Learning Technologies 2016

We had such a great time at the Learning Technologies, Olympia in London last week! It was one of the busiest years yet, the vibe was outstanding and the freebies were good enough to stock your cupboards up! It truly was a success, the learning community always proves to be a friendly and welcoming place whether you’re visiting or exhibiting.

Potential clients, competitors or people just wanting to gather more information about the industry are always met with a smile and plenty of advice! With the attitude that we can all help and learn from each other, this is especially true when it comes to the speakers. They put time in to help and guide fellow members of the eLearning community.

We went to a conference called ‘How interactive’ to gather inspiration and further knowledge about one of the key elements to eLearning. This proved to be very rewarding, giving us information and statistics that support the idea that people learn better visually; ‘Visuals are processed 60000x faster to the brain than text is. And a 1 minute video is worth 1.8 million words!’ This is incredible, but not hard to believe. We all learn in different ways however the way technology has and is evolving, nobody can deny that the use of YouTube ‘how to’ videos are a quicker and more effective go-to than a book or manual now. This really is relevant when thinking about the evolution of learning, to engage with the learner, it is crucial to understand how they learn and when 67% of people agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn, it is nonsensical to not involve video visuals into all learning. Gone are the days when a huge TV was rolled into the classroom or office once every month and everyone went wild, it’s now part of everyday life.

Furthermore it really is no surprise that books are becoming outdated when our attention spans are shrinking, ‘in 2015 we had on average consumed more than 15 hours of media per day!’ It’s about bringing all learning to a level in which we have to utilise this movement, that doesn’t mean to say ditch the books completely, books are wonderful, however it’s important to move with the learner. The myths around this style of learning are also proven wrong time and time again when resources like Lynda and Bitesize are so successful in the education sector. So the idea that it ‘costs too much’ or it is ‘just passive learning’ really isn’t a reliable reason to not get on board!

The learning technology exhibition was all in all a great success but also an eye opener for us here at Optimised Learning, we love being part of this ever growing community! We felt inspired, but also it was brilliant to chat to people who might need inspiring. Technology is always evolving and learning is the future so it is great to be part of an industry that gives something back!

It has set us in good stead for 2016, a year of growth and motivation in the eLearning industry. It helped us gather an idea as to what our potential clients want. The services that we provide that are most sort after, from bespoke to LMS support we offer a vast array of services.

We hope to return next year when the event is even bigger and better!