A new world of learning is dawning and the role of training professionals is set to change dramatically, Dr Dean Spitzer told visitors to the World of Learning Conference and Exhibition.

In the opening key note address Dr Spitzer, managing consultant of learning and performance for IBM, said that training professionals need to become "training and development leaders" - managers and stewards of learning resources.

"Our job needs to change because the use of your organisation’s learning resources need to change," he said. "It is not a matter of whether the new world of learning will come, but rather how soon it will come. The critical question is: Will you be ready for it?"

Dr Spitzer identified trends such as learning moving out of the classroom into the workplace, a stronger alliance between learning and business priorities and the growth of enterprise-wide learning strategies as drivers of this change.

But the greatest driver was the need for learning to become more closely allied to the organisation's development needs.

The learning and development manager, he added, would be able to leverage both learning and non-learning resources to maximize organisational, rather than just individual, performance in this “new world of learning.”

Trends
Dr Spitzer said that learning will:
* Continue to move out of the classroom into the workplace
* Occur all-the-time and everywhere
* Be focused on optimizing organisational outcomes, rather than on managing inputs, activities, and outputs
* Be tightly aligned with business priorities
* Be more organizational and less individual, learning in teams will be more common
* Be just-in-time, rather than just-in-case
* Be integrated with performance, not separate from an adjunct to work