The eLearning Playmakers - Learning Technologies 2023

The First Media team loved attending Learning Technologies 2023. The exhibition gives us a chance to meet new and existing clients in real life, check out the competition and gain inspiration from new technologies that are available. With over 10,000 attendees, it’s a great couple of days out, in an environment filled with some of the most friendly people you’ll ever meet! From giant zebras to packed-out seminars, we’re here to give you the low down on how LT23 went.

Fun at ‘The Hangout Zone’ 

This year Learning Technologies was bigger and better than ever, and in sticking with this, we revealed our biggest stand yet! The FM stand promoted a sporty and team-player feel and featured tabletop foosball, which was a hit with exhibition attendees, and even a couple of stormtroopers got involved!

Aside from the foosball table, our stand featured 'The Hangout Zone' - a cozy area where attendees could unwind, recharge their energy levels, and engage in great conversation with the First Media team about innovative, creative bespoke eLearning. The space was filled with vibrant discussions and competitive foosball matches, making it the heart of LT23 with many attendees returning for a game or two.

Innovative Microlearning 

Microlearning stole the spotlight at this year's show, and we certainly captivated attendees with our innovative approach. Microlearning is a way of breaking content down into creative and engaging elements that will stick with the audience. It’s about giving your learners just enough information to achieve a goal and should take no longer than 3-5 minutes of learning time to complete. It’s important that your piece of microlearning fits naturally into the daily workflow of a project and can be easily interpreted by your audience.

So, What are the benefits of microlearning? 

• It shortens learning time and leaves a lasting impression
• It fits into everyday life
• Can be used in combination with other learning
• Affordable
• Easily updated
• Fast Impact
• Highly engaging!

You can achieve engaging microlearning through effective use of social media, video assets, animation, gamification, and interactive video elements. We have created different types and styles of microlearning elements, for example, an ‘Escape the Farm Experience’ that features 360-degree immersive imagery that challenged learners to navigate through different sections of a farm, identifying high and low-risk factors.

The response to our microlearning offerings at LT23 was phenomenal and generated numerous meaningful conversations from intrigued attendees. If you’d like to see any of our examples, just get in touch.

Packed out Seminars

This year we were absolutely delighted to see such a large turnout for our seminar, ‘The GamePlan: A creative guide to engaging eLearning’, where our team captain, Shane Traill took attendees on a journey of discovery across all the factors that make up our engaging eLearning solutions and important areas that new designers and developers should focus on to create a successful learning experience for their learners. 

If you missed the talk, we’ve included a brief summary below of the key points:

1.Work out your goals 

What are you wanting to achieve with this solution? Change audience behavior / Skills Development / Improve sales performance / Innovative Compliance Training / Create a safer work environment / Create an engaging Blended Learning experience / Great induction process

2. Have a great vision 

With years of expertise and extensive knowledge in crafting creative and engaging eLearning solutions, we’ve discovered that combining our industry know-how with the knowledge of SMEs breeds innovative ideas and creative magic. By doing so, we ensure that the desired learning outcomes are achieved while delivering an immersive and interactive learning experience that truly resonates with the audience.

3. Think like a Marketeer

Think about a successful marketing campaign and what goes into it. You need to make sure you understand what message you’re trying to communicate and what’s the best way of getting that message across. Understand who your audience is and what style of content would resonate and engage them most, while ensuring the format is short and snappy (no death by solid blocks of information). Then finally, what’s your call to action going to be? Are you going to include the option to continue the learning via links to existing information, or is there an assessment your learners will need to complete? P.s. remember to MEASURE YOUR ANALYTICS!! 

Design for modern learners

We all know the modern learner's attention span is between 25 - 30 minutes when it comes to eLearning and eTraining. It’s important that we as eLearning providers use that time to cement learning outcomes in an engaging and memorable way. We’ve identified the main areas to focus on in order to achieve this are: 

1. On-demand / mobile - Ensure your eLearning modules are easily accessible, allowing learners to pick up where they left off on any device. Try to make your solution available on mobile devices, tablets, and laptops - the more platforms to access the higher the chance of completion as learners can reengage with the content during their commute home, lunch break, etc.
2. Highly visual - As developers and designers we get 5-10 seconds to grab the learner's attention before they click on through content. Ensure your eLearning modules are engaging, filled with interactivity, and visually appealing authentic content (authentic content holds learners' attention longer).
3. Impatient and easily distracted - Break the content down into microlearning sections, this way you’re not overstimulating the audience with text, they can understand and retain information faster and get through the content easier and in a much more enjoyable way. Including a progress bar and gamification elements helps make this process more fun for the learner (friendly competition and sense of achievement). 

Cool things we saw

Each year Learning Tech never fails to surprise us with the inclusion of all things weird and wonderful. If you missed the event this year here are a few things we saw that helped make the event extra special for us.

• Stormtroopers from planet Skillshub (we even challenged them to a game of tabletop football, the galaxy depended on it!)
• Frankenstein and his victim from Hive Learning
• An almost life-sized zebra at the Simply Brilliance stand
• Pick and mix sweet stand at PLURALSIGHT (we loved this btw!!)
• Whack a mole but instead of a mole an LMS at the thirst stand 
• An Ice cream parlor at the THRIVE stand 
• A mariachi band (this was at our hotel but we feel it deserved an honorable mention) 

Each stand this year really made an effort to impress attendees, this helps make LT so special and unlike any other event in this area. A lot of the stands featured fun giveaways and we were lucky enough to get a couple too! From purple elephants to stress balls, socks, and an insane amount of sugar, this year we feel was the biggest yet and we’re already excited to be returning next year.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the team had an incredible experience filled with enjoyable moments and engaging discussions. Our stand stood out as the largest and most impressive one we’ve presented yet and meeting existing clients in person was a real highlight of the event for us. Our seminars drew a crowd and our microlearning abilities led to some great conversations which we look forward to continuing. 

In conclusion, First Media are the champions not only in foosball but also in providing engaging and innovative eLearning solutions! If you want to see our work, drop us an email, and let's have a chat.