Hey, Meg, let's do a podcast. That's a great idea. What should

we talk about?

All right, I'm just going to jump right into this. Every industry has its

buzzwords, and what I always find interesting is that

sometimes how people in the industry define those

buzzwords differs widely. It's like

instructional design. That's a whole rabbit hole we're not going to go down. I want

to talk about learning ecosystems today, in part because

you and I, who otherwise think so similar in

so many respects, came at this one from two

totally different directions. Yes. Yeah. And I actually remember

the first time that we talked about this because I had just given

a presentation at Devlearn and it was on

learner journey mapping. And Sam Degas and I have done

this workshop a couple different times, and we talk not

just about the learner's journey, but also the

entire ecosystem of things that support that

learner through their journey. So we're talking about the people, the

processes, and the technology that helps them to

be successful in what they're, they're learning,

but also in what they're doing, going to then perform and do on the

job. And so

that is my way about thinking about learning ecosystems. And I remember

you came to me and you're like, you know what? I thought you were just

going to talk about the technology piece and

just the systems, but it's broader than that, isn't it? And I was

like, I think it is, Megan. I know. I was like, where are the LMS?

Where's the data? Yeah. Yep, yep.

And, you know, as we were preparing to have this conversation,

I also thought, I'm gonna go out and see what the rest of

the world thinks, too. And so I asked my good friend Google,

and I asked my good friend Chat. GPT well, we're

not quite good friends yet, but we're getting there. I

said, describe for me what's a learning ecosystem.

Give me three different ways, emphasize different aspects of it, and chat

GPT came back with one way to

describe it from a technology aspect, another from community

and social aspect. And the third way was organizational and

policy. And I was like, that's exactly it. It's the people, processes and

technology. I also found some other stuff around

culture that could be people, too. Content,

strategy, data, governance. So it's a lot of

things. It's all the things. It's kind of whatever you

want it to be. Could it be? It could be,

yes, I think so. Well, and so this is helpful, though.

So it's not just me, it's not just you right.

There's lots of different ways to define it. I showed up, I remember, to

rob Brodnick's learning ecosystem project. I was

so excited. And yeah, I showed up with my lmss and my

data lakes and I was all ready to geek out. And all of a sudden

we're talking about social identities and student life,

economic ecosystems. And I thought, I have landed on the wrong

place. But they all. I mean, by the end of the session, it all made

sense. It was just a bigger place than I had landed.

So in our work, Meg, you and I have worked now with several

organizations in their ecosystem strategy,

and we always start

with describing the current state as

a good place to get started. And what

is some of the things that you find that, that brings to that project?

What's the value there? Yeah. So

starting there allows you to really get

a lay of the land and see do you have the right elements in

place to achieve the goals that your organization is setting out to

achieve? As a broad organization, but

also with learners specifically, you can

also start to get a sense for, are there

gaps that need to be addressed? Are there

redundancies? Are you one of those very, very large

organizations out there that has six lmss

and maybe you don't quite need

all of those, or maybe each one of those is serving a very specific

need and somebody higher up is saying, like, ask

the lmss. And no, really what you find by mapping that

current state is they're all necessary for different

reasons. Maybe you'll find some inefficiencies or things that

you could do better. Maybe you'll find that there's

something in the environment, in the ecosystem that

is holding you back from being able to reach your goals. So

I think that's why starting with the current state can really

get you a long way. And we had a project

recently where we ended up with a really creative way of,

an insightful way of looking at

their learning ecosystem. And we actually looked beyond

just learning. We looked at a lot of depth. There were things on that learning

ecosystem that I don't see in a lot of places.

Walk me through that one. Sure. Knowing that this is an

audio and we're walking through a picture, everybody. There's a lot of hand waving going

on. It's true. Yeah.

So this particular project, we started by

looking at all the different layers. So

the learner has their layer and they can see,

they see how they access things, the devices that they're using

and the systems that they're using for that, the systems that are used to

deliver. So that might be the learning management system

or a data dashboard that they would see. So

those are the learner visible aspects. And then below

that, there's also the things they don't see.

There's all the tools that are used to create the content.

There's the content management, there's the content authoring,

analysis and visualization that's happening with your data. And also

a data management layer, skills, taxonomies and

how the data is being aggregated and transformed

to be able to serve up those visualizations and provide

insights to leaders or to even to learners

themselves. And then below that and kind of

spanning across as well is all the things that enable

the learning to take place. And so that might have something to do with

AI or it's learning ops and project management.

There's all sorts of things that might enable that learning to take

place, even language and translation. That needs to

happen. And so what we did was

we identified all these different aspects

and also laid them out in a

matrixed approach to look at how that

spans across the employee's lifecycle from

the very start of their journey with you as an organization, when they're

being attracted to your

organization, also when retaining them as part of

your, and then training

them, getting them up to speed to when they're performing on the job.

And how will all of that,

all of those different pieces of the ecosystem interact with them. And

then we really focused in, because we were working with the learning organization,

we really focused in on that middle section

of getting them up to speed and training them. When I think what

was really cool about that project, because yes, we focused in

on the learning part of the ecosystem, but as we

drew that, we found there were pieces and tools

that bled over into the attract, grow, retain,

kind of the more HR and OD side of things and on the performance side

of things that were going to hint that we needed to connect with other

people, not just the learning folks in the organization. So that was

super cool. Yeah, absolutely. I think that speaks to getting

all the right people at the table to talk about this and look

at it as well. You're going to need to, in this

process of mapping the ecosystem,

think about who your stakeholders are and bring them in

and having this visual, that's one of the key things

about ecosystem mapping, is you can start

to have a visual that everybody can come around,

stand around or on a computer look

at together to have that common

shared visual and shared language for what

you have in front of you to deal with. And that's super

super powerful. Yeah. So, all

right. We can't really talk about learning ecosystems

without talking about JD Dillon's book, the Modern Learning Ecosystem.

Totally run out and grab that. But you've recently seen him

talk, haven't you? I did, yes. We here in

Ann Arbor had the pleasure of welcoming him to our

local ATD chapter. He joined us

virtually for one night and

he got to talk to us about how AI is going to

be interacting with and changing the modern learning

ecosystem. And he shared his framework with us as

well. And so his framework is really looking at the

different modalities that are used for,

for learning. And he's mapped those across,

or he sort of stacks them up depending on

the level of structure of that particular

learning modality, and then also looks at the

availability of that learning. So that's

really a little bit more focused than what

we have been talking about with learner ecosystem

mapping. But I think also

holds a lot of value to think about it using that framework. Well, and

that graphic is super powerful, and we should include

a picture of that graphic in the show notes because

it really captures his point of view on things. And his work is all around

frontline wernickers, and that's really his history.

How structured is it and how can I get to it

really makes sense in what he's doing.

Meg, as I think about this conversation, as I think about the

way you and I work at this together, what's always

interesting is how just you and I work together

on this, right? So I am, I

move fast, I wave my hands around, I jump up and draw on

whiteboards. And I'm

one of those fast thinker people who can work the room, pull together a visual,

and then you're the one who comes in and you think through it

so carefully and deeply, and you find all the holes in that first

draft thinking that we had, and you put the polish on

it, but also you connect the dots.

So you and I are coming at this from not only

different perspectives on the ecosystem itself, but

just on the work of doing that visual itself. Are

there lessons for other people here? Yeah, I think there

are. You know, the process itself can often

bring more questions than it answers.

And so bringing together people who

are, who are thinking big and can help

you with your divergent thinking,

that will be really important. But then you also need those people in the

room who are going to be deep processors, who are going

to really hone in on

details and think about all the implications of

one thing or another. And so

having a bunch of people and diverse

people in the room, especially in the way that they think

and process information, I think is really helpful.

So you're just saying I should be a little bit more patient with things.

Yeah, probably.

Okay, so, Meg, seriously, we talk about ecosystems, but does that have anything

to do with, like, the natural ecosystems we learned about in elementary school?

So I think it's funny to think about that, because

if you recall, my graduate

education is in environmental studies, and so it's funny for

me to be coming, like, back around and being like, oh, we're talking about

ecosystems. But I think there could be some

analogies or metaphors that we bring through there. I think

probably the most obvious one would be like that. It's a web, and

everything is interconnected. And so if you're going to be

changing one thing in your learning ecosystem, it's going

to potentially shift or adjust

or have an effect on another piece of your learning ecosystem.

And without having things mapped out,

when you're making those changes, you could very easily

be doing things in the dark and not know kind of the full

implications of things as you're moving them around.

So how'd that one go, Meg? I think it was pretty good.

I think there could be a lot more. We could probably have

more episodes on ecosystem mapping, but I

feel good about that. It's a good place to start. We like it. Yeah. High

five. This is Megan Torrance with Meg Fairchild,

and this has been a podcast by Torrance Learning. Tangents is the official

podcast of Torrance Learning, as though we have an unofficial one.

Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance. It's produced and

edited by Dean Castile with original music also by Dean

Castile. This episode was fact checked by Meg Fairchild.