LearningFOMO

We recently discovered a new phenomenon regarding personalized/adaptive learning. Participants of personalized/adaptive learning report Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) some of the Learning(content). We call it LearningFOMO

The big promise in Learning and Development for many years now, is the personalized/adaptive learning. It has been in the top 3 for many years in DonTaylor’s Global Sentiment Survey. And it is a big topic in the recently published book Artificial Intelligence for Learning by Donald Clark.

In recent years, because of increased computer power, new applications have arrived. But did you know that real application of personalized/adaptive learning is already available for more than 10 years? I know because I work at a company called aNewSpring that successfully introduced it in 2010.

In the meantime we know about many impressive implementations and use cases. Most of the time, the positive results in terms of efficiency (concrete findings in one case show reduction of time to competency/proficiency from 11 to 4,6 hours!) get the most attention as well the positive effect on learner experience. 

But in the meantime we also found evidence of the new #LearningFOMO phenomenon. We have several reported cases of learners who finished a personalized/adaptive learning program and mentioned that they liked the efficiency of the approach but had some concerns around the topics and content that was filtered out for them. They had the fear of missing out some learning experiences or content. Some - after successfully finalizing their course (most including formal certification) - asked to get acces to all materials to be sure that they didn’t miss anything. Of course that is a nice and simple solution.

Did you also discover examples of #learningFOMO? Please let us know!