Global Sentiment Survey in L&D 2020

Donald H Taylor has released the narrative report in support of this year's Global Sentiment Survey in L&D.

The survey has taken place each year since 2015 and asks a single question at the start of each year, as a measure of the sentiment felt by people working in learning and development: “What will be hot in workplace learning this year?” The results are published each year ahead of Learning Technologies and followed up with a narrative from Donald H Taylor.

This year, for the first time since 2015, the leading position on the survey was not held by Collaborative/social learning (#1 in 2015 and 2016) or Personalization/adaptive delivery (#1 in 2017, 2018 and 2019). Learning analytics held the top spot, and was #1 in 4 of the 9 countries with the most respondents (USA, India, Australia, Spain). This broad support is in contrast to Personalisation/adaptive delivery, which held the #1 position for 3 years mostly due to strong North American interest.

“This is the first time that the table has been topped by an option focused on improving the work of the department, rather than a delivery mechanism or an approach to learning,” explains Donald H Taylor.

“This year's L&D Global Sentiment Survey shows that last year's focus on data was no flash in the pan. Of the five most popular options, four rely on data. This doesn't mean that a whole slew of people will become data scientists this year. A real shift to follow up these aspirations will take time.”

“There is, though one thing we can take away immediately from this year's results. Traditionally, L&D has focused on the creation and delivery of content. No longer. Now there is a clear shift towards answering the questions of how the work of the L&D department can align more closely with the business.”

The Global Sentiment Survey in L&D Report and narritive by Donald H Taylor is available to download from the website: donaldhtaylor.co.uk/gss.