Second Finding
Informal education settings are the most recommended by Learning Industry Experts.
Recap of the 2022 Learning Industry Report and the first-finding:
This 3-part series is based on findings from a survey conducted of a select group of Learning Industry professionals. In the first part, we established details about the participants – most are instructional designers or in a management role, with over 8 years of experience.
Click here for a copy of the 2022 Learning Industry Report.
In the first part of this series, we provided some background on how this report came to be:
- We want to help people enter the Learning Industry
- We set out to find ways to help those people – we decided to connect with people already in the industry
- Our initial finding was most people who completed the survey were in Instructional Design or Management roles
- A large majority with 8+ years experience
Second Key Finding
Survey Findings:
With the third survey question, participants were asked to share sources for learning about the industry and roles within it.
What was asked:
Where would you recommend someone just starting out go to learn more about your role?
Why we asked this question:
We wanted to know what participants would suggest doing and where to go to learn more about the industry and the core roles involved.
Results:
With a 97% response rate, most provided links and specific names of organizations, corporations, and businesses; public, private, and personal.
To evaluate and compare responses, we grouped and categorized the responses using common attributes – Setting and Format (see site for definitions).
- For Setting, we focused on the Education Type; Formal, Informal, and Non-formal.
- We then assigned each a sub-type:
- Group/Organization
- Personal
- Self-driven
- We then assigned each a sub-type:
- For Format, we categorized responses based on how the content is provided; via a website, through an app, or a profession-based services.
- Specific brands and professional groups were mentioned frequently among recommended sources.
Biggest Surprise:
While most respondents recommended the Informal education type, we focused on the responses for Non-formal type, as this is more relevant to the project.
Within the Non-formal education type, the results show Self-driven is the preferred sub-type. Further, most respondents with over 8-years experience (nearly 60%) recommended the Non-formal education type, with an even split between the Group/Organization, Personal, and Self-driven sub-types.
LinkedIn was the most mentioned brand among all recommended sources with 12%.
Impact:
Having a list of specific recommended resources with the named source helped solidify some of the project hypotheses and provided real-world examples to be shared with others, especially those entering the industry.
Why this matters to you
Activity:
In the industry?
- Conduct a thought exercise of how you have come to gain your knowledge and skillset.
- What were the steps and resources you used to better understand the industry and your role in it?
- Which do you use today?
Looking to enter the industry?
- What are the steps you would take to find out about the industry or a particular role?
- There are the obvious starting points (Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc.), but how would you gain a deeper understanding? Where would you look and who would you look to?
- Think about your preferred setting and format. Do you like self-paced experiences, live cohorts, or something in between? – maybe that’s a good starting point.
Next:
Please look for the third and final part of this series. We’ll cover our third key finding – expert advice – and summarize the series.
Thanks for reading and please contact us if you would like to connect on this series and our findings.