Ep. 129 - The Future of Education & Learning: Adapting to What People Want - with Sher Downing

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Written By Connie Steele

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Sher Downing, PhD, is an EdTech Strategist who guides companies and professionals in the business of digital transformation. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sher personally and I think she just brings so much insight on the intersection of learning, technology, and careers.

Succeeding Like Frogger: Career Development isn’t Linear

Sher got started in EdTech before most people had access to the internet. She was one of the first people who really started to tackle the challenge of what learning looks like online. And that perspective proved valuable for both companies and individuals as many were thrust into new hybrid ways of working.

Sher had the opportunity to pioneer e-learning not because she was a tech expert — her early jobs were in hospitality and food service before shifting to education — but rather as a result of surrounding herself with managers and mentors who helped her identify her talents, strengths, and opportunities in the marketplace. They saw a greater ability and aptitude than she saw in herself.

“I always tell people my career was like Frogger,” Sher says. “I went forward, and then I went sideways, and then I went back a step, and then I went forward again. But in the end, I still ended up across the road just like everybody else.”

Now, Sher leverages those talents and all of that expertise to facilitate digital transformation for both individuals and organizations.

Trends (& Shifts) in Education and Learning

After the 2020 pandemic, education needed to change really quickly. People needed to communicate, collaborate, and learn from different places and at different times. 

We saw these same needs reflected in much of the workforce. And really, we continue to see a need for transformation in the workspace, especially when it comes to improving ongoing professional learning and development.

In both higher education and the workforce, people want to be able to learn in a way that works for them. Some people learn better at different times, some in different contexts, some collaboratively, some individually... addressing these different needs will naturally require a hybrid approach, and that means more than just virtual webinars. 

We need to broaden our concept of what activities are considered learning and create flexible organizations that are able to create opportunities for hands-on learning. Otherwise, the talent that wants to grow, which is most of your talent, is eventually going to outgrow their role and leave. Like Giselle Mota said in episode 120, it’s all about meeting learners where they are at.

The Future of Education & Learning: Looking to the Past

Sher sees the future of education as off-the-shelf learning, where someone can pick and choose what they want to focus on with more flexibility and customization than is currently available. And in a world that is changing so rapidly, being able to identify and learn a new skill will likely be a critical skill in and of itself.

And Sher suggests we might find a solution to our ongoing education and development problem from the past.

Sher says we used to have more flexibility in education and career development, particularly in the form of trades. And at the same time, people in the mid 20th century who did go to college largely weren’t going into debt. That might seem counterintuitive if you look at the industries and marketplaces that didn’t even exist at the turn of the century, but for many, there were both more options and more opportunities.

But technology does create the potential for so many more options and opportunities — our potential is held back by policy. Will robots take our jobs? Like Steve Hoffman told us back in episode 125 when talking about the five forces that change everything, we’ve seen automation erode employment in the past — so we have to proactively create policies that prioritize people, on both a legislative and organizational level.

The world isn’t just changing. The world has changed. So we need the right policies to fit the world we live in now and lay the foundation for a better future.

What and how we learn shapes who we are as people and the impact we’re capable of having on the world. So when we empower people to learn what and how they want throughout their lives, and we create organizations that can adapt to and nurture a constantly growing workforce, we will just magnify the impact people are capable of having.

Definition of Career Success

  • Success is every day that we do or try something new

Best Career Advice

  • If people knew better, they'd do better.

Key Takeaways: 

  • People want to be able to adapt their own learning experiences in the way that makes the most sense for them. Establish a learning objective and then create multiple paths to get there.

  • People are choosing to learn and develop differently, which impacts how colleges and universities will need to address their needs in order to attract and maintain their student population, as well as how organizations will need to structure themselves to facilitate new hybrid roles and hybrid ways of learning.

  • Future of education will evolve towards off-the-shelf and on-demand learning because people want to have control over what, when, and how they learn.

  • The humanistic side, no matter what technological advances occur, will still be paramount. People will still be needed to help us learn because it is our connection with those individuals and their experiences that will help us move forward.

  • Our own ability to be flexible and adaptive are critical skills everyone will be critical in navigating this new workplace.

Connie Steele
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Ep. 130 - The Art of Being Indispensable, Go-To-Ism, & Continuous Relationship Improvement - with Bruce Tulgan
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Ep. 128 - What Workers Want 2023: Insights From This Year’s State of Work and Career Success Study - with Gina Woodall & Scott Vanderbilt