| | October - November - 20198IN MY OPINIONTraining and Education Practitioners Need to Lead Digital Disruption!By Rodney Beach, Group Managing Director, Liberate LearningAs learning and development professionals we can no longer afford to put our heads in the sand and believe that digital disruption will pass us by. Digital disruption does not only affect people in manufacturing and related industries. If we ignore the disruptive influence of digital technology we will stand by while our role is greatly de-valued. Instead, we need to lead the digital disruption and forge new strategies for learning and development. We all know that technology impacts the means of working, the worker and the workplace. Digital, biological and physical technologies are converging, bringing social, economic and political change. These changes heralded by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are occurring at a phenomenal rate. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and all industry sectors need to embrace change and adapt, or die-out. This includes learning and development professionals. I believe that learning and development professionals should be involved in a strategic re-evaluation of themselves, their team's purpose and direction as well as their organisation's strategic direction and service offerings at least once every 12 months. Why, you ask? Given the pace of change, if you haven't undergone some form of re-invention in some capacity, you may not be adding value to the services you offer your customers. If you are a learning development professional, then your customers are the educators (university, TAFE, school staff etc) and business partners/stakeholders) for whom you design learning programs. We hear about digital disruption daily; however, the learning and education sectors aren't changing at a parallel pace, not by a long-shot. Frankly, I see first-hand how learning and education professionals are getting left behind at a rate that creates the perception that learning design teams and education institutions provide little to no value to the end user of said learning opportunities.Generally speaking, organisations and education institutions are still stuck in the paradigm of front-loading students with factual knowledge. This knowledge is assessed in some form, and judgements are made as to the learner's competency. Then the learner is bestowed with the credentials to perform in their related trade or discipline. Many organisations are no different Rodney Beach
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