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Justin Mass is head of Digital Learning Innovation at Adobe.

Justin Mass

December 2014 - TD Magazine

Embracing a bold digital learning strategy, Adobe helps new employees find their bearings using a highly engaging, scalable method that pushes the boundaries of virtual classrooms.

Going Digital: Re-Imagining New-Hire Orientation

Discusses the integration of mass-customization and just-in-time production methods into employee education at IBM. Key features of the firm's occupational training programs; Education management system employed by the firm; Implications on manpower development.

IBM Faces the Future

If you have ever been in the market for a learning management system (LMS), then you are well aware of the breadth of options available. In fact, there seems to be an LMS for nearly every situation.Want franchise training? There’s an LMS for that.Need to roll-out employee onboarding? There’s an LMS for that.Learners are looking for an easy-to-access course marketplace? There’s an LMS for that.Each solution contains a set of features that the target audience would value. However, despite these industry-specific solutions, there is a core set of features that any modern LMS should support. Three of the more popular modern LMS features include gamification, theming, and third-party integrations.GamificationGamification is everywhere today, and with good reason: it is effective when implemented properly.Typical gamification methods include badges and points. Badges are awarded and stored by the LMS, usually integrating with an open API such as Mozilla OpenBadges. In a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on digital education, virtual badges are becoming highly sought after by learners and organizations alike.Companies issue internal badges to their employees based on courses they complete, and third-party training organizations award them for successfully meeting certain criteria. Social platforms like LinkedIn have even created a way for professionals to share their earned badges through the OpenBadge system. Likewise, formal educational programs held at universities are beginning to issue virtual badges via MOOC (massive open online course) services like Coursera.Any LMS lacking this fundamental component to online learning is showing its age.ThemingThere is something to be said about utility, but user experience (UX) should not suffer at the hands of it. Indeed, we are exposed daily to beautiful websites, applications, and various virtual environments that provide a healthy blend aesthetics with functionality. This is beyond a nice-to-have feature when it comes to learning management, it is a must-have feature.Courses that are sitting on an LMS with dated user interface are subject to be guilty-by-association. If the LMS looks old, then the course content can suffer the same perception (even if unfounded).Theming also is important to an organization’s overall mission. It isn’t uncommon today for organizations to invest heavily into brand presentation and consistency. This includes such assets as its website, Twitter, Facebook, intranet, printed materials, and so forth.The modern LMS understands the importance of consistent messaging. As such, you will find relevant theming features that make it possible to have this uniformity across all channels.Third-Party IntegrationsAt one time, every piece of software was proprietary. Consequently, when you bought an LMS, you also bought into its ecosystem that had been created for it. Today, this approach isn’t acceptable. There are hundreds of applications out there with the ability to “speak” to one another, it only makes sense that your LMS does too.Cross-application communication is in such high demand, services like Zapier have seen tremendous growth. This is because our daily lives include a mix of various apps and devices. Our lives become much easier when these various platforms can interact. By way of example, there are many software platforms available that allow you to sign-up (or log-in) using your Facebook account eliminating the need to create yet another username and password.When you are searching for your ideal LMS, make sure that they have integrations with other popular services, such as Google Docs, Evernote, DropBox, OpenBadges, and so forth. Even if you don’t plan on using any of these programs, having them available is validation that the provider is thinking outside of their own immediate technical environment. It is an indication that the LMS you are choosing has a user-first mindset.Bottom LineThe first iteration of all LMS offerings had a focus on functionality. The primary objective was to get the LMS to do what we wanted it to do in terms of course delivery (is it delivered) and reporting (does it track participation). The modern LMS continues this original goal, but there is now more emphasis on the user experience. Gamification, theming, and third-party integrations are just three examples of desired feature sets that have come out of this end-user focus shift.The trend is continuing this direction as we see innovations around accessibility and platform compatibility. LMS providers that don’t take the necessary steps now to transform their offerings are at serious risk of becoming obsolete, while those that embrace this evolution in the market will certainly be around for years to come.

3 Must-Have Features in a Modern LMS

Happy Holidays!The end of the year is fast approaching, which means it’s a good time to take a step back and review where we’ve been and speculate on where we’re going. I think we can all agree that 2012 continued to be a huge year for mobile.  ASTD launched a new certificate program and co-published a book, along with numerous articles, blog posts, and webcasts on the topic. Mobile is not going away. So, as you continue think about how this trend affects your learning strategies, remember that it’s not about the device or technology, it’s about being able to provide learners support—in context—where and when they need it.Also, the term “gamification” has been thrown around this year—A LOT. There’s been a great deal of hype, as well as some negative press. Recently, a Gartner report predicted that 80 percent of gamification implementations will fail by 2014. Unfortunately, this stat might be true. There is quite a bit of poor quality solutions making the rounds –not to mention promises of increased engagement by merely handing out digital badges and awards. Like anything else, good game design or even just the application of general game elements to learning takes time and expertise. To help motivated developers head down the right path, ASTD co-published Karl Kapp’s new book, The Gamfication of Learning and Instruction, and we are partnering with Karl and Koreen Olbrish on a Game Design and Gamification Workshop. We expect it to not only take you inside the game design process, but also a lot of fun.Finally, you’ve likely heard of MOOCs (massively open online courses) by now. If not, these are online courses with free, open access. A few prominent MOOC providers are Coursera, Udacity, and edX; these providers partner with various universities who also offer other course content and instructors. I believe MOOCs will continue to have a huge impact on the higher education system. More important, I’ll be interested to see how they affect organizational learning.That’s just my quick take on some 2012 trends. What was your trend of the year? What trends are you looking out for in 2013?

Learning Technologies: Looking Back On 2012

To be sure, mobile learning has been quite the buzz in the industry for the last year. But one comment that I hear frequently is, "Yeah, mobile learning sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if it will catch on in my company—soon, in the future, or ever." According to the 2013 ASTD State of the Industry Report, 39 percent of formal learning hours are available via technology-based delivery methods. However, only 1.64 percent of that was attributed to mobile technology in 2012—that was less than the percentage of training available on DVD and audio CD (2.13 percent)! Interestingly, a 2013 eLearning Guild research report, How Mobile Learning is Done: Nine Case Studies from Around the World, indicates that 70.6 percent of the workforce reports using their personal mobile devices for work purposes. This means that our industry is missing a huge opportunity to take advantage of a platform that the workforce is already regularly using! So, aside from how we prefer to use our mobile devices, are there are other reasons why mobile is important to workplace learning professionals?1. Mobile changes how you and your organization views data and information.We are at a point in time when data storage is cheaper than ever before In addition, there are massive amounts of information and content flowing through our organizations—some of which is relevant, some isn't. Regardless, we have the new challenge of finding the right information when we need it. Mobile learning is heavily focused on the process by which we are able to quickly retrieve necessary information. In order to do this, on a very basic level, it has to be categorized, classified (tagged), and easily retrieved by a user. It also must be formatted in such a way that it is accessible on a variety of devices. Achieving this level of accessibility requires thinking strategically about content management in your organization: Where will you store the content?How will you categorize it (taxonomy)?What tags will you use to improve searchability or the flow of that content to interfaces (such as your app or website)? Answering these questions will help you on the road to mobile learning. But remember that it also helps you manage information for other purposes. Slide decks, images, white papers, reports, worksheets, videos, podcasts or audio files, and so forth all need a method of organization that goes beyond a naming convention or file structure in your shared drive. 2. Mobile will change how you view design. Mobile is challenging our industry more than ever to practice thoughtful design. Over the years, instructional designers have been exposed to all sorts of practices and methodology. We have experienced everything from avatars to flash animations. However, when all of that desktop computing power was squished into a hand-held device, designers had to revisit what was really important and cut the fat. You may have noticed the trend of "flatter" and lighter design for mobile. Although we have become accustomed to seeing the flashy, high-fidelity graphics, the concept of "less is more" has begun to hit us hard. Check out information-loaded sites like Google or Wikipedia, which are text-based and highly structured and organized. Also, searches are far more intuitive than they've ever been. We have different expectations of what it means to use technology to learn something new, and it doesn't begin with, "the learning objectives of this session are XYZ." How does this affect the way you design? Are you looking for ways to scale-down and customize your training solutions? Do you think about the way that associates would realistically need to access information in their moment of need?3. Mobile is the way to "be there" when they need you.Learners come to class, take notes, and then return to their jobs. Do you know what happens next? Take a walk through your learners' workspaces. Do you see post-it notes everywhere? Observe workers carrying-out daily tasks. Are they asking co-workers for assistance? Do you notice opportunities for efficiency in how they are accessing frequently used notes or information housed somewhere on the company intranet? These are all perfect examples of where mobile could help. Are you empowering your associates by giving them a way to access the right information quickly and easily, just when they need it? Do you provide support outside of the classroom—whether it is reinforcing processes and procedures or adding value by making additional resources available? Think about establishing ways to empower associates and help them be more efficient and self-sustaining so that they can spend more time being successful on-the-job.

Why Should You Care About Mobile Learning?

Using a variety of technologies has become more of the norm as forward-acting companies focus on performance gains by modernizing their learning strategies to fit the way people work and live. This includes virtual reality, segmented reality, and robotics as well as using standard off-the-shelf technologies in new and creative ways. Reimagine the learning space from a mass-produced push environment to a modern and personalized pull space available just-in-time. Senior practitioners will share their stories for integrating technologies to advance employees in a rapid method referred to as zing rounds. Learn how one company is using technologies to provide an extended onboarding process enabling new employees to learn at the moment of need, and another is providing experienced employees the ability to share their own expertise and learn from others. Leave with resources and references to up the ante on making decisions on ways to integrate technology and learning to stay relevant in a continuously changing work-learn environment. This session was recorded at the ATD 2019 TechKnowledge conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Using Technologies to Advance Employee Performance

We all walk around the world with certain expectations. We have a sense of how the food will taste at a fast food restaurant. We know what our favorite slippers feel like on a cold morning. We brace ourselves when we get a letter from our accountant. When our expectations aren’t met, we struggle. We complain that the line at our go-to coffee shop is longer than normal. We can’t believe that a particular clothing store no longer sells red T-shirts.We also struggle when something or someone exceeds our expectations because we don’t know how to react. The entertainment industry plays on this mismatch of expectations and reality. But often, we celebrate when faced with such unexpected scenarios. Julia Roberts can afford to shop in the pricy boutique in Pretty Woman. Frodo is much more than a just a hobbit in Lord of the Rings and defeats the greatest evil in the land_._We carry around the same expectations at work. Learning and knowledge teams often begin projects with deeply held beliefs about the other. Prior interactions between the two teams (like the mass of ERP projects in the 1990s and 2000s) have built and reinforced such preconceptions. Yet in reality, both teams exceed these expectations.Learning teams see knowledge managers as organizers of information, building categories and subcategories to put knowledge into well-identified bins. Knowledge managers historically controlled the content necessary for the learning team to develop training, managed access to that knowledge, and ensured that all of the knowledge was formatted properly. The learning team saw the knowledge managers as keepers of policies, processes, and procedures for knowledge. The demands of these procedures frustrated learning teams, creating an impression that knowledge managers were more worried about the format and categorization of knowledge than whether it fit a particular need. Knowledge managers were perceived as gatekeepers, not enablers. Learning teams felt compelled to create supplementary content to fill in what they perceived to be gaps in the “fit” of the knowledge.Knowledge teams, on the other hand, saw learning managers as trainers only, adapting content that they had created. Learning teams might change the order of the presentation of knowledge to make it easier to consume, which would affect the context of the knowledge presented. Knowledge teams also felt an intense pressure to deliver “complete” knowledge to the learning team. This was particularly difficult in complex projects where changes to the deliverables would alter the knowledge required to build training, creating numerous back-and-forth interactions between knowledge and learning teams, and frustrating both. Knowledge teams also were frustrated by the amount of time that the learning team required to build training.Obviously, neither of these sets of expectations is true. Today, both learning and knowledge teams are driving toward the same goal—delivering the knowledge and skills that team-members need as close to when they need them as possible. Just-in-time knowledge and learning delivery systems mirror one another in intent.Knowledge and learning teams need to recognize their limiting expectations and learn to exceed them. Can you imagine the applause you can get if the teams move past their expectations?Would you like to know how to build this partnership and achieve exceptional results? Check out our March issue of TD at Work: “Enabling Success through Learning and Knowledge Sharing.”

Great Expectations: Move Past Preconceptions and Forge a Healthy Partnership

While preparing today for a future speech on learning trends at a Belgian government organization, I was interrupted by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake's funny hashtag video. This prompted me to add hashtags to each trend during my speech, as if to say, "These are the things you should be talking about."Here are hashtags for 11 learning trends learning and development professionals should be thinking about today.#CharlesToldMeSoAccording to Charles Jennings and the Internet Time Alliance, most learning doesn't happen in a formal structured organized (training) way. Most thought leaders agree that some 70 percent of learning comes from unstructured experiential moments. If learning managers can encourage, capture, and share this learning to the benefit of the wider organization, they can really improve results.Watch the 70:20:10 video introduction by Charles Jennings on YouTube.Visit www.702010forum.com for an introduction and numerous resources.#WithALittleHelpFromMyFriendsEven if you don't buy into the 70:20:10 possibility (why wouldn't you?), you can't live in the learning world these days and not realise that both social media and social learning present massive opportunities to improve learning efficiency and results.Get more ideas on how to use social media for training.Check out 100 examples of social media for learning by Jane Hart.#KnowWhoYouKnowAndKnowWhoAndWhatTHEYKnowIf social learning is important, so are social networks—and the ability to evaluate them and create more influence from within them. Learning professionals must stop considering the organization as a bunch of functional hierarchies and seek to understand the informal learning networks at play and how to profit from them.Read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.Read my ASTD2013 notes on “Analysing and Evaluating Informal Learning Networks” with Shari Yocum (lots of references and questions at the end).#WhoAreYouCallingImpatient?Real-time learning is becoming increasingly more important. People can’t wait six months for training when they have a problem today. In order to increase speed to learning, we need to think about quick and easy ways to get people the answers they need to improve their work. The range of tools, expertise and resources available is ever growing and L&D people must support usage, sharing, and effectiveness in order to help people get what they need quickly.Read Jane Hart’s blog post on learning trends and learning tools.#IFightForTheUser or #OneSizeDoesn’tFitAllEverything learning professionals do to support or structure learning has to be user-centric. This implies granularity and consumerization. Granularity is all about creating diverse chunks of learning content on different platforms and using different styles—the user can serve herself and take what seems suitable in the format she prefers. Consumerization is about letting people get their hands on learning information and content on whatever device they like.Read about the problems with BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) and five app solutions.Read my ASTD2013 notes about Google and MOOCs—a granular approach to learning.#SizeIsntEverythingBig data is getting a lot of press because of its apparent ability to give a better understanding of the reality, create better strategy and achieve more results. Applications within the consumer world are both various and scary. (Yes, they track everything you do on Facebook and use it to sell you stuff!) But the learning world may also be able to profit. If you can capture and assess all performance metrics in the organisation quickly, you will be able to see trends and create better approaches to improving performance through learning.Check out the conceptual example of big data for learning in a call center.#IMovedYourCheeseOkay, I stole the title of this hashtag from Deepak Malhotra’s great book of the same name L . In today’s VUCA business environment, things change all the time. Our learning approaches need to be equally adaptive. In training, although we may have designed for 12 people (and even if we may have a set plan of learning activities), to have real impact we need to be able to incorporate flexible strategies to account for different previously unknown needs that “appear out of nowhere.”In workplace-based learning, we need to be able to quickly identify need news and reply with relevant and timely adapted learning. Challenges to adaptive learning include “data-mining” and “scaling.” If we are going to continuously adapt to the environment, we need to be able to plough through massive amounts of available information in order to assess changes and trends and reply with the right answer for all the right people, right now!Read about Knewton’s Adaptive Learning Platform.#InAtTheDeepEndImmersive and authentic learning is likely to grow in importance, as learning professionals understand the needs of the business and how learners interact with content. Models and theories in classroom environments are good for the many things, but there are other ways to create a more engaging and authentic learning environment.Learning platforms that combine rich digital media with simulation and virtual reality may be one answer. Gamified learning is another. Augmented reality also has potetional.Join the Immersive Education Initiative and help define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.Read about what to consider before starting with gamification.Have a look at Mashable’s posts on augmented reality.Check out five existing augmented reality apps for education.#ShowMeTheMoneyIf CEOs hate learning and development people, the mostly likely reason is lack of business acumen and poor marketing/sales skills. In many organizations, the learning function grew out of an administrative part of HR that managed sending people to training. The work and measurement of those people were based around how many people went to training and whether or not they liked it.Today, even if learning people all know that it’s the result that counts and not the method, many are unable to understand core business problems and articulate proposed learning solutions. L&D people must have good business acumen and marketing/sales skills.Read more about business acumen and the five things everyone in a business needs to understand to have impact.Learn what are the only three questions that count and how to be FAB when you pitch a learning initiative.#InYouWeTrustL&D people need to stop doing things for themselves and get people from within and around the organization more involved in learning design, support, and delivery. And sometimes, we need to realize that not everything has to be designed and structured for the learner—he can do some things himself!Find out why it’s also very important to make sure people are competent to learn by themselves.#WishIWorkedInAMuseumGiven the massive amount of information and resources available for our people to learn, it can be helpful to have someone filtering, contextualising and sharing information for different target groups. The skill of curation is becoming more and more important in the learning world.Read about the importance of curation and different approaches, according to David Kelly.Other hashtags that didn’t make the list today—but may be used in the future include:#SpoonfulOfSugarHelpsTheMedicineGoDown for gamification#MyThirdHand for mobile + iPad#7BillionLearningStyles because “learning styles” is a myth#BlokeInThePubSaidItSoItMustBeTrue for 70:20:10#AustralianEducation for “flipped-classroom”

Alternative Learning Hashtags for Today's Learning Trends

The ASTD 2013 International Conference & Exposition is less than three months away, which is hard to believe as TechKnowledge is only a month behind us. This May in Dallas, we’ll have about 290 educational sessions, in addition to the numerous other learning opportunities available. The event is so big, it can feel a bit overwhelming if you’re not prepared.I manage ASTD’s Learning Technologies Community, and help select the sessions for the Learning Technologies track, which contains about 40 sessions this year. If this is an areas of interest for you, we have a great mix of content – from e-learning to mobile to games to social and emerging trends. There’s something for everyone.Here are a few of the sessions that I’m looking forward to attending:Massive Open Online Courses: The Future of Corporate Learning: You gotta love when a session title makes a statement like that. Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) are a huge topic in higher education and have interesting implications for corporate learning. The speakers, Julia Wilkowski and Phil Wagner are both instructional designers at Google, and this session is a case study showing what they learned from experimenting with MOOCs there.Everything You Need to Know About the Experience API: If you haven’t heard of the Experience API (also known as Project Tin Can), then you should definitely check out this panel with Aaron Silvers, Clark Quinn, Jason Haag, Megan Bowe, and Julie Dirksen. In this session, you’ll hear about how this update to SCORM will change the way we track and monitor our learning experiences. There are no other experts better equipped to answer your questions than this group.What’s Next for Mobile Learning?: Mobile is such a huge topic of interest, and rightful so. We’re a mobile world and it’s a technology that learning and development needs to capitalize on. In this session, Chad Udell will take a look at the mobile landscape and explain what learning professionals need to know in the coming years. The topic of mobile is nothing new, but I am interested in seeing Chad’s take on where it’s going.Ten Principles We Can Learn from Game Designers: Games are a huge topic of interest, both inside and outside of learning. In this session, Julie Dirksen will break down principles that game designers use such as feedback ratios, goals, levels, and so on can be applied to create engaging learning experiences. This session will no doubt be a lot of fun.So those are just some of the sessions I’ll be checking out in Dallas. I’m interested in hearing what you plan on seeing, take a look at the schedule and let me know.The ASTD 2013 International Conference & Exposition is the premier event for training and development professionals. This year's event will take place in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. from May 19-22, 2013. Learn more about ASTD 2013's keynote speakers, educational sessions, and exposition at www.astdconference.org.

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