What We Did

AlphaPlus signed up for LinkedIn Learning and reviewed a selection of courses. We started by looking at topics AlphaPlus staff are often called upon to address in the course of coaching engagements to see if there was material relevant to the people we work with most often. We also tested the algorithm to see if the recommendations would create meaningful pathways for LBS professionals.

In this phase of our field research, we found courses that we thought would be relevant to a broad spectrum of people working in LBS, but we felt that we did not have enough information about how people in the field are currently engaging in self-directed professional development to ascertain whether or not they find the platform a good place to learn. If LBS professionals are learning at work in the ways described in the workplace learning research, the platform could work very well. On the other hand, if they were approaching learning at work in different ways, they may find the platform less than ideal.

We decided we needed to learn more about how LBS practitioners are learning at work to get a sense of how the models described above reflect the experience of LBS professionals and to determine if an online, independent, self-directed, algorithmic learning platform would work for this cohort.

In order to determine how LinkedIn Learning would fit into the professional development framework for LBS managers and instructors, we needed to find out the answers to these questions:

How do LBS professionals manage workplace learning?

What are their preferences?

How will algorithms support or not support their learning pathways?

We felt that the best way to do this was to ask a group of practitioners about their current professional learning framework, have them experiment with LinkedIn Learning and report on their experience.

We decided that, for the scope of this report, we could work with 10 English-speaking participants from community-based programs.

We put out a call (Appendix A: Outreach Letter) and 10 people responded. The participants work in programs in a variety of regions in small urban centres. Three people work mainly as instructors, three mainly as program managers and the other four do both.

We did a survey interview (Appendices B, C and D) with each participant. The survey did not include finding out about how people learn in courses, workshops and conferences where people learn together in a group. This survey was conducted to find out about what self-directed, self-determined and self-motivated workplace learning literacy workers are doing now (Appendix J).

The survey asked literacy workers about:

• How they currently engage in self-determined, informal professional development.
• How they would like to engage in online self-determined, informal professional development.
• How they decide when they need to learn something new.
• How they decide what resource to use.
• How they determine the effectiveness of the resource.
• What they do next.

We also asked people about their wish list — what resources they would like to see created or would like to have access to. The wish list can be seen in the companion document AlphaPlus LinkedIn Learning Report Field Research under the heading “Learning 5: The Professional Development (PD) Wish List.”

AlphaPlus collected this information in order to think about how LinkedIn Learning fits into the collective current framework and could enhance and extend the learning literacy workers are already doing. AlphaPlus also wanted to learn about what types of learning people are looking for and what criteria they use to rate a learning opportunity.

The answers to the questions about the criteria for evaluating an online learning experience as effective and engaging were used to create a rubric for evaluating the LinkedIn Learning experience (Appendix H). We created an evaluation form for the platform to determine ease-of-use and whether the LinkedIn Learning recommendations create useful and effective learning pathways (Appendix I).

The next step was for participants to choose a LinkedIn Learning course and evaluate it in terms of how it fit into their own professional development framework, how it works as a professional development resource for Ontario LBS programs and whether they feel learning pathways determined by algorithms are relevant to the work and learning needs of LBS practitioners (Appendices G, H and I).

All participants submitted their evaluations in a timely manner and all the responses were comprehensive and thoughtful. Our plan for the follow-up interviews was to ask participants to expand on the evaluations but as they had written up the answers so fully, we focused on the questions about how they felt LinkedIn Learning could complement the learning LBS practitioners are already doing and their recommendations for the field (Appendix K).

The final step in our field research was to invite the project participants to a video conference. We wanted the participants to meet each other and we wanted them to reflect on the things we had learned from the interviews and evaluations. I presented the research results (Appendix L) and asked people for their comments and if they wanted to add anything. I added the new ideas and information to the Field Research document called AlphaPlus LinkedIn Learning Report – Field Research.