AI in Talent Development
Understanding AI in Talent Development from ATD 2024
This past May, I was fortunate to attend ATD24 in New Orleans. The Association for Talent Development hosts this annual conference for learning and development professionals.
Its purpose is to unite talent development professionals in one forum to share information, services, and ideas.
It’s a great place for us to see where various industries are headed and how the talent development field can prepare organizations and teams for these changes.
At ATD24, the overriding theme was AI. The question on everyone’s mind was, “Will AI take my job?” I saw just as much concern as excitement surrounding AI tools and applications. The feeling of tension and anxiety in the air was palpable.
In fact, I learned that, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, 52% of Americans said they were more concerned than excited about AI.
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AI was the focus at the conference; I didn’t count, but I’d guess well over half the sessions centered around it.
In this article, I’ll share what the conference experts are discussing regarding AI and how it can be used in the talent development industry.
Technical Applications in Talent Development
TD professionals typically utilize text and image-based documents, like PowerPoint slide decks, to enhance learning content. However, this mode of learning doesn’t work for everyone, and can be very inefficient in retention of learning.
AI-powered tools can enhance L&D platforms by creating dynamic learning environments and analyzing user data for retention.
Let’s take a look at these different use cases now.
Creating Dynamic Learning Environments
Instead of static learning modules, like videos or text documents, AI can create dynamic learning by challenging the learners individually.
I attended a session hosted by Mike Vaughn with The Thinking Effect. Mike spoke to how AI can be used in the Learning and Development field. Their organization provides resources to L&D professionals to learn about AI and how to utilize it.
Current LMS platforms are typically limited in the variety of resources available to the learner. They’re typically static multiple-choice questions.
Scenarios are usually very scripted and limited. A question may read something like “In this situation, how would you react?” and provide a few multiple-choice answers.
AI can create interactive challenges based on the user’s history. This will help learners retain information and apply it in a simulated experience.
For example, we host an Online Everything DiSC® Certification course each month. During the course, we teach the cohort how to People Read the DISC styles by identifying behavioral markers during a conversation.
This is a perfect knowledge check for deploying AI to help test how well our learners grasped the content.
Suppose a learner is not answering People Reading questions correctly. In that case, the AI may challenge the learner by creating custom scenarios for them to work through until it feels that the learner has absorbed the information.
The scenario could home in on something specific the learner is missing. For example, it may create scenarios with exaggerated behavioral preferences or create more extended scenarios to really accentuate the style so the learner can absorb the information at their own pace.
AI can be used for more than creating content; it can also analyze data incredibly effectively, in most cases far more so than humans can.
Analyze User Data for Retention - AI and the Kirkpatrick Model
If you’re an L&D or TD professional, you’ve probably had someone ask you what the ROI is on training. That can be difficult to provide data for, especially if you’re an outside consultant who has been brought in to do the training.
Acquiring data from your client on their learners is never easy. The struggle is determining whether or not training is successful. How do you do that without access to the learners?
Without access to survey data, it’s nearly impossible to determine the impact of training.
There are a few ways that AI can help in this area.
One way is to analyze custom challenge interactions to determine what content has been absorbed / incorporated (see above – Creating Dynamic Learning Environments).
This is called a feedback loop, where each interaction enriches the learning experience. This happens in real time as the learner completes learning modules or activities. The data from each learning session will then be used to create more impactful learning in future sessions.
Those of you that are familiar with the Kirkpatrick Model know that Level 3 – Behavior – is one of the most difficult to evaluate, especially for outside consultants. Also, according to the Kirkpatrick Group, it is the most important!
Typically training evaluations include multiple-choice questions that only give us a limited view into what a learner absorbed. Open-ended questions can provide much deeper insight, but require significantly more time to review.
Until now.
AI can create an analysis of open-ended questions that can search context for changed behavior. Moreover, it can do it far more accurately than a human can.
Earlier, I mentioned that we certify individuals in Everything DiSC®. We also facilitate DiSC training sessions for DiSC Workplace, Management, and Productive Conflict.
Often, we’ll have team leaders ask us how they can determine whether their team members learned anything.
As mentioned above, this can be difficult to determine. Currently, we provide these team leaders with surveys, but this isn’t the most accurate way to determine whether learning was absorbed.
Moving forward, we may adapt our survey approach to include AI. Why?
Well, AI can allow users to answer open-ended questions in their native language rather than selecting from multiple-choice answers, which enables the AI:
- Pull context from answers more accurately
- Determine whether learning was achieved
- Determine whether behaviors changed
This would benefit both us and the team or organization that contracted with us. We’d both have a better understanding if the training was successful and why.
Keep an Open Mind
As you can see, there are myriad ways that AI can be incorporated into talent development, from content creation to facilitation to evaluation.
My advice is to keep an open mind. Artificial intelligence isn’t going away. Like the Internet, it will become more integrated into our daily lives.
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