Build a Strong Learning Culture on Your Team

This week’s TIP comes from James McKenna. McKenna,  is an award-winning educator, speaker, and consultant in learning design and development. in his article Build a Strong Learning Culture on Your Team  he addresses how employers can help their employees become expert learners; and how that training can better lead and help enable people to adapt to change. 

Are you providing upskilling and reskilling, and not seeing results? Are the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework principles in your future? What is UDL?

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a style of teaching and learning that provides equal opportunity for all people to become expert learners. The job of companies is to help their workers develop expert learning skills.  Often the lack of motivation and employee engagement stems from a faulty design process and not the learner. Notably, it is understood in design theory, that  “workers of today need to prepare for what they’ll be doing tomorrow”.

Workers of today need to prepare for what they’ll be doing tomorrow

According to Mckenna, today’s challenges and traditional approaches are not working, and he addresses some of the reasons why. A few may sound familiar:   

1.    A day late and a dollar short. 

2.    One-size-fits-none. 

3.    A lack of support for the application. 

4.    A cultural disconnect

5.    Learner experience and identity. 

McKenna does offer the employer a few solutions to help shine a light on the problem of “change”. He mentions the fact, that when employees begin to take ownership of what they are learning, that enables them to better begin to adapt to change, and thus become their own drivers of change.  

How does an employer begin to create expert learners, when many employees do not know what, or how to learn? McKenna discusses these concerns in his article and how expert learning requires conditions.

1.    The first is context.

2.    Then there’s capacity. Each person has talents

3.    We can’t assume requisite learning skills and behaviors,

4.    Begin to provide options

5.    Apply learning behaviors in a framework known as the Universal Design for Learning.

UDL helps us embrace the differences between learners — their variability in strengths, interests, attitudes, cultures, and more — by setting firm, challenging goals and allowing for flexible pathways to meet those goals.

There are numerous varieties of learners. From your top-down, one-size-fits-all, to the self-directed who take initiative for their own learning. Then there are Expert learners who focus on strategic performance improvement. These types of learners adapt best to our changing modern workplaces and can help improve outcomes.   What is to gain?

·      First, employees who are skilled learners can more readily innovate

·      Next, learning fuels employee engagement

·      Finally, investing in learning is just that: an investment. 

When you begin to build your own Culture of Expert Learners there are some stick to it philosophical steps you might want to stick with.  

• Adopt a learning philosophy and stick to it.
• Audit your culture for barriers to learning.
• Be flexible.
• Change is constant
• UDL helps us focus on what works for people

Great article I highly encourage it. Learn more about expert learners and how they can help you with tomorrow’s problems. Build a Strong Learning Culture on Your Team

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