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October 5, 2024 15 mins

Join us for a special episode of the Inside Learning Podcast, recorded at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, with Elliot Masie, a key innovator in e-learning since the 1990s. Elliot discusses the evolution of digital learning, the intersection of learning and innovation, and the role of creativity and storytelling in education. The conversation also covers the impact of AI on learning and work, and the need for continuous learning and adaptation in today’s fast-paced digital world. Elliot emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions, embracing failure as a path to success, and fostering a learning culture within organizations. Learn more about these insights, challenges, and opportunities for the future on this engaging episode, brought to you by the Learnovate Centre.

 

00:00 Introduction to Inside Learning Podcast

00:15 Welcome Elliot Masie to Dublin

01:08 Elliot Masie's Contributions to eLearning

01:55 The Role of Creativity in Learning

03:24 Impact of the Pandemic on eLearning

05:43 The Future of AI in Learning

11:16 Continuous Learning in the Corporate World

13:56 The Importance of Performance in Learning

15:06 Conclusion and Contact Information

Find Eliot here: https://www.masie.com/elliott-masie

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Inside Learning Podcast is broughtto you by the Learnovate Center.
Learnovate's research explores the powerof learning to unlock human potential.
Find out more about Learnovate's researchon the science of learning and the
future of work at LearnovateCenter.
org.
You're very welcome to a very specialepisode of inside learning here
in the Aviva stadium in Dublin.

(00:21):
We are joined by thebrilliant Elliot Masie.
Welcome to Dublin,
brother.
Thank you.
And it's amazing to be doing thisnot only in Ireland, but in this
wonderful stadium where I imaginetheir athletic events, their concerts.
And today we have the Learnovate.
We're in
October, by the way, and Elliot kindlybrought some nice weather with him, which
we didn't have a couple of days ago.

(00:42):
So you're very lucky.
I was thinking about.
How to even frame today's conversation.
And I was, did loads of research,listened to lots of interviews.
The Big Pink had you on, did loads ofstuff, your own interviews on online.
All the musicals this man has created.
Mrs.
Doubtfire is one of hisshares there as well.
There's, I noticed that the Wikipedia pagehas been updated recently, but still needs

(01:04):
updating because he's on 12 books now.
They happen, they happen, yeah
And last thing I want to tellyou before he gets stuck into a
conversation is the term e learning.
That we use all the time.
We've used it probablythousands of times on this show.
Is attributed to Elliot Bayes.
And it was intriguing because nobodycared about that until the pandemic,
and once the pandemic happened, I wasgetting calls from journalists all

(01:28):
around the world and they were saying,well, how come e learning is boring
or how come e learning , is differentthan and the like, but it was me and
other people were part of that earlyinnovation in in the 1990s to imagine
what learning and technology would be.
And.
Now we're at this event andwe're even talking about the next

(01:49):
generation with AI and the like.
It's a very, very exciting moment.
The two
absolute passions I have are learningand innovation and you're at the
intersection of those both things, whichreally when you meet, when you see that
intersection, the middle is creativity.
The middle of that Venndiagram is creativity.
Elias has a vast amountof creativity inside you.
I'd love you to share a little bit ofthat experience with our audience because

(02:12):
that brought to e learning is the magic.
And I think creativity , isthe human quality.
It is and I think of creativity builton another one that's part of that
intersection, which is storytelling,and what better place to talk about
storytelling than here in Ireland, butwhen a mother is telling a story to a
child, or when you're sitting on the floorto hear that from , your grandfather,

(02:36):
or maybe you're at work and you arewalking a new employee through what
the process is, ultimately You want totell a story, but you have two choices.
It can be a dull story, or itcan be a story that lights it up.
And it is that creativity momentwhen we realize that as human
beings, we can bring our content,our context, and then our challenges.

(03:02):
And creativity makes almosteverything, , it's the juice of life.
Whether I'm giving a keynote speech.
Whether I'm preparing a meal for friends,or, or whether I'm just sitting, , and
chatting with a colleague aboutsomething, you have to inject creativity
to get to that point of innovation.

(03:24):
That shift you talked about, sothe pandemic was an accelerant
for any type of digital businessmodel, e learning, absolutely.
People have been forced upon them,and sometimes we need a crisis like
that to push through a new innovation.
What I found most interestingis Even connecting with you
here, we usually do audio.
So it's the first time theaudience has seen me as well.

(03:45):
And it's the energy aspect.
So I'm always torn between this.
When a client, I work in facilitating,doing workshops, keynotes.
And when you do an e keynote versusan in person keynote, I'm always torn.
I always prefer to do the in person and
there's a dilemma there.
And that's because whether welike it or not, Up until around

(04:07):
now, when we did somethingdigitally, we were publishing it.
E learning was an amazinginvention in the 1990s.
It allowed us to publish content.
But the reality is, it was never betterthan when we were with a great instructor,
a wonderful role model, a compassionatemanager, or subject matter expert.

(04:32):
And What we're now starting to lookat and I think that's where digital
happens even for you to say to meLet's do this interview, but let's
do it standing outside in front of abeautiful gigantic athletic stadium
because for the viewer it changes theirexperience from one of just Hearing it

(04:53):
to seeing it and it's a little chilly.
So I said to my colleague.
Hey go get me my jacket I didn't thinkI'd have my Winnie the Pooh jacket It adds
to the process and totally, yeah, , andI think that's what learning innovation
is about is we shouldn't be just tryingto do the same lesson, the same textbook,
the same idea presentation over andover again, but rather continually

(05:19):
ask, how can I make it more engaging?
How can I stimulate the learner?
And and I'm so excited becauseI think we're now at a moment.
When we will be able to do thoseonline programs in ways that are
significantly more energizingthan what you and I were doing one
year, two year or three years ago.

(05:40):
That humann piece is coreto all the work you've done.
So you're a deep background increativity, but we're at a point in
human history where AI is significant.
And so I thought about you andbecause we're here in the stadium,
it's not quite the same, but.
Hockey, the famous hockey player,Wayne Gretzky, and the quote that's

(06:00):
attributed to him when he was asked bya journalist, How are you so good, man?
How do you know where the puck's gonna be?
He goes, I skate to where the puckis going to be, not where it is.
Yeah, yeah.
And I thought about you,you've been waiting for others
to catch up with that puck.
I, I have.
And, and part of what you do if youare a, a thinker, an analyst, is

(06:21):
your you don't have the right answer,but you have the right question.
So that part of what.
I do, and I think what whatlearning innovators do is
we ask the right question.
So AI is fascinating.
So here's a question I, I often askmy friends who are AI experts at
all the different tech companies.

(06:42):
And I go, tell me something I'mgoing to stop doing that I'm
now doing as I start to use AI.
Or.
What skill do I need to leverage thepower of AI, or how do I trust that the

(07:05):
content I'm getting back is appropriateversus hallucinogenic or, or the like.
But I think our role has to be oneof asking these push questions to
help people understand and explore,and I actually go a bit farther.
I think we have to commit.
To failing our way to success.

(07:27):
And so partially what we're doingright now and at this moment is we
have all this innovation coming.
We have to try it and bluntly,some of it doesn't work very well.
Some of it will work really well ina year or three years, but we have
to give ourselves permission tofail creatively to get to success.
Many of our audience are startupfounders, they're entrepreneurs,

(07:50):
they're exploring e learning and they'readding in elements of AI, et cetera.
So your advice to them, becausethere's sometimes there's people
are mistaking to think I need tosay AI is part of my e learning.
You're, you're hearing this loads as well.
Like this is a fallacy.
We
call it AI washing.
It's where you add the word AIand suddenly it seems better.

(08:12):
I literally got a phone call fromsomebody who said, I want to send you
my product and I want you to look at it.
I said, well, what is it?
He said, I have an AI pillow.
What do you mean an AI pillow?
Well, you sleep on it and AI is goingto gather all sorts of information about
your, your health and your wellness.

(08:34):
Well, there wasn't one bit of AI in it.
He just put the AI sticker on the side ofit to suddenly look cool and innovative.
And we're going to have to be disciplined,try things, including trying things
when we decide, No, that's not, thatdoesn't work right now, or that works
in some situation, or even it worksdifferently in different cultures.

(08:57):
We know working internationally, ifI am, if I'm leading a workshop for
a group of colleagues in Germanyand a same workshop later in Brazil,
I can't teach it the same way.
Because in Germany they want structure,in Brazil they want to argue with me.
But that's part of the creativity thatwe have, that we've got to be agile

(09:20):
and adapt to these different processes.
I was thinking how to even phrase thisquestion and I love this analogy or
this picture, if you picture in yourmind that you walk into a kitchen,
the sink is overflowing and do yougrab a mop or do you turn off the tap?
And I always use it as this analogyfor the education system to go
We're at this point where the sinkis overflowing, that the, there's

(09:43):
a huge change coming to society.
But the pack work, the educationsystem at the source is, is not feeding
through to what we need from people.
All these things you talked about,creativity, failing, the ability to
fail, but also the resilience to fail.
Or even if we go a step back and wecan think about a teacher, whether they
are teaching, in the younger age, incollege, or in a corporate environment,

(10:06):
do they have time to be a learner?
Because the, the more I'm alearner, the better teacher I am.
And so they're going to have to figure outin this changing world, what do I teach?
What do I teach to a good example rightnow for all of the entrepreneurs is, am I
now doing education products to get peopleto memorize it, to familiarize them,

(10:30):
or just to be able to perform with it.
And, and we have a new cognitive modelwe're going to have to deal with of,
of what does the employee as a learner.
What do they mean in an increasinglytechnology, technologically
intense world?
That's a huge part of your work,the corporate learning environment
and creating products , anddelivering for that corporate world.

(10:54):
, the need for that is never so morepronounced , than today because, I don't
think we've, yes, realized the impact AIis going to have on the working world.
There is going to be jobs obliterated,but there's going to be others created.
And learning is thekey to be the survivor.
You were talking about , the startupsand the survival of the fittest.

(11:14):
Right.
The same thing is going to happen.
And one of the
changes, we used to teach people how to dotheir job at the beginning of their job.
We called it a, an orientationor a walk on or induction.
Well, the reality nowis that it doesn't work.
I've got to get you started.
And then that person is going toneed to go and learn some more in two

(11:38):
months, in six months, in 12 months.
We have to create a cultureof continuous learning.
And some of it, it's going tobe from an instructor and some
of it's going to be online.
And I bet a lot of it may be from AI.
And I hope more and more it's fromcollaborating with people who are , with
fellow, employees along the way.
And the question part , beingat the core of that.

(12:00):
And not being afraidof asking the question.
Every now and then my friendswho have kids will say, Any
advice to me as a parent, I wantmy kid to do better in school.
And I go, Focus on asking your kidquestions that stretch their imagination.

(12:22):
Learn You know, and, and theycould even be a question for
which you don't have the answer.
So let's even take a look here, in, inthe United States, suddenly the people
in baseball figured out that there wasa lot of data that they could gather and
that a manager who had data could makea whole bunch of different decisions.
Well, we look at this beautifularena here, but think about what

(12:45):
the data set must be for theteams that are playing here.
, and in the future, how does that getright down to the individual athlete,
that they spend an hour in practice orlike, and afterwards they pick up their
phone and they see, wow, my speed ofacceleration was 2 percent down, I moved

(13:06):
to the right, , , I've got to stretchthat muscle there because we've got to
create, and I think it's true, we've gotto treat every employee like an athlete.
And we've got to, we have to treatevery athlete as an individual
who is continuously getting betterand stretching , their skills.

(13:26):
My AI pillow tells me, the
last one for you.
So , we've gone right back tothe source, turning off the tap.
Now, if you think about it, the mopwork, so in the boardroom, I think
many of our audience are L& D leaders,HR leaders, and traditionally, , they
were seen as almost admin roles, lookafter payroll, look after letting

(13:50):
people go or onboarding, induction, etc.
But now, they really do needa place at the boardroom
table.
They do.
, and the word we haveto use is performance.
, performance.
To be quite honest, I know many,many CEOs of big global companies.
They're not overly interested in whetheror not their employees have learned.
You know what they're interested in?

(14:10):
Can they perform?
Can they retain them?
Can they eventually promote them?
Can they get them tocollaborate with each other?
Can they give them the productsor services or coaching to get
around where perhaps , theirgaps are or their flaws are?
So yeah, , I get excited if we thinkabout the ultimate ability If you run an

(14:36):
organization to create it as a learningculture to be not teachers, but in a
way, I think we're going to be learningengineers and and to create exciting
moments of learning, much like whenthis stadium , will fill up, you have
to fill up your stadium of learners.
and create with technology and goodmethodology, high impact experiences.

(15:00):
And for you who , are foundersthat can also create profitability
and growth for your company.
And where can people find you?
I know you're the travelextensions, eMazy at mazy.
com.
I'm actually going to be herein Ireland for about six weeks.
I'm going to be.
Living here starting on atthe beginning of of November.
And but you can find

(15:21):
me online.
Elliot Masie, it was an absolutepleasure bringing the weather with you.
Join us here in thebeautiful Aviva Stadium.
Elliot Masie, thank you for joining us.
An honor, an absolute honor.
Take care, everybody.
Thanks for joining us on Inside Learning.
Inside Learning is brought toyou by the Learnovate Centre
in Trinity College, Dublin.
Learnovate is funded by EnterpriseIreland and IDA Ireland.

(15:41):
Visit learnovatecentre.
org to find out more aboutour research on the science of
learning and the future of work.
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