Learning businesses care about creating effective learning. Doing so is at the heart of why learning businesses exist. But what happens when effective learning practices clash with what learners want or what they believe is effective?

That clash is precisely what Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore in this episode, which looks at desirable difficulties and the specific difficulty desirable difficulties pose for learning businesses.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode398.

Learning, education, and professional development are not the same. Similar, yes, interrelated even, but fundamentally and importantly different. If learning businesses take the parochial view of learning as merely education, they unnecessarily limit their impact and their possibilities.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore the strategic importance of recognizing the differences between learning, education, and professional development. Learning encompasses informal experiences in addition to formal education and professional development, making it the broadest, more encompassing term.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode397.

Everybody loves a good story. It’s what draws us to good books, good movies, good podcasts. And we know that good stories can draw prospective learners to us and the learning experiences we offer. But telling a good story is harder than it looks, particularly in the realm of business, where often too much emphasis is put on numbers, data, and building a case rather than appealing to emotions, human connection, familiar patterns, and satisfying hooks. If you listen to this episode, you’ll get a mini class in how to tell a good story for your learning business.

Park Howell is the founder of the Business of Story. Park comes from the marketing world, where he ran his own advertising agency for 20 years. One of his big a-has is the and-but-therefore (ABT) agile narrative framework. Leading Learning Podcast co-host Celisa Steele talks with Park about the power of storytelling, its connection to how the human brain works, and how the ABT framework works at a conceptual and a practical level.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode396.

Digital credentials aren’t as valuable on their own as they are in an ecosystem that uses open standards to connect learners and employers and where relevant data about skills achieved, pathways to new roles, and the needs of the job market intersect.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa talk about standards-based digital credentials being at tipping point and the need for learning businesses to adopt them in order to adapt to what learners are coming to expect when receiving a credential.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode395.