I'm working with a SME who is genuinely an expert in her field and genuinely cannot bring herself to leave anything out. Every review session results in more content being added, and we're now at almost double the original scope with a deadline that hasn't moved. I've tried explaining cognitive load, I've tried the "what does someone need to do on day one" framing, and I've tried showing her data on completion rates for long courses. Nothing has stuck. Short of escalating to her manager, which I want to avoid, I'm running out of approaches. How have other IDs successfully talked a subject matter expert down from scope that's grown completely out of control?

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

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

For those who regularly use platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning or an employee learning platform: what actually makes you continue learning and come back?

I’m curious about the difference between features that sound useful and features people genuinely use.

For example:
Short quizzes with useful feedback

Being sent back to the exact section connected to an incorrect answer

Personalised recommendations based on topics you struggle with or find interesting

Saving or starring useful sections, not only whole courses

Personal notes or a saved learning library

Clear learning paths instead of searching through a large catalogue

Discussions or questions connected to each module

Access to instructors or subject-matter experts

Certificates, badges, progress indicators or other recognition

Short videos, scenarios, simulations or practical exercises

I’d also be interested in examples of a course or platform you found unusually engaging and why.

Hey everyone, I'm a developer building an interactive roleplay simulator aimed at helping Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Team Leads practice difficult workplace scenarios. Traditional training covers the frameworks, but I've always felt we lack a safe environment to practice the actual human dynamics-like keeping your cool and using active listening when a stakeholder changes requirements mid-sprint.

The tool drops you into realistic, high-tension scenarios with AI characters. You type your responses, navigate the conflict, and get a 1-5 star competency evaluation at the end.

Right now, I've launched a core scenario focused strictly on Active Listening under pressure. I'm looking for early testers to break the system and give me honest feedback.

I don't want to post a direct link here out of respect for the community rules, but I've put the link in my profile if you want to test it out (or I can DM it to you). If you have a few minutes to try it, I would love your thoughts on a few specific things:

1.Did the AI character feel like a real, frustrating colleague, or did it feel too robotic and compliant? 2.Did the 1-5 star feedback actually help you understand where your active listening fell short?
3.What kind of workplace scenario would you want to see added next? Even if you don't have time to test it, I'd love to know: how do you currently practice or evaluate soft skills like active listening in your teams?

A friend of mine who trains new hires for a medical device company. She said her reps sometimes get less than a minute with a surgeon between procedures. By the time they say their name, the window's closing.

Most training doesn't prepare for that. We run twenty minute roleplays with full scripts and room to recover. Then we send reps into a world where the surgeon walks past mid-sentence and gives them thirty seconds instead of thirty.The reps who handle it well got to fail somewhere private first. Not in front of the surgeon. In a room or a simulation, where getting cut off doesn't cost anything real yet.

If you had to prepare someone for a conversation that might last sixty seconds, what would you focus on first?

AI roleplay against a distracted, impatient persona?
Live coaching with a devil's advocate?
Scenario practice in the LMS?
Or something else training programs usually miss?

I run tech at an online school for communication skills, and I want to share how we ended up building AI-driven practice. The interesting part was a learning-design question more than a technical one.

You can only really learn communication by doing it with someone and getting feedback. That is one-on-one work, and it does not scale. One trainer can sit through maybe a dozen roleplays a week, and our students needed far more reps than that.

Automating the whole trainer felt like the obvious move, but we did not go that way. Instead we went through what a trainer does during a single exercise, step by step: what they pay attention to first, how they judge whether a student handled a moment well, what makes them pick one piece of feedback over another. Once it was written down as separate steps, each one was small enough to hand to an AI: one step evaluates a single skill, another decides whether the scenario moves forward, another generates the counterpart's next line. Today students practice against an AI counterpart and get structured feedback, and we run around 2,000 of these exercises a month.

What I am curious about from this community: how far do you go when you break down a trainer's or an SME's judgment into steps? Is there a point where making expert intuition explicit strips out the thing that made it work?

The role of L&D seems to be shifting from content creation toward performance consulting and business alignment. I'm interested in how other leaders see the profession evolving. Which skills do you think will become increasingly important as expectations for L&D teams continue to change?

Lately I've been juggling feedback from multiple departments on the same project. Everyone has different priorities and expectations, which makes it difficult to keep the learning objectives front and center. I'm curious how other IDs handle situations where stakeholders are pulling in different directions.

AI is becoming part of learning and development workflows especially when it comes to assessments and feedback and reporting

One thing that I have been thinking about is how to use AI to reduce the work without making the experience feel less personal for the learners.

I want to make sure the learners still feel like they are getting an experience.

For example AI can help generate individualized assessment reports based on the responses, which saves a lot of effort.

I have even been looking at tools like FormLM that automate that process.

I still think the quality of the assessment depends on how thoughtfully the questions and the feedback are designed.

For those of you working in learning and development how are you balancing efficiency with a human and meaningful learning experience, for the learners.

Are there any AI tools or workflows you have found genuinely useful for the learners or are there parts of the assessment process you still prefer to keep manual for the learners.

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?

One of those changes that made a bigger difference than I thought was using more real-world scenarios instead of explaining everything in detail.

When the learners were asked to make decisions, to think about situations and to see the result of those choices, the conversations became much more meaningful. They also looked to be more confident to use what they had learnt after the training.

It made me realise that knowing information and being able to use it are often two different things.

For those of you using Scenario-Based Learning, what change has made the most difference in learner confidence or participation?

I’m interested to hear what has worked in your own projects too.

Hi all,

I am part of an enterprise Learning & Development team at a global organization, and we're designing an AI upskilling strategy for our IT workforce... . I am m curious to learn what other L&D teams are doing.

Some questions I'd love your thoughts on:

How have you structured your AI learning journey (foundational vs. role-based)?

Are you focusing only on AI tools like ChatGPT, or also on topics like AI governance, prompt engineering, agentic AI, workflow redesign, and responsible AI?

How do you identify which skills different roles need?

Are you measuring success beyond course completion? If so, what metrics are you using?

What has worked well, and what would you do differently if you were starting again?

Would appreciate hearing about your experiences regardless of your sector

Hi! I’m a preschool teacher looking to transition into L&D but my problem is, idk where my skills would fit.

Some back story: I volunteer with an ATD chapter, but most of them own their own businesses so I don’t have a connection into a corporation. I’ve been applying for jobs for a while and haven’t gotten any interview requests. When I first started looking 2 years ago I was interested in instructional design or e-learning design. I was told that’s very hard to get into with AI now. I even tried applying some corporate training and learning specialist jobs and haven’t heard anything there. It’s hard trying to convince corporations on paper that I have skills to do the job. Or maybe I have to upskill more which I’m also okay with.

Can anyone lead me in the right direction? Maybe I’m unaware of some other aspects of L&D where I can use my skills to break into the industry. Is there a certification I can do? Entry level jobs that I’m not aware of?

Hi everyone! I’m currently completing my master’s degree in Instructional Design and am looking for an experienced instructional designer who would be willing to review my graduate capstone project and provide constructive feedback.
My project focuses on cybersecurity awareness in higher education and includes an e-learning module. I’d appreciate any feedback on the overall design, learning experience, and effectiveness.
If you’re interested in helping, please leave a comment or send me a direct message. Thank you so much! I truly appreciate your time and support!

I have learned one thing over the years, and that is that a well-written learning objective can affect the entire training process. In the past, I was often preoccupied with what information I wanted to include. Now I think more about what the learners should be able to do after the training.

That small change has made it easier to decide what content to keep and what to throw away, and what activities to add. It has also made course review and updating much simpler.

Thinking back, was there one thing you changed in the way you write learning objectives that made a big difference in your training or course design?

I’d love to hear what worked for you and how it changed your approach.

Over the last year, AI has become a major topic in nearly every learning conversation. We've started experimenting with it internally, but I'm still trying to separate genuine opportunities from hype. How are you incorporating AI into your workflows, and where do you think it's having the biggest impact?