When a car accident brought an untimely end to Trish Uhl's athletic career, equestrian sport's loss became a massive gain for IT and learning technologies. Trish is founder and CEO of Owl's Ledge LLC, a firm that helps learning professionals improve their performance, drive business results, and produce organizational outcomes. She works with Global 500 and Fortune 500 clients on four continents. Describing herself as someone who, in words often attributed to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, is alwa...
Feb 21, 2022•52 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to David Lockie, an entrepreneur and investor in leading-edge web technologies who is Co-chair of the British Interactive Media Association’s Blockchain Counsel and passionate about blockchain, open source software and crypto. Over the last two decades, the internet and the world wide web have had transformative effects on workplace learning. Now around the corner is Web 3, and everything’s about to change all over again. So what is Web 3, and will it be good news for those now forgin...
Feb 07, 2022•47 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Stefaan van Hooydonk, Founder of the Global Curiosity Institute. Stefaan has lived, worked and studied all over the world, in a learning career spanning three decades. He has held numerous leadership roles in large companies. As Chief Learning Officer at Cognizant he was in charge of L&D for 300,000 people. Last June he published The Curiosity Manifesto: How Curiosity Helps Individuals and Workplaces Thrive. Curiosity, he believes, is the key to an organization's success in the 20t...
Jan 24, 2022•51 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Josh Bersin describes Cornerstone's new platform, Xplor, as a ‘skills-based, AI-powered platform designed as an LXP, talent mobility, career, and skills platform, [with] the potential to change the L&D landscape.' In this episode, last of the present season, John talks to Summer Rivers Salomonsen, VP Content Product at Cornerstone. Is this type of huge, all-inclusive system that brings together LXP, talent management system and skills really what organizations and learners need right now? 0:00 –...
Nov 29, 2021•45 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast John is joined by Megan Torrance, Chief Energy Officer of Torrance Learning, a custom development company based in Michigan USA. With an MBA from Cornell and a consultancy background, Megan has a firm grasp of the business value of learning initiatives. But her two decades of experience in learning technologies also includes a strong bent towards using data for learning. She is strong advocate for xAPI, and organizes the 'xAPI Party'. How does she feel about the slow rate of adoption of xAPI amo...
Nov 15, 2021•43 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast John Helmer talks to Craig Weiss, the straight-talking learntech analyst and consultant. Craig is CEO and Lead Analyst for The Craig Weiss Group, and the founder of FindAnLMS, a learning system search engine. With the so-called 'Great Resignation' underway, skills issues are uppermost in many business leaders' minds: do learning systems have a part to play in helping organizations deal with the fallout? Craig has a view – and as with the other topics that John has crowdsourced from the community...
Nov 01, 2021•55 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast How is digital technology impacting the way people work, learn and think – and what upcoming technology trends should we look out for? In this episode, John talks to Ezri Carlebach, writer, lecturer, communications expert and imagineer, who has worked extensively in educational and workplace learning contexts. Why is imagination so important to learning – and in what ways has the pandemic changed the way we relate to technology? 2:31 - What is 'imagineering'? 5:54 - Ezri's career journey 13:22 -...
Oct 18, 2021•51 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Tom Hickmore, award-winning Creative Director of video learning company Nice Media, about his newly released book Watch & Learn. The book aims to help learning professionals in designing, commissioning and producing effective video drama for learning. Tom has also produced a popular series of videos drawing particular lessons from hit movies and TV series such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and the Bond franchise. But can video dramas for learning paid for by organizations ever a...
Oct 04, 2021•46 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast This time John is talking to Laura Overton, an award-winning international speaker, author and facilitator, with multiple institutional fellowships. Laura is probably best known for helming Towards Maturity, the research and benchmarking organization, from its inception as a Government initiative, through independence and commercial success before it was bought out by Emerald Group in 2017. Does she think during her time there she really managed to bring about change in the practice of learning?...
Sep 20, 2021•45 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Dr. Jane Bozarth, Director of Research at The Learning Guild, about how the rise of digital technology is changing expectations about the sort of skills and qualifications a learning professional should have in the 21st Century – and about her own, long career in learning. That career includes numerous books, work as a columnist for Learning Solutions Magazine, and a long-standing position as E-Learning Co-ordinator for the US state of North Carolina. More than all that, Jane has a...
Sep 06, 2021•50 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Another chance to hear the inaugural episode of Great Minds on Learning, which was originally aired back in March 2021 to considerable acclaim. In this series, Donald Clark – the internationally famous author, blogger and entrepreneur, joins John Helmer to discuss the history of thought and theorising about learning. This particular episode is about The Cognitivists, a group of theorists who made a vital contribution to what we now know about the mechanics of memory and learning. ---------- 00:4...
Aug 30, 2021•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Internationally respected author, blogger and learning expert, Donald Clark joins John Helmer of the Learning Hack podcast to discuss the history of thought and theorising about learning. From the Greeks to the Geeks, they cover 2,500 years of thought and science on learning. The inspired, the enduring, the wacked-out weird and the just plain wrong, from Socrates to the present day. Starting with a repeat of the popular pilot episode The Cognitivists on 30 August, the series proper kicks off on ...
Aug 25, 2021•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Learning Hack is taking a seasonal break. In the meantime, here’s another chance to hear one of our most listened-to episodes. John talks to Julie Dirksen, a leading expert in instructional design, digital learning and behaviour change. Is it a problem for learning professionals that even when they have supported learners in gaining the knowledge and skills they need to do things right, and to do the right thing, once back in the workplace they so often do the exact opposite? The conversatio...
Aug 16, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Learning Hack is taking a break for the Summer. We’ll be back in September, but meanwhile, here’s our second most listened-to episode of all time, featuring an interview with Nick Shackleton-Jones. John talks to Nick about his book, 'How People Learn'. 01:22 About the book 04:04 Its ambitions 07:16 The affective context model 16:40 Instructional design 22:51 The learner experience 25:30 Learning in the flow of work 28:14 Are things getting better? 31:22 Business and emotion 33:12 Sentiment a...
Aug 02, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Audrey Watters' new book, Teaching Machines, tells the story of how two academics, Sidney Pressey in the 1920s and B.F. Skinner in the 1950s, attempted to develop and market mechanical devices for learning. John talks to Audrey about the book and explores the reasons why both of these pioneers of pre-computer learning technology, ultimately, failed. In the book Audrey Watters, who describes herself as 'an education writer, an independent scholar, a serial dropout, a rabble-rouser, and ed-tech's ...
Jul 19, 2021•44 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Bob Mosher, champion of workflow learning and the Five Moments of L&D Need. Bob has been an active and influential leader in the learning and training industry for over 30 years and is renowned worldwide for his pioneering role in new approaches to learning. Based in South Carolina, he is CEO and Chief Learning Evangelist at Apply Synergies. Previously he was with Microsoft, as Director of Learning Strategy. Bob is also a Maisie Fellow. 00:00 - Intro 02:40 - What are the 5 moments ...
Jul 05, 2021•38 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast This special edition of the podcast features interviews with two people who have each in their different ways played important roles in the effort to vaccinate the world and free us all from the menace of Covid-19. Marc Howells is VP & Head of Global Talent & Learning at AstraZeneca, developers of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine AZD1222, one of the leading weapons in the fightback against global pandemic. Reda Sadki, President of The Geneva Learning Foundation, is an old friend of the po...
Jun 21, 2021•49 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Cognitive load theory tells us that we have to do our best to make things easier for learners. But Bjork says that 'necessary' (or 'desirable') difficulties are an essential part of the process. Should learning be easy or difficult? Is there a simple way to resolve this apparent contradiction – or is it a matter of trade-offs? John talks to Stella Collins, one of the 'Brain Ladies' and also Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Stellar Labs, based in Belgium. With degrees in Psychology and Hu...
Jun 07, 2021•44 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Mirjam Neelen, Head of Global Learning Design & Learning Sciences at Novartis, and a well-known blogger and speaker. She recently co-authored a book, Evidence-Informed Learning Design, with Paul Kirschner that has been extremely influential in learning and development. The book has plentiful tips, tools and examples to help L&D and training professionals avoid the myths and hype and design effective learning based on solid research. The conversation also covers two controversial an...
May 24, 2021•43 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Lior (Christine) Locher, a learning consultant, coach, author, and a director of the elearning network. Lior's experience spans journalism, practitioner L&D roles for companies such as McKinsey, Deloitte and the Boston Consulting Group as well as creative work and beer blogging. She has lived and worked on 4 continents. She knows 22 languages and speaks seven to intermediate level. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Learning and Performance Institute. They discuss...
May 10, 2021•42 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast This time we're featuring the pilot episode of a brand new podcast from the Learning Hack team, Great Minds on Learning. In this series, Donald Clark, the internationally famous author, blogger and entrepreneur, joins John Helmer to discuss the history of thought and theorising about learning. It’s all here: the inspired, the enduring, the wacked-out weird and the just plain wrong in 2,500 years of learning theory from Aristotle to the present day. This inaugural episode is about the Cognitivist...
Apr 26, 2021•54 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Toby Harris, Product Marketing Manager at Filtered. Filtered is an innovative company that uses AI to help large organizations deliver relevant learning content to the right people at the right time, using personal recommendations to help build the skills they need. FIltered is rated a 'specialist' in Fosway's 9-grid for learning systems, so where does it sit within the learntech ecosystem? Filtered is all about categorizing information and knowledge for organizations – but is 'lea...
Apr 12, 2021•48 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Dr. Gregg Collins, Chief Learning Scientist at NIIT. A Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Yale University, Dr. Collins played a key role in the seminal research carried out at the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) at Northwestern University in Chicago. He was a co-founder of Cognitive Arts Corporation, which was incorporated in 1995 to commercialize ILS and has been consistently recognized as a pioneer and leader in the effective use of instructional design and technolog...
Mar 29, 2021•50 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast John Talks to Charles Jennings, who is Partner, Strategy and Performance of Tulser / 70:20:10 Institute. Recognised as one of the world's leading experts on building and implementing learning and organisational performance strategies, Charles has led projects for multinational corporations, government agencies, not-for-profits, and other organisations for more than 40 years. He has also held several academic posts. They discuss the influence of knowledge management, the conspiracy of convenience...
Mar 15, 2021•44 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast 'People imagine that technology's a recent thing in learning, [but] it's always been there.' From its earliest beginnings in cave paintings to today's AI-driven learning systems with interfaces influenced by consumer technology, Donald Clark tells the colourful story of learning technologies in conversation with John Helmer. Donald has been an important part of that history himself. Growing up in the housing schemes of Livingston, Scotland, Donald studied Philosophy at Edinburgh University and D...
Mar 01, 2021•51 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Page Chen, CEO of Remote Learner; a learntech business leader with a strong academic background. How does she characterise the development of learning systems in the first two decades of the 21st Century, a period during which there was a good deal of pushback from 'guru' figures and practitioners alike against the admin-focused model promulgated by the industry? Have we reached a place now where the design of learning systems is better informed by learning science? 02:58 How did s...
Feb 15, 2021•47 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Julie Dirksen, a leading expert in instructional design, digital learning and behaviour change. Is it a problem for learning professionals that even when they have supported learners in gaining the knowledge and skills they need to do things right, and to do the right thing, once back in the workplace they so often do the exact opposite? This conversation dives deep into the mechanics of behaviour change, addressing the 'elephant and rider' problem in human psychology, and confront...
Feb 01, 2021•49 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Harold Jarche, blogger, speaker and consultant in the closely adjacent but oddly separate worlds of learning and knowledge management. People at work need more than skills training and compliance learning. They have to navigate the complex knowledge environment that technology has given us, using concepts and tools that are part of an emerging field described by figures such as George Siemens, Dave Snowden, and Harold himself. Harold talks about Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM), hi...
Jan 18, 2021•48 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast Looking back over a year and a half of podcast episodes, John Helmer summarizes the main themes that have emerged from these these fascinating discussions and attempts to draw insights by taking a helicopter view. Where do people agree, and where do they clash? Includes contributions from George Siemens, Nick Shackleton-Jones, Donald Clark, Connie Malamed, Gianni Giacomelli, Laura Lee-Gibbs, Andrea Miles, Sharon Claffey Kaliouby, Jane Hart, Matthew Confer, Paul Matthews, David Wilson, Julliette ...
Dec 16, 2020•41 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast John talks to Laura Lee-Gibbs, Digital Learning Consultant & Director of Learn Fox. In her 14 years in the industry she has worked both vendor-side and client-side, across a broad range of sectors including legal, healthcare, retail, automotive, hospitality, financial, charities, professional associations, public sector and government agencies. Her practice focuses on digital transformation, and one of the things she does a lot for clients is to guide them through the difficult decisions involve...
Nov 30, 2020•41 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast 
