An initiative of Tagoras, Leading Learning provides ongoing insights, tips, education, and other resources to learning business professionals, the people who serve adult lifelong learners with continuing education and professional development offerings. Current Leading Learning resources include the following:
- The Leading Learning Podcast
- Regular Leading Learning Webinars
- The Leading Learning newsletter
- Leading Learning executive briefings
- The Learning Business Summit
Learning Business Professionals?
Yes, learning business professionals.
You can tune into an episode about learning business professionals here, but the general idea is that these are people who work in learning businesses—that is, businesses that serve the global market for continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning.
We see this as a huge but generally overlooked and under-appreciated area of education—basically, a third sector of education—one that plays an essential role in every human society and has become more and more important as technology has transformed the global economy. (Here’s our take on why the learning business is so important.)
Being a professional in a learning business is different from working in a corporate learning and development department or in academic degree programs. Learning business professionals have to understand how to create effective learning experiences, but they also have to understand business—how to attract, convert, and retain customers for their learning experiences in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Some of the traditional places where learning business professionals can be found include:
- Trade and professional associations
- Commercial training and consulting firms
- Nonprofit training and consulting firms
- College and university professional, continuing, and online (PCO) units
In recent years, with what technology has made possible, an increasing number of independent subject matter experts have become edupreneurs and also joined the ranks of learning business professionals. We actually have a sister site dedicated to this group at Learning Revolution.
If you identify with any of these categories or, categories aside, simply identify as someone who serves the market for continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning, then you’re in the right place.
We’re Out to Elevate the Learning Business
Our goals for Leading Learning are to:
- Raise awareness of the third sector of education and the critical role that learning businesses play in it.
- Help learning businesses increase the reach, revenue, and impact of their offerings.
- Support individual learning professionals in achieving high levels of performance in their work.
Learning businesses and the people who work for them change the world on a daily basis. We want to do everything we can to help them in that work.
Uh, and Who Are You?
Good question. Leading Learning is an initiative of Tagoras and was started by the two people you see here, Tagoras co-founders Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele.
We’ve each been working in the business of lifelong learning for (hard to believe!) more than 20 years. We’ve worked for multiple learning technology companies and have built and sold a learning technology and online course production company of our own.
For more than a decade (through Tagoras) we have consulted with a wide range of organizations in the learning business to help them improve their performance. Last, but certainly not least, we are in the learning business ourselves. In addition to what we offer through Leading Learning, we hosted the Learning • Technology • Design™ (LTD) and the Leading Learning Symposium for multiple years and continue to host Live Review annually.
We’re not going to try to tell you we are “passionate” about the learning business. We cringe at the over use of that word, and there’s a decent chance you do too. If you really want to gauge whether we’re worth listening to, we encourage you to use the handy trust-and-authority meter available in your browser bar: Google. A little searching on us and Tagoras and you will see pretty quickly that the learning business is what we’re all about.
So, if the learning business is what you are all about, too, please do consider tuning into the podcast, subscribing to the newsletter, and joining us for an upcoming Webinar.
We’d also be grateful if you would use the social links on this page to share Leading Learning with others in the learning business community.