Are Autonomous Learning Platforms the Cure for Workforce Development?

Whilst I always cast a suspicious side-eye at gratuitous buzzwords and acronyms, Autonomous Learning Platforms have recently been highlighted as a new EdTech category because they are about serving up personalized experiences at scale. It is a rare newbie worth paying attention to. That said, there’s always lower-case hype, upper-case Hype, and what is indeed possible today. Let’s dissect.

Basically, an ALP allows you to use a co-pilot to interact with content in your learning library or closed ecosystem simply by asking questions. AI can then be used to serve up a personalised experience at scale. This is a very reductive version of a very dynamic space, so do your own research using your favourite tool (I’m still a rarely seen-in-the-wild Team Perplexity.ai).

If you are looking for some examples, I have been a long-time fan of Sana Labs and herald their disruption in our industry. I also have a brain crush on adjacent tech like Mindset.ai. PSA: I never do paid endorsements and any tech I highlight is at my discretion. In this case, anything that a) messes with SCORM b) unlocks access to content without click-next-to-continue and c) combines knowledge management with L&D brings joy to my cynical heart. Why? Because this is what an employee needs. I, too, was once a very passionate baby Instructional Designer with a Storyline licence, but time and tech have marched on.

And whilst ALPs are off to a great start and there are pockets of platforms that leverage AI to ensure the right content hits the right person at the right time with the right performance outcomes, it's not stitched together…yet.

The fact is, AI creates what we have trained it to create. A course is a course because we have decided according to research and dubious data points what a course should look like. However, we now have the technology to look at billions of interaction points and determine what is an optimal path to skills acquisition combined with personalisation. It’s essentially reverse engineering the learning process. A really good example of this is Duolingo (even if that Owl haunts me).

Then there is skills practice. Borderless access to the company canon of knowledge and unlocking the content library into naturalised conversation are amazing things. Could a person fundamentally switch from a customer service role to a product engineer using an ALP? I would say they have an infinitely better chance there than on an LMS or LXP. But there does need to be more. Solutions like Bongo have the potential to create a fulsome learning experience with personalised feedback and video practice. Me gusto.

Overall, where we are going is exciting and overdue. But we can't forget the biggest challenge: user adoption. Take a look at the autocompletes in this Google Search for “Turn off”

Just the simple change from performing a search to writing a prompt or interacting with a co-pilot is a seismic shift. You might even get rebellion. In San Francisco, a crowd torched a Waymo driverless car.

Speaking of autonomous cars, Josh Bersin used this analogy in his latest article to map a maturity model for EdTech vendors. Now, I know it is hard to come up with a smashing metaphor but I have to be a little bit pedantic. Hopefully, for a good reason. In an autonomous-driving car, there are no KPIs for the passenger. Yes, the experience is designed for them and the goals presumably are to get from point A to B without an accident. However, in L&D we need to have some sort of impact on the business. It is not just about keeping an employee happy and comfortable.

In a perfect world, AI could be used to uncover real-time insights on performance gaps and emerging skills even before human intervention and feed these directly into an ALP.

All this is not to say we are not heading in the right direction with Autonomous Learning Platforms and AI solutions in EdTech. I simply worry we are not spending enough time and focus to learn from some of our mistakes. There is a window now to get it right.

Advice to L&D leaders:

• Speak now with IT and understand their views on AI
• Respectfully challenge resistance within leadership towards change
• Find the early adopters in your organisation
• Think less about AI for content

None of us wants to be sitting around a table (either real or in the metaverse) in twenty years talking about measuring the ROI of learning.