9/15/2019 To build the workforce of the future, we need to revolutionize how we learn | World Economic Forum

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To build the workforce of the future, we

need to revolutionize how we learn

Image: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay

11 Sep 2019

So-Young Kang
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Gnowbe

With the advent of massive open online courses (MOOCs) almost a decade ago, learning entered
its own period of digital disruption. Digital Learning 1.0 (the age of the MOOCs) catalyzed the
democratization of learning by providing digital access to content that had previously been
limited to face-to-face. Coursera, Udemy and Udacity were the early pioneers in digitalizing
content and making it accessible to millions around the world.

However, learning objectives have evolved. It’s no longer just about knowledge and access. Skills
are the new currency. We can’t learn soft skills by merely watching videos and taking quizzes;
instead, it’s time to move beyond those traditional approaches towards a new digital learning
paradigm.
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So what’s next? Here are four major trends that are defining that new paradigm: Digital Learning
2.0.

1) The rapid growth of the mobile workforce. According to market intelligence firm IDC, there
were over 1.3 billion mobile workers globally in 2015 and PWC forecasts over 1 billion mobile
workers in Asia alone by 2020. As more workers are mobile and work remotely, the demand for
mobile solutions that can deliver quality content anytime, anywhere, will continue to increase.

Arti cial intelligence & the future of education systems | Bernhard Schindlhol…
Schindlhol…

2) Smartphone penetration rates have already surpassed 30% globally and research
indicates that by 2021, there will be more people with smartphones than have access to clean
water. Given cell network advances and the rapid adoption of 4G+, more than half of the world’s
population is now connected to the internet via a mobile phone.

The convergence of smartphone technology, broadband speeds and the rise of a mobile
workforce are leading to the emergence of mobile microlearning as a key driver for Digital
Learning 2.0.

3) Learning is no longer just about content and knowledge. Learning is about experience and
application, because the new currency is skills. Experts and practitioners recognize that learning
overall is not just about formal training, but about learning with others and practical on-the-job
experiences - as is described simply in the 70-20-10 model. This trend is based heavily on
andragogy (the science of adult learning), transformative learning theory and experiential learning

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9/15/2019 To build the workforce of the future, we need to revolutionize how we learn | World Economic Forum

(which says that adults learn through reflection, peer dialogue and application). Project-based
work and hands-on experiences are all ways of bringing these principles to life. When adults
practice what they have learned, retention and ownership of the content increases significantly. In
a corporate environment, this is the holy grail of learning – encouraging people to own, retain and
apply what they have learned.

4) By 2022, businesses will require a proactive and inventive workplace strategy to help the
54% of the workforce who will require upskilling or reskilling. Artificial intelligence and machine
learning will allow for better forecasting, and employers will be quick to anticipate and map out
emerging job categories, redundancies and inefficiencies in processes - as well as the changing
skills requirements - in response to the continuous disruption of the modern workforce.

It is time for a rise in stronger, more collaborative learning ecosystems in which data is used to
spot talent trends and skills gaps. This will align talent management strategies across businesses,
governments and training providers to maximize the available opportunities for capitalizing on the
transformational trends of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

So if Digital Learning 1.0 was focused on scaling knowledge, Digital Learning 2.0 is about
building skills through application of knowledge. Digital Learning 2.0 is about what we call MPPG
- which stands for mobile micro-learning in participatory, personalized ways in groups. It’s about
engaging the learner anytime, anywhere. Learners who experience Digital Learning 2.0 will need
to rethink how they learn: from a passive experience of primarily reading, watching or listening to
experts to a more active, participatory role in asking questions, reflecting on the answers and
sharing points of view with other learners.

Why does this matter?

We have entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are living in a world in which it is predicted
that 20-50% of tasks will be replaced by machines and AI. At global meetings around the world
from Davos to the World Bank, skills development and job creation are among the top items on
the agenda. Unemployment rates are rising, and if we do nothing, they will only continue to
skyrocket as our jobs are replaced by machines.

Digital Learning 2.0 solutions will need to be designed to not just deliver content, but to catalyze
people to think critically and collaborate to develop the top 10 skills as identified in the World
Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report.

It will need to prepare billions for the future of work. It will need to embrace the ‘many to many’
philosophy of learning, in which there is not one single expert but a community of people who
can learn from one another’s experiences and knowledge. It will need to foster creative
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expressions of learning, from visualization to role-playing to sharing new ideas. And most
importantly, it will have to embrace a strong mobile strategy (preferably mobile-first, not mobile-
responsive) to meet the growing needs of billions of people.

Digital Learning 2.0 will need to be MPPG – mobile-first, participatory, personalized and group-
based. This is a new and emerging space, so it’s time to redefine how we learn and reteach how
we teach in order embrace the participatory, mobile, micro-learning era that will enable us to
reach billions as fast as we can.

Written by

So-Young Kang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Gnowbe

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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