>>> intro
Welcome to this new episode of our podcast Let's talk about Work. Today an interesting guest from the world of learning and development joins us. Bart Wuyts talks to Christophe Jacobs, chief customer success officer at FLOWSPARKS. Christophe is an expert in the field of pedagogical sciences and digital learning, and takes us into the world of e-learning and self-directed training. Together we zoom in on the challenges and opportunities that digital tools offer to make learning accessible and inclusive. From digital skills to accessibility for people with specific needs: Christophe shares his insights, practical tips and concrete examples. An inspiring conversation for everyone who works on lifelong learning and inclusion in the workplace.
Dear listeners, welcome to this new podcast episode Let's Talk about Work! Today we have a guest from the commercial world visiting, Christophe Jacobs. I have to take a closer look at my paper, because Christophe is chief customer success officer at FLOWSPARKS.
What does a chief customer success officer do?
Chief customer success officer at FLOWSPARKS is responsible for the success that our customers achieve in using our tool, which has a very broad scope and for me specifically this means that on the one hand I manage a team that will effectively advise our customers on using FLOWSPARKS, which is an e-learning tool.
You have to explain FLOWSPARKS, because otherwise we don't know what we're talking about.
FLOWSPARKS is an e-learning platform that enables organizations to create their own self-directed digital training courses, based on didactic principles, which is somewhat the core of our tooling. In our world we call that an e-learning authoring tool. But it is also a platform that ensures that you can roll out what you have created from training or training initiatives to participants, giving access to people who need to follow that training. And of course if you have a piece of content and you have the platform where people are going to visit it, you also have reporting. That is the third part of FLOWSPARKS, reports to see who followed what at what time.
In this conversation we are not primarily going to advertise FLOWSPARKS, but of course we can't do it without explaining that. We have you here first and foremost as an expert in the field of pedagogical sciences. You have a master's degree in educational sciences and in all our episodes in this podcast we actually talk about inclusive entrepreneurship, inclusion at work. At first glance this may seem like a more distant theme, but actually it is not. Because learning and keeping up to date is also an important element to fully belong and get all the opportunities that come with inclusion. And that is why we find it interesting to let you have your say here too. It’s true that you have a master's degree in educational sciences, Isn't?
That's right. I have a master's degree in educational sciences, specializing in educational sciences. So that's where my specialty lies. But I also have a bachelor's degree in social work. So I followed a bridging program in my studies, which also explains my background around inclusion and paying attention to some social themes. That's why I like being invited to join us here. And indeed, what you say is completely correct. If you look at work and offering people work. A large part of going to work also means learning the processes, procedures and content of a job that someone has to perform. And what we can do as an organization to engage people in our group of employees is of course to provide that training. And from my perspective, it is very specifically about what digital self-directed training courses can contribute to integrating people more smoothly into the group of employees.
Digital training, I still understand that. Self-directed training, what do you mean by that?
In my experience there is sometimes some confusion between, okay, what is a digital education, especially since Covid that has become a very cloudy issue in discussions. Put it this way; If you have a classroom training that suddenly can no longer take place physically and you do this via Zoom or Teams, will you call that a digital training or not? In principle yes, because you will use a digital tool to facilitate that training. Why I use the word self-directed is that this is a training that does not take place live, but as synchronous. A piece of training material is prepared in advance there. This is then distributed to an employee or to a person who can follow the training anywhere and at any time. So for me that means a self-directed digital education. That could be that recording of that ex cathedra moment that was given. But that could also be a processing assignment, a scenario that you have to go through, a quiz that you have to complete. So there are many different working methods within this self-directed digital training.
And so that is actually a form of training where people can follow some training themselves, behind their own computer, at a time that suits them, at a place where they can use it, and start up a certain program and, we say, follow the instructions that appear and that way they are learning or something is being learned.
That's right. The principle is; someone is using their computer, their mobile phone, their tablet, whatever device. They will be given access somewhere to be able to follow that training. They will go through it. There are instructions on the screen. It is told what needs to be done. So you are actually going to digitize the role of that coach or trainer or teacher to some extent. That it is ready for everyone. One goes through the instructions, one reads the texts, looks at the images, watches the videos, takes a test if necessary, does the scenario that is going to be completed and then one gets an outcome. Being, you either took it or you passed. The intention is indeed for someone to decide for themselves, here I am now going to follow that training with a device that’s available.
I imagine that is a contemporary way of learning. Is this the way of learning today? Will this be the only way to learn? How do you see that?
I would love to say yes, this is the best way to learn and the only way to learn and everyone come to FLOWSPARKS because we have the solution. The reality, however, is that that piece that we call e-learning, that self-directed learning, is actually yet another tool in the toolbox that someone within learning and development actually has at their disposal. You have those classroom moments, you have that on the job training, that e-learning is an added value in many cases if you apply it correctly. And the latter is very important because what are the major advantages of economies of scale? If you look at organizations that work in shifts, for example, it is not always easy to get people into classroom training at the same time. Then e-learning can help. This is the case on the BASF site. For example, they have a breathing training that they are going to roll out. The first time you follow it is in a classroom setting and you have to do something hands-on in practice. But the repetition is via a digital route and a small amount of practical training. So you actually have to ensure that people can do that digital piece at any time. And once they are ready, they can do that moment together. So that's where the major benefits of e-learning really lie.
By the way, it's funny that you refer to breathing training, because a few episodes ago we had Tom Stijven here as a breathing coach about the importance of good breathing. This is completely aside.
So on the one hand, very practical matters, but also in terms of the learning moment itself, e-learning or self-directed training, digital training is an advantage, because you can let the participant go through a piece of learning material at his own pace. And that is also saying that the fear of giving the wrong answer in a classroom session is not present. One can learn from feedback, it can take an hour while someone else needs half an hour. So in terms of differentiation according to training, this is also a very great added value. But I don't want to say, suddenly do everything in e-learning, because that is often the reflex, we have a new tool such as FLOWSPARKS, a very nice one, we are going to put everything into it. It is always a well-considered choice as to what we will offer in which working format in order to shape our complete learning offering within the organization.
It will actually always remain a mix of different learning forms, in which this may become more important in the future and create additional possibilities. One of our own activities here at WEB-Blenders is a team that has been working on the theme of e-inclusion for years. We talk about inclusion, but we see that many people today are still at risk of digital exclusion. We are also working on this in all kinds of ways. And when you tell me all this, it rings a bell in my mind: oh, this immediately creates a barrier for a number of people to start working with e-learning on their own, self-directed. How do you deal with that? Or how do you see that?
That is a reality that we also see. The majority of the customer base we have are organizations where digital literacy is tested during recruitment and is at least necessary before you can start in that job. But we also have a number of custom work companies, for example, that also work with FLOWSPARKS to also provide access to e-learning training. Fortunately, we are flexible enough as a tool to provide access, because that is where it actually starts: having an email address, being able to manage it, and being able to remember the password. That is actually a very big step for many people. To simplify that access, you always have a batch number, for example, you have it with you, you enter it and then you have access. In this way we will facilitate access. But as a creator, as an organizer, we can also facilitate enough in transferring the content to keep that threshold as low as possible. For example, instead of providing three pages of text, we can start using icons to convey things. But that's on the whole other side of the maker. So, as with any tooling itself, what you make with it also depends very much on the maker who is working on it. And if you pay attention to that, you can also work in an accessible way when it comes to the content.
So that's in terms of content. But people must also be sufficiently familiar with a minimum of skills with the digital devices to even get there, you say we can already facilitate access, I can imagine that that will remain a theme that people, unfortunately we see quite a few people are still a bit afraid of digital devices, so to speak. And I won't do anything wrong, I'll just stay away. That is still a barrier to e-learning.
Yes, that's right. We have organizations that consciously choose to set up a preliminary process around the use of digital devices. Or there is a communal tablet that is ready, or there is a device that is ready and there is always a supervisor or guidance present, that is also possible. But there are also times when digital literacy is so low. And usually this also has a harmony with, for example, not being able to speak the language, which means that e-learning... It seems that e-learning training cannot be used for part of the target audience. A very concrete example. We have a solution where, for example, contractors must follow safety training before entering a factory. Very important, the safety training. What we have there in the platform is the possibility to organize the e-learning, which is essentially a self-directed activity, as a group session. This means that no one has to touch a device, we can start the session with a moderator. That moderator must of course take his role as moderator seriously and he can bring four to five people together to navigate through that e-learning. We then expect the moderator to intervene and seek interaction. What would you answer to this question? And once that is completed, the e-learning is registered for each of those four or five individual people. So we are also realistic enough to know that we cannot solve it all with a digital means. But even if we already have digital resources, how do we get people who do not have digital literacy or simply do not speak the language, who need to receive instructions in a different way, to participate in that digital story? Because offering content is one aspect? But organizations are also often looking for registration. What did people follow.
Can I pick up on that for a moment? You also mentioned language. You hear my sidekick Artemis Kubala, very best listener. Suppose there are indeed people who do not speak Dutch very well, is there already the option to switch the language in the e-learning platform? Maybe with AI applications in it.
This is built in within FLOWSPARKS. The creator can choose in which language he wants to prepare the instruction. Please note, for some subjects and for some organizations, Dutch is a mandatory language for providing instruction, especially in the field of safety and compliance. But for example FLOWSPARKS has an integration with DeepL, which may be known to do translations. Google Translate is even integrated with translation software, if you have one at home, to translate your content by machine, by AI, in one click. Which of course you will have to check yourself, because it only goes so far. But at least for the creator, this means that he does not necessarily have to be proficient in French, or German, or Italian, or Romanian or Polish. They can simply choose that language and then, if necessary, forward it for verification and have it read. That is also something that we will actively encourage, because by offering all those languages, you will indeed lower the threshold for your target audience.
I would like to open up the theme a bit to learning and development in a broad sense, lifelong learning. We all know how important it is. Also in relation to the entire theme of inclusion that we have mentioned. At the same time, we should not be shy about it and there are many people who are not looking forward to it. Who are not always motivated to learn things and to learn more. How do you view this as a professional? How do we get people more aware of the need to learn? How do we make this attractive in such a way that it becomes no or a much smaller barrier?
I have already seen many different, very practical approaches there in the thirteen years I have now been working in the profession for many different organizations. There are those who have the approach of punishing. This is a training that you have to do. If you don't do this you won't be eligible for a promotion or anything else. There are those who will do the other side. This is the approach of rewarding. We did a process with a customer, I won't mention the name directly, which was about when you are going to carry out and complete a training course. So you don't have to pass. It was about digital skills, then you could pick up a personalized mouse from the company. A small reward. Or you can give a pat on the back as a reward. But if you look at the totality of training courses provided in an organization, you will see that there are four major types of training courses. There are some that are mandatory. So you will see that there is a huge amount of initiative there to get this completed in your target audience. This even involves continuing to stalk someone until it has been completed because otherwise the organization will be fined or... Your training is necessary to simply carry out the work. So that kind of training is usually pushed through a lot by the team leader, otherwise he or she will have an employee who is not operational in the team. Then you have some courses that are about upskilling. Okay, you are going to go to another job or you have the ambition to go to another job. These are usually training courses that start from a kind of intrinsic motivation of that employee because he knows if I follow that training course, I will receive a higher salary or other things. So then you have some training there. And then you have some of the courses that are self-development courses. And you see, I see two perspectives on this in practice. You have a group that embraces that and they say okay, if it's cool I will follow it as a training course. And you have the group that completely ignores it. So often the romantic image about self-development is, I am going to offer a training course and that offer is 2000 training courses or as many objects that you can follow and then you will see that there is a part that is completely repulsed by the idea that I just don't feel like it and have no time to do that. And there is a part that says yes, I want to record all kinds of things, usually a minority. You just have such diversity and does it come from an intrinsic motivation? Is it externally imposed? Is that something that could be interesting? Is it relevant to the job? And I think the latter is the most important for me. If a training course is given and it has zero relevance to what I do every day, why on earth would I do that? What's in it for me remains the most important thing for me as a maker and as a consultant. Show why on ea:rth that training is relevant and important for that person, which will increase his motivation to follow it.
That is actually looked at from the employer's perspective. Yes, the carrot-and-stick strategy. And what's in it for me? And the category that is intrinsically motivated, we don't have to worry about that, they will follow it, they are interested in learning everything.
There you naturally have the urge to learn something. If that group is a lot larger, then they will naturally pick up the learning initiatives that are present in the organization a lot more easily. You can also see this in a very practical way if we have a learning management system in the organization. Most people have an aversion to that, which is usually a vehicle that is very difficult to navigate. But then the people who really want to learn something, they will find their way through all those twenty clicks to achieve something and they will then find their way. So that is a group that you get along with relatively quickly. However, that is not a fixed group, because depending on what is available or a moment in that person's career, it could also be just another person. As an L&D professional, this means that you are always working on a moving playing field within the organization if you organize your learning initiatives around it.
L&D, the term was justmentioned, learning and development. As a professional, what do you see going wrong with employers today when it comes to learning and development? What are things we should watch out for?
Advice, traps you can fall into are twofold I think. On the one hand, as the organizer of a learning initiative, I think that you should avoid seeing a learning initiative as a complete content dump or a content transfer to another party. I see that happen often. A learning initiative needs to be set up. They are going to write twenty pages and they are going to involve an expert, then there will be thirty pages, forty pages, three questions at the end. Hey, we're going to send that to someone. We hope that he will go through that and answer three questions and then he will know, in quotes. Or we'll make a fun video of it, a 20-minute video, and then they'll know. Only, if there is no focus whatsoever, what is the transfer to practice? What should that person do with that in their daily work? Then that is usually a useless initiative because you also have to provide information. But then you have informed, then you have not set up a learning initiative.
How do we turn it into a learning initiative?
There are two things. The moment of learning itself is about being able to translate things into practice as quickly as possible. This means offering scenarios, offering observation assignments, and offering reflection moments. I often see that in order to set up the classic pattern of a learning initiative, a lot of thought is put into the content. What should we give? Then quite a lot of time has already been spent on that and then the practical situations that have to arise from that become a bit more difficult. You need creativity for that. That is quickly put aside. So at the time of learning itself, you can now apply this in a simulated or a case study or something that has to do with practice, you can apply that to also have that retention. But then of course the heavier work follows. You have had a learning initiative. Now let us observe this in practice. What do people do with that in everyday life? Because ultimately, your learning initiative will have to start from we want a change in our daily work. What is the change we aspire to? We do the initiative. Is that change present or not? And then you have to evaluate whether it is present or not? So for me they go hand in hand. However, you often see that initiatives are started and that observation part is missing in practice. What is the outcome we want there and what is the measurement we need to evaluate that?
That is indeed an interesting one and I can imagine that it is often omitted, because it is all extra work that is added. And we are often not aware of how important that is. What you said triggered me in another way. You say that a lot of importance is attached to the content that needs to be conveyed. So much attention and time is often spent on this that it quickly becomes, so to speak, 80% of the effort. And this also means that much less thought and effort is put into the form in which it is presented. While we actually know that different people absorb knowledge in different ways. That there are many different ways of learning and absorbing knowledge and the form in which this takes place may or may not be important. How do you look at that?
What you just mentioned is actually the core philosophy of the tool we have, FLOWSPARKS, the authoring tool. Because we offer precisely those working methods for makers. You can do information transfer, pages with information with an image, but that also includes working methods to offer a scenario where people have to decide very quickly: Is this right or wrong? Is this safe, is this not safe? Is this as we wish or not. It contains scenarios: think about this situation. What would you do? What is the behavior you would adopt with a moment of reflection behind it? There are options to record a video and ask: observe and push a button if you see something wrong. Just that diversity in those working methods. We have incorporated this into our technology because we see that if you want to learn something, it always means that if active learning is involved, it has much more value than just simply transferring knowledge.
I have a question. They are in-house trainers who use the software. Right?
With us it is indeed: either it is learning and development themselves that will use the tool, or they will involve their knowledge expert, subject matter experts, in the creation process. And this can be done at two levels: either those subject matter experts, those knowledge experts, are involved as those who provide input or feedback or guidance, or they are also given the tools to develop those contents.
It actually serves a double purpose because the way we now regularly work with external suppliers is that they ask: give me cases. So that our cases are relevant specifically for the workplace and the situations and scenarios are also relevant for the target groups. Actually that is in that system. But I also wondered whether an organization should use FLOWSPARKS as a system or is it integrated? Is it compatible with existing LMS systems?
If, as an organization, you already have a learning management system, great, it already exists. Then you can only use FLOWSPARKS to develop the content and then put it in the learning management system. We are fairly flexible in that regard.
If we look at the content like this. It interests me from your perspective to see what employers are doing today. What are the themes that score high in terms of learning and development? What do you often encounter today?
I think I can answer it more from the e-learning niche. Because in L&D there can be quite a few themes. But from what we see as e-learning, precisely because it entails an increase in scale, we very often see compliance, the code of conduct, the code of ethics.
Boring stuff.
Very boring stuff. And luckily FLOWSPARKS has found something to put it into an adaptive learning process. If you already know something about it and it is already the twentieth time that you have received that training, you can cycle through it much faster because you can already prove your knowledge. So that's a big part of it. Software training, everything that has to do with yes, we have a product here in the commercial sector. SAP is a well-known product, especially in logistics. But everyone has configured their processes in a certain way, so you have to learn them again. Ah okay, how do they work then? Does that procedure work step by step? And fortunately, FLOWSPARKS also has a solution to offer that transfer step by step. Plus you can get a downloadable manual at the same time. So that's all taken care of as well. And then we see some of it around product training. Okay, we have a range of products and I just passed Soudal here. Yes, they also have FLOWSPARKS to teach their product catalog to their team. So they also use product training for that. Onboarding is another classic one, especially in terms of pre-boarding. So we have someone who has the desire to work with us. Great, but it only starts within three months. E-learning is ideal because you can send something in advance. Go through it already. Process that information already. If you want, prepare yourself, whether mandatory or not. But you can also do that more easily digitally. Those are about the four most common. Apart from all other questions that still exist. In my opinion, these are the most common ones I see in daily practice.
When we talk about learning, which may be somewhat in line with what we mentioned earlier, people traditionally think rather harshly about those over 55. We especially need to get them on board, because they are the ones that are lagging behind the most. And those, yes, they can't keep up anymore. Do you also experience that with your customers? And do you agree?
Not really. Yes, of course I don't have that hands-on experience myself, so the only thing I can see is the feedback I receive or the conversations I have with people who are actually in the field within the organization. There it is more likely that age itself does not make such a big difference. Young people, older people who can reason like that, yes, that young group are digital natives, who were born with a smartphone or a computer. However, you can see that they are indeed using those devices every day. But for Instagram, TikTok, ... And when it comes to learning experiences, yes, it's a whole new world again. Especially when you talk about a learning management system. Those aren't the sexiest tools or ones that are consumer-oriented either. So I don't actually see that this split is really endorsed by people in the field. The point is that it is indeed not obvious for all groups to get them involved in these initiatives, that is a fact. But to really say, yes, we see a total split between those two groups, certainly not for e-learning, that is actually not that obvious.
Okay, I'm reassured. A final theme perhaps to briefly touch on? Unless my sidekick has other things in store. We talked about digital skills, but in a more general sense, accessibility is also an important theme when we talk about inclusion combined with learning and development. Do you have any insights there that can help us? Not every training is equally accessible for people who have poor hearing, poor vision and other limitations.
Yes, I can certainly provide input for that, because last year or two years ago we started preparing our tooling for what we call accessibility. So people who need support: hearing impairment, visual impairment. To also give them access to learning materials that are created in a self-directed learning program. We had our first initiative with a customer who very consciously asked for this. We adjusted our software and in retrospect, yes, that was the wrong way to deal with it or to do the implementation on a technical level. We learned a lot of lessons from that. And in the meantime, we are also working on making our tooling accessible. To ensure that someone who needs software to read out those texts or to adjust fonts or to adjust the color contrast, can simply do that in our software without having to do many difficult manipulations. What I also learned from that is that the accessibility guidelines that exist, the ones we have, WCAG mainly, yes, they assume that it concerns a website.
What is WCAG?
This is the accessibility standard that determines what your technology must meet in order to be accessible to everyone. So there are guidelines for that, which we now also follow in the implementation. Only those are made for a website, but a website is not a learning experience. To give an example, in a learning experience you often have sequences that you have to follow. So the guideline says, if you have content on a page, it must always be immediately accessible. But sometimes that learning strategy is, no, you build up your knowledge. So you have to do the first part first and then the second part. So somewhere we implement those standards, but we also go against that because from our educational approach we say yes, but yes, we have a different logic that we have.
You should actually need a different standard for the learning platform.
That's right, to my knowledge or what I have come across in the meantime. I also interviewed Susi Miller two years ago. Susi Miller has written a book on Accessibility Guidelines for eLearnix. Actually, that almost becomes our Bible, because she will also look at all those educational documents and then retranslate them into the guidelines that exist for a website. Doesn't mean we shouldn't comply. Our technical team is working on this to ensure that it is ready-made. However, at certain times we make decisions that go against those standards. Very purposefully because we also like to look at our digital solutions from an educational angle and also want to implement them.
Okay Christophe, thank you for sharing all your expertise. In the meantime it turned into a commercial talk again, but that does not alter the fact that it was fascinating and that the world of e-learning possibilities is infinitely large and provides many accessible options. Whether it is FLOWSPARKS or another system, we will make an abstraction of that. You don't, but we do. Thank you for being here for this fascinating conversation.
With great pleasure.
[outro]
You listened to an episode of Let's talk about Work, the podcast of the group WEB-Blenders. All our conversations are about work, the road to work, well-being in the workplace and everything that comes with it. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform and at www.blenders.be/podcast. On social media you can follow us on LinkedIn under podcast Let's talk about Work and on Instagram as Blenders podcast Let's talk! You can also stay up-to-date via the Blenders newsletter. Were you handcuffed? Does this conversation make you think? Would you like to be one of our next guests? Let us know via info@blenders.be and who knows, you might join us at the table soon!
