Here at Nomadic we’re a team of entrepreneurs, writers, developers, designers, and filmmakers–– but at our core we’re all teachers (some of us more formal than others). So most people find it strange when they learn that one of the foundations of our approach to learning design is: “do not teach.” How can a team of teachers advocate that digital learning should not teach?
Well, it’s not so much that we don’t want to teach—it’s that our focus is on what we want people to learn. And that small shift informs every aspect of our process. And, leads to more effective collaborative learning.
Instead of focusing on what we want to teach—we focus on what we want our learners to experience within our social learning platform, what we want them to talk to each other about, and ultimately what we want them to learn. Then, we work backward and use that lens to inform the decisions we make every step of the way.
Check out this clip to learn more about our approach to learning design:
Our shift to starting with what we want the learners to experience instead of what we want to teach them has led us to rethink the way we approach writing and designing content, the way we think about UX within our platform, and even the job titles we have (we don’t have a single instructional designer on our team).
This shift in mindset really resonates with our clients, as well. They are seeing similar shifts in the way they approach business in today’s changing landscape. They want programs that help employees shift to be more client-centric, programs that help customer service representatives to better understand and empathize with the user experience, and programs that enable both internal and external communication strategies to break through the noise and grab attention.
But perhaps most importantly, this small shift in how we approach digital learning gives both our clients and our team a consistent reminder that true learning can happen in any medium—as long as we remember who our learner is and as long as we care more about what we want them to learn than what we want to teach. Sometimes it’s easier said than done, but like any good mantra: we practice it every day.
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Podcast episode - Laurie Rebholtz, Design Lead - Leadership and Performance Solutions, at Citi joins Nomadic’s co-founders to discuss learning at Citi, an organization with more than 200,000 employees worldwide.
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