About a month ago I saw a question from the eLearning Guild asking for people’s input on what learning will look like in 2024. Since that day I’ve been thinking about it and meaning to write down my thoughts.
There has since been a discussion on the topic, and several others who wrote down their thoughts.
Here are my thoughts on what learning will look like in 2024. I also hope to see some comments on where you think learning will look like.
Reality
In reality not much will change in 10 years. There will still be a few organizations on the cutting edge of learning who will work with how people learn instead of forcing it. That number of organizations who “get it” may grow a small amount, but still be the minority.
Most organizations will still try to control how, when, and where learning happens. The fight will still remain against how learning occurs. Learning & Development departments will be stuck in formal learning, tracking the wrong data through an outdated LMS.
Ideally
Learning & Development will be working with how people learn. This is contrary to what happens today, but this shift will catch on. It will occur but I say ideally because in a perfect world it would occur within the next 10 years.
Few organization learning departments will be controlling learning to track participation through an LMS.
Working with how people learn in reality is the only logical step in how learning will look in 2024 to me. There are many moving parts to working with how people learn though. A great shift will occur to performance support and social learning. Also, courses will be limited, more viable solutions will be developed for the majority of learning.
The foundation of how learning will look in 2024 exists in whole today, it just hasn’t been adopted. Leaders who have the best chance of making these changes first need to have visibility to the possibilities.
As those in charge are introduced to how people learn, they’ll be forced to put in place solutions to solve the problem. With this happening, the ideal will soon become the reality.
xAPI
The last part of where I think learning will move towards the year 2024 is the experience API (xAPI). Within 10 years time cutting edge organizations will figure out how to use xAPI.
xAPI will track activities within an organization and show what people do, and what their preferences are. Of course more will have to be learned in L&D to analyze and draw information from the Big Data that xAPI can provide.
Rather than throwing xAPI at a problem, organizations will learn how to create a plan for what they want to do with xAPI. Only after the plan is created will an organization move towards implementation.
Mobile
There are still so many questions surrounding mobile, and so many misconceptions. In 10 years time mobile will be the primary access point for users to learn what they need for their job. They’ll do it at the point of need by searching for what they need and receiving accurate results. Once the needed topic is found by search or by location, it’ll be as simple as glancing at their device to do their job.
Organization learning departments will learn that it’s not the ideal tool to apply old learning methods to. The determination will be that performance support is the ideal application for mobile.
Of course this is an idealized story of how mobile will work in 10 years, but it is the direction organizations should and will need to go in. This is how I see mobile in 2024 in an ideal world.
See You In The Future
The foundation exists to what learning will look like in 2024. Some organizations are even there or have a plan in place to get there already.
As the message spreads, doing the same old thing will no longer suffice. Organizations will figure out what they’re doing isn’t working and be forced to change. This will all happen as the workforce changes and employees demand a better way to be better at their job. Future employees will demand their time is not wasted on required courses only to be forgotten, or were not necessary in the first place.
What do you think learning will look like in the year 2024? I know I am excited to see where things go, and I’m excited to be on the forefront of whatever does happen.
2 thoughts on “What Will Learning Look Like In 2024?”
Hi Nick – I like your cautiously optimistic style ; ) Easy to get caught up in what *could be*. If you were to look at what’s changed in the previous 10 years in what L&D does there’s probably not a huge degree of change – and I think your assessment of what the next 10 years might hold probably reflects that. It’s probably fair to say though that the next 10 years the rate of change will be a lot faster than the previous (so hopefully this means we’ll see these changes across the board sooner…?! Maybe…??) Def agree L&D should (and probably, hopefully, will!) do a seismic shift away from merely course design / devp to supporting performance and social via mobile as its primary function. Mobile is likely to not only = smartphones and tablets though; there’s likely to be much more convergence with wearable tech, augmented reality and virtual reality applications (as these technologies become cheaper and more ubiquitous…) as means to create realistic simulations, applied learning and performance support….well, here’s hoping, anyway! : )
Thanks for the commend Tanya! I guess I have a cautiously optimistic style 🙂
You are right mobile will = more than just smartphones and tablets, although I don’t think that other things like watches and glasses will be as ground-breaking as we’d like to think unfortunately. They will do some great things but they will be expensive and few and far between.
If anything I think the wearable devices will work in conjunction with smartphones. Like you said, more of a convergence, not a take-over. I hope for the best but I do know it will be a long slow road.
I wrote this a while ago about wearable devices, still haven’t seen much more happen in the mainstream with them. Maybe Apple will change that, they usually do 🙂
Hi Nick – I like your cautiously optimistic style ; ) Easy to get caught up in what *could be*. If you were to look at what’s changed in the previous 10 years in what L&D does there’s probably not a huge degree of change – and I think your assessment of what the next 10 years might hold probably reflects that. It’s probably fair to say though that the next 10 years the rate of change will be a lot faster than the previous (so hopefully this means we’ll see these changes across the board sooner…?! Maybe…??) Def agree L&D should (and probably, hopefully, will!) do a seismic shift away from merely course design / devp to supporting performance and social via mobile as its primary function. Mobile is likely to not only = smartphones and tablets though; there’s likely to be much more convergence with wearable tech, augmented reality and virtual reality applications (as these technologies become cheaper and more ubiquitous…) as means to create realistic simulations, applied learning and performance support….well, here’s hoping, anyway! : )
Thanks for the commend Tanya! I guess I have a cautiously optimistic style 🙂
You are right mobile will = more than just smartphones and tablets, although I don’t think that other things like watches and glasses will be as ground-breaking as we’d like to think unfortunately. They will do some great things but they will be expensive and few and far between.
If anything I think the wearable devices will work in conjunction with smartphones. Like you said, more of a convergence, not a take-over. I hope for the best but I do know it will be a long slow road.
I wrote this a while ago about wearable devices, still haven’t seen much more happen in the mainstream with them. Maybe Apple will change that, they usually do 🙂
https://www.nickleffler.com/smartwearables-vs-smartphone/