Claimed in the name of Learning!

I'm preparing to cross the street to attend the 20th anniversary edition of Online Educa Berlin, which has as a theme 'Learning Changes'. It does. Not with big explosions, rebellions and disruptions, but it does nonetheless. One of the changes seems to me that over the year, more and more territory has been 'claimed' by the L&D department in the name of learning!

Decades ago learning was what happened in a classroom. Period.
Then around the time of the birth of Online Educa Berlin we saw a new medium of Technology Enhanced Learning immerse. The 'mots du jour' were multimedia and learning management system.
The L&D department now offered e-courses too.

The space of e-learning was claimed in the name of learning by L&D.

A bit later we saw the rise of all kind of web 2.0 and social tools. At some point we realized that we were not present in a much bigger space than formal learning and we rediscovered the pathways of informal learning. Jay Cross' book has been instrumental at the time and he was one of the keynote speakers I remember from that conference. We have been arguing a bit about the numbers (how big is the space?) but we all agree more learning happens informally than formally.

The space of social learning was claimed in the name of learning by L&D.

After a while, the words 'e-learning' and 'social learning' even became obsolete and we just refer to them as learning altogether.

So what space are we conquering now?
Logically the space where it actually happens (and where we logically need to move). In corporate L&D circles that means we are going into the job and into the business - not just aligning ourselves with the business anymore or 'having a seat at the table', but deeply integrate and enable it. In academic circles that means going into life (life-long-learning anyone?) itself.

So what will that mean? Can we spread ourselves that thin?
I don't know what it will mean, but here are some elements of the answer as we will be claiming new territory:

• I'm getting especially interested in tools, platforms and apps in that illustrious "70" space of learning. So I'll be having a look at the booths of the conference to see what is available.
• It means we have moved over the decades from learning as the main activity (in a class you are not supposed to do anything else) to learning as a supporting activity (learning is the work and the work is learning).
• It means probably the professional L&D people will focus much more on the 'meta': developing learners to learn and teachers to teach. (... and we are both learner and teacher.)
• It may mean that having dedicated systems, dedicated processes, dedicated institutions, dedicated departments and dedicated jobs for learning gets questioned. 

Now let's get to the conference...