Welcome to the eLearn Podcast. My name is Ladek and I’m your Host from Open LMS.
My guest for today is Kenneth Chapman, who runs the customer advisory program for D2L. As he likes to put it, he was “raised by wolves” in the EdTech business – having done it all over the past 20 year. Today, his work focuses on listening to clients, partners and competitors and reflecting what he learns back to D2L to improve their products.
In this insightful conversation, Ken and I discuss:
- How the pandemic has given D2L confidence and hope for the future as everyone in every part of the education sector has dramatically increased their level of sophistication about things like user centered design, accessibility and data science.
- The importance of: Going forward, designing accessibility into content, tools and tech; and how D2L is building that into their core products to help clients and learners… especially as this relates to how we think about and interact with video
- How video has become “the standard” for online learning, but that the expectations around production value and general comfortability have evolved dramatically, in favor of thinking about cognitive load
- Kenneth’s thoughts on customization and complexity in learning management systems and how he views this as an opportunity to look at learning design from a project management perspective. Hint: the LMS isn’t just seen as a delivery platform for content anymore.
- Why D2L Wave was created and how this connects the skills a company needs to satisfy in their workforce with providers of the necessary educational content.
- Kenneth’s excitement around the “Done For You” services and opportunities in the eLearning space, whether that is actually rolling up sleeves and building things, or just contributing by consulting around the art of the possible.
- We end with a talk around data, analytics and how AI is making its way into learning and EdTech, and how Kenneth really wants to see AI and machine learning progress into areas around context, but also why humans are still super important and more relevant than ever.
- And… just a note about the format of this episode. I’ve started to move all interviews to a live format so that we can interact with you – our listeners! In this episode you’ll hear Kenneth and I answer questions as they come in via chat messages.
