<figure class="alignleft size-large"><figcaption>Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele</figcaption></figure>

As we close out our seven-part series on the frontiers of learntech, we want to help you make sense of what the wide-ranging topics that emerged mean for the future of your learning business.

Through the interviews with Ashish Rangnekar, Sam Sannandeji, Sae Schatz, and Donald Clark and our own reflective episodes, we’ve had the chance to touch on many different aspects of learntech. We covered everything from specific types of learntech, to the growing importance of data, the increasing need for organizations to have an integrated learning ecosystem in place, the essential role of standards in making such an ecosystem work, and, at long last, truly delivering on the promise of personalized learning.

We also explored related philosophical and ethical concerns such as the accelerating pace of change, equity in access to learning technology, and the potential bias in the data and design of technologies.

In this final episode in the series, we offer five suggested actions for how to make the promise of the frontiers of learntech a reality for your learning business: develop a data strategy, grow a learning ecosystem, conduct a feasibility study for extended reality, build a governance structure, and regularly reassess which learntech holds the most promise.

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[00:32 ] – An overview of the first six episodes in our series on the frontiers of learntech:

• Learntech: The Next Generation
• AI, Data, and Optimism with Donald Clark
• The Future Learning Ecosystem with Sae Schatz
• Bias and Equity in Learntech
• Finding XR’s Sweet Spot with Sam Sannandeji
• Digital Transformation with Ashish Rangnekar

The Challenge and Overview of Five Suggested Actions

[02:42 ] – There are incredible technologies being developed, and their promise for the future is huge—more effective learning, more efficient learning, learning that’s more broadly and equitably distributed, learning that responds to a specific learner’s needs in a particular situation at a particular time. Making sure those promises pan out is the challenge. What can a learning business do now to make those promises comes true? That’s what we want to address in this episode.

A lot has to happen to get from here to the frontiers of learntech, where those promises of more equitable, accessible, effective, and personalized learning exist, where they are well-executed realities rather than just possibilities. To help with the journey, we’ll offer five suggested actions.

The suggested actions are numbered, but the order isn’t important—these aren’t sequential—and you might not pursue all five actions or all five at once. These are the kinds of actions that might make it into your roadmap for how to make the promise of the frontiers of learntech a reality for your learning business.

1. Develop a Data Strategy

[04:20 ] – When we asked interviewees for their advice for learning businesses trying to figure out what to do with learntech, what to invest in, what to focus limited time and other resources on, data came up again and again.

When Donald and Sae answered that question, they mentioned data, as did both Celeste Martinell and Joe Miller, VP of customer success and VP of learning design and strategy at BenchPrep, respectively.

Celeste recommends focusing on the richness of the data that you’ll get from your learntech partner or partners. Joe stresses the importance of having a vision and how data as part of an overall approach helps you move from vision to roadmap. Both Celeste and Joe get at some of the areas and key questions you’ll want your data strategy to address, including what data you have and what insights that data can yield.

[08:00 ] – A good data strategy will:

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• Account for all four of the levels of data use that Donald Clark describes in Artificial Intelligence for Learning: describe, analyze, predict, prescribe. The strategy should describe what data you have from what sources, but you have to analyze that data, and then be clear about what you’re trying to use the data to predict and prescribe. The strategy part of a data strategy is about using data to help your learning business meet its goals.
• Address questions you’re trying to answer, based on what’s strategically important for your learning business. Part of using the data to meet your goals will be about formulating the questions you want your data to help you answer.
• Think throughout your organization, not just your learntech data as you document your data sources. For a fuller picture of your learners, you’ll want to marry data from your learning management system with data from your association management system or customer relationship database and other sources.
• Think outside your organization. There are likely data sources that you don’t own but that can give you insight into learners and prospective learners. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the <a href="https://ww