Unbundle learning to use technology purposefully

I think we all can agree that in the 21st century, how and what we learn is changing. And if you are working as a learning consultant, HR or Learning & Development professional you probably have felt the increasing expectation and demand to design learning that makes use of technology. Have you found a solution for it yet?

I believe we won’t really be able to use technology effectively until we change the way we think about learning today. When we talk about learning we often think of it as a program or course, that is happening online or face-to-face. As the new paradigm has arrived we now have the opportunity to look at learning in a much more dynamic way. At Colearn we like to frame it as “hybrid learning”. With hybrid learning, we mean that learning happens everywhere and all the time, and as trainers and educators, it’s a matter of designing for a continuous flow of (lifelong) learning. So how can you do that?

We have developed a first version of 12 guiding principles that can help you design for hybrid learning. You can download them here. And in this post, I’ll unpack our first principle: 1. Using technology purposefully.

Using technology purposefully

When you want to start using technology for your learning experiences it’s easy to fall in the “tech-trap”, meaning running too quickly to solution by implementing an LSM and hoping you can just move what you’re doing face-to-face into an online environment. The risk here is that you might end up creating a learning experience that is not matching the needs of our learners but is dictated by the functionality of the platform you choose.

I am a strong believer in that simply adding one technology to do the same job won’t create better results. Rather it’s about identifying your learner’s new behaviors and needs when it comes to learning and find your own digital process and pedagogy. Once we understand the needs and behaviors of our learners, and our own needs as educators we can choose and combine technologies to strengthen learning experiences in purposeful, learner-centric ways. Through this process, you are essentially prototyping a new learning design practice — your very own hybrid learning approach.

Let me give an example from my own experience

In my former role as Director of Development at the leading learning institute Hyper Island, I once got the brief to implement or build an e-learning platform. It would have been relatively easy to just run with that brief and quickly implement one of the many linear and static e-learning platforms in the market at the time. But the question was, what problem would that have solved for the business and the learners?

So what did I do? I challenged the brief and said: let’s experiment and learn how to use different technologies and tools to strengthen the learning experience and make it more accessible, personalized and prolonged. We then experimented with existing technologies we were already using and focused on learning from our learner’s new behaviors and how we could design learning in a blended way. This meant that we updated our methodology to be adaptive to any habits and infrastructures our clients and learners had.

So the question is — how can you think to figure out what technology you need for what, where and how? Here is a mental model we have developed to help in the process.

Unbundle as a mental model

Think of it as unbundling or unpacking the different pieces of learning. To illustrate this, let’s look at another industry for some inspiration: banking. What if we would have tried to make banking better by finding one technology that did banking as it used to be, but in one digital environment? How much better do you think that would have been?

Instead what happened in banking is that it unbundled into many different building blocks; eg payments, savings and investments, lending, money etc.

Take yourself as an example: how many money-related apps do you have on your phone? I would bet some bitcoin that it’s more than a single full-service app from your bank. Each of these building blocks has now been transformed and massively improved with a different type of technologies and solutions, for example, digital identification tools, payment tools like Klarna, Paypal, payments services like Venmo and Swish. I think you get the picture. And at the end, depending on what we want to do, these technologies seamlessly connect with each other to create a good and safe experience for us.

What happens if we unbundle learning?

How would it look if we did the same when it comes to learning? Instead of thinking about learning as a single, monolithic activity that happens one way, we can try unbundling different parts:

• content consumption (through reading, watching, listening)
• tasks learning by doing
• collaboration with peers
• coaching/mentoring
• reflecting on experience
• assessment

And depending on what type of learning you are creating there might be fewer or many more.

When we unbundle, it quickly becomes clear that there are infinite ways to creatively recombine and mix building blocks to serve different situations and learner needs, and use a blend of technologies.

Let’s take an example

Imagine we’re designing learning for a group of leaders in a corporate setting. The brief is for them to increase their communication skills. Now, a traditional approach would be to take them away on a course for a few days, apply most or all of the above building blocks in an intensive experience and then send them back to work.

But what if we really consider these learners needs, context and then take an unbundling approach. We might realize, for example, that they are super busy, at very different levels of current competence, and that actually have lots of opportunities to practice communication skills already in daily work.

Based on this, we could start creatively unbundling! Perhaps these learners get a regular task to practice communication within existing communication tools at work (eg Teams, Slack), accompanied by reflection and feedback with a peer and some coaching with a specialist using a video conference tools (Hangout, Skype, Zoom). Maybe they get one amazing article or podcast every few days, shared in their intranet, to consume on their commute. Maybe, in a culminating task, they need to do some kind of presentation that challenges them to step outside their individual comfort zone and really go for it.

Unbundling is important because, in the 21st century, learning cannot be a sometimes activity, it needs to be continuous and integrated into the learners every day. And technology makes it easier and easier to unbundle and design learning in creative and seamless ways.

So how can you work with unbundling in your own practice?

Ask these questions, when you design learning:

• What are the learning objectives and desired outcomes?
• What are the indicators of quality and success?
• Where are my learners today?
• What are the different building blocks my learners need in order to learn?
• What is the purpose of each building block?
• What technology are they already using? Are any of those technologies meeting the need of the building blocks you identified? Can you make learning happen there?
• What is missing? How can you use technology to strengthen the purpose of the building block?
• How do you design the experience to be seamless and connect with each other?

What do you think? Does it resonate with you? Do you have another opinion or other examples? We are always keen to colearn and would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so feel free to comment and add your perspectives.

Putting this into practice

If you find this helpful and you want to colearn more about digital learning and other principles for designing hybrid learning, welcome to join us in a four-week experience where we will explore the practice and thinking of Digital Learning Design.

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Written by Bella Funck

Bella Funck is a learning strategist and facilitator, the co-founder of Colearn and former Director of Development & Online Courses at Hyper Island, a trained coach, founder of The Personal Canvas.

Colearn is on a mission to shift the way schools, organizations and learning practitioners teach and learn to adapt to the changing needs of 21st-century learners.