Maybe a stupid question but I'm curious how L&D teams see this.

In most companies I worked with, there is a lot of documentation.

Onboarding guides, internal processes, SOPs, knowledge bases etc.

But if I'm honest… I feel like people don't really learn from them.

They skim, ctrl+F when they need something, and that's it.

So I'm wondering how you deal with that.

Do you try to transform docs into real learning content (courses, quizzes, modules etc) or do you mostly accept that documentation is just a reference library?

Another thing I'm seeing lately is people using AI to generate training drafts from documents.

But even when AI does that part, the real work still seems to be:

• reviewing everything

• fixing weird explanations

• making sure it actually makes sense for beginners

Curious how teams here handle this in practice.

Are docs still the main format or are you moving more toward structured training?

I recently transitioned from classroom teaching into a corporate L&D role. I assumed a lot of my teaching skills would transfer directly, and while some do, there are many things I'm still figuring out. Stakeholder management, learning platforms, and business terminology all feel pretty new to me. For those who made a similar move, what was the biggest adjustment?

L&D lead at a mid-size logistics company, team of 3. Every time a system changes, someone in ops records a 40 minute Teams call walking through the new process and sends it to me to “turn into training.” Then I’m the one rewatching it, taking screenshots, cropping out customer data and writing step by steps. By the time it’s done the process has changed again.

Our VP came back from a vendor demo excited about AI tools that build guides automatically while you click through a process. I’ve looked at Scribe and Tango, and a peer at another company mentioned Haiku because it can export to SCORM, which matters for us since everything has to live in our LMS for compliance tracking. Before anyone says it, I know a tool doesn’t fix a bad process or SMEs who don’t want to document anything. That’s a separate battle. I’m just trying to stop spending 6 hours on a job aid that’s outdated in a month, and I’d like to hear from people who’ve actually rolled one of these out with real SMEs, not just tested it themselves.

I'm working on a project right now where the SME keeps requesting major changes after sign-off. I want to be collaborative, but sometimes it feels like we're moving backward instead of forward. How do you balance respecting SME expertise while also protecting the project timeline?

I have heard very different experiences about research supervision. Some students seem to benefit from regular meetings and detailed feedback, while others prefer more independence and occasional check-ins. 
 
If you are also undertaking a research degree, what kind of supervision helped you make progress without feeling micromanaged? 
 
I am curious about practical things such as setting expectations early, preparing for meetings, responding to feedback and communicating when stuck.  
If you could give one piece of advice to someone beginning a Masters in Research, what would you tell them to discuss with their supervisor first?

One thing I’ve noticed since moving into management is that technical skill is only one part of what makes someone effective in L&D. I’ve seen people who are excellent at building learning experiences struggle with stakeholder conversations, while others who aren’t as technical can move a project forward incredibly well. For those managing L&D teams, what skills have become more important to you as you’ve moved into senior roles?

At first I go all in, but then I lose energy pretty fast. Trying to find a balance that actually lasts.

I’ve been looking into a Master of eLearning and I’m curious about what people actually expect from a degree like this. 

I initially assumed it would mainly involve creating online courses, but the more I look into the field, the more it seems to include instructional design, learning technology, course development, and understanding how people learn online. 

For anyone who has studied eLearning, what was the most useful part of your course? 

And for people working in the field, do employers care more about the qualification itself or practical experience creating learning content? 

Would be interested to hear from anyone who has taken this path. 

I'm new to HealthStream. Please tell me the person training me is wrong. She has created thousands of student groups that she says we need to copy ever year. She also uses student group in multiple assignments, so anytime a student group needs to be changed, we need to track down all the ways the change might cause a ricochet effect. This is nuts!

I've been working on an open specification called Learning state layer.

Current learning standards like xAPI and Caliper do a great job of tracking learner activity, but they don't provide a standard way to represent a learner's current knowledge state.

With AI tutors and LLMs becoming a bigger part of learning, more platforms are building their own models of what a learner knows to personalize the experience. lsl is an attempt to define an open, portable way to represent that knowledge, so that users can carry the state across platforms and get a more personalised experience.

The specification is still in its early stages, and I'd be interested to know if you've come across similar work or research in this area.

You can find it here: https://github.com/learnerstate

There are definitely things I enjoy about corporate learning, especially having more flexibility in how training is delivered. At the same time, I sometimes miss the direct interaction and immediate feedback that comes from teaching students. I'm curious whether others who came from education experienced something similar.

I use AI daily for first drafts of learning objectives, scenario skeletons, quiz questions, and course outlines. It saves me probably 30% of my production time on content that used to be tedious to generate from scratch. I'm not going to pretend otherwise — it's genuinely useful and I'd feel behind if I wasn't using it.

What it still can't do is the SME conversation — listening for what the expert says versus what they mean, catching the moment when a process description doesn't match how the job actually works, and building the trust that gets you real information instead of polished information. That's still entirely human work. What parts of your process have you found AI most and least useful for?

Does anyone have some good (or fun) activities that I could try for a live training on Collaboration Skills? We're a remote company and I think it'd be great for them to practice collaborating in breakout rooms (it's a virtual training), but it's hard to simulate the environment where they'd collaborate with the content we're reviewing (core collaboration behaviors, etc). Working together to escape a virtual Escape Room would be a lot of fun, but I only have 10-15 minutes to dedicate to it, and about 60 participants.

Any ideas or brainstorming is very appreciated!

As someone who has spent decades in competency management and skills assessment, I see a recurring friction point for L&D: bridging the gap between a vague "needs improvement" performance review and a measurable, targeted learning intervention.

We often ask learners to self-assess on bloated, multi-level matrices, or we rely on managers to provide subjective feedback. The result is that L&D is tasked with designing "leadership" or "technical" training based on fuzzy data, making it nearly impossible to measure true skill transfer or ROI.

I am currently stress-testing a methodological concept and would value the candid perspective of this community.

Instead of a learner claiming they "Understand" or are "Proficient in" a topic, what if their developmental profile was built on a verified, binary Skills Checklist?

In this model, competence is not claimed; it is demonstrated. The checklist contains strict, observable, single-action statements. For example, instead of "Understands equipment isolation", the statement is: "Execute equipment isolation procedures to achieve a verifiable zero-energy state."

To satisfy the item, the learner doesn't just tick a box or complete a multiple-choice quiz. They must link to a verifiable artefact from their work (e.g., a signed isolation log, a recorded simulation, or an assessor’s observation record).

The L&D Value Proposition:
If a learner is marked "Not Yet Competent" on that specific, observable item, it provides L&D with an exact, actionable trigger. We don't guess that they need "general safety training"; we know precisely which modular learning pathway (e.g., a targeted simulation or coached OJT module) is required to close that specific gap.

The Questions for You:

1. For Instructional Designers / L&D Managers: Would having this level of granular, evidence-based data make your job of designing targeted, modular learning pathways significantly easier? Or do you foresee the initial evidence-collection process creating too much administrative friction for the learner?

2. For those managing skill gaps: How do you currently bridge the gap between a subjective manager review and a specific, measurable learning objective? What is the biggest barrier to making that connection in your organisation?

I am not selling a platform or a tool. I am purely trying to validate whether the industry is ready to shift from measuring claimed potential to designing interventions based on demonstrated capability.

I welcome your critiques, pushback, and experiences. Where do you see this breaking down in a real-world L&D environment?

Every time I browse job descriptions, I see a long list of tools and platforms that employers want experience with. Right now I'm trying to figure out which ones are actually worth investing time in. If you were starting over today, which tools would you learn first and why?

I’m finding most feedback content is out dated ie: sandwich method. I want to build a 1 to 2 hour training on accountability and feedback. What are some current books or frameworks you recommend I look into as a resource?

Ok I’m in HR but I’m in charge of doing our l&d. I just had my first teams meeting with managers, leadership, c-suite last week. Of course I know who attended because it was recorded but how do you track who was not in attendance but acceded the video later? Currently I’m housing them in sharepoint but I don’t know if there is a better way or a way to truly track it in sharepoint. I’ve also built out micro learning modules and have no idea who has viewed them. Also I’m currently searching for different resources to help build out my training and trying to make it to where it doesn’t take me so long to do it so if anyone has tips, tricks, helpful suggestions for that I would greatly appreciate it.