Designing new ways of learning and working for the BBC Academy
The Challenge
The BBC Academy supports the training and development of over 20,000 internal staff; particularly journalists and production staff working within TV, radio, online, multi-platforms and mobile, as well as external production companies.
The Academy realised their approaches to training and development were increasingly out of sync with the emerging informal and social ways of discovery and learning. They came to Engine looking to develop a totally new strategy for learning; a defining idea that would sit at the heart of all that they do to help staff with their personal development, in finding inspiration and in new ways of working. In addition, a new process and supporting toolkit was developed to help them to deliver on the strategy.
The Approach
Insight to ideas
We started with one simple question: How do people learn in a web 2.0 world? The answer lay in a deep understanding of learners attitudes, activities and aspirations towards learning and discovery.
BBC and Engine teams worked highly collaboratively, developing new internal capabilities throughout the duration of the project. We researched learners and subject matter experts who had varying styles and attitudes towards learning, both within and outside of the BBC. Research participants kept one or three-week learning journals and some were interviewed and observed at their place of work.
Example of the learning journal
Developing a strategy and testing tools
We analysed the research insights to inform the creation of a strategic learner-centred framework, then created and tested tools to help deliver it.The strategy is based around a core proposition or defining idea that would sit at the heart of everything the Academy does;
Our aim is to encourage success by building confidence and stimulating creativity.
This was made actionable by seven design principles to guide the actual creation of ideas, content and treatments of learning projects and programmes. For example;
Connect
Connect learners with relevant sources of inspiration, expertise and experience.
Embed experimentation
Enable iterative learning by embedding experimentation and encouraging reflection.
These principles would support the strategy, decision making at programme and project levels and working in new ways. The toolkit was intensively tested with members of the internal teams and with live project briefs to ensure usability, usefulness and buy-in.
A workshop to test the tool
The Results
The resulting learner-centred design strategy and toolkit provides a clear, unifying vision for the BBC Academy team.
The toolkit contains 40 cards arranged in seven sets, each highly usable and useful for those generating content and designing learner-centred experiences. The sets cover topics such as how to understand the different behaviours of learners, a number of matrix tools and frameworks, setting out the different stages of a learning programme and a number of prompts and provocations to help if further inspiration is needed.
There are no rules, the cards can be used in whatever way or sequence that works for the user but there is support and guidance where needed, a number of trusted advocates selected to spearhead the pilot and to be points of contact for the Academy community. For adoption and traction it was also important that the toolkit was seen to come from within the BBC, so using established BBC visual and written language was critical.
The toolkit and new ways of working are currently being piloted across a number of real learning projects; treatment workshops to define creative, content and delivery direction and individual brainstorms.
Given the informal, online focus of much learning, this strategy and toolkit has also generated much interest from the informal learning community outside the BBC.
The toolkit: the finished product
