The Mindtools L&D Podcast

At Mind Tools, we pride ourselves on our ability to create visually rich learning experiences that drive performance. Often, these experiences will include a mix of video, audio, and illustration. But why do these things matter? And how do they serve the outcomes we define with our clients?

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross D is joined by Tracey, Claire and Alison to discuss the use of multimedia in learning design. We cover:

• the role of multimedia in effective learning design
• creating an emotional connection through storytelling
• what 'good' multimedia looks like in a learning context

In WILTW, Tracey described a recent family trip to a model-railway exhibition. A full breakdown of modelling scale standards can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_transport_modelling_scale_standards

Claire mentioned the Netflix show A Trip to Infinity: netflix.com/title/81273453

This led her to explore the so-called "coastline paradox". If you were as befuddled by this concept as Ross D, you can find more information here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

Alison talked about the ability of dogs to sense when their owners are unwell. You can find more information here: wagwalking.com/sense/can-dogs-sense-if-youre-sick

Ross D recommended the video game Immortality, which is available on Xbox, PC and mobile devices.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieMT
• Tracey McDonald – @TraceyMcDonald
• Claire Gibson - @Claireisdigital
• Alison Perrott - @allyperrott

In learning science, there are certain ideas that have leapt the fences of academia and seeped into the public consciousness. Often, these ideas gain traction because they feel intuitively true. But what does the data say? And how should we apply these ideas as learning professionals?

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Garner and Ross Dickie are joined by Jane Bozarth, Director of Research for the Learning Guild, to discuss three research papers that challenge the received wisdom. We cover:

• Generational difference
• Learning styles
• The "Marshmallow Test".

The three papers we discussed were:

• 'Generational Differences in Work-Related Attitudes: A Meta-analysis', published in 2012 in the Journal of Business and Psychology.
• 'Another Nail in the Coffin for Learning Styles? Disparities among Undergraduate Anatomy Students' Study Strategies, Class Performance, and Reported VARK Learning Styles', published in 2018 in Anatomical Sciences Education.
• 'Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes', published in Psychological Science in 2018.

The Atlantic did a good write-up of the controversy surrounding the 'Marshmallow Experiment'. See here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross Garner mentioned a Twitter thread from Aaron Berman, in which he shares writing tips from his time as editor of the US President's daily brief: https://twitter.com/aarondberman/status/1541576231891525633?s=21&t=1_oHB0tqjbt4VXZXmTMnXQ

Jane spoke about Kate the Chemist's recent session at DevLearn. To find out more about Kate, visit her website: https://www.katethechemist.com/

Ross Dickie recommended the technology podcast 'Hard Fork' from the New York Times. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or through the NYT website: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/podcasts/hard-fork-technology.html

To find out more about Jane's work at the Learning Guild, see: https://www.learningguild.com/

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieMT
• Dr Jane Bozarth - @JaneBozarth

In the UK, 84% of workers who had to work from home because of the Coronavirus pandemic have said they plan to continue working at home, at least some of the time, in the future. That poses a problem to those of us responsible for workplace learning.

This week on The Mind Tools Podcast, Ross G and Ross D are joined by Phill Miller, Managing Director of Open LMS, to explore solutions. We discuss:

• The impact that a shift to hybrid and remote working has had on L&D professionals
• The advantages of remote learning
• The disadvantages of remote learning – and how to address them!

The stats that Ross G mentioned were taken from the Office for National Statistics, 'Is hybrid working here to stay?'. See: ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/ishybridworkingheretostay/2022-05-23

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross D discussed his experiments using DALL·E to create images from text. See: openai.com/blog/dall-e-now-available-without-waitlist/

Ross also shared the image he created with the prompt 'Oil painting of two nerdy guys recording a podcast in a studio.' on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RossDickieMT/status/1590310719832354816

For more about Open LMS, see: openlms.net/about-us

To learn more from Open LMS about online learning engagement in the workplace, see: openlms.net/blog/education/collaborative-online-learning-improve-retention-and-engagement

You can also find Phill at: linkedin.com/in/phillmiller

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieMT
• Phill Miller - @PhJMille

Here at Mind Tools Towers, we love podcasts. We've produced our own for six years! But what role do they have to play in workplace learning?

This week on The Mind Tools Podcast, Ross G and Owen are joined by Adam Lacey from podcasts-for-learning-provider Assemble You. We discuss:

• The evolution of podcasts as a technology and as a market
• The solutions that now exist to organisational security barriers
• Workplace learning contexts where podcasts are ideal.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Owen discussed some internal insights from Meta's development of VR application Horizon Worlds: theverge.com/2022/10/6/23391895/meta-facebook-horizon-worlds-vr-social-network-too-buggy-leaked-memo

Adam discussed decision-making speed, based on insights from the Brain Food newsletter: fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/

Ross G discussed the 'digital dark age', recently discussed on Twitter by @CulturalTutor: twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1553789465881202690?s=21&t=aByJZxFkW0QeyyrF1nwcEg

For more from Adam, visit:

• His LinkedIn page: linkedin.com/in/adamlacey/
• The Assemble You LinkedIn page: linkedin.com/company/assemble-you/
• The Assemble You website: assembleyou.com/
• The Power Skills Project: assembleyou.com/podcast

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson
• Adam Lacey - LinkedIn

Once upon a midnight dreary, Ross G pondered, weak and weary Whether Ross D might consider him a dry and awful bore—

If he proposed some gentle chatting, sprinkled with some caveating,

A pod with almost no formatting, on an essay he'd adored.

"'Tis about unity of effect in learning design," he muttered, "by Edgar Allan Poe—

Only this and nothing more."

We discuss:

• why we are dedicating our Halloween Special to the application of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Philosophy of Composition' to modern-day learning design
• the impact of 'unity of effect' on design decisions
• how to create an emotional response in learning experiences.

To read Poe's essay, see: poetryfoundation.org/articles/69390/the-philosophy-of-composition

To read the full text of 'The Raven', see: poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven

For The Simpsons version of this tale, see: youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross D shared his insights from his recent marathon. Ross G discussed Paul Fairie's (@Paulisci) Twitter thread on the many issues caused by bicycles: twitter.com/paulisci/status/1561848479470694403

If you're interested in the poem that Ross G's wife wrote, Edgar Allan Poem, see: instagram.com/p/Chwy4eLLecV/ (It inspired this episode!)

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieMT
• Edgar Allan Poe - @Poe_Quotes_Bot

As learning professionals, we can rely on people always needing support to do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. We can also rely on the hows, whats, whens, and wheres of that support changing. It's up to us to make sure we have the skills, knowledge and attitude to keep pace with changes in learning science, technology and learner demands.

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma and her teammates in the learning experience team are joined by digital learning designer and developer Ed McLean to share how they keep pace.

We discuss:

• The skills and knowledge we're using now
• How we anticipate what we'll need to develop in the future
• How we find learning and development opportunities.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Gemma recommended The Rest is Politics podcast. You can find this wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ed prompted discussion about the Swiss legal requirement of buying guinea pigs in pairs. You can find out more by reading 'Why it's illegal to own only one guinea pig in Switzerland' in the NY Post.

Sean's fact about the first VR headset came from this 'A brief history of Virtual Reality, In patents' article.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Gemma Towersey- @gemmatowersey
• Sean Brown - @Seanbrownhrtech
• Claire Gibson - @Claireisdigital
• Ed McLean - @em_learning

English is the world's lingua franca, but the 400 million native-English speakers are a minority compared to the 2 billion people who learned English in a classroom. With these numbers, it's no surprise that most people speak English 'badly'.

The problem is that, when people speak with a strange accent, pronounce words wrong, or use unusual grammar, we form an impression of their intelligence and capability that has nothing to do with their actual abilities. So this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we're joined by author, consultant and TEDx speaker Heather Hansen to explore the benefits of speaking English badly!

We discuss:

• Why 'accent bias' is a problem
• How to become better listeners in a global setting
• How we can better communicate with others.

You can watch Heather's TEDx talk at: ted.com/talks/heather_hansen_2_billion_voices_how_to_speak_bad_english_perfectly

Find out more about Heather at: globalspeechacademy.com/

You can also find Heather on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hansenheather/

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross discussed Alan Rickman's showbiz diaries: theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/24/alan-rickmans-secret-showbiz-diaries-harry-potter

Nahdia discussed research into accent bias in Britain: accentbiasbritain.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Accent-Bias-Britain-Report-2020.pdf

We opened today's show with a clip from Mind Your Language.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Nahdia Khan - @NahdiaKhan
• Heather Hansen - @HeatherHansen

How do you set your projects up for success? Does the SME and learning designer relationship really follow the buddy cop movie trope?

In this episode of the Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Claire, Sean, Tracey and Ross G share their experiences of working with SMEs and their insights into what makes a great working relationship.

We discussed:

• How to build a solid learning designer and SME relationship
• Ways to engage SMEs effectively
• The power of positive challenge

In WILTW, Sean shared some facts linked to the latest Frozen Planet.

Tracey told us about her planet-gazing, join her in finding out more facts about Jupiter on the NASA website.

Ross talked about recent Economist article he'd read which introduced the new phenomenon of 'champing' camping in churches. You can read it here, 'Britain's empty churches are turning into campsites'.

Claire mentioned the SS Explorer currently docked in Leith, check out the preservation society page here.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Claire Gibson - @Claireisdigital
• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Tracey McDonald – @TraceyMcDonald
• Sean Brown - @SeanBrownHRTech

How is it possible to learn faster than external world changes? What do we need to do to purposefully protect ourselves against irrelevance?

Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma and Ross G are joined by author of Learning at Speed, Nelson Sivalingam, to discuss how organisations, L&D teams and individuals can upskill and reskill efficiently.

We discussed:

• What learning at speed means
• The barriers to learning at speed
• How we can overcome those challenges

Nelson's book, Learning at Speed, is available from the Kogan Page website or any other good bookseller.

To plug into Nelson's podcast, L&D Disrupt, find it wherever you get your podcasts, or visit the HowNow podcast webpage.

At the start of the podcast, Gemma referenced The Economist article, 'The tech winners and losers of the pandemic'.

Nelson mentioned Andy Lancaster's Driving performance through learning. This is available from Kogan Page or any other good bookseller.

Michelle Parry-Slater's The Learning and Development Handbook also cropped up in the conversation. It's also available from Kogan Page and any other good bookseller.

Nelson recommended reading Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Get a copy on Amazon.

Nelson talked through the ICE framework, a scoring method created by Sean Ellis. Find out more here: productplan.com/glossary/ice-scoring-model/

Additionally, Nelson advocated using the principles of 'Jobs to Be Done'. To read about the practices involved, take a look at Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice. You can find it on Amazon.

Ross referenced the Agile Manifesto. You can read it and the 12 principles on agilemanifesto.org.

In WILTW, Ross talked about the percentage of American subjects in social psychology studies as discussed on the Freakonomics podcast episode, 'The U.S. is just different – so let's stop pretending we're not.'

Gemma mentioned 'Kopfkino', a word that appears in Susie Dent's new book and appeared as Word of the day on her Twitter feed.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Nelson Sivalingam - @thatnelsondude
• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Gemma Towersey – @gemmatowersey

Our brain is a 'prediction machine' that responds to and interprets reality based on what we expect. This is the claim of science writer David Robson and, this week on The Mind Tools Podcast, Ross G, Owen and Nahdia plan to exceed your expectations by discussing it in our book club.

We discuss:

• examples of the 'expectation effect' in action
• the strengths and weaknesses of Robson's argument
• how we can experiment, personally, with managing our expectations.

During the discussion, Ross referenced the Freakonomics episode 'I Don't Know What You've Done With My Husband But He's a Changed Man': freakonomics.com/podcast/i-dont-know-what-youve-done-with-my-husband-but-hes-a-changed-man/

See also our podcast on Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset: podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/grit-and-mindset-emotion-at-work-crossover-special/id1114862726?i=1000470741181

In 'What I Learned This Week', Owen recommended Bob Sutton (@work_matters) on Twitter, and specifically his Tweet about the 'feedback sandwich': twitter.com/work_matters/status/1565064130574241793?s=46&t=z7JQmmhA9bhpOPtQuc1RLQ

And Ross discussed the shortest day for 40 years, June 29: theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/01/midnight-sooner-earth-spins-faster-shortest-day

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

To take advantage of our special offer on a Mind Tools Membership, visit: mindtools.com/september-subscription-sale

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Nahdia Khan - @NahdiaKhan
• Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson