CEO Insights: The Biggest Trends That Have Dominated the Future of Learning in 2019

Highlights from an interview with CanopyLAB’s co-founder & CEO Sahra-Josephine Hjorth.


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As we approach the end of the year, we’re taking a look back at the biggest trends that have dominated corporate learning and training. When evaluating what corporate clients ask about when deciding which Learning Management System (LMS) to buy, is whether or not it is future-proof. In other words, will it meet their corporate training needs over a long stretch of time? Sahra-Josephine Hjorth points to microlearning and microcredentials as one of the old trends still dominating corporate learning:

 

 “Microlearning, or learning in small chunks has to do with learners’ attention span. When we began creating digital learning it was thought that everyone had to take a whole course and complete it. Today we have a bigger awareness that learners jump from channel to channel. Microcredentials is a trend that follows that. Not to be certified for an entire education or entire course, but to be certified more at the level of what competencies you have.”

 

Sahra-Josephine highlights the fact that gamification has become a must on any learning platform because they are crucial to motivate learners. However, CanopyLAB looks beyond simple features or elements on learning platforms that provide instant gratification:

 

“At CanopyLAB we want to take a step further than just the idea of gamification… we have to look much closer to the actual gaming industry and what we can learn from elements… how people collaborate at a massive scale to solve big problems as well as relationship building and bonding.”

 

One of the hottest trends of 2019 and that will definitely continue dominating the scene in 2020 is advanced analytics described by Sahra-Josephine as the ability to track trends and progress based on the experiences and difficulties faced by learners:

 

Something that we can do on the CanopyLAB platform is to see the difference between supply and demand: To see what learners want to learn, how they want to learn and what we are currently offering.

 

“Something that we can do on the CanopyLAB platform is to see the difference between supply and demand: To see what learners want to learn, how they want to learn and what we are currently offering. The demands for more and more analytics and the ability to make sense of structured and unstructured data.”

 

It is impossible to discuss the future of learning without highlighting the incredible role Artificial Intelligence has played in disrupting digital learning as we know it:

 

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the trends that people are including on their platforms very differently. We’ve seen a big wave in late 2018 and in most of 2019 where it has been the ability to showcase AI features for the end user. Platforms used it to address very basic things… you can even question the value of it. AI chatbots that are customer service oriented and some that have domain knowledge, a chatbot that can intelligently help you answer questions about a specific knowledge-domain like biology.”

 

To all the fellow digital learning geeks out there, chatbots may have lost the novelty and excitement because it is really just a small element of how AI can really revolutionize the future of learning. Sahra-Josephine shares what’s next in store for taking the potential of AI to the next level:

 

The next big wave of AI in learning will be about giving qualitative feedback, not just quantitative.

 

“Automated grading has been around for a while… the next step will not just be the ability to give a numerical grade or a letter grade, we have seen that done before. The next big wave of AI in learning will be about giving qualitative feedback, not just quantitative. How do I know how well I am doing? How I may improve a specific skills? We haven’t seen something great in my opinion yet, but I know there are a lot of experiments happening in that domain.”

 

After such an incredible year at CanopyLAB, we cannot help but look into what’s in store for us in 2020. Check out another exclusive interview featuring Sahra-Josephine Hjorth where she provides exclusive insights on how close we are to creating an actual self-building course. Read along: If We Can Build a Self-Driving Car, How Close Are We to the Self-Building Course?

 


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At CanopyLAB we designed a simple and social platform for digital learning experiences.