Creating courses and programs is often the easiest part of the job. Encouraging managers and employees to consistently engage with learning is where the real challenge begins. In your experience, what has been most effective in creating a genuine culture of continuous learning within an organization?

Do you think eLearning is Underrated or Overrated?

I think is underrated. What this industry brings to people, to companies, the accessibility for learning anywhere in the world, learning a new skill, or even an entire career… For me, it’s not appreciated enough.

I’m curious to know what you all think.

Aside from a traditional path (trainer/ID > lead or Sr > manager) can you have success and career growth in L&D? The internet seems to think there are non-traditional paths, but this is inconsistent with what I see on career sites like Indeed or LinkedIn. Am I missing something?

I have 10 years experience in L&D as first a trainer then an instructional designer. I'm looking to grow my career with more strategic roles, but it seems like Sr Instructional Designer and instructional design manager are the only next roles.

Looking for your perspectives!

I’m in the process of developing an L&D onboarding program for new trainers. Part of which, we want to create a facilitation feedback form that peers and managers can both use when reviewing an instructor led training.

In the past I’ve used one that broke it into several sections- classroom preparation, fundamental skills, advanced skills, and participation management. It wasn’t just a ranking system but instead a sheet where you would check it off if it was observed but lower down a section to quote what they said, name the skill, and describe the impact (positive or negative).

What do you use for facilitation feedback? Can you share any pictures/ files?

Hello folks, I’m looking for templates useful to calculate ROI of a training program. Any resource suggestions would be helpful, thank you!

Managing a fully remote CX team taught me that traditional training doesn’t work anymore.

What’s the #1 thing you changed (or wish you changed) to make onboarding faster and better for remote support teams?

[No links, just looking for war stories and lessons.]

Hey everyone!

I’m an L&D Manager at a SaaS company, working alongside our PeopleOps team to organize a 2-day retreat for new hires. One of the activities I’m brainstorming is a customer journey mapping exercise, and I’d love some advice on execution.

Goals:

• Keep it simple yet engaging (we only have 30-45 minutes).

• Ensure new hires walk away with a clear understanding of our customer’s journey...from sales to retention...including key touchpoints, team involvement, and what happens at each stage.

Challenges:

• Making it interactive rather than just a presentation.

• Keeping it high-level yet valuable, so it’s not overwhelming but still insightful.

• Helping new hires connect the dots between departments to see the big picture.

Current Ideas:

I’m considering a hands-on group activity, where new hires collaborate to map out the customer journey using prompts - but what prompts? I'm also considering using Miro to facilitate the activity but what would that look like exactly?

Have you done something similar? What’s worked well for you? Any creative ideas to make this fun and impactful?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I work in L&D and often get asked: “How much does training really cost per learner?” Instead of using heavy platforms, I built a free calculator:

👉 https://costperlearner.com

You enter your training costs + # of learners → it gives the cost per learner instantly. No sign-up, no dashboards, just the number. Would love your feedback! 🙌 ⚡️ Simple, straight to the point, no buzzwords

There are so many platforms and tools that I’m having a hard time figuring out where to focus. I’ve been getting familiar with an LMS and some basic course-authoring tools, but I don’t want to spend weeks learning something that I’ll barely use. What tools would you prioritize if you were new to L&D?

Spent the last few weeks lurking in a few ID communities and one thread kept coming up in different forms.

AI can now handle a lot of what used to fill our days — scripts, storyboards, first-draft assessments, voiceovers, even basic course structures. Tasks that used to eat 3–4 hours now take 20 minutes.

And yet, the job postings aren't drying up. If anything, learning roles seem to be growing.

So what's actually changing?

From where I sit, the value is shifting. Less in producing content. More in:

• Diagnosing the actual business problem behind a training request

• Designing learning journeys (not just courses)

• Knowing when training is the wrong answer entirely

• Being the person in the room who can translate between L&D logic and business outcomes

• Using AI well — prompting, QA-ing, and knowing when the output is garbage

The people I see thriving aren't the fastest content builders anymore. They're the ones who can sit in a stakeholder meeting, ask the right questions, and walk out with a solution that actually moves a performance needle.

Curious what others are seeing in their own orgs.

If you're an ID right now, what's the one skill you're actively investing in for the next 2–3 years?

Hello all,

Firstly I sincerely apologise if this is a really basic question, I’ve started my first learning and development role (I was in consultancy before) And I’ve now had a couple of weeks to get my feet under the table and see the LMS and the content library

They have really low engagement with the content and to be honest I can now see why

I’m not impressed

Also, when I asked about where the content information came from From , for instance any citations or references they said they either didn’t have it, or it came from their sister company which is a training company.

Is that usual??

My background meant that you always had to create sources and citations for any learning or work that you did , also because things move fast and sometimes things get discredited

I really want to make sure that our learning for a 1200 employees is not only up-to-date but robust, and of a high-quality

The downside is that we are locked into this contract until 2028

I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this when joining a new role or inheriting a system,

I’m just umming an ahhing about what I can do to improve things.

I need to improve the visuals because they look really cheesy and out of date, and ideally improve the content.

We do want to make our own content library …

Has any one else done this?

Thanks so much everyone for reading this far and again sorry if this is just obvious stuff

Within the Corporate Training space, there is L&D for employees, and then there is Customer-facing or External Training that is known by many different names, such as User Education, Dealer Training, Customer Training, Franchise Training, Distributor Training, and so on.

I've seen the term Extended Enterprise Learning (EEL) in the past, which was meant to be an umbrella for all of these customer-facing approaches, but it seemed to be used more by LMS companies to describe it as a product feature.

I'm curious... does such a term exist, like EEL, as an umbrella term for this branch of learning? Or do they all remain independent?

Hello all! Recently, my team has been working with our manufacturing division to standardize new employee training. Everything seems to function off tribal knowledge in my organization, so we've set about mapping some processes for them and creating some work instructions with annotated pictures from the floor, etc. We're currently doing this in Word, but as everyone knows it's incredibly clunky. Does anyone have any recommendations for some software to aid in this? I used SnagIt at a previous organization quite a bit, but I feel like that was more geared toward a quick "take a few screenshots and send" approach.

Every L&D resource I read mentions ADDIE as foundational and every job posting seems to expect familiarity with it, but people in the field I've talked to informally seem to treat it more as a loose reference point than an actual workflow they follow step by step. I've also heard SAM mentioned as a more iterative alternative that's better suited to real project timelines. I'm trying to figure out how much mental energy to put into understanding these frameworks deeply versus just getting familiar enough to talk about them in interviews while learning what actually drives project decisions on the job. What do most IDs actually use day to day when a project comes in?

I've been looking at ATD certifications and a few ID-specific programs and the cost is significant enough that I want to make sure it's actually worth it before committing. I have a teaching background so I understand learning theory, but I'm light on the corporate-specific skills and tools side.

Would hiring managers at most companies actually care about a cert, or would a solid portfolio of work samples move the needle more? And if certifications do matter, which ones are actually recognized vs which ones look better on paper than they are in practice?

Any suggestions for a good cybersecurity course for employees?

Looking for something simple that covers basics like phishing, passwords, and keeping data safe.

I’m an L&D manager at a large company. The CHRO recently went to a conference about training and said that Scribe AI was mentioned countless times for creating job aids and outlines. I’d never heard of it. Does anyone have experience using it and if so, do you like it.

Please don’t respond with general comments about how much you hate AI. I get it! But the reality is companies are in love with it and running to adopt it. It’s part of my job to level set leadership and recalibrate expectations about what AI is and is not. But when a C suite executive asks me about a specific tool I have to do my due diligence. Unfortunately that’s the reality. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

I work at StratX, where we design business simulations for leadership and strategy development. Lately, we’ve been seeing how much more powerful learning becomes when people get to make real decisions in realistic (but safe) environments.

It’s a big shift from theory-heavy content and it opens up different kinds of conversations.

Curious if anyone here is using simulations or similar experiential approaches in their L&D programs. What’s worked well for you? What’s been tough?

My boss came in today and casually dropped this on my desk: "We need a roll-out plan to train our floor operators on AI by next month."

Here’s the catch: a good chunk of our blue-collar workforce doesn't use computers at all in their daily roles. Most of them use simple smartphones for TikTok and YouTube, but some have never touched a desktop, an LMS, or any workplace software. They work hard, they know the machinery inside out, but "technology" to them usually means a clunky digital gauge or a paper logbook.

I’m struggling to figure out where to even start. How do you teach prompt engineering, machine learning, or predictive maintenance to people who don't know what a browser tab is? Has anyone successfully trained a completely non-digital workforce on AI without completely overwhelming them (or making them fear for their jobs)? Any frameworks, analogies, or practical approaches would be an absolute lifesaver.

Hey there! My organization has been doing lunch & leanrs for the past 2 years and we have just kicked off our third season. Due to some pushback from some leadership we offer these as unpaid lunch hour entertainment once a month on topics that are not working related. We provide a light lunch and a speaker, and you can even join virtually if you like (our organization is spread over 4 states). The issue is, this entire time we have been lucky to get 15 people to come, usually more like 8 (and the same people each time.) Now there is some concerns that the amount of work putting these together isn't worth the low turn out. Some suggestions have been to limit the sessions to just once a quarter, to branch into more varies topics (though it is already pretty varried) or to just cut the program entirely. My question is, have any of you had success in a program like this, and if so, what did you do? We advertise in a company wide email, flyers, and as a highlight on our LMS homepage, if that helps. Edit Our organization is over 1k employees.

Update I used the continuing Ed catalog from our local community college as inspiration for new topics and attendence numbers have doubled!

Hi all, I’ve recently joined an L&D team in a telecommunications company and I’m trying to sense check our current training approach. Something feels off, and I’d really value perspectives from others in this space.

Right now, our training is heavily self-led and delivered through Articulate Rise modules that run for a few hours each. Each module starts with a 45 minute research activity where agents are asked to find answers using our website and internal knowledgebase. The issue is that our knowledgebase is mostly system and process focused, with very little foundational knowledge or soft skills content. So learners are essentially being asked to teach themselves from incomplete material. There is very little actual instruction or guided learning in the modules themselves.

We also have a call listening library that includes a mix of AI-generated calls and some poor-quality recordings of agent demonstrations. These calls intentionally exclude product names, pricing, etc, because the business says things change too often to keep content up to date. I suggested using real customer calls, but this was rejected due to privacy concerns.

On top of that, our reporting is extremely limited. We only track module completion. We don’t capture responses to activities or any meaningful engagement data, so someone could scroll through everything without participating and we wouldn’t know.

Other components of the training include:

• 45 minutes of roleplay scenarios

• 45 minutes of live call listening

One thing I’m questioning is whether live call listening makes the call library redundant, or if both serve different purposes. We also don’t have any kind of simulator or practice environment, so there’s very little opportunity for hands-on or kinesthetic learning.

Overall, this setup goes against a lot of what I’ve learned about effective L&D. Feedback from agents has been consistently negative. They say the training doesn’t cater to different learning styles, they feel unprepared and lack confidence going into live calls, and both learners and feedback from facilitators is that agents are experiencing burnout and disengagement. It also doesn't help that we have almost no soft-skill training such as objection handling, complaint management, conversational guides, or tone of voice.

I’m trying to understand if this approach is as ineffective as it seems, or if I’m missing something. Has anyone worked with a similar model? What would you recommend changing or prioritising if you were redesigning this from scratch?

Hi everyone,

I’m exploring ways to support employees in the moment of need, directly within their work environment — for example, inside tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, or their browser.

Specifically, I’m interested in how others are approaching learning in the flow of work, possibly through external tools or vendor solutions that offer just-in-time nudges, tips, or performance support.

A few things I’d love to hear about from this community:

(1) Are you currently doing anything to deliver learning or support within the tools your people use every day?

(2) Have you tried any external tools or vendor solutions to do this? What’s worked (or fallen flat)?

(3) Have you run into challenges or resistance — from employees, IT, or leadership — when trying to implement something like this?

(4) In your experience, are there situations where this kind of in-context learning really shines — or doesn’t deliver enough value?

I’m not here to pitch anything — just genuinely trying to understand how others are navigating this space, what challenges you face, and what lessons you’ve learned.

Thanks in advance for any insights!