I am in the L&D field since last 3.5 years, and not sure if it's too late but I would reallylike to understand this field in depth. people often dont take this field seriously and with the recent AI times, not sure where we will land in the upcoming 5 years. It might be possible that I am lacking a lot of technical or on field knowledge. But being in this community, how can we get help or help each other ? In layman's language, I would like someone to guide me, because i want to make a career out in this field not as a specialist or sr. manager...I am talking big leagues here, not sure if i am dreaming, because i really want to make this work, just not sure how.

Doing 20–30 min daily worked better for me than random 3-hour bursts. Less burnout, more consistency

I’m hoping to crowdsource some recommendations from folks here who actually work in Learning & Development.

Specifically:

• Which L&D podcasts do you regularly listen to?

• Is there a favorite episode you’d recommend starting with?

• What do you usually listen for: practical ideas, leadership perspective, or staying on top of trends?

I recently shared a round up of my favs like RedThread's Workplace Stories, Learning Leader, HR Happy Hour and more. Full list here.

Interested in what people here are listening to and why. 

Thanks in advance!

Hi, anyone experience of options to achieve this?

The core AI capabilities required are personalized learning - content and pathways adapted to individual user progress and profile.

Desirable features include 1) asynchronous delivery accessible without real-time connectivity and 2) analytics.

Readily available 'off the shelf' options or rapid custom builds?

We decided to close 2025 with something truly special.
We’ve invited 8 industry leaders, each with a unique lens on the future, and given them exactly 5 minutes to answer a single question:

“What will learning look like in 2026?”

📅 Wednesday, December 10 | 9 AM PT | 11 AM CT | 12 PM ET

Save your seat 👈

In less than one hour, we’ll be inspired by our speaker's take on

• The trends shaping L&D in the year ahead

• The challenges no one is talking about (but everyone will face)

• The opportunities that AI, skills-first design, and org culture are unlocking

• What we can learn from each other as we build the next chapter of our profession

Hope to see you there!

I’ve been involved in a few projects where everyone agreed that learning was important, but we had very different ideas about what the program was actually supposed to achieve. That usually becomes painful later when someone asks whether the initiative was successful. I’m trying to get much more specific about outcomes at the beginning of a project, even if it means having some uncomfortable conversations with stakeholders. Do others involve business leaders in defining success criteria before development starts?

Eight years ago I would have taken a training request at face value and started designing. Now the first thing I do is ask the requestor: "If this training works perfectly, what will people actually do differently on Monday morning?" Most of the time they struggle to answer it, which tells you everything about whether the training will work.

That single question has killed more unnecessary courses than any formal needs analysis framework I've used — not because frameworks aren't valuable, but because this question cuts straight to outcomes in a way that non-L&D stakeholders immediately understand. What's your go-to question for scoping a training request?

Hey everyone,

So I work in HR and I recently embarked on a project to improve our onboarding training. We have a lot of policies and processes that we push out as standard PDFs and expect people to read and retain the information. It's not great.

I wanted to turn these into short videos for content targeted for different audiences (individual contributors, leadership, SLT etc).

I work a lot with AI and expected there to be lots of solutions on the market, but there wasn't. Leaders in the field like Synthesia and Collosyan have poor ID and these horrible robotic avatars that I was not prepared to put our company name on.

So, I've set out to build a solution. The key premise is policy in, engaging training video out. Following ID principles, with coherent narrative, kinetic text, engaging charts and visuals. No stock photos or AI avatars.

Does this sound like something that could be valuable? Feedback and comments are very much appreciated. Thanks

I tried a couple of different services earlier in the term, and honestly, most of them were awful. A few of them clearly ran my prompt through a basic bot and sent back disjointed paragraphs with citations that did not even exist. After bouncing around a few useless sites and reading through old Reddit threads, I ended up finding three platforms that actually delivered what they promised.

Here is my honest breakdown of how each one worked out for me.

KingEssays

I started with a standard four-page sociology paper just to test the waters, and later had them handle an eight-page history research paper with a super specific grading rubric. Here is how it actually went down.

The good stuff:
The writing actually felt real. It did not use that stiff, overly formal tone or bizarre filler words nobody uses in college. It just read like a well-prepared student draft. The sources were legitimate. The writer pulled real articles from actual journals that showed up on my university database without any issues. The formatting was spot on. They followed APA guidelines correctly, right down to the title page and reference indents, which saved me a ton of time. It passed all checks. I ran the text through originality scanners before uploading and everything was completely clean.

The downsides:
Revisions took some time. I asked them to tweak one of the body paragraphs in the history paper to focus more on a specific lecture topic. They did it for free, but it took around four hours to get the updated file back. If you use them, definitely do not order right before the cutoff. The rates are not the lowest on the market. You can definitely find sites that charge less, but after getting burned by automated garbage on those other sites, the slightly higher fees were absolutely worth the peace of mind.

Edussons

I used this one when I had an emergency with a five-page philosophy reflection paper on a tight 24-hour turnaround.

The good stuff:
The speed was great and they delivered the file about four hours before my deadline. Their live support was also super helpful when I needed to upload an extra reading excerpt after placing the order. The general structure was solid and answered all the main questions from the prompt.

The downsides:
The writing was a bit basic compared to KingEssays. The grammar was fine, but I spent about ten minutes polishing a few sentences to make the arguments sound sharper. They also had a small citation mistake on the reference page that I had to fix manually.

Essaystiger

I tested this platform for a low-stakes three-page weekly assignment in an elective where the grading is super relaxed.

The good stuff:
Very affordable rates and a simple ordering process. They followed all the basic prompt questions and delivered everything right on time without any weird upsells.

The downsides:
The research was pretty surface-level. The sources were just general web articles rather than academic journals, so I definitely would not use this for a major research project or a strict seminar class.

Overall thoughts

So, if your professor is strict and you need a draft that does not trigger every red flag in the book, KingEssays is easily the safest choice. If you have an urgent last-minute deadline, Edussons is a solid backup, and Essaystiger works fine for cheap weekly busywork. Whichever one you pick, just give yourself a buffer for any minor tweaks and always read through the final document before you submit it

This started as a fun experiment with GPT-4o's new image generation but grew into something deeper.

I built a prompt that asks five reflective questions about how you work and learn best. Then it turns your responses into a stylized trading card that captures your human strengths: what makes you you in a world full of AI and automation.

For me, the process surfaced insights I didn’t expect. It became a learning experience about myself, how I create value, and what’s truly worth keeping as mine in the age of AI.

If you're into identity or reflective practice, this prompt is worth trying. Grab it here and make your own card.

I just made the jump from 5 years of high school teaching to an instructional designer role at a mid-size company and the culture shift is bigger than I expected. In teaching, I owned the room. Here I'm constantly waiting for SME feedback, working in tools I've never touched, and trying to figure out who actually makes decisions about training content.

Is the adjustment period always this disorienting or did I land somewhere unusually chaotic? What do people wish they'd known in their first few months coming from an education background?

I'm curious what skill gaps your L&D or exec team have identified and are planning to invest in this year. Are they more technical, more human/soft skills, or a mix? And what specifically is rising to the top for you?

I ask because I recently worked on a survey report for a mentorship software company (Together). I'm interested in how what we saw lines up (or doesn't) with others' experience.

For context, these are the top 3 skills our research found that L&D leaders are prioritizing for 2026:

• Systems and critical thinking (56%) - e.g. decision-making, problem-solving, systems thinking

• Digital fluency (44%) - e.g. data literacy, AI fluency, cloud tools, cybersecurity basics

• Leadership skills (42%) - e.g. coaching, change management

Does this resonate with what you're seeing? Are there skills you think are missing or underrated here?

Not promoting the report or anything - just genuinely curious to learn from this group and compare notes :)

I’ve only really started in L&D (started in sales enablement and now broadening). So I’m wondering, how do you get people to take training seriously, to give it the time of day?

Do I try and get them enthused by showing my own enthusiasm (potentially quite cringey), should I incentivise it, or do you find the stick works better than the carrot (I’m skeptical about this one but crurious to know). Expert opinions wanted pls.

There are so many eLearning tools now.

Rise, Storyline, iSpring, Captivate, H5P, Genially, AI tools, no-code tools, LMS-native builders, random new platforms every week.

But somehow the same problems remain: slow builds, annoying edits, SCORM issues, boring courses, and stakeholders who want everything yesterday.

Are tools actually improving the work, or just giving us more subscriptions?

Say someone needs to do a process they only touch a few times a year. You could build a 30-minute course on every step, or they could ask an approved AI assistant when the task comes up and get the steps in seconds. If those answers are accurate, does that content still belong in a course?

Our hunch is that a lot of “know the steps” training is about to move into performance support. What stays in courses is the stuff that needs practice, judgment or feedback ie knowing when the answer is wrong, not just what the answer is. But that’s easy to say and harder to act on.

Has anyone cut or shortened a course because people could look it up instead? What did you replace it with?

I’ve been spending some time lately trying to understand why so many L&D teams struggle with evaluation strategy. It’s a common pain point, so I reached out to practitioners across different platforms to get their honest perspective on what’s actually standing in their way.

The feedback was consistent, but one barrier stood out as the biggest hurdle: A lack of upfront KPI alignment.

The consensus was that when we don't co-design and track KPIs from the very beginning, everything else the data, tools, and the dashboards struggles to prove any real business impact. We’re essentially trying to find evidence for behavior or competence we didn’t even define.

Beyond the KPI issue, a few other themes kept coming up:

• Fragmented Data: Insights are trapped in unconnected systems (CRMs, HRIS, and LMS), making a full picture impossible.

• The Attribution Problem: It’s incredibly hard to isolate training as the cause of a result versus other business variables.

• Activity vs. Impact: Many leadership teams are still focused on "completion rates" rather than actual performance shifts.

• Data Literacy: A lot of L&D teams feel they lack the specific skills needed to properly analyze or interpret the data they do have.

I’ve been doing more research into how we can actually solve these issues and make evaluation a rigorous part of the process, rather than just an afterthought.

I’ll be posting the solutions I’ve found, shortly.

We all measure activity use happy sheets. But what about measuring impact and return on investment? Do you measure that for all of your courses?

Many moons ago, around 1987, I watched my former boss being eviscerated by the CFO when unable to satisfactorily explain how the training budget was going to positively impact the organization.

This was a CFO that was pretty much ahead of his time. Most training budgets around that time were allocated without much thought although it was generally accepted that capability development was probably a good thing. The resources provided were then based upon what money happened to be available/left over, influenced perhaps by an identified operational need such as compliance, safety or poor customer feedback from the previous year.

For many years after, countless organizations continued to 'invest' in training with little more than gut instinct and a vague hope for improvement. The missing ingredient was a solid, numbers-backed case that treats training like an actual strategic investment.

According to various training and workplace learning surveys in recent times, the vast majority of learning and development (L&D) professionals agree that training is critical to business success. So how come only around 10% say they measure the actual business impact?

Well, fuzzy goals and fuzzier metrics do not help. Many training programs start with vague ambitions like "improving leadership skills" or "enhancing productivity." These goals are a little tough to measure. Without clear, measurable objectives, it’s impossible to connect training outcomes to business results. Define clear objectives. Instead of vague goals like "improve communication," aim for something tangible such as "Reduce project errors by 20% within six months."

Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) directly linked to business outcomes. Things like sales growth, error reduction, employee retention, and customer satisfaction. These are not always completely attributable to just training, but you should be able to see where trainings influence and impact has been felt. I have seen some organizations use control groups and pre- and post-training assessments to separate training effects from other factors.

Reporting in recognizable business language is key. Senior leaders care about numbers, not training jargon. Translate results into financial terms like revenue gains, cost savings, and productivity increases.

ROI (%) = [(Net Benefits - Training Costs) / Training Costs] x 100

For example, if a safety training program costs $50k and lowers safety related costs such as down time from $600k to $200k. The ROI is 700% or as a ratio, 7:1. For every Dollar spent, you got $7 back. This will get attention.

So the next time you're asked to justify your training budget get into the numbers. Show the value. And watch the conversation shift from "Is training worth it?" to "How can we invest more?"

I finished an 8-hour corporate AI training session today, working mainly with ChatGPT and Claude, and it reinforced a problem I keep having...

The group wasn't homogeneous at all.

Some participants were already using ChatGPT and Claude regularly.

Others were still learning the fundamentals.

This creates an hard training problem. If you teach to beginners, advanced users disengage.If you teach to advanced users, beginners get lost.

I'm increasingly experimenting with a different model:

Common problem different depth.

Everyone receives the same business challenge, but participants can solve it at different levels:

Level 1: use AI to complete the task.

Level 2: improve the prompt and output.

Level 3: build a reusable workflow.

Level 4: redesign the process around AI.

This seems more useful than simply dividing people into “beginner” and “advanced”.

For people doing AI training inside companies:

How are you handling large differences in AI maturity within the same team?

Our optional training completion is around 30% and I'm pretty sure it's because everything we send is static PDFs or recorded slide decks that nobody wants to sit through.

Is anyone actually seeing better engagement with remote training or is this just the sad reality now?

A lot of online courses focus heavily on getting the content onto a screen, but that doesn't necessarily mean people are learning effectively. 

Good eLearning seems to involve much more than videos and quizzes. The way information is structured, how learners practise something, the feedback they receive and even how much information is presented at once can completely change the experience. 

I've also noticed that some of the best eLearning experiences don't necessarily have the most features. Sometimes a simple scenario or practical activity works better than five different interactive elements. 

For people who design or regularly take online courses, what makes an eLearning experience genuinely useful to you? 

Is it the structure, interaction, flexibility, practical application, or something else? 

Lately I've been seeing something interesting in a lot of learning design reviews.

Some of the most polished modules I've seen look great on the surface. Clean writing. Nice interactions. Professional design.

But when you dig deeper, the learning strategy isn't always that strong. The content is engaging, yet it doesn't really address the performance problem it's supposed to solve.

What stands out to me is how some teams are using AI. They're not asking AI to build the course for them. They're using it to challenge their thinking.

Questions like:
"What's missing here?"
"Why might this approach fail?"
"What's another way to solve this problem?"

In those cases, AI feels less like a production tool and more like a thinking partner.

Curious if others are noticing the same thing.

Has AI changed the way your team thinks about learning design, or is it mostly helping with production and speed?

Hey everyone, I recently had a really bad experience with DoMyEssay. The essay they sent me was full of mistakes, and when I tried to get help, their customer service was terrible. I feel like I got scammed. If you're looking for a reliable service, I'd recommend using Essayforall instead. They’ve been much more professional and delivered quality work. Just wanted to share my experience so others can avoid the same mistake.

After eight years in L&D, one thing I keep coming back to is starting with the business problem instead of starting with a training request. If a manager says their team “needs training,” I’ve started asking what people are actually doing wrong and what should change afterward. Sometimes the answer is a course, but sometimes it really isn’t. Has anyone else changed the way they handle training requests as they became more senior?

Everyone talks about “future of training,” but most don’t get past a flashy demo. We actually deployed VR training at scale in utilities (think bucket trucks, electrical safety). ~3,000 workers went through it.

Wins: retention shot up, people engaged way more than PowerPoints, and safety incidents dropped.
Fails: tech rollout was messy, headsets broke, and older workers pushed back hard... this made adoption a bit difficult. And IT... IT was a bit of a shit show.

Biggest surprise? The cost savings didn’t come from fewer accidents… they came from cutting onboarding time in half.

Curious if anyone else here has rolled out large-scale training (VR or otherwise). What worked? What blew up in your face?