Digital learning is crucial in the 21st century as it simplifies education by making it accessible to everyone, everywhere, and in any situation. It enhances educational experiences by delivering content innovatively, adapting to industry needs, empowering training providers, and supporting global product utilization.
The Head of Channel Services plays a vital role in effectively managing and delivering educational content through scalable digital platforms, ensuring efficient reach to partners and end-users. At the same momentum, elevating direct growth through cooperative initiatives that optimize partner engagement and performance, all while maintaining integrity and accountability.
This is where Tomas Karlsson stands out, currently working as a Head of Channel Services at KnowledgePoint Limited. Tomas has a diverse work experience in the learning industry and he strongly believes in involving his team in all aspects of the business, from day-to-day tactical execution to longer-term strategy discussion. Tomas oversees the management of outsourced extended enterprise learning programs at KnowledgePoint.
KnowledgePoint is a service provider to the learning industry. They provide comprehensive support to learning industry partners worldwide, including print services for high-quality educational materials and digital learning solutions for accessibility and engagement. Their global training network management ensures seamless program coordination and execution while administrative services optimize operations. These services enable them to focus on teaching and student development, increasing their effectiveness and global impact.
Let’s delve into Tomas Karlsson’s impactful journey
The Process of Revolutionizing Educational Pathways
Tomas has worked his entire career in the learning industry, and he gained an important insight during the pandemic some four years ago when training organizations around the world needed to bring their classroom courses online overnight. Tomas says, “Our network of partners had to do the same, and many of them took the materials and approaches used in the classroom and moved to an online conference tool. That addressed the immediate challenge of people not being able to show up for classroom courses but it also highlighted to me that an opportunity was missed when not thinking more broadly about it.”
The true power of digital transformation in the learning industry lies in the ability it brings to build comprehensive learning pathways that integrate multiple delivery methods and give learners control by allowing them the choice to consume educational material at the point in time they need it. Including those principles in the design of learning programs from day one has been a big focus area for me personally.
The Use of Digital Innovation to Empower Learners
Tomas has spent a lot of time in recent years working with his partners on digitizing the learning process. Each such project may be humble on its own, but put together; they are actually on a path of revolutionizing the learning industry towards learner influence and more personalized learning experiences.
Historically, it’s always been the instructor who has been in control by following a set curriculum to which the learners have had to largely adapt. By digitizing content and leveraging digital platforms that integrate different delivery methods, we can now actually adapt the content to the learner’s individual needs and give them the ability to work with the instructor more as a coach and trusted adviser.
Fostering Team Empowerment
Tomas strongly believes in involving his team in all aspects of the business, from day-to-day tactical execution to longer-term strategy discussions. His experience is that the best ideas come from individuals who have a broad understanding of the mission of a business and thereby feel a strong personal commitment to making it successful. It’s also important to ensure that there is clear ownership and a level of freedom to take your initiative.
Addressing Challenges through Digital Solutions
Tomas emphasizes, “A key challenge for the learning industry is that we are “competing” for people’s time in a much more noticeable way than 5 – 10 years ago. We’re living in a world where people are used to quick interactions and finding answers to their questions immediately, which means that convincing someone to spend 2 – 3 or sometimes up to 5 days on a training course can be a challenge.”
“We are addressing this by supporting our partners in combining in-person learning experiences with digital delivery of learning content. This ranges from pre-recorded e-learning modules, live webinars where you get to interact with a subject matter expert but don’t need to leave your home/office, and organizing project-based competitions and hackathons where the participants work in virtual teams to solve real-life design challenges.”
Embracing the Future
Tomas feels “That Mixed Reality (Augmented and Virtual Reality) will evolve to become a key factor in how we deliver and experience learning in the coming years. We’re starting to see projects emerge already in areas that require a lot of hands-on practice like for example, engineering, software training, construction, and medical studies.”
Leveraging these technologies means that one can deliver practical learning experiences without requiring people to be in the room. That, in return, will help open up these career paths to a broader base of individuals and that is much needed as we know that particularly those industries are experiencing a huge skills gap.
Driving Positive Impact to Foster Sustainable Development
A lot of it is about building sustainability approaches in existing initiatives to ensure that it becomes an area that gets considered without requiring additional effort. Tomas shares’ “one example from our own business is an annual engineering competition that we’re organizing together with one of our clients. The competition targets students in the post-secondary space and is held completely online.
We ask the students to work with their peers in virtual teams to solve a design challenge, which is defined as sustainability front and center. This year’s edition focuses on designing a green tomorrow by coming up with solutions for waste management. We’re hence combining three approaches: We’re delivering a learning experience, which is our core business; we’re fully leveraging digital solutions as a delivery method, and the outcome supports sustainable design and business practices.”
Essential Qualities for Driving Digital Innovation
Tomas assumes that it’s more important than ever to be curious and open to new ideas. Digital technology is developing at such a rapid pace that it is almost impossible to have all the answers. His team is a subject matter expert in this field, and trusting and supporting their ideas is one of Tomas’s main responsibilities as a leader.
He also believes that as leaders, one needs to be aware of the slowness that can exist in many businesses and do the best to overcome it. It’s not wrong to apply rigor to a business through processes and policies, but one also needs to make sure that these don’t stand in the way of acting quickly and testing new ideas when the context we operate changes.
Adopting Resources Beyond Traditional Training
Tomas is in the learning industry, so it’s probably not a surprise that he sees learning as a key factor for staying ahead of everything that is going on, and learning in a broader sense is not just about attending a one-off training course here and there but rather leveraging the wealth of resources that exist to regularly enable oneself – blogs, webinars, online conferences, insight reports, etc. From a very practical perspective, he has set a calendar blocker for himself on Friday afternoons to ensure that he actually takes action and regularly spends time on enablement.
Key Advice for Aspiring Leaders
Tomas states, “Start by getting an understanding of what type of implementation makes sense for your industry, your company, and your team. Take AI and machine learning, for example. We all know that it will impact how we work, but how it will be implemented will depend on the industry you’re in, the quality of data that your organization has access to, and the experience and skills of your team.”
Leaders have to bring the teams with other leaders on the journey and make sure that the entire organization understands why change is happening and truly believes that it will benefit them as individuals as well as the business as a whole. Training and enablement initiatives that are delivered alongside technical implementation projects are key in that respect.
