This week Josh Bersin put out his latest blog, where it is proclaimed there is a new category of platforms – a Creator Platform. He immediately leaned into TikTok and similar platforms such as Snapchat, Spotify, and Patreon as not just development tools – but platforms – and shared his perspective both on the need for a creator platform for corporate learning – and shared some examples of platforms he felt met the mark.
Before we all go crazy trying to build a creator platform of our own, we thought it would be helpful to break this down further.
What is a creator platform in the parlance of corporate learning?
In our mind this is a fancy buzzword for an SME authoring tool, knowledge capture tool, and an OJT learning tool rolled into one. For years we have struggled with capturing the learning that is in heads of our employees, we have feared what would happen when those workers who have been with us for 25 years have walked out the door, and we are constantly looking for ways to fight the “forgetting curve” – this type of platform allows for SMEs to create content, have it discoverable by those who need it when they need it (moment of need), and can be curated. Sounds simple right?
That is great, I bet you must be an expert or coder to make it work right?
The best type of creator platform would be low code/no code. Ideally the average employee should be able to use the platform with limited to no coding experience. The platform should allow the average worker to use the technologies at their disposal (laptop, phone, camera, webcam) to create relevant content.
Does this mean my instructional designers are obsolete?
No, quite to the contrary, you instructional designers are as important as they were before. Your IDs will be needed to help create templates and structures for the content to be created by your SMEs. These content recipes – or blueprints – are what your SMEs would use to create content. (You did not think everyone TikTok just knew how to do those dances did you?)
Once you create your recipe book for content, your IDs will be important to ensuring the quality of content, curating content, and determining what content to pull into more formal learning experiences.
Do I have to build my own platform? Does this magical fluffy puppy machine exist?
The good news is you do not have to build your own platform – and while we have yet to find a magical fluffy puppy machine (and we have looked) – this type of creator platform for corporate learning does exist. Josh Bersin shares a few of them in his post (referenced above) and we would add another to the list – which is our partner Ambfi.
We believe that Ambifi ticks many of the boxes we discussed above and that they are build for the purpose of learning.
If you have seen other platforms or are interested in talking to us about this topic and what it means for how your organization develops content – reach out – we would love to talk to you – because as we say around here – we are all in this together – and together – we learn.
