The Death of E-learning
E-learning, but not how you’re used to it! Less noise, more candour. Interviews, panel discussions, retrospectives - every episode has something different! We talk to interesting people and ask some big questions - 'Is this the end of learning design?' - 'Can creativity and productivity coexist in harmony?' - but mainly, we challenge people to decide 'What aspect of e-learning would you like to see the death of?'
The Death of E-learning
Why So Serious? - Does formality matter?
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Ever sat through a meeting or a piece of learning so breathlessly serious it made you trust it less? You're not alone. In this episode, Stefan and Dan take aim at "Professional Solemnity": the corporate habit of performing expertise through deliberate complexity, jargon, and sterile delivery. We're joined by experts to explore whether the serious face is a mark of rigour, or a place to hide.
Hello and welcome to the Death of ELearning. Right, Stefan, how's it going?
SPEAKER_04Yes, yes, I'm very well Dan. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03How are you? I am bubbling with excitement to do, I think, my first proper intro. How exciting.
SPEAKER_04And it's been a hot minute because we've been very, very busy. So um we've not been on here for a while.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Uh, but you know, now I've got a proper mic, I feel uh I'm ready to take this on.
SPEAKER_04And what are we here to talk about, Dan?
SPEAKER_03We're going to talk about the performance of expertise, or better put, the performative expertise. Yeah. I imagine it's something probably we've all witnessed if you've ever been in the workplace, actually, maybe even in the pub, and we probably dabbled in it ourselves a few times. Uh this is uh when people use what we're going to term professional solemnity, and we have kind of two characters for professional solemnity: the one person who communicates in a deliberately serious way. That's both kind of how they communicate, but also in the work that they create. Uh, think of the e-learning that's deadly serious and almost sterile.
SPEAKER_04It's also about the way they present themselves, maybe if it's a live training situation, for example.
SPEAKER_03You know, we think that this is a this is a facade or it's a veneer that people apply. You know, that's the the performative aspect of it. Uh, but that facade or that veneer isn't always uh deliberate seriousness, but it can also be uh when you communicate in a deliberately complex way, uh using jargon or ideas that are deliberately overly complex.
SPEAKER_04These kinds of strategies they kind of are the opposite of the coin or the the reason for or um the feeling behind that showing humour and kind of being yourself, showing your own personality being vulnerable means that you may be silly or incompetent or unserious, and um you and I and Graham don't kind of really agree with that. So yeah, so we got in touch with some very, very smart people um to see what they thought about that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was interesting to hear what they had to say, and I don't think uh it wasn't just a total win for uh you shouldn't be serious or have formality in the workplace.
SPEAKER_04So, who are these experts we talked to about this? There's four of them. It was Camilla Long, uh, from Bespoke Communications, she's a business speaker, and uh she's amazing. The second person was Kirsty Greene, head of learning strategy at Elucidat and Learning Pool. The third person, Paul Anderson Walsh, uh CEO and co-founder of Enola Consulting and formerly of the Center for Inclusive Leadership. And then finally, our very own Mr. Jack Quantrell, Senior Director of Learning Experience, right here at Learning Pool. And they've all had interesting things to say. So the question we asked Camilla is if you had to choose between a two-hour strategic alignment meeting in a grey boardroom or a 20-minute chat over coffee or a beer, which one actually generates the better ideas for your team? And why do you think we might be afraid to admit that informal is often more productive?
SPEAKER_05In this question, we've been asked to choose between an informal catch-up with a colleague over a coffee or even a beer, and a more formal structured strategy session in a boardroom with the entire team. And I believe actually, if the purpose of these activities are to generate ideas that are going to move the team forward, I don't think that they're mutually exclusive activities. I think both are equally important and both can be done informally. In fact, a really powerful strategy session almost certainly will have psychological safety in the room, and participants will feel free to express their ideas and feel heard and to feel that their ideas have value. And the truth of it is, for a facilitator to do a good job of that strategy session, there probably have been a whole series of informal coffee catch-ups as inputs into that strategy session itself. So, as activities, both can be as formal or as informal as necessary to achieve the results that you're looking for.
SPEAKER_04What are your first impressions?
SPEAKER_03My first impression is the explanation about why informality matters. Yes, because informality creates a sort of psych well, creates psychological safety. And when people have feel safe, it means that they can feel that they can share their ideas without kind of risk associated with them. And you want that to get the the richest and most diverse ideas in the room.
SPEAKER_04They feel able to articulate what's in their heads without having to put a filter in front of it, right? I think that's that's what it means. They feel comfortable is what we pr probably would have called it ten years ago. Yeah. I feel like when I felt like when I first heard Camilla's response. That expression psychological safety just it was it hit me really as a really important thing. I've been in conversations where I've been or in meetings where I've been missing that, and it's and other people have as well, and that was the the the reason why it wasn't a good meeting, a productive meeting, a creative meeting. So yeah, I couldn't agree more.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think one of the things that was interesting is that she said that the two settings could both be informal. Being in the being in the boardroom or being in like the the pub or the cafe, they can be both of them can actually be informal themselves, which is to kind of say that the structure doesn't actually determine what counts as formal. We might think that sometimes, like when we discuss like when we think about what formal is, like a structured environment is maybe one of those things we we would think is like is one of the criteria, but she's saying actually it's not, it doesn't necessarily have to be the room that you're in or the environment that makes something formal, it's also the behavior of the people in that room. It can be detached.
SPEAKER_04It made me think of the impact that everyone brings to a group meeting rather than just the expert in the room, the the person at the front, you know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and we'll probably touch on this lots. I think more senior people, they're going to feel it's going to be easier for them to be informal, right? They have the power, they're more comfortable anyway in these more formal situations. The more junior people, it's not going to be as easy for them to be as informal, even though those are the people who actually are going to benefit from it most.
SPEAKER_04100%.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's interesting there. So I don't know if it's actually just a case of like, oh well, if the senior people are being informal, then it makes it easier for the junior people for to be informal.
SPEAKER_04I don't necessarily think that's the case, though. Uh I don't know how deep we should go on this one question, but I don't think that's a given that if the senior people are feel able to be informal, that that actually means the more junior people in the room or other groups in the room.
SPEAKER_03This is the flip side to this, which is informality is really good. Um on the other hand, the people that probably feel happiest being informal are straight white men. Yeah. And part of that then is like the informality is a bit of rule breaking, and then their sense of like rule breaking what counts as informal then can kind of bleed into making other people feel uncomfortable. So it's a very um, it's a really interesting uh like there are real benefits to her being informal, but then it's a very thin, tight rope to tread to my metaphors there. Uh but to get it right without uh then completely destroying the psychological safety in the room.
SPEAKER_04That's exactly right. That's exactly how I feel. And I've just recently experienced that in a room full of senior people, being one of the more junior people in the room and um just seeing exactly what we've just described. So yeah, I think that's excellent. It also is, I think, a quite decent segue into another one of our experts, Paul Anderson Walsh. His subject of expertise is diversity, equality in an organizational context. So the first question we asked Paul was the same question as Camilla, i.e., big meeting either in a boardroom or in a coffee bar or a over a beer or more of an informal setting, which generates better ideas.
SPEAKER_03Shall we listen to him? Let's listen to Paul Anderson Walsh.
SPEAKER_01Both potentially have value. It's not necessarily the issue of whether it's a boardroom and two hours or a cafe and twenty minutes. The issue is whether the environment is a thinking environment or not. A great boardroom can be generative, a cafe can be performative, the the variable is not really the furniture, it's the degree of psychological safety. The premise of the question is is a is a good one. But the real leadership question, I think, is not boardroom or beer, it's what's the most uninhibiting creative space we can create for this conversation. Because the goal is not to hold a meeting, the goal is to generate insight. So for me that's the that's the the the real the real key, I guess.
SPEAKER_03The actually like the physical space doesn't necessarily, although I you know I think obviously it can have an influence on it, uh, but it doesn't have to, he's say, he's saying.
SPEAKER_04Boardroom of beer, yes, nice. The boardroom is it's almost like a metaphor for that vibe when you walk into a room and it's intimidating. And it's that that feeling of of there being an expectation and the attendee having to fulfill that expectation, which immediately from from my personal experience narrows what I'm gonna say. It narrows the bandwidth of my thinking, I think. If I feel like there is an expectation on me and my performance that is not exactly aligned with what I'm totally comfortable with, and I'm sure that's the same for other people too.
SPEAKER_03So maybe like let's push back on this idea. Like they're they're saying, Oh, yeah, of course the you know the space doesn't matter, but the space is imbued with uh expectation beer rather than boardroom. You know, obviously the expectations there are we're kind of out of work here, so you can be more honest with me. And those cues are hard to ignore.
SPEAKER_04I agree. I feel like there is a basic uh a sort of base layer of mood that is that can be set by the environment that the the the facilitator, the expert, and the rest of the group has to then do more work to overcome, you know, and have more skill to overcome in terms of mood setting, presentation level skills, etc. We have an office in Northern Ireland, and um there is a big meeting room there that is that feels like a very welcoming and informal space to me. And I've been in a load of meetings with a load of very senior people and clients in there, and it's always felt comfortable and easy to go in and relaxing to go in there 100% the the the room doing that. And then do you remember we used to have an office in Nottingham where there was a boardroom, there was a small room with a huge oval table, and when you stepped in there, it was like oh okay, it was sort of intimidating.
SPEAKER_03This got kind of there's a practice element to this about like where you feel comfortable and the things you feel comfortable with, and I wonder if there's like the the positive experiences that you've had in the dairy office has led to that and uh led to you feeling more comfortable in that particular space.
SPEAKER_04But I've had loads of positive experiences in the um boardroom in knots as well, though, you know, and um we do loads of podcast recording in that room. Yeah, okay. I just think that you're right by saying it has an impact. And we are obviously with Camilla and Paul dealing with extremely experienced facilitators of workshops and meetings whose job it is to do that stuff. They're skilled at making whatever environment they find themselves in, their own, because that's what they that's what they do. They go into organizations and do their job wherever they're being put. So I think that might also have something to do with the skill that of the people that we're speaking to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There's there's something to explore, I don't know if it's for now, which is what are the elements that we should be introducing that can make even structured situations feel psychologically safe. And here we're we're creating informality to psychological safety, but maybe informality is one way of getting to psychological safety, but are there others? And are there other ways of being informal? So one way is changing the environment, but is there another way to make people feel psychologically safe? Uh for example, actually, pubs might not make some people feel safe. Not at all. Yeah, I can imagine there's a whole group of people that don't want to go for beers with their boss.
SPEAKER_04Yes, exactly. Do you do you remember when we talk about communication skills and it also has an element of of in in change management, you always touch on the creation of psychological safety and good communication, and I feel like uh empathy and matching in style with your audience is hugely important. I feel like when you've done a certain amount of this kind of work, uh it's almost becomes kind of second nature to you. There's the human element of empathy and perception and reacting to the situation, being able to having the skills to be able to react to the room. Informal, the word informality doesn't really describe that properly, but it's connected to it.
SPEAKER_03Should we listen to Kirsty's? Because I really like what Kirsty has to say.
SPEAKER_04Kirsty talks about, well, actually, we asked Kirsty two questions, but she's answered them both. What is one specific phrase, design choice, or instruction in a piece of e-learning that immediately makes you feel patronized, right? Um I loved Kirsty's answer too.
SPEAKER_00So, what makes me feel patronized or annoyed in learning? That's a big question. There's quite a lot, I could say. But um, how about when text narration says something like, let's explore this concept together? Or when we're faced with this, we are not exploring this together. I am probably clicking next alone at my desk while Teams ping's in the background and a dog bites my slippers. So if you want to design something that actually feels participatory, then great. Design something that actually is social and genuinely connects people. But that idea that we're in it together just because the e-learning might be using a friendly voice and words like let's and we, no thanks. Uh if I could throw in another one, then the forced enthusiasm, for example. Get ready for an exciting journey into health and safety. I'm a massive fan of creating really engaging learning experiences, but let's not over-eg what's not one. So that kind of learning maybe is better as a helpful, straightforward resource, or create a genuinely personalized, really engaging learning experience. But that middle ground, then don't big it up. Maybe don't make it in the first place.
SPEAKER_04Perfect. No notes.
SPEAKER_03Well great. It's like a mic drop that maybe just don't make it in the first place. I mean, yeah, Kirsty, she's an oracle.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I would also like to add at this point that Kirstie has recently got a puppy. So the the dog was probably biting her slippers at the time she was uh recording this.
SPEAKER_03Oh dear Kirsty, I've definitely I definitely invited people to come and explore with me some code of conduct training. Uh and I can only apologize to her if she's had to do that. If I was being combative, I'd say there's still, you know, there is good psychological principles behind not the enthusiasm thing, but the we, let's do something together, or let's when you're kind of talking to people directly, you know, this is the personalization principle. Um and there's lots of evidence that that has a positive impact that has that really helps people concentrate, feel like they're in a conversation, even if they know that they're they're not actually in a conversation with you. Uh I one of what we might be seeing there is the um ennui of somebody who works in online learning who's sick of reading the similar sorts of phrases over and over again. It's part of the same family of um click next to continue. Is she still right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. I appreciate your playing devil's avocado, but um I I get that in to as many uh episodes as possible. But she's still right. Um and you're uh you are also right. It's probably heightened sensitivity because she looks at more eviling, she looks at more e-learning than most people hopefully do. And there are certain clients who seem to really love that kind of enthusiastic, overly enthusiastic, slightly patronizing learning. I remember somebody getting a completion statement, a completion pop-up on a health and safety or some kind of compliance course, and it was well done on on completing course X. What an achievement!
SPEAKER_03What an achievement. What an achievement. What I like about this is it also ties in nicely actually with our like our topic, because this is the other side, so there's serious learning, but you can if you're like trying not to be serious, you're perhaps trying to be playful, you can move into being childish, which is like the other like cardinal sin of e-learning, where it feels cartoony and yeah, childish, forced enthusiasm leaves you with uh feeling like a child, feeling patronized.
SPEAKER_04That's probably a good point to bring back the word informality. Informal just means not hyperstify professional, but it doesn't mean being super overly enthusiastic, patronizing, and childish, maybe.
SPEAKER_03It reveals something which may um a problem, maybe, with adults, which is that we struggle to see play as being like something which is adult. So when we try and be playful in this sort of way, it's it comes out as childish. Yes. We then think of it as frivolous. We can't we don't think of play as being something which is serious, we can't marry the two. Uh because well, I d I don't know why. I think it's a shame, it's a scandal that we can't in like actually if we look at professional sport, that is play, and many people think that is very serious indeed.
SPEAKER_04What you're touching on has a lot to do with how society views play and how we see childishness and our own personal confidence or security and messing messing up, you know, saying something dumb or failure, if you will, and the embarrassment that that brings. So I don't know if that's the right point for us to hear from Paul Anderson Walsh again, because he's really got some good stuff to say about exactly that. The other question we asked Paul was think back to a time you met a subject matter expert or a consultant who really looked the part. Wearing a suit, saying all the right things, maybe a bit jargony, severe expression. But the moment they started talking, you realized they were just using this kind of seriousness to hide the fact they didn't really have much of an idea of what they were doing. What was the tell, or what were the tells that gave them away?
SPEAKER_03Let's listen to it. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01I love this question about the subject matter expert. And let me play with my cards face up on the table. The answer to the question is yes, absolutely. I've been seduced by that before. And I think part of the reason I get seduced by it is because the kind of for me at any rate, the look, the part of it really matters. I'm certainly not immune to it. I'm certainly not immune to appearance bias, it's real. Accent bias, it's real. Uh confidence signals are real. And we are all, I think, influenced often unconsciously by the packaging. After all, there's an entire industry built around packaging for a reason. It works. We're kind of wired to infer competence from presentation. So the issue isn't what we notice, the issue is whether we stop there. Because real discernment begins when you start to listen past the presentation and start paying attention to the content, and that's where the tells really appear.
SPEAKER_03Press pause. I I I really appreciate his honesty there. A hundred percent is so great, isn't it? Oh yeah. Which is a bit of kind of informality at play, is it not? I'm gonna put my cards on the table and tell you what I really think here. There's no filter, like I'm I'm not really having a filter with you.
SPEAKER_04I'm not pretending to know more or be something other than what I am.
SPEAKER_03I just yeah, I just I thought it's so he's so right.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_03And I I kind of think about this for myself because I know the way that I sound, and I think that there are I don't know this isn't a good thing, but I sometimes benefit from the accent that I have makes it maybe sound like what I'm saying is smarter than what it actually is. I'm not fishing here for you to say no no, what you said is really smart.
SPEAKER_04You say it's always very smart. No, I was going to say actually, I think I agree. I think that I think you're right. Um I think a lot of us Southerners do benefit from that.
SPEAKER_03It's not just southern, it's posh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So true. Yeah, it's it's posh. That's right. There tends to not be any kind of ridicule or stigma attached to that, whereas there are other regional dialects and accents that uh come with preconceptions, shall we say it in a neutral way. I'm actually going to pull the foreigner card here because uh my German accent is a very strong dialect, as well you know. And um I felt that I've always been conscious of that. I've always been um I went to a decent, I went to a good school in in Germany and gymnasium. And um when I speak with my friends from that school, I my my the way I express myself, the way my accent completely changes to when I speak speak at home. So I I'm I'm aware of that. That's absolutely true. Yeah. But how did we get here?
SPEAKER_03Uh we're talking about the bias that we have with accents and the basically presentation matters as kind of a it's a trick which is hard for people to get over. He's saying it's like it's um kind of subconsciously, a lot of values are being ascribed to the way that some somebody is presenting, of course, the way that they talk, and that means you're kind of doing a quick judgment to go, oh, I should probably pay attention because this person sounds put together. They sound like they'll know what they're talking about. Um, so alright, I'll I'll pay attention, more than actually pay attention, like, oh, probably what they're saying is is smart, yeah, is something I should um I should value.
SPEAKER_04I'm really interested in talking to you about the following, which is, and this may not be the right word, but maybe you understand what I mean, but I feel almost like status comes into it, you know, like you you maybe order yourself in the the status of this meeting, that's in this environment in terms of knowledge and expertise, depending on your sort of first impression uh of the the the expert in the room. Do you do you see what I mean? Like, oh, I'm really junior compared to this person because they express themselves so in such in ways that I don't re that I struggle to follow, or they seem to know so much about these things because they talk with such complexity.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's um it's all like bleeds into class as well. Hundreds of knowing how to perform in a certain way in these environments, maybe like the the code of formality is if you know that world and you're comfortable with it, then you you can thrive in that, and so that performance of how you're talking it can be then a way of kind of performing. Oh, good for me, I've put myself up on the status, but then also that is then oh, I'm performing in this way to put other people down.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. This goes back to the very simple, very sort of I in my thinking, foundational realization or about L and D in general, that is not about you, it's about them, and you're making it about you when you when you do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like the being the sage on the stage. Precisely. We don't want the sage on the stage.
SPEAKER_04I feel like this is the good point to press play again and hear some more about what Paul's got to say.
SPEAKER_01So in our practice at Anola Consulting, we use the phrase subject matter of expert, but that's only half the story for us. A consultant is two things at once: a thinking partner and an instant, a kind of insight bringer, I guess. We help you think and we bring thinking that you may not have got access to. But here's the discipline: if you can't explain your insight to a five-year-old, it's not sophisticated, it's unprocessed. The job of a consultant is not to add complexity, it's to cut through it and provide clarity. So, over the last 25 years in consultancy, I've noticed something in myself, and that's really the more settled I become with what I know, uh, the less I feel the need to defend my position. But um early in my career, there's you're so desperate to prove everything, prove you belong, prove you're smart, prove your model works. And sometimes you kind of overmake your case. So you're not really convincing the client, you're trying to think convince yourself. Um, so let's talk about some of those uh those those tells then that show up because there are some there are some good ones, I think. Um I think sometimes what happens is uh you ask for an example and the explanation is really abstract instead of clear. Um, maybe sometimes you kind of press gently and the response becomes very defensive, and you're just trying to clarify, but the you you obviously caught somebody on the hook and they themselves aren't really clear themselves. I think sometimes there's a tendency amongst the this folks to do like this to maybe prescribe uh before they diagnose uh to kind of use complexity as a sort of shield, if you like. Uh and here's a kind of uncomfortable truth around that. I think complexity often protects the ego, um, but clarity is what serves the client, and there's a profound difference between complexity and mastery. Complexity is often kind of uh anxiety driven, clarity is always mastery driven. Um, complexity says, Don't question me. Clarity says, here's the essence, let's test it. And when you truly understood something, pressure simplifies, and that's exactly the point. So the real question for us as consultants, I guess, and as leaders, really, is um isn't did they look the part? Is did they leave me clearer than when I walked in? Uh it's it's not, yeah, I I guess that's the thing. Sometimes I think to myself, it's not about being impressive, it's about being impressed. Uh, could I explain to my team what they said to me? Do I feel more capable of thinking myself, or do I feel more uh dazzled and more kind of beholden and dependent on the consultant? Uh, because you know, the impressive isn't normally isn't particularly useful, to be perfectly honest with you. And the mark of good consulting is not how complicated it sounds, it's whether after 20 minutes someone says, That makes sense, and I can see how to do that. That isn't theatre, that's good thinking.
SPEAKER_04Do you know? I have a confession to make. If my if my cards are indeed also to be laid out on the table, I've done that complexity waffle. When I wasn't sure about things, somebody asked me a question at the end of a presentation. And uh yeah, that's definitely something that I have done. And I've also done the other the other bit where I've really understood what I've what they meant, what I what they needed, and I was able to clearly articulate it.
SPEAKER_03So yeah. Oh yeah. I think I've got a royal flush of all those cards. I've definitely I you know I definitely yeah, responded with complexity and uh bristled um to a simple soft probing question.
SPEAKER_04100%.
SPEAKER_03Um he's got such a good line there, which is be impressive but be impressed.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, not to be impressive, but to be impressed.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly it. I I also like you know he's a consultant's background or a leadership background and talking about them being thinking partners. But it's a really nice way for us to think about ourselves as learning designers, as you know, we're trying to shape how somebody is thinking about something. You're not thinking, oh, I'm just gonna put some information in your head. I'm I want to get you thinking about this information or this content, because when you're thinking about it, that's how you're actually going to make it relevant to yourself, and if you're thinking about it, you're going to encode it into long-term memory.
SPEAKER_04That's and that's what we you and I spend a lot of time talking about and trying to come up with better better ways of doing. So yeah, absolutely. It's not about, like you say, putting information in front of people. It's influencing the way people think.
SPEAKER_03We have all these biases about like being impressive, and it's hard to overcome them. Yes. You can be impressive, but there could be nothing behind that. So it's like a veneer. Is what you want to do is be impressive and then also leave people impressed. Have both of those things.
SPEAKER_04That's the probably close to the heart and the essence of this of why we wanted to make this episode because uh the the being impressive only is only good for someone who then comes away feeling smug and everybody else is just is is just as confused as they were before. That's not the point.
SPEAKER_03So this is Jack. The question we asked Jack was what is the most unprofessional or playful thing you've ever done in a learning project? Something that would make a traditional HR director wince that actually delivered incredible results.
SPEAKER_04Let's hear from Jack.
SPEAKER_02One project that comes to mind is a video-led piece I did in my time at Boots. Uh, other Meal Deal providers are available. Uh, we'd set aside a day to workshop the content and got hung up on this idea of how we make something feel properly real and relatable, and we started talking about video. And we must have spent another hour then talking about the practicalities and just getting bogged down in all of that. Then on a whim, we just thought, screw it, let's just film something and see if it's any good. So we took ourselves to a local store, we improvised some scenarios with the staff that were in that store, all filmed on an iPhone. It was all a bit gorilla, if that term can ever really be applied to eLearning. But the footage was great, it had a real energy about it, and it ended up being the centerpiece of the experience rather than just a demo. And that decision, the process of just getting everybody off site and just making something up on the day seemed to enthuse everyone. And the ideas that came from the SME and the group that were on site in that moment were so much stronger than anything we would have come up with if we just sat around a meeting room table, probably whilst slyly checking our emails at the same time.
SPEAKER_04The supposed anti-professionality or playfulness of that it had an amazing result because it was spur of the moment creativity rather than overconceptualized, overconceived, overproduced. I'm such a big proponent in any kind of learning intervention to to do that, to have a go rather than to try and make it perfect. I I think it often helps, it often really yields a much better result.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a very good point. I I it's kind of tapping into something with the people there, which is they're really uh they're really in the moment, they're really engaged, uh, and they're thinking in a way that perhaps they couldn't in that very formal type of structure. But there's something here about uh authenticity. Learners, people they they're they've got really good bullshit detectors, haven't they? And they switch off when they're like this is this feels like it's been this is very corporate or this feels like it's uh it doesn't feel like a human's written it. And when you yeah, so this is one of the advantages of escaping the formal is that it feels authentic, it feels like it's real, and therefore for me as the learner or the person, it's worth my attention.
SPEAKER_04If you're talking about the context of e-learning creation, videos, performance, the perceived professionalism going on to your point from of learners having a bullshit detector, that's what my story is is about because I think that professionalism can make it worse, can make things go from useful learning to ridiculous. I was uh doing a blended learning program where there was a lot of in-person training. Yeah, many, many years ago. I was the trainer, and then there were some online branching scenarios that learners had to practice in, and we paid an absolute fortune to this company who built these branching scenarios, video branching scenarios for us. And if you uh messed up, if you've gone, if if you made three incorrect choices, you got this pop-up of an earnestly concerned looking guy going, well, that didn't go very well, did it? And and this resulted in our uh trainees wanting to get this guy to come up as much as possible because it was the silliness of it all. It was so ridiculous. And if that if that just had been a pop-up saying whoops, or someone just saying, try again, that would have been far more useful as a learning tool, as a as an interaction tool.
SPEAKER_03Well, that didn't go very well, did it? We can use that as the sign-off for this podcast episode.
SPEAKER_04Poor man, I hope he's not listening.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I thought they were all really insightful guests, generous with their thoughts. What I was pleasantly surprised by was where we ended up here, um, which was I I think in general there was support for the like the argument that being overly complex, being overly serious as a way of presenting expertise is not always a good thing. There was general support for that. Yeah, but there was also like when we started talking about formality and communicating in a formal way or uh it or formal environments, uh, there was also a bit of uh pushback there on like, well, you know, formal environments they can play a role and they can provide a kind of a structure and a framework for people to to kind of work within.
SPEAKER_04I got the feeling that the setting isn't really the thing that's going to make something a good or a bad, productive or an unproductive meeting or session or brainstorm or whatever or webinar. I I feel like it was the behaviour and the skill of the person who is running the session and their way to I think react to what the room needs and create an environment that kind of brings people along, trying very hard to to not use the word inspire. You know what I mean, listeners.
SPEAKER_03Part of that was creating all mentioned this um psychological safety.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_03Uh and there there are different ways of doing that. Paul Anderson, didn't he? Uh you want to leave people impressed. It's not that you want to be impressive. And that's like that for me is that's kind of really resonated. That's something I'll take away from this.
SPEAKER_04It's such a nice, precise way of putting it. And um yeah, you don't want people to feel intimidated.
SPEAKER_03You want them intrigued. Let's think about that, not just from like uh a way that that person feels at that moment, but also from the if you're designing a learning experience, right? You do want people to be impressed, like you want to leave a impression on them, an impression on them, which is the the learning content. If you're um intimidating them, that is kind of creating a barrier between the them and the content, what you want them to take away.
SPEAKER_04It's almost like a rejection, it's a feeling of oh, I don't want to think about that. I it's negative, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well it's it's what's going on with that person at that time. They're managing the feeling of intimidation, not the uh hard thinking that's required for you to learn something.
SPEAKER_04I remember many years ago when I was attending a lot of live training sessions, how there's always an imbalance in there's like a power dynamic of the facilitator, let's call them, and the audience. I believe that the audience are far more aware of that power dynamic than uh most facilitators are. Uh I feel like when you've become a facilitator, you feel much more on a level with uh with everyone else in the room. Whereas when you're attending a training session, there is a whore expert kind of kind of thing. And in order to leave feeling impressed, for me as a member of the audience, it was always about the facilitator conveying enthusiasm as well as ability and knowledge, conveying passion for the subject, conveying enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I think particularly now, maybe more than ever, for learning designers, uh, as information, like knowledge becomes more of a commodity, right? It's easy to get access to good knowledge. Uh that's not our job, but the job is to create the experience around the knowledge. That's where the value is brought. Um and so escaping the stage on the stage in the live environment and being more like a facilitator and being a partner in that person's thinking around the content, which you know they could get from anywhere, uh, is is truly valuable. Yeah. Well, that feels like a nice place to stop where when we're branching out into the the broader changes in society, that's how that's that's how relevant the Death of ELearning podcast is.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much to our expert contributors. We are so grateful for your time and your insight. And thank you, listeners, for sticking with us. We'll be back very, very soon. Until then. Bye. Bye.
