397 episodes
The Mind Tools L&D Podcast Mind Tools Ltd
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- Business
The Mind Tools L&D Podcast is a must-listen for anyone involved in Learning and Development or Human Resources. The weekly show features regular appearances from the Mind Tools team plus special guests to get right to the heart of issues affecting the L&D and HR communities. From learning needs analysis and evidence-based practice through to the impact of technology on work and hot topics at industry conferences, you'll get critical insights into the world of work, performance and learning.
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Adaptive vs linear courses: Which performs better?
Adaptive courses come in many forms, but generally respond to the learner’s existing knowledge and skills: thereby optimizing the time to completion. But do they improve learning outcomes?
In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Owen are joined by Roy de Vries, Learning Innovator at aNewSpring, to explore the results of an experiment they ran to compare adaptive vs linear courses.
We discuss:
Forms of adaptive learning content;
The potential advantages of adaptive learning;
The results of an experiment carried out by aNewSpring.
Details of the study we discussed are online at: anewspring.com/articles/adaptive-learning-reduce-study-time
During the discussion, Ross referenced our AI-powered difficult conversation simulator: AI Conversations. It gives your people an opportunity to practice a variety of off-the-shelf or custom scenarios. You can find details on our website: mindtools.com/business/products/ai-conversations
In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Owen recommended the book Smart Swam, by Peter Millers.
If you want to hear The L&D Dispatch jingle again (and why wouldn’t you?), it’s available from Suno.com.
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
For aNewSpring, visit anewspring.com
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
Ross Garner
Owen Ferguson
Roy de Vries -
Knock out your tasks with timeboxing
Timeboxing means dividing your day into 15-60 minute slots, based on your priorities, and then sticking to those slots as you dive into the business of work. If that sounds great, it is. If it sounds easy, it isn’t.
In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, author Marc Zao-Sanders joins Ross G to give him advice on timeboxing his life. We discuss:
· The benefits of timeboxing;
· How email is the ‘killer’, and what to do about it;
· The difficulties that Ross had implementing timeboxing, and what he could do differently.
The article Marc wrote for HBR was ‘How timeboxing works and why it will make you more productive’.
Find out more about timeboxing from Mind Tools.
The book, Timeboxing, is available from Penguin.
Marc’s substack is One Thing at a Time.
The company Marc runs is Filtered.
In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross discussed the rising popularity of the ‘dumbphone’.
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
· Ross Garner
· Marc Zao-Sanders -
Joining forces with your brain
As learning designers, we’re ultimately in the business of trying to help people build new connections in their brains. To do this effectively, we need to have a fundamental understanding of how the brain works. But how far down the neuroscience rabbit hole do we need to go?
In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Dickie and Ross Garner are joined by Lauren Waldman, learning scientist, consultant, and founder of Learning Pirate. We discuss:
· Lauren’s journey to deepen her understanding of how the brain works;
· how much learning designers need to know about neuroscience to be effective in their roles;
· the cost of L&D’s continual focus on the ‘shiny and the new’.
To find out more about Lauren’s work as Learning Pirate, head to: https://www.learningpirate.com/. You can also view a trailer for Lauren’s ‘Joining Forces with Your Brain’ series here.
In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross Garner mentioned the ‘Battle of the Eclipse’.
Ross Dickie recommended the documentary STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces.
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
· Ross Dickie
· Ross Garner
· Lauren Waldman -
Coaching for all
As a conversation approach and development tool, coaching is a highly effective option for everyone – not just the executive suite. Professional coaches are expensive, so how can large organisations give all of their employees the chance to be coached and for coaching conversations to be the norm?
In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma and Claire are joined by Mina Papakonstantinou, Manager in the Leadership development team at Deloitte, to discuss upskilling internal coaches at scale.
We discussed:
the benefits of creating a coaching culture designing and facilitating a coaching skills programme for thousands measuring and evaluating a coaching programme. During the discussion, Mina referenced a case study she provided as an example of how we apply coaching psychology in internal coaching within organisations.
See: Papakonstantinou, F. (2021). Internal coaching within organisations–Coaching psychology application. In Introduction to Coaching Psychology (pp. 203-204). Routledge.
See also her article, 'Creating micro closures: reinventing the psychological transition process to help coachees deal with the current state of disruptive change'.
She also contributed to: Papakonstantinou, F. (2016). 'A Trusted Chameleon: The evolving role of the L&D consultant as an internal coach'. In Coaching Psychology International - VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1 (pp, 11-16).
In what I learned this week, Gemma talked about oathing stones – a wedding ceremony ritual. You can read about it and other options: humanism.scot/ceremonies-blog/wedding-ceremony-rituals/
Claire found out about how money is made. Check out this really funky piece on it here: refinery29.com/stories/how-stuff-is-made-money/
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
Gemma Towersey Claire Gibson Mina Papakonstantinou -
Public speaking in L&D
Whether you’re delivering workshops, speaking at conferences, presenting to senior leaders, or even hosting L&D’s favorite podcast, public speaking is a critical skill for learning professionals. So how do you develop this skill, and how do you manage your nerves when speaking publicly?
In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross D and Lara are joined by Samantha Tulloch, public speaker and business-transformation consultant. We discuss:
· the nuances of public speaking in an L&D context,
· techniques that can help you prepare and deliver effectively,
· strategies for managing nerves and anxiety.
During the discussion, Ross D referenced our previous episode with Andrea Pacini.
In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Samantha mentioned the little-known Steven Bartlett.
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
· Ross Dickie
· Samantha Tulloch
· Lara Kidd -
Bringing spaced practice into workplace learning
One-off learning interventions are frequently the ‘go to’ solution for workplace learning teams, but we know that spaced repetition and retrieval practice are more effective. How do we get past organizational constraints that make this difficult?
In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Tony Manwani from People Unboxed joins Ross Dickie and Ross Garner to discuss:
· The problems with one-off interventions
· Science-backed principles to make an impact
· How Tony’s ‘BentoBot’ tool puts those principles into practice.
For a recent replication of Ebbinghaus’ ‘forgetting curve’ experiment, see: Murre, J. M., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PloS one, 10(7), e0120644.
For more on the ‘Leitner system’ see the overview on Wikipedia.
For the LTEM model, referenced by Ross D, see Dr Will Thalheimer’s website.
In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross G recommended Perplexity.ai.
For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.
For more from Tony and People Unboxed, see peopleunboxed.co.uk. For BentoBot, see bentobot.com.
Connect with our speakers
If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:
· Ross Garner
· Ross Dickie
· Tony Manwani