Big Question: What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

This month's Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog asks 'What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?' Well,contrary to many commentators, I am not so sure that l&d professionals need to tear up the rule book and start again. True, we do need to adjust the balance of our activities quite significantly, away from formal courses to more responsive, work-embedded approaches, at the same time taking much better advantage of new media. We still have the same primary goal, i.e. to enhance organisational performance through employee learning and development, and we're still working in the same four primary skill areas, i.e. strategic l&d management, the design of interventions, sourcing and developing learning materials, and facilitating learning and development on a person-to-person basis. The problem for me is that a great many l&d professionals have fallen behind in their continuing professional development - the world has changed much faster around them than they have managed to change themselves.

Let's take an example. Twenty-five years ago, every l&d professional (or training officer as they were called then) would have been familiar with every medium then available, i.e. overhead projectors, flip charts, black/whiteboards, 35mm slide projectors, VCRs, etc. At some point since then, as new learning media began to proliferate, they backed out and started leaving the job to specialists. Big mistake. Now they have a hell of a lot of catching up to do. The same is true of educational and training methods: the options may be essentially timeless, but the thinking has shifted substantially towards new models such as connectivism, and the brain science means we know so much more than we once did about how people learn. Taking into account the unprecedented financial, time and environmental pressures we are facing, and a new generation of learners that's less content to go with the status quo, and there's plenty of momentum to change.

I can't see a future for those l&d professionals currently in denial and just hoping all this will blow over. I can't imagine who will want to employ them. New thinking and new media are no longer the province of pioneers and geeks - it's time for the whole community to come on board. They will be welcomed warmly.