An Informal Learning Business Curriculum

Photo of laptop with curriculum in jigsaw puzzle on screen for learning business curriculum concept

We’ve been publishing the Leading Learning Podcast for many years now. While the majority of episodes have featured interviews with thought leaders, practitioners, and influencers in the world of lifelong learning, nearly a third have been discussion between hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele about a range of topics related to the learning business. Over time, these have amounted to a sort of informal “learning business curriculum” for anyone interested in expanding and deepening their knowledge about what it means to serve the market for lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development.

In this post, we’ve gathered together and categorized these episodes to make them easy to access. (The categories align with the Learning Business Maturity Model.) We’ll continue to add to this post as we publish new episodes, so we encourage you to bookmark this page (and share it with others).

We also encourage you to set aside some time on your calendar to learn from each of these episodes. You can, of course, listen to them, but there are also detailed show notes for each episode, often with supplemental resources, so you can read the majority of the content for each episode, if you prefer.

If there are multiple people involved in your learning business, consider scheduling regular meetings over time to discuss one or more episodes. The curriculum can serve as a convenient and effective “social learning object” to help surface issues and opportunities and spark innovation for your learning business.

Now, on to the curriculum.

Focused Series

In late 2020, we shifted away from weekly episodes and instead began to produce focused, 7-part series on core learning business topics. These are a great place to start your exploration of the learning business curriculum.

Tool Talks

A series of episodes in which we highlight free tools and concepts that can help you grow and improve your learning business.

The Learning Business and Leading Learning

The core idea underpinning the Leading Learning Podcast—as well as this entire site and the work that we have done for more than 15 years at Tagoras—is that there is a business of lifelong learning that serves an incredibly important, but generally under-appreciated third sector of education. The following episodes focus on different aspects of the learning business as well as on what it means to lead learning in the field or industry you serve.

Access additional episodes related to leadership >>

Strategy

All of the podcasts we publish are more or less aligned with the domains of the Tagoras Learning Business Maturity Model: leadership, strategy, capacity, portfolio, and marketing. In the following episodes, we tackle various aspects of strategy for learning businesses.

Access additional episodes related to strategy >>

Capacity

Many learning businesses struggle with developing and maintaining the capacity necessary for a thriving learning business. From our perspective, capacity involves not only staffing, but also having the right processes, technologies, and mindset in place to support successful execution of your vision and strategy. The following episodes address topics related to capacity for learning businesses.

Access additional episodes related to capacity >>

Portfolio

Your portfolio is the range of products and services you offer to the audience you serve. Building a compelling portfolio means understanding the science of learning as well as the range of formats and methods available for developing, delivering, and evaluating learning experiences. In these episodes we cover a range of topics related to portfolio.

Access additional episodes related to portfolio >>

Marketing

All learning business strive to create great learning experiences, but if you don’t create experiences your audience will actually buy and then promote them effectively, you won’t have much success. In these episodes, we look at various aspects of marketing – from market assessment, to pricing, to product strategy, to promotion.

Access additional episodes related to marketing >>

Key Trends

We all know the world of learning and the market for learning is changing rapidly. In these episodes, we consider some of the key trends learning business professionals need to be aware of in order to continue serving their audiences effectively.

Access additional episodes related to trends >>

What Else Would Be Helpful?

We’ve published 350+ episodes of the Leading Learning Podcast, but we’re just getting started in terms of the areas we could explore. We’d welcome your input on how we should focus our efforts going forward. What topics should we cover, or go deeper on as part of the evolving learning business curriculum? Who should we interview? Please use the comments are below to share your thoughts.