Many of the key takeaways from World of Learning Oct 2026 centred around designing learning for real-world impact and overcoming the challenges that can keep even high-quality learning initiatives from translating into improved performance at an individual and organisational level.
The conference and exhibition, which took place at the NEC Birmingham on the 6th and 7th of October, was packed with valuable talks and seminars, so trying to do it justice in one blog would be a Herculean task. Instead, we’ve whittled down (with difficulty) some of our favourite insights about how we can design learning to ensure it survives contact with the messy, inbox-overflowing, not-enough-time reality of the workplace.
How can we Shift from Completion to Performance?
Learning transfer was a crucial takeaway from World of Learning October 2026, with many speakers exploring how to go beyond focusing on completion to application.
While the title of Jeremy Campbell’s (NudgeAI) session “Your LMS says 100% complete. Your people forgot 75% by Friday” is an L&D horror story sure to send a shiver down the spine, it perfectly sums up an all-too-real issue: how do we make sure learning sticks and translates to better performance?
In their talk on increasing learning transfer, Melanie Martinelli (Institute for Transfer Effectiveness) and Nick Mongan (BT Group) recommended starting by clarifying the need: moving from broad learning aims to sharper, more specific transfer-focused goals.
It was a sentiment echoed by other speakers during the event: we need to start with the specific change we want to see. After all, if we don’t know what improved performance should look like in the real world, expecting the learner to work it out feels like expecting them to win a game without explaining the rules first.
Our take?
As providers of targeted microlearning, this idea really appealed to us. Video Arts content isn’t just entertaining and informative – each resource is action-orientated and focused on a clear learning objective. Nobody should be closing the tab thinking “interesting… but what do I do with that, exactly?”
Having effective content is only half the battle, though. Another key idea that came out of World of Learning is that the environment is just as important. As Jess Pressland (JP Group) remarked in her seminar: “Behaviour doesn’t change because someone walked into a training room. Behaviour changes when an environment allows it to.”
She identified several transfer barriers, including lack of support with application, the fact that managers often aren’t meaningfully aware of the training their people have been given and, simplest of all, that nobody asks learners what they plan to do with what they’ve learned. People might be all fired up to apply learning but without an environment built on curiosity, support and the expectation of change, that fire is almost certainly doomed to fizzle out
Wondering how to start developing that kind of environment? Looping a manager in about the goals of a particular training before their people complete it and letting them know about simple things they can do to support learning transfer would be a great first step.
How Can AI Assist Learning?
How we can use AI to assist and enhance (not replace!) the vital, human aspects of learning was a key question throughout the conference and exhibition.
AI’s potential to help learning become part of everyday work was an exciting possibility that came up in various ways, including during a session by Timothy Paulissen (Meta-Skills) who talked about the importance of embedding personalised practice at the moment of need and in the flow of work.
What struck us most was how this plays into the conversations around learning transfer in terms of AI’s capability to support people to apply, consolidate and demonstrate what they’ve learned. This idea was summed up well by Paulissen, who believes the problem with transfer isn’t attention but rehearsal.
AI coaches and roleplay tools, strongly in evidence at the exhibition, give people the opportunity to put skills into practice right away, see how scenarios might unfold and receive live feedback. They provide a safe space to try things out and make those all-important but oh-so uncomfortable mistakes.
It’s the idea behind Video Arts’ AI Coach: a way to make learning concrete while it’s still fresh. No more waiting for a scenario to happen in the real world and crossing your fingers that someone not only remembers but correctly applies that training from back in July!
How can L&D demonstrate business impact?
Proving the impact of learning on the wider business was a major talking point, with several sessions focusing on proving ROI, achieving business buy-in and moving away from so-called vanity metrics (like completion) towards measuring real change.
One vital takeaway, covered by Steve Dineen (Fuse) and others, was to start with the desired outcome. Focus on the business’s priorities, work out what behaviours or knowledge are needed to support them and design interventions from there. Problems and performance gaps are also a rich source of inspiration – preventing a loss can be as impactful as adding revenue.
Nick Gonios (Talent LMS) believes this requires a change in mindset. He explained that the single most important change L&D leaders can make is to shift from thinking in terms of courses to focusing on capabilities instead. Capabilities are the outcomes, and it’s the outcomes the business cares about.
Then there’s the thorny issue of proving value. Glowing surveys from course attendees might be a nice way for the trainer to end the day but “Alice had a lovely time” does not a business case make.
Jess Pressland explained that one mistake teams often make is trying to prove impact without a benchmark. The first step before embarking on a learning initiative should be to decide what to measure and then to see where things stand before any learning. That way, there’s a clear before and after to prove what the intervention has achieved.
This is another area where AI provides valuable opportunities. With AI coaching and scenario-based training, it’s much easier to track performance improvements over time and to measure engagement and the quality of decision-making.
Another powerful point that stood out from the various talks is that emphasising the impact of learning doesn’t just secure budgets and buy-in. It can actually fundamentally change an organisation’s attitude to L&D and widen its remit.
This was highlighted by the four leaders who took part in a panel discussion for the L&D Disrupt podcast. As host Nelson Sivalingam (HowNow) described it afterwards: “The more they shifted from delivering learning to solving business problems, the more the business wanted from them.” Daunting? Exciting? Let’s go with both.
Focus on What Happens After the Learning
While there are so many valuable points to take away from World of Learning October 2026, the one that stands out the most to us is the importance of rooting learning in how it’s going to change things, both in people’s day-to-day work and in the business as a whole.
For learning to fulfil its potential, we need to get specific with needs, goals, support and measurements, rather than falling back on abstract learning outcomes and completion metrics that may sound good on paper but don’t lead to a tangible uptick in performance. As conference chair Robin Hoyle put it in Learning Magazine, it’s about shifting focus from courses, classrooms and competence to performance, practice and problem-solving.
This is something we can get behind at Video Arts, as we’ve spent years curating an extensive library of learning content that’s specifically designed to stick. Then there’s our AI Coach, ready to help people practice those difficult scenarios long before they come up for real. Intrigued? Take a look at our content.
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