Top 10 Learning Trends of the Future

October 2015, the month and year Marty McFly visited the future. If you’ve seen any “Back to the Future” movies you may recall the future having flying cars, hoverboards, and even self-tying shoes. While you may not have any of those futuristic inventions lying around at home, they actually exist.

So what else can we expect to see for the rest of 2015 and beyond? In GovLoop’s recent training, “Back to the Future” of Learning: Top 10 Trends in 2015, Marty McFly Style, our learning team experts, Andrew Krzmarzick, Vice President of Learning and Development and Julia Taylor, Senior Learning Consultant, discussed what trends are emerging in learning today.

Top 10 Learning Trends:

1. Micro Learning. This refers to a very brief “hyper learning” moment. The average length of this learning is 5-10 minutes long. It’s easy for people to commit to a quick learning course. What can you really learn in a few minutes? The answer is quite a bit. In one GovLoop course a two-minute video featured four different speakers with graphics to go along with the content.

2. Flipped Classrooms. Participants get the information before they arrive for the live learning experience. This creates a learning that’s sticky, more absorbable. Participants watch quick videos and complete a few exercises to test what they’ve learned. Then the live learning session can be more of a refresher of what the audience already learned and allows more time for the audience to have their questions answered.

3. Minimally Viable Courses. The agile approach to learning. You build a little bit of your course and then the learners give their feedback. You can then make small changes to the course and incrementally build onto it. This allows you to build a better course that saves you time and money. “You don’t have to build a DeLorean if a skateboard gets you where you’re going,” said Taylor.

4. MOOCs/TOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). These are trainings with thousands of participants, almost like a lecture, and are less engaging for learners. A TOOC (Tiny Open Online Course) is the solution to a MOOC. The learning is broken down into very small pieces that include small group work and is spread throughout weeks or even months.

5. Virtual Action Learning. Make learning immediately applicable in real time with real learners. Give the learners a project to work on that related directly to what they just learned. At the end of the day if makes them feel like they accomplished and learned more.

6. Mobile Learning. People use phones to answer their everyday questions. They want to quickly search something and have the bite-size answer at their fingertips. Make your course content small and consumable everywhere.

7. Wearable Learning. We are already using data to learn about our lives. Apple Watches, Google Glasses and Fitbits are giving people the data to answer the questions about their livelihood. Now this same technology could help you collect different data. A learning course could send you texts asking questions regarding the course content and how it has helped you in the workplace. This technology and data can be used to track the effectiveness of the course material.

8. Learning Concierge. A digital librarian at your workplace that can help you find what you’re looking for. You have content that you need to know but you aren’t sure where to find it or what’s the most important information to know. You can request this information from the digital librarian who will locate the content for you.

9. Artificial Intelligence. What if you could ask a machine any question and it would give you the right answer? Well, that dream isn’t as far fetched as we think. People are using Siri and “Okay Google” to do these same things. Machines are starting to know what we need before we know we need it.

10. Robot-Assisted. What if you could turn to a robot colleague to ask it questions? Robots may start taking over the workplace. They could follow you to meetings, interviews, or trainings and collect the same information as you. Then you could ask it questions if you are unsure of the correct answer.

The future of learning is looking very bright. Marty McFly would even be impressed. To learn more about smarter learning platforms or how you can improve your agency’s trainings visit the GovLoop Academy homepage here.