After Action Live Review

With the launch of a new event recently behind us, we wanted to devote some time to reflect on the experience. And, as we have done with past Leading Learning events, we use the After Action Review (AAR) as a framework to guide that reflection process.

For those that might not be aware, the new event – Live Review 2019 – was a two-day, entirely online offering that allowed participants a chance to get targeted demos from 14 learning platforms focused on learning businesses and committed to serving organizations that market and sell lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Jeff and Celisa reflect on Live Review using the guiding components of AAR: what it is they set out to do, what actually happened, why there was a difference between the two (if there was one), and what they will continue and/or change going forward.

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Listen to the Show

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Read the Show Notes

[00:18] – We are going to return to a tradition that we have not featured on the podcast for a while. Namely, After Action Review.

We want to do this for a few reasons:

• It involves the launching a new learning experience, specifically our recent 2019 Live Review demonstration event.
• It was a virtual conference, which is a type of event for which we are advocates.
• We feel that AARs are a practice that individual learning professionals and learning businesses should adopt so we want to model that.

 See our previous After Action Review episodes:

• Mid-Action Review for Learning • Technology • Design™ (LTD) 2018 – Episode 124
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2017 – Episode 73
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2016 – Part I – Episode 35
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2016 – Part II – Episode 36
• AAR of the Leading Learning Symposium™, Part I – Episode 13

Reflection Questions

[02:07] – You might consider the reflections questions below on your own after listening to an episode, and/or you might pull the team together, using part or all of the podcast episode for a group discussion.

1. What are some areas of your learning business in which it might be valuable to establish AAR as a practice – might be for you personally, for your business, or for your learners?
2. Is there an area where you might experiment with developing a low-risk, high-value product?

What Is an After Action Review (AAR)?

[02:30] – The four components include:

• What did we set out to do?
• What actually happened?
• Why is there a difference between the first two (if there is one)?
• What should we continue, and what should we change?

This was popularized by David Garvin*, who wrote about it as a practice used by the U.S. Army. We encourage it as a practice for organizations that produce educational offerings of any sort. It is also something we recommend for individual lifelong learners.

See https://www.missiontolearn.com/after-action-review/ to learn more.

What We Set Out To Do

[04:17] – Live Review is a two-day, entirely online event that allows you to efficiently, effectively, and affordably get targeted demos of learning platforms from vendors focused on learning businesses and committed to serving organizations that market and sell lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development.

Live Review is an offshoot of ReviewMyLMS, a user-generated review site focused specifically on learning management systems that are a good fit for market-facing learning businesses. The site was launched based on the recognition that the LMS needs of these businesses are very different than those of corporate training departments and academic institutions.

This wasn’t meant to be a significant revenue generator in and of itself—traditionally Tagoras (the parent company of Leading Learning) has done high-touch (therefore high(er)-cost) technology consulting. But in recent years we have made more of an effort to make our knowledge and experience more broadly available. This is one of the reasons we started ReviewMyLMS, designed a learning platform selection boot camp, and now, this event.

So this was part of our mission to make LMS selection and learning platform selection much more approachable by organizations who may not be able to hire a consultant—and even those that can, this gives them more working knowledge for making sure their engagement with that consultant is effective.

We put this out there as a minimum viable product (MVP) and once we had the idea, we executed it fairly quickly. The idea was to float it—put it out and see how the market responded. So without putting a whole lot of planning, effort, and a lot of lead up into, we went out with this offering.

It’s also worth noting that traditionally we like to focus on learning that results in change and helps learners perform their job better—or maybe even the goal of transformational learning experiences. We’ve talked before about inform, perform, and transform, along a sliding scale but Live Review really was more on the inform end of the spectrum.

See our related blog post, “Inform. Perform. Transform. What do your educational offerings do?”.

We’ve been on a mission for a long time to help organizations, people, and vendors recognize there is this whole third sector of education that serves the adult lifelong learning market. And the needs of that sector are different, which includes technology needs.

So on an ongoing basis, we’re trying to help people recognize that and to make the third sector of education something they really appreciate and value consciously at a level they haven’t before. To do this takes a lot of small efforts and Live Review was just another of those small efforts. We hope it’s part of a much larger transformation with some of that being that there are platform providers that are a good fit for learning businesses.

Sponsor: Community Brands

[09:21] – Check out our sponsor for this quarter – Community Brands – who participated in Live Review with two of their platforms: Crowd Wisdom and Freestone.

Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

What Actually Happened

[10:22] – We got 14 vendors to quickly agree to participate (7 demo sessions each day) and decided to cap it there, remembering that this was the minimum viable product. We wanted enough that it was going to be valuable but not so much that it was going to get too complicated.

In terms of attendees, we got 145 individuals registered for Live Review, representing 74 organizations. Of those 145 individuals who registered, 90 of them (62.1% of registrants) attended one or more live demos. We’ll note that’s higher live participation than what often gets quoted as the average live participation rate, which is roughly 50%.  Of those who participated in 1 or more live demos, on average they went to 5 live demos. And each demo session averaged about 34 unique viewers.

We were also very pleased by the level of engagement of those people in the sessions. The sessions were structured with 30 minutes of demonstration followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. Since you never know how the Q&A will go we had seed questions prepared. But we didn’t need those and in fact, in some cases we couldn’t get to all the questions that got asked. This was a sign that this was useful to at least a certain segment of people, depending on where they are in their selection process.

We’ll also note that it was fairly draining to sit and facilitate 7 sessions each day. And we actually had about 5 people who went to all 14 sessions live so kudos to them.

Difference Between the Two

[13:41] – When it comes to the difference between what we expected and what actually happened, it was interesting because we didn’t actually have a lot of expectations going into Live Review. Again, it was this minimum viable product, we thought that it had potential, and it was fairly low risk to experiment with, so we just kind of pursued it.

If anything, we’re just pleased that it turned out how we hoped it would turn out. So overall, not a lot of difference between what we set out to do and what actually happened.

What Should We Continue and What Should We Change?

[14:46] –

To continue:

• Timing: 45 minutes with 15 minutes for Q&A.
• Pre calls with vendors allowed for technology check-in and also to make sure everyone understood what the structure was. (We tend to do this with everything—our Learning • Technology • Design (LTD) event, for example).

To change:

• We got to the 14 participating vendors fairly quickly and that was great but the potential downside of that is it was mostly the usual suspects—folks who already understand learning businesses and what they need. With our meta goal of helping people understand there is this third sector, we really need to expand that pool of participating vendors in the future. This will benefit those technology platforms because they will come to understand and recognize this new potential audience to serve. And it’s also going to then serve those working in learning businesses because there will be more technology options out there that are appropriate and suited to them.
• Attendees were mostly usual suspects too. Our work traditionally has been very heavy with trade and professional associations and that is certainly a very significant/important segment of the third sector, but there are many other types of learning businesses out there. And one of our aims going forward is to attract some of those other types of learning businesses.
• We could do more to tie to Live Review into our other offerings—particularly with ReviewMyLMS. One of the things we ended up doing after we had begun work on the event was putting together a buying guide where we pulled together profiles of the participating platforms. Over time, we could probably enhance that buying guide by going into the event knowing we are going to put it together. And for the platforms that are on ReviewMyLMS, we could pull some of that profile data from it to get Live Review and ReviewMyLMS working more in tandem to provide people looking for a learning platform with a fuller package of information around their technology options.
• We could probably provide a little more structure for the vendors going forward to make sure they are touching on some of the same aspects/features (apples to apples).
• Improve how we handle recordings (attendees all get access to those). Since again, this was a minimum viable product we put these as a showcase in Vimeo. And although these were easy to access, we think it could be better.

[22:33] – Wrap-Up

Reflection Questions

1. Where in your learning business might it be valuable to establish AAR as a practice?
2. Is there an area where you might experiment with developing a low-risk, high-value product?

If you are getting value from the Leading Learning podcast, be sure to subscribe by RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, iHeartRadio, PodBean, or any podcatcher service you may use (e.g., Overcast).

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And we would be grateful if you check out our sponsor for this quarter. Find out more about Community Brands.

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[25:02] – Sign off

See Also:

• Mid-Action Review for Learning • Technology • Design™ (LTD) 2018 – Episode 124
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2017 – Episode 73
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2016 – Part I – Episode 35
• AAR of Learning • Technology • Design™ 2016 – Part II – Episode 36
• AAR of the Leading Learning Symposium™, Part I – Episode 13