on here. “There is significant potential for increased use of analytics more generally within the learning cycle — both for the learning function, and for managers and individual learners and learning teams,” Wilson said. “In learning, predictive analytics tends to be linked to certain use cases or case studies about improving the efficacy of learning and its impact on the business. This requires better integration of learning data and business performance data. At the moment, I would probably argue that this topic is more developed in a broader HCM or talent context than it is for learning specifically.” We predict that at a product level you’re going to see increasing pressure for predictive solutions and the integration with other HR and non-HR databases that it will require. You’re also going to notice a rising tide of expectations in data visualization in reporting and dashboards.

These challenges and opportunities give you a road map.

The buyers out there are in the middle of their journey and they’re looking for help. Educate them and give away valuable information and insight and you’ll find that your altruism will be repaid in the form of early favorite vendor status with your sales prospects.