About Arun Pradhan Arun is a leading innovator in the field of learning and development with over two decades in the field. He’s the co-founder of ModelThinkers.com, a platform that aims to provide solutions that empower people to be smarter and faster by cataloging a playbook of the world’s most powerful ideas. These ideas can be used to make better decisions, interrupt bias, and solve complex problems. He’s passionate and ever curious about topics such as cognitive psychology, behavioural econ...
Nov 29, 2021•26 min•Ep 108•Transcript available on Metacast About Sumit Gupta Sumit, now a leadership coach, comes from 16 years of working in tech companies. He's now moved away from the technical side of things and slowly transitioned his passion for tech to management and leadership. Today he works with leaders from various tech and social organizations to overcome some of the biggest challenges they face in their individual leadership or with managing their teams. "Learning is the foundation which helps your team to adapt to whatever is coming next. ...
Nov 08, 2021•23 min•Ep 107•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Robin chats with Panos Siozos, co-founder and CEO of LearnWorlds, an e-learning platform allowing companies and individuals to create their own online training school. He shares how the platform is used to onboard their own developers/technical staff, ways to encourage continued learning in a remote environment, and ways to streamline the creation of learning content for your courses. “Success is not being defined by all the things we know, or how excellent we are at what we do ...
Oct 23, 2021•24 min•Ep 106•Transcript available on Metacast Join us for a new episode of Learning While Working as Robin chats with John Danner from Dunce Capital – a company focused on investing in the future of learning and work. In this episode, John shares his insights as to why tech companies need to be focused on developing their own talent pipeline as opposed to continuing to bid from a dwindling supply of senior engineers. About John Danner: In the 90’s John co-founded Net Gravity, which was one of the first online survey companies. He then sold ...
Oct 04, 2021•18 min•Ep 105•Transcript available on Metacast About Zachary Minott Zachary Minott has a background in computer science, game and augmented reality programming and web and salesforce development. Beyond software engineering, Zach is an avid reader and learner. He’s also a talented writer on Medium where he’s amassed quite the following. Zach is passionate about expanding his knowledge, exchanging ideas with others, and finding new ways not only to create but to innovate. What is a learning engine? “What a learning engine is to me, is how man...
Aug 28, 2021•29 min•Ep 104•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast is a conversation with Toby Newman from HERE Technologies about how to foster a learning culture. HERE Technologies is a Netherlands-based company that provides mapping and location data services. In the interview, Toby provides examples of the strategies and approaches that Nigel Paine and Sonia Malik talk about in the previous interviews on learning cultures. One of the key points from this interview is the importance of supporting employees to be able to share and capture knowled...
Jul 17, 2021•22 min•Ep 103•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Robin talks with Sonia Malik from IBM about reskilling your workforce. Sonia has more than twenty-five years of experience working in various roles in the education technology industry. The conversation starts with Sonia talking about how the pandemic has put reskilling and learning at the core of organisations and the opportunity this has provided for L&D. We then move into talking about how organisations can plan for reskilling, to enable learning to be at the strategic core o...
Jul 03, 2021•24 min•Ep 102•Transcript available on Metacast This is a podcast with Dan Mottau from RedBubble on Future ways of working. RedBubble is a global online marketplace for print-on-demand products-based designs submitted by artists. Dan has previously been on the podcast and talked about Agility as being The Secret to Greater People Experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world and is transforming how we work and live. Remote working has transformed many workspaces and employee’s lives and we are seeing the rise of hybrid workplac...
Jun 20, 2021•27 min•Ep 101•Transcript available on Metacast What is a learning culture and how is a learning culture fostered, supported and enabled? In this podcast, Robin is exploring these questions with author and podcaster, Nigel Paine. Nigel's latest book is called Workplace Learning: How to build a culture of continuous employee development . This podcast builds upon and discusses themes from the book. About Nigel Paine Nigel Paine is a change-focused leader with a worldwide reputation and a unique grasp of media, learning and development in the p...
Apr 12, 2021•27 min•Ep 100•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast is a return to talking about live online learning. When people signed up for the 2020 Remote Learning Conference we asked them what they wanted to know more about and inclusion was one of the themes to emerge. In this podcast Robin is talking with Brigit Ritchie from WE. WE is a learning studio facilitating workshops, retreats and art experiences to re-imagine relationships in and out of work. This podcast explores what inclusion is and it’s importance. It’s also partly a case study...
Mar 06, 2021•29 min•Ep 99•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation Robin is talking with Gareth Killeen from Reece about how they used design thinking to re-imagine their leadership development program. Themes include human centered design, design thinking and micro-learning and spaced learning. This is another podcast that was recorded at LearnX 2019. Links from the podcast Connect with Gareth Killeen Find out more about Reece Find out more about LearnX Sprout Labs eBook on design thinking and L&D ....
Feb 16, 2021•18 min•Ep 98•Transcript available on Metacast This is the next in the series of podcasts from LearnX 2019. This podcast is a return to a series of podcasts that were recorded face-to-face at LearnX 2019. Future podcasts may keep on exploring live online learning and learning in hybrid workplaces. In this podcast Robin is talking with Zoe Sharan from Amicus about how she is using the 70:20:10 learning model in their leadership development program. Links from the podcast Find out more about the 70:20:10 learning model Find out more about Lear...
Jan 10, 2021•22 min•Ep 97•Transcript available on Metacast The remote learning virtual conference brings together guests from the Learning While Working podcast series on virtual facilitation. It's four half-day sessions over 3 days from November 17th 2020 (Australian time zones). One of the sessions is designed for the European/UK time zone. The event is a mixture of group sessions and small breakout sessions with your peers where you will be exploring the issues and possibilities of live remote learning. If you're listening to this after November 18th...
Nov 08, 2020•22 min•Ep 96•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Rachel Burnham is talking about sketchnoting as a way for accelerating the process of learning and cognitive science behind the practice of sketchnoting. If the idea of sketchnoting is new to you, Rachel explains what sketchnoting is at the start. Also, towards the end of the session Rachel talks about how she is now teaching sketchnoting online. About Rachel Burnham Rachel helps trainers and L&D professionals become even more effective. She has over 25 years of experience in tra...
Nov 01, 2020•26 min•Ep 95•Transcript available on Metacast How do you make sure a virtual event runs smoothly and is engaging? Your event producer is key to a successful virtual event but what does a producer do? In this podcast, Robin is talking with Karyn Gleeson about this question. The podcast focuses on large events but producers are also key to small events. In smaller groups, producers can help new online facilitators, support the learners with technology and help read the digital body language of participants. About Karyn Gleeson Karyn Gleeson i...
Oct 11, 2020•22 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast Conference style events have a different set of problems to events that are designed for small group learning, they are even harder to make engaging. For Barbara Covarrubias Venegas the key to making an event memorable is the connections between the speakers and audience and connections within the audience. In this interview Robin is talking with Barbara Covarrubias Venegas about approaches to building connections and designing large virtual events. About Barbara Covarrubias Venegas Barbara Cova...
Sep 27, 2020•24 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast Scenarios are a powerful way to ensure your learning is performance focused. Using scenarios moves your online sessions away from being information dumps to being active and engaging experiences, where participants are sharing and problem solving together. One approach Ray talks about, is working with the group to bring out their experiences and basing the learning on those scenarios instead of fictional scenarios. About Ray Jimenez Ray Jimenez Ph.D. is the Chief Learning Architect at Vignettes ...
Sep 13, 2020•25 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast Conversations are at the core of how we learn with each other, too often live sessions both face-to-face and online are presentations not conversations. Moving online does make designing learning around conversations more challenging but not impossible. In this interview Robin is talking with Joshua Davies from Knowmium about what a conversation architect does. Powerful conversations helping people transform the way they think and behaviour don't just happen, they need to be planned and designed...
Aug 30, 2020•27 min•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast Everyone who is working remotely knows the experience of Zoom fatigue and the negatives of video conferencing; pixel vision, seeing yourself all the time, and what sometimes feels like an ocean of blank faces; but video conferencing also has many powerful possibilities for learning. These are the possibilities that Robin explores with Chad Owen in this latest interview. One of the themes that often recurs in interviews around online facilitation is showing up as human online and really connectin...
Aug 09, 2020•26 min•Ep 90•Transcript available on Metacast Great live virtual learning sessions happen with a combination of facilitation skills, learning design and visual design. L&D professionals often struggle with visual design. In this podcast, Sprout Labs visual design lead Iona Dierich, talks about the importance of visual design in online facilitation. Iona has a unique set of skills, as well being a visual designer and an occasional instructional designer, she has a background in teaching design. She now runs Sprout Labs visual design for our ...
Jul 26, 2020•28 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Robin is talking with Nancy White about how we can rethink how we work and learn online. Nancy is one of the pioneers of virtual communities, social learning and online facilitation. She now works mainly in organisation development focusing on how we meet. Nancy’s interview gives a different feel to other interviews in this series, it's less about formal learning and more an exploration of how to reimagine working and learning online. In the podcast, Nancy uses a powerful stateme...
Jul 12, 2020•24 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Robin and Lori Niles-Hofman are talking about performance consulting. This podcast is another in our series on live online teaching and facilitation being recorded in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Many organisations have rapidly switched from face-to-face learning to live online facilitation which feels like a fast agile way to get learning to employees who are remote. There are other rapid agile approaches to help your people learn and performance consulting is key to decid...
Jun 28, 2020•22 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Robin is talking with Patti Shank about blending learning design for live online sessions. Patti Shank focuses on transforming research into learning with tactics and practical approaches we can use in workplace learning. A lot of her recent focus has been on assessment and she uses examples in this podcast from her Writing Learning Assessments course. The rush to provide live learning often highlights what is wrong with our face-to-face session, as too often face-to-face is focu...
Jun 14, 2020•37 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast This is another podcast in our series on live online teaching and facilitation. In this podcast Robin and Ben Faranda explore what is safe online and what it means to be human in online sessions. Ben is an experienced face-to-face and online facilitator who has worked with some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Robin and Ben talk about what safety means online and then move into talking about strategies which can be used to help with building safety online. The conversation then goes i...
Jun 08, 2020•35 min•Ep 85•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Robin is talking with Cheryle Walker on the future of live online learning. Cheryle is an experienced online facilitator who helped get Sprout Labs’ webinar program up and running. The title of the podcast is the future of live online learning but that is not where the discussion started, Robin and Cheryle started with exploring how live online learning can reach more people and then they moved onto how the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the move towards more live online session...
May 31, 2020•15 min•Ep 84•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Robin is talking with Michael Gwyther about pivoting to online training. Michael often works with Sprout Labs on online facilitation; he was the host of one room for our first virtual conference. Michael has been helping a number of training providers in the Australian vocational education system to pivot rapidly to live online learning. The discussion is an insight to what is happening in the training sector at the moment and Michael shares a number of ‘learning hacks’. The inte...
May 25, 2020•31 min•Ep 83•Transcript available on Metacast This is another podcast in our series on live online teaching and facilitation. In the podcast, Robin is talking with Jo Cook about designing interactive virtual sessions. They start with what an interactive virtual classroom session looks like and then move into how to design engaging, interactive virtual sessions. This podcast is full of practical tips and ideas about designing more interactive sessions and how to become a better facilitator. Links from the podcast Find out more about Lightbul...
May 20, 2020•25 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast is the start of our series of podcasts on live online teaching and facilitation. Sprout Labs has been busy helping organisations rapidly move from face-to-face learning to live online learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Virtual facilitation has always been in the background of what we do at Sprout Labs. Virtual classrooms are often a core feature of the learning ecosystems we design. Our own development programs for L&D people focus on live sessions, and we also have our regular we...
May 17, 2020•30 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast We are in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis; the world is full of uncertainty, organizations have rapidly moved workforces home, and we are isolated and distanced. Before this started, I talked with Beatrice Bekar and Juan Casasbuenas from Nesta about research they were doing on the future of learning. ‘ The Make it FutureFit: Four ways to design better adult learning ’ report focuses on preparing learners for the workforce, and it explores four core strategies via a series of case studies. The ...
Apr 26, 2020•26 min•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast about agility for the internal people experience is a discussion between Robin and Dan Mottau from Zendesk at LearnX 2019. It’s also about placing what people need at the centre of an organisation's culture. If the agile principles are new to you there is a link to them in the notes. Links from the podcast Find out more about the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto Find out more about LearnX Connect with Dan on LinkedIn...
Mar 02, 2020•20 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast 
