Learning Outcomes Leaders 011 | Josh Nesbitt

Welcome to Learning Outcomes Leaders.

In this episode, we're joined by Josh Nesbitt, Chief Technical Officer here at Genio, to discuss what it actually takes to build learning platforms that people want to use.

Drawing on his experience creating a system that reached over a million NHS staff, we explore why frictionless design isn't always the goal, how accessibility legislation is reshaping what good looks like for learning tools, and why AI's biggest opportunity in education isn't generating content but personalizing the experience.

Let's get into the episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Hello and welcome to Learning Outcomes Leaders, brought to you by GM.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm James, and I'm Scott, and on this podcast, you're going to have a chat into higher education professionals who can talk to talk about the Tim at End of it.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

We'll discuss some of their proudest and most ambitious projects and explore the most effective ways in which they've helped to improve and elevate their students' experience. In this episode, we're joined by Josh Nesler, Chief Technical Officer here at Genio, to discuss what it actually takes to build learning platforms that people want to use. Drawing up experience creating a system that reached over a million NHS staff. We explore why frictionless design isn't always the goal, how accessibility legislation is reshaping what good looks like for learning tools, and why AI's biggest opportunity in education isn't generating content but personalising the experience. Want to find out more? Well, let's get into the episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Hello Josh. Thank you for joining us. How uh are you excited for the podcast today, Josh?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Immensely, yes. I'm very looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Amazing. So um how we start off this podcast, we ask a very fundamental question um to everybody, and it's I'd love you to talk us through one or multiple of your formative experiences in your career in education and just your origin story. Like what got you to this point, and what are those formative moments that happened to get you here?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yes, sure. Um so I'm currently a CTO, uh chief technology officer, um, and I've been doing quite a few leadership roles over the past few years, but my career started um sort of before university, I guess, uh when I started to sort of program for a living. Um so started to yeah, and and do engineering for for money, which was a nice uh lucrative thing when you're 16, 17. Um but then I I um I sort of did a lot of programming in my spare time, learned a lot of it was self-taught, so did a lot of sort of yeah, a lot of evenings and sort of weekends messing around with computers and and things like that. Um and then decided to go to university in Leeds. Um so I I came to Leeds to do a um a bachelor's degree uh called Business Computing, which is the most ambiguously named course you could imagine uh on computing. Um and yeah, it was it was great. I love Leeds, I live in Leeds now, um, and and yeah, just love the city. Um and sort of really enjoyed the the sort of university experience, but I didn't necessarily take as much from that that sort of course as I hoped, um, which I can explain a bit more of, but um sort of went through university, um came out with a first class uh bachelor's degree, and then went into a um straight into a role in industry um with a company in Leeds called Dubit uh and they were doing loads of virtual worlds for for kids at the time. So you're you're both probably too young to remember. There was a thing called Haber Hotel. Um I remember Haber Hotel.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

You you you don't uh you you must think we look very, very young, but well, me and D, because I remember Haber Hotel.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

I, however, am young.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, the mustache, the mustache doesn't fool anyone, sadly. Um but yeah, so um so Haber Hotel was one of the big things that we were sort of uh not working on, but in in that sort of space. So we're building loads of virtual worlds for kids. Um there was there was one for Nickelodeon, there's another one for Disney. There was loads of sort of these things popping up at the time, um, and it was the sort of safe environment that kids could could network essentially, um, but in a safe way. So like you couldn't just type any old chats to each other, and we tried to figure out the sort of boundaries of which kids could enjoy games and stuff uh online. Um, and then after that, sort of started my own software consultancy and ran that for quite a few years, um, had loads of exposures, different industries from um from finance to healthcare to um to sort of AI machine learning um to yeah, insurance, all sorts of industries. Um and throughout that time, sort of built a lot of different products and platforms. Um, and the most notable of which, which we'll probably talk about in this uh episode, is is a platform for the NHS, which was um called NHS X at the time, although that name got stolen um by the government at the time to use for a different initiative, so we had to rebrand the whole thing, which was thoroughly enjoyable. Um but yeah, so it was just a big learning platform for the NHS that was deployed for for anyone who was in NHS that could uh essentially learn about how to become a better leader in the NHS. And the idea is that it all was that it was a super accessible, inclusive platform that made learning quite frictionless and quite easy, and you know, could be used anywhere from a nurse on on their break um to you know an exec leader who wants to go deep into some sort of leadership course. Um, and it was a huge success, like over a million people were using the platform at the time we retired it. Um, and it was just a good alternative to other learning platforms around there that were not particularly good. Um, there's loads of um sort of popular ones like Moodle. I don't know if you've heard of Moodle, there's loads of other loads of other LMSs basically, but they're all pretty poor. Like the experience is poor and the way in which you load content into them is poor, they're not engaging, they're not enjoyable to use, they're not even good for sort of faculty institution side either, in my opinion. Um, so yeah, that was that was sort of a big a big piece of work for me. But yeah, just done lots of that sort of stuff over my career. So we can probably dig into some of that, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Brilliant. Yeah, I'd I'd I'd like to sort of go back a little bit and touch on something that you you mentioned at the the start before we go on to sort of the national health service work. Um you talked about obviously starting being self-taught when it when it came to programming and then going to university and not having the experience that you necessarily um expected or wanted in terms of the learning. I guess what how were you doing the self-taught? You know, how how did that start? What was that process like and and how did that differ from that that university experience once you got to got to lead?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Um, yeah, so I I think um the self-taught stuff was just it started off with a Commodore 64 at home. I just had like a computer that my aunt gave me, and I was just like, This is this is ace, I can play track and field on this, and it's really good fun. Um, so started with that, and then things would like break, or I'd have to figure out how the games work. So I'd start to figure out how to get into sort of like a programming environment in there, and then um then got different computers, and I've got myself a Mac eventually, which was like a game changer for me. Like the environment on a Mac was just amazing, and it sort of clicked for well the way my brain worked. Um and then when I got to university, I was really excited to sort of dig more into deeper programming topics. It was probably a combination of the course that I picked wasn't quite right, um, but also the the speed of which the industry was evolving was just really hard for for the institution to keep up. So like I I I felt like the course material was relatively static in a very dynamic industry. So I was sort of going to my tutors saying, like, I really want to I really want to program in Ruby, which was a sort of reasonably up and coming sort of language at the time to program in. And my my tutors didn't know what what it was. They'd heard of they might have heard of it in the news, but they didn't they'd never used it, they never tried to use it. Um so I was like, I really want to use this for my thesis and my course, and they were like, We don't know how to mark that, so can you not use that and use something that we prescribe? And I was like, This doesn't really make sense. Um so so I used it anyway, and and they were fine with it. Um but yeah, it was sort of a bit frustrating because I was like, I'm meant to be learning from you, I'm meant to be learning how to sort of go from here into industry and be equipped with this knowledge, and I felt like I'd sort of been let down a little bit by that. Um but I enjoyed the course and I enjoyed my sort of peers who I was working with, and we sort of yeah, it was it was a sort of weird dynamic. Can't really explain it. Sort of we all sort of figured out things ahead of what the course was doing.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

What what what I love about that is um you went to your instructors and you said, Hey, I wanna I wanna learn on uh on Ruby. They said I don't know how to do it, I I don't know what that is. We can't really mark you on that. You went and did it anyway, which is great. Super innovative and like forward thinking, but also really clever because you might they might have just gone, oh you might have made a mistake, but I don't know. So that's how the box thinking. I think what what what was really interesting about that is um like how you got into things. So I've been thinking a lot recently about like uh learning and how like structured learning, like when you're in like an educational environment, is like you do these things. This is how you do it. Like it's more like fundamental, right? I mean you really learn things when you take those fundamentals and apply them to things which you genuinely really care about, and you kind of like learn how to do things through the things that you cared about, like the playing games and like figuring stuff like that. Once you finished with like your education, did you continue to do things outside of like a a work, a workspace that helped foster that learning in the like if you understand what I'm saying? Like, what did you do outside of work that helped you learn further?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, I I guess um in in most jobs I think you have opportunities to continue to like level up your knowledge, right? Um, in all of our all of our jobs we have that, and I think in in software engineering that it's particularly easy to get like just get absorbed into learning because ultimately there's so much new tech coming out all the time, like especially the AI at the moment. There's there's a whole host of stuff coming out every almost every day, every week, um, where you're like, that looks really interesting. I'd love to find a use case for that. I'm gonna play with it. And yeah, even you know, 20 years ago, the the there's been exactly those sort of things where you'd just be you know part of a community on the internet, like Twitter was huge at the time, GitHub was just sort of establishing itself, which was a big it's a big um code hosting platform, it's like a social network for coders essentially. Um, and all these things were kicking off, and like every day a new project would come out where you'd want to install it and play with it and figure out how to use it. And yeah, in the evenings and weekends, and I remember at the time, even when it was university, I was doing freelance work at the same time. Um, my um girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, um, so that worked out quite well. Um, met her at university as well. Um, she, you know, we'd we'd be hanging out and I'd be like, actually, I'm just gonna do this tonight. And she couldn't, she was like really supportive of it, but like really you want to program at home when we could go out and just enjoy like university. Um, so I think there's always that thing where you've you've sort of got that, there's something like niggling you, and you're like, I need to go and play with that and explore it and and and figure out how it works. And I think that's something that you it's like a trait that I don't think is specific to a formal education environment. I think it's something that is sort of within people and it's it's in everyone, and I think you just gotta sort of create the right um conditions for that to be maximized. So um I it sort of went on. I I've I run um technical conferences, I run software engineering conferences, um, have done for over 10 years, and I think it's it's a quite an indie conference where it encourages you to explore and be curious and to and yeah, just to try and figure out what those conditions look like for you essentially. So I I sort of believe quite strongly in the self-taught approach.

SPEAKER_04 12:04

Um I I totally agree with that. I think in in in any work or anything you do in life, if you don't feel like you're learning something, I think over time that that monotony can get too much. So building that learning into any sort of job or environment that you're in, it keeps it interesting, and it being able to have people constantly engaging with new material, whether that be in a formal sense or you know, those sort of more informal things, I think, is really important. I guess it'd be good to sort of look into this this project that you talked about earlier for for our um international listeners. Uh, we're going to talk a lot about the NHS. That's National Health Service. It's Britain's state-funded healthcare system. So pay for my taxes, everyone gets access to it across the NA across the country. Huge organisation. Um, millions and millions of people access it every day, millions work um for it every day. So really huge um organization. You talked about this NHS X. Can you just talk to us a little bit more about where that started, first and foremost, how how that sort of came about and your involvement on it?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Yeah, so that context is important because um obviously it's it's quite a huge beast of a machine to try and deliver any sort of project inside of. Um and we had a really rare opportunity where one of the the person that was running the project, um, his name's Jason Brewster. Uh, he think he still works for the Leadership Academy today, actually. Um and he had managed, I don't know how he I genuinely don't know how he did this because I I imagine the amount of red tape and stuff he must have had to work through. Um but he created this environment uh where there was four to six people who could literally build some technology from scratch and get it signed off and get it released and available to everyone. And with with very little from what I could see, sort of politics or or red tape from from that happening. Now I don't understand how he did that because it's quite hard to do that in any sort of public sort of um organisation, never mind the NHS, which is just an absolute beast. Um but yeah, I was I was approached by um my friend who was doing some some work at the time, and he said, I've I've got this um project which sounds really interesting. Do you want to come and come and help? He was doing a lot of the sort of front-end visual side, and he said, I need someone to help code up the back end and make it all work, basically. Um so I was like, Yeah, absolutely. I hadn't got any work at the time, so I was really keen just to sort of jump on it. And turned out to be just the most amazing project. We we worked on it for probably a couple of years, but we released it probably in about eight months, which for a software project's pretty pretty good for one of that size. Um, probably because we were just so small we could make quick decisions and just build it essentially. Um but we yeah, we built this platform, it was it was a a space where people could come join a program. Um, there was loads of different programs. I'd named all of the um programs after sort of significant innovators in in the space. So you had like the Mary C. Cole program and so on. Like it had loads of different names for the programs, and they're all great. Um so we we designed these programs, we created a system to contain these programs, and then got um some professionals to write the course material, we load it into the system, um, took loads of people onto the programs, and then just sort of started these cohorts off, and then it started to gain a lot of traction, people got to get more uh loads more people got access to it. I think the news spread that this was a sort of nice new innovative platform that was nice to use. Um, and it was just a really nice like user interface. It was literally you log in, you get your course, you start your work, you can pick it up where you left off. Almost sort of micro um credentials in a way, like it was, you know, the the way it worked was a bit like Duolingo at the time, I guess. Sort of you just be able to do really small pieces of material in your lunch break. Uh and yeah, um but unlike Duolingo actually worked to be clear. Um but yeah, it was just it was just a really cool project. And uh I think it was it we really focused on the accessibility and the the sort of inclusivity of the platform, way you'd access it if it be on your mobile and your desktop. Um you know, we we focused very heavily on the usability testing of it and just to make sure that there was there were really few barriers, if any, to people getting getting in their hands and starting to use it. Um, because their time was very precious, you know. I think you had a lot of people that would be doing this in their spare time or lunch breaks, or you know, you really need to optimize that process. Um so yeah, that frictionless sort of learning environment was was key to that project, and I think we nailed the brief.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

That's yeah, I it's uh it's interesting the reference you made to like micro-credentials, um, because like it's so so popular now and so important, and people like just for like boosting people in the workplace, boosting their skills to make them even better, because you've mentioned previously, especially like within your industry, like everything changes so drastically and so quickly, especially now AI is in place, that learning these new things in the small amount of time that you have is is is so important. I I'm really interested in what you took from your own learning experiences and put into into the platform. Like, what did you what do you what do you what did you put in the platform that you attribute to your own learning experiences?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

That's a good question. I think I think for me it is like attention spans pretty pretty poor with a lot of people these days, but I I think like some of these some of these traits are like quite specific to it's well quite contextual, right? So like your ability to learn on a product will be different probably in your home environment, like we both we all are now, versus a busy environment at work where someone's always trying to steal that attention. Um so I think trying to understand the the learner, the user in more in more detail, understand the different contexts in which they could use that the thing we were building. Um there's loads of stuff we could talk about from the sort of creator perspective. Like I think that's my my sort of angle on this is like how how do the creators of these tools really think and feel about um about them because yeah, we had as I say, we had this sort of visionary, I guess, product manager. He was sort of acting as a product manager at the time, trying to understand the requirements for this product and um trying to understand the learners we were trying to target, but it's really hard when you've got the NHS, which is like a hugely diverse like group of roles and people, and you know, it's really hard to try and figure out how you nail that for everyone. So you look you go back to like what the principles are of inclusive design, um, you really think about the the fewest steps possible to get someone to achieve a task, and I think that was sort of my mentality while we were building it. It's like okay, like it's my job to code this up and to try and make it work, but also it's my responsibility to ensure that it doesn't just work because these other tools like Moodle just they work but they don't work well, and I think there's this like an area of pride and an area of responsibility when you're building these sort of things to ensure that they yeah, they're actually enjoyable to use and they create an environment where people can can learn in a really effective way that makes sense to them. Um so we we looked at like customisation, we looked at like what were the boundaries of customization that allow people to make it work better for them, but not to overwhelm with them with a choice or or make it a worse, a worse experience because people, you know, you you need to create sort of guardrails, but you don't want to create complete configurability because ultimately it could be horrendous and it could be unusable. Um so I think that they were there were the sort of areas that I was looking at when I was building these things.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

It's a really interesting balance to um to try and strike. So I know I've I've used programs in the past where you can change absolutely everything that you want. And it almost feels like when you log on to something like Netflix, you've got every single choice under the sun, and you sit there and go, There's nothing to watch. There is, it's just you're so overwhelmed by choice for trying to strike that balance, particularly when you know it might be a nurse on a night shift that's got 15 minutes to try and get some lunch, you know, sandwich in one hand, mouse in the other, sort of thing, or but then also make that work for um someone that works in a lap that might have a 45-minute break in a quieter environment, it's a completely different um way. How how did that sort of that learning experience, how was that structured? Was it text-based? Was it videos? Was it a mix of everything? How how did it sort of look to the to the user?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So it was it was multimodal. Um so what one of the um one of the requirements sorry one of the requirements of um of this was like the it had to work on the web. So we didn't want any native native apps, we didn't want anything installable, it had to be a web-based product. Um and at the time some of the web standards were were not wonderful. So like you know, we've got such a rich ecosystem of sort of web technologies now. Um even just audio recording in the browser has come a long way. Um you can create entire synths and like music tools now in the browser. You never you could just never do that. Um so we had we had multimodal content, it was text, it was video, it was audio, it was multiple choice um quizzes, um all of which we built from scratch and created this sort of custom way of of loading this content in. Um which was important because there's there's a package tool called SCORM. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's it's like a way to package up um different types of media um that you load into a learning platform like like Moodle essentially. And SCORM's awful. It's a terrible, it's sort of it's just like the worst thing ever. It's the worst format, it's inflexible, it creates a horrible learning environment. Um, but this this sort of explains why some of these tools are so bad because the building blocks of the system themselves are quite poor. So, you know, if how you package the content is quite bad, you can only do so much with it on the other end when you try and deliver that to the learner. And that was a really big constraint that we found. We didn't want to use SCORM because it it constrained us from providing a better experience to the learner. So we create a custom way to um to load content into the platform, which used Markdown, used loads of open standards and open formats that you know anyone could author. Um and I really wanted to open source that tool, but um that was an area that the NHS weren't too keen on because of licensing, and I didn't want to fight that fight because I would have lost it very quickly. Um but yeah, so um I've actually completely forgotten the question. I don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_04 22:58

No, it's like no, it was it was on sort of what what did that look like to to the learner, and you you you covered that you answered it, you answered it perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah, the reason I was I was listening, but it just disappeared. Um the uh the reason I mentioned all that stuff, there was some relevancy to it, this to that waffle, and it was that the the way in which we presented that content was really important. So, like, you know, how you how we use the multiple choice quiz, how we'd roll the those answers up into like a really simple summary screen. Um we focused on like a step-by-step um course run through, but had these nice little sort of markers, almost like tube map markers, where you could see where you were in the learning material and you could jump about a bit and you could pick the pick a way you left off. And like it didn't have to follow this like linear format where you'd be like, unless you've answered this, you can't proceed. It sort of tried to let people explore topics and content in a way that they wanted to, really. And I think that was quite an important component of the of the system.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

I I agree. I think um well, because once you when you when you learn a topic, uh, you want to dig into something within that specific topic, whereas like most traditional stuff is like you've learned this now, now you need to learn this, now you need to learn this, now you need to learn this. But where you most engage is like, okay, I've learned this, but that's very interesting. Let me focus a little bit further on that. And you might pick up on the other things based on those like taken off in that junction. Um, so I think that's really crucial, and for platforms like this, it's it's super crucial to be able to facilitate that as well. You mentioned um a a few times, a few things there that were challenges, some some stuff that the some stuff that came up that made it a little bit more difficult for you to put things in place. Was there any point in the project where you were like, oh, this isn't gonna work? And how did you yourself navigate that? And what what was it? What what what came up that you didn't think was gonna work?

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah, I mean, you know, I've I've sort of described it as being quite a smooth process to build this in in isolation within a much larger org. I I think we still had to interface with with the org, right? Like how we, you know, we were talking before we hit record about SOC2 and and uh and things like you know, all these different compliance requirements that you have to satisfy, um, all these different hosting requirements, um, the way in which people access the services, you know, are you gonna have to hook into some NHS single sign-on solution or are you gonna have to build your own? And we had all these sort of choices to make. And I think there was a there's a few decisions that we compromised on to navigate things politically to make sure that you know the the um the trusts would be happy using these services. And I think you know, if if you're not familiar with how the NHS works, there's there's a bunch of trusts as part of a biggest a bigger network essentially, but they all operate as independent businesses. Um so you you still have the challenge of trying to ensure that access is is available and that uh it complies with with their expectations. Um so I think there was a sort of political environment to navigate to ensure that people saw this not as a not as a threat, but as as something that was super beneficial to their uh to their staff and that would really level things up. Um I think when you describe a new shiny technology piece in in an environment like NHS, people get quite scared because a lot of the systems people know how to use, they know they're comfortable with them, they don't need to do training. Um, you know, they've sort of it's sort of knowledge passed on from person to person as you join. It's the onboarding experience is not as you'd expect in a a more typical modern uh organization. So yeah, I think that there's definitely a few moments where we'd built this thing and we we struggled to get it into the hands of people. Um and we had to figure out other other requirements and other ways to jump through hoops. But um yeah, it's all sort of part of uh part of how you build a product really, how you make sure that once you've built it and you know it's gonna solve the problems for those for the learners, how you actually get it, how you distribute it, how you get it into the hands of those learners and keep it in the hands of those learners. So if trusts you know decide they don't want to use this anymore, how does that not negatively impact um that learner's experience? How do they not lose access to the content and to the progress of which they've they've sort of put ours into? Um all these sort of things are really key considerations as as with how you build these tools. Um if that person leaves NHS, like do they lose access? Can they export their data? Can they get that content um you know for the for the future? Uh I think all these things are like considerations that complicate how you create products like this.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

You talked a little bit then about sort of that institutional politics that can that can sometimes go on. And I think the NHS, it can be very similar to a lot of higher education institutions, very big organizations with clear hierarchical structures all the way through, and um sometimes a lot of red tape, right? Um we're gonna have people that are instructional designers, um, student success directors, lots of people that are putting forward uh change proposals often with the idea that something that they they've come forward with is gonna you know improve the learning experience. What would you say to those people going through similar things now in terms of when you are trying to navigate those into departmental politics or or sort of negotiations to get that change through? What what would your advice be to them when they're sort of pushing this sort of thing through?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

I think there's the there's the classic challenge of having to really articulate the value of of of what you've got. I think not not selling it as a like not selling it as a product, but looking at the sol like the solution in the in the context of the learner. Like what are they gonna get out of it? Like how is this gonna really like other than you know, tick a box and and allow you to deliver something, like what else is it gonna do? And I think for for us it was it was about articulating you know, this is a platform for someone to to learn in a way that makes sense to them. It's gonna it's gonna reduce the friction and improve their effectiveness at work and and and create more skill, a more skilled workforce. And I think if you can figure out how to articulate that to the to the right people, um, you know, look at why there might be resistance in the system. Like that resistance isn't because people are trying to be awkward or trying to create blockers. There's there's there's a lot more behind that, and I think you need to understand understand the mentality of your buyers, understand the mentality of the people who are also just trying to do their jobs, you know, like the compliance blocker is a common one, like you know, there are genuine reasons why you can't or shouldn't adopt a a system. Um, it's probably due to you know them not having their compliance stuff in check, or maybe we need to provide additional integrations to uh to support audit logging or something like that. Like these sort of things are you know, someone's trying to do their job somewhere essentially, and and you need to sort of support that and you need to give them the evidence they need to wave these sort of things through. Um so I think I think probably the best thing you can do is a bit of a stakeholder map on on where those key people are in the system. Like, is it your IT folk, is it your is it your sort of you know, your leaders in the organizations, is it like who who's gonna help you, who's gonna get in your way, how can you work with them on these these sort of problems? Um and I guess it's you know, you'll both know this pretty well, it's about how you build your network, how you build your relationships and how you how you articulate that you're trying to do, you know, the right thing for the learner, and you're trying to, you know, trying to deliver something that's gonna really help people. Um so yeah, I think that's that's the key thing, a bit of storytelling, really, isn't it? Ultimately, it's like how do you tell the story on on on why you've done what you've done.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. We it's it's it's something which we we navigate right daily, right? I think um you're you're spot on in it's the it's the ability to articulate the uh the benefits and also but not but without not like shying away from the things that are going to be difficult, right? Like these things are gonna be difficult to get things in place, but the benefits are definitely gonna outweigh all that work, right? So it's it's it's it's things like that which are which are super important and difficult to get across to people. Um but once it's there, it's like you can you can see the impact. Um on the same sort of theme, like I'm really interested in like all of your learnings from from from a project which you've worked on previously. Um what would you say to somebody who is designing a platform for learners? What are the critical things they should be asking themselves? And and what what should be their maybe top three focuses first going into developing a product for learning?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Um well, the most pressing at the moment is is the accessibility angle. Um, there is a huge legislation sort of change coming in in April. Um so it's it's becoming a very legal requirement that you consider the accessibility of your products and and you try and do that to a really good a good level. Um, so I think definitely, you know, how how you can make your product inclusive and accessible and and an enjoyable place for people to to learn is a big thing. Um so that's one of them. Um the other thing is sort of respecting the learning process and trying to understand more about how people learn. Um I think particularly with the rise of AI, there's a real concern around AI doing the learning for you, um, which is impossible. Like AI can't learn for you. Um there has to be a degree of friction and a degree of um energy invested by the learner to really learn whether that's sort of how how you memorize things, how you take notes, um, how you um you know, how you revisit things, you know. However, you like do you physically write things on flashcards, do you use digital tooling? Do you use other platforms? Like I think you've got to think about where you where friction is actually a really positive thing. Um you know, you need to introduce friction to ensure that, you know, in the right areas to make sure that it's productive. Um there's some things that you can automate and remove, so there's like people can definitely sort of learn, learn in a better way. But I do think friction is important. Um I think trying to automate everything and resolve like that friction is is not gonna benefit learning on like the bigger picture of learning. And I think figuring out how we essentially like preserve some of that so people can process you know the content they're trying to absorb or or they can learn something is really important. Um and annoyingly I can't think of a third, but I think that's two that I could I could go for.

SPEAKER_04 33:49

It's an interesting balance to strike, isn't it? Because I think as a as a human race, over over time, everything that we ever innovate is to make life easier for ourselves and more comfortable, whether that be windows on a house or a car instead of a horse. Like these these things have increasingly over time being how is we going to make life easier? Learning's almost the one that we still have to actively make a little bit difficult and not impossible, but it still has to be a process, it can't be like a checkout at a supermarket. And I think where where AI's come in and being able to go for a lot of lot of tasks, we'll do it for you. Don't worry about that. Here it is. That that in a way can be counterproductive if not used in in the right way. When you're looking at AI then in in into the future, obviously, I know you touched on things like quizzes and things. What do you potentially see the the future of that looking like when it when it comes to learning platforms um in the future? How how might that look?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Yeah, I think I think the problem is at the moment the conversation is very focused around generative AI and and and it generating content and media. Um and I know one of the big concerns of institutions is around how this this sort of you know plagiarism and how it's really hard to detect some of this this stuff. Um but I think if you and and that's a whole other podcast episode that we could easily go into, right? Um so skirting around that, I think the the challenge that you've got is is how you really harness AI in products that isn't through that traditional chat interface or gen AI interface. Um I think AI is gonna be incredible at personalization. And you know, we've we've talked a lot in this in this sort of episode about how you create that environment, that that sort of unique, like almost special environment for someone to learn in a way that really is tailored to them. And I think AI is gonna be incredible at that, you know, in terms of it understanding who you are and and how what resonates with you and how you learn almost, you know, what what's the format and styles of which you're really like consuming content really really works for you. And I think this is an area that is is still quite unexplored. Um, I think people are still focusing quite heavily on the sort of gen AI chat interfaces where actually there's so much more powerful uh implementations for AI. So yeah, I think I think we're starting to sort of figure that out. I think we're figuring out you know, beyond just generating summaries and text, like where where it can show up in products in a way that that is nice and and not just forced in. Um I think the problem is everyone feels like they have to force AI into their product, but actually it's like what problems are you trying to solve? Um how can you use this technology to reduce or remove friction where it's not needed, like where it's getting in the way of someone learning versus where can you sort of get out of the way and allow that person to go through a bit of a struggle, to go through a bit of friction to ensure that that knowledge really embeds in them. Um and I think the personalization stuff is just super interesting. Um, we need to think about privacy aware ways in which we do this, and we need to be super careful about consent and ensuring that everything, you know, around it, you know, often you're dealing with people who might be vulnerable or might be, you know, particularly at risk and you want to make sure that you sort of respect the responsibility of what you're building for there. Um, but yeah, imagine if you had a system that really understood, you know, your your dyslexia in more detail or you know, you you know, how how you work in a way that supports, you know, you can work with your ADHD. Um I think there's there's huge potential for this technology that is currently untapped.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

I I I agree, and I to be fair, I think AI completely understands my dyslexia because I don't even try and spell anything right when I'm typing into it now. Just managed to know exactly what I'm saying. It gets its spot on. Um so at least my at least at least mine in itself is figured it out. Um this has been a super, super interesting conversation, and it's a little bit like different to what we normally speak about. So this is so this is this is really cool to have, and I think it's gonna be super useful for the viewers to understand what goes into these platforms as well. Um if the viewers are interested in learning a little bit more. I know that you have a podcast yourself. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your podcast? Maybe give it a little bit of a plug of the conference as well for any other viewers that might be listening. Um I'm a prank. I'm a prank. What am I gonna say?

SPEAKER_00 38:29

You're an absolute gem. Look at that. Um I was yeah, I don't even have to do it myself. Um, so I I I run a conference called All Day Hey. We've been doing it for 10 years. It's uh sort of we call it a conference for curious developers, designers, and technology leaders. Um it's in Leeds in the UK. Uh it's in May this one. Um, the next one is, and it's yeah, it's just a really nice sort of indie conference, a really tight-knit community of people who just sort of come together, they share stories, they talk about what they're building, they talk about the challenges they're up against, they you know, almost like solving problems with with people who are doing the same sort of stuff as you. Um, and then yeah, I run a com uh podcast with my my friend James, who runs a sort of digital innovation agency doing a lot with AI um called Offscript, and we talk a lot about these deeper topics around what's going on in technology at the moment. Um, so you know, everything from the challenges with AI adoption to AI and software engineering to um some of the sort of socio, economic, political problems of of things in our industry, um, as well as just like trends and things that are going on going down in sort of news. Um, so yeah, it's usually every other week. Um calendars permitting. Um but yeah, we've been doing it for quite a while now. I think we've got about 60 episodes up so far.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Brilliant. Well, Josh, thank you so much for for today. Been super, super interesting. I'm sure we'll have you on um in the future again to talk about all things AI and whatever's changed in in the world of learning and technology. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

When it changes, when it changes again next week. Yes.

unknown 40:04

Indeed.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Well, yeah, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for joining us on Learning Outcome Leaders. We hope you found the conversation valuable and that we gave you some ideas for how you can elevate your own stream experience.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Don't forget to hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. Until next time, have an amazing day.