Community Showcase: Amanda Davison

Luis Malbas  
All right, it looks like we're live. Hello, everybody. Welcome to a training learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. Let's see, we've got a couple people looks like people are starting to pop into, into the, into the the guest area, I see that Chantal is in there and Franco's registered and I'm sure more and more people will start to come in. And so let me start out by saying, one, we haven't done a member showcase episode in a while, I think that as far as to DC, and everything is concerned, we've been kind of in the background, really working on some of the events that we've got going like, you know, next week's event on gamification and games and just other things. But now I'm really, really interested in getting back into having kind of our weekly introduction to one another. And so thank you so much for for doing this one.

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, so this is the second industry I've worked in, in a learning and development position. So formerly, I was in the construction industry and just recently transitioned into travel. So they're two very different industries.

Luis Malbas  
So, let's just start it out. Amanda, um, once you give us a little bit, tell us a little bit about yourself. Before I jump into the question, I would love to hear about your work with Travelodge and your learning specialists. What else can you say about that?

Amanda Davison  
Of course, a lot of the skills still transfer over. But I've really enjoyed the work that I've been doing there. And there's just sort of new new things that I get to experience and try out, it's, you know, it's a different kind of organizational structure. So that's kind of it the extent of what I've been doing in learning and development. But if we're, if we're thinking about before that I also have some interesting experience from other other fields that I feel I can kind of bring into what I do and learning and development. So

Luis Malbas  
right, so travel edge right now, can you talk a little bit about that? I'm really curious as to what exactly travel edge is, I didn't look, I was like, I want to be surprised with this travel edge.

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, it's really interesting. It's a, it's what's called a host agency for travel advisors, or travel agents. So we provide we have a proprietary software that we that we developed in house for booking booking travel, but basically what it is, is we have travel agents that Join our host agency, and then we provide them with some of the the services of a larger, like a larger agency, that they might not be able to have their selves. So like, it would be very expensive to kind of have your own booking software or your own, you know, sort of like webinars or or connections that that we can bring being a larger organization. So that's, that's what my company does that I work for.

Luis Malbas  
So who exactly are you training? Are you training the people that are using the software, the platform that you provide? Or? Or who exactly is your audience?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, so our Yeah, my audience is, is our travel advisors. So um, milk, for the most part, we do some internal training as well. But for the most part, it is those independent consultants that we, we create different programs for and provide training for.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. So give me an example of something that you're like working on right now.

Amanda Davison  
So right now, I'm working on developing a new program, we've got a new program, it hasn't launched yet. So I'm not going to go into any specifics. I don't want to, to say too much about that before we launch. But basically, it's a brand new program and building the training from from the ground up. And going through kind of the whole process of development. So a little bit of analysis, a lot of building in articulate. And also setting up the LMS I do the LMS management. So kind of setting up the system and how how our users are going to flow through the LMS. And then we're just getting right now to actually kind of doing a soft launch and seeing how it works.

Luis Malbas  
So is it is is is it like something that Travelodge developed internally or is it are you using a platform that's already out there? Or is it someone just kind of, you know, developed with internally?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, I mean, the material and everything is developed internally. So it's the it's a program that that we put together and designed internally.

Luis Malbas  
Nice, nice. Is there anything in particular that you really like about what you're doing right now?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, I really like I really like the fact that it's actually a fairly, it's been a fairly robust review system that I've gone through. So it's been a few months of kind of just like developing material, reviewing it, changing it, which I find is actually really great because it helps you improve. And I've, I've worked in in contexts where, you know, you kind of just make it and you put it out there, and you don't get a whole lot of feedback as to what works, what doesn't, what could change. So I've really liked that because it helps me develop. But I like that I've been able to be involved in in a lot of different steps in the whole development process, which has been really interesting. And then getting getting different people's perspectives on on the material we've produced is it's been really great.

Luis Malbas  
That's really interesting. Is there, can you so you're basically you're doing a lot of testing right now. Right?

Amanda Davison  
Right now. Yeah, right now we are, I just kind of came off, excuse me just kind of came off the whole sort of creation phase, where I was making the content and putting the content in. And then now now we're into the testing phase. So that's that's also been really interesting, too, because I've had to spend a lot of time kind of programming the LMS, to do what we need it to do. Yeah.

Luis Malbas  
You know, and we never talked about that. Or at least I never hear anyone talk about that. But that whole testing phase is so critical. It is, what's it like? What are you guys doing as far as testing is concerned?

Amanda Davison  
So I've actually spent a good chunk of my day doing it today. So this is good, relevant, relevant discussion here. But um, so I had to figure out what the best way to group our users would be. And then from there, how to automate course assignment, how to unlock certain material after after they've completed the mandatory material. And then making sure that you know, the right people are seeing the right homepage, the right courses, the right sequence of courses. So that was something that I sort of figured out a few weeks ago, and now I've been building it for different groups within the organization. So yeah, it's been it's been interesting.

Luis Malbas  
So very different from like, the content development part.

Amanda Davison  
Very different. Yeah. It's, it's really more of a sort of automation process kind of mindset that you have to get into, as opposed to the creative elements of designing the content.

Luis Malbas  
Right. And okay, and so before you got into the travel industry, was it construction? Yes, I was,

Amanda Davison  
I was in construction. And the projects that I was working on, there were more to do with rolling out, like new software's that we were going to be using, so kind of doing the internal training part of teaching people how to use these new tools that we were introducing. So it's definitely a different type of project than what I was doing.

Luis Malbas  
Interesting. And is there like, what kind of tools were using? I'm just curious, like, is there any, any particular platforms that you can mention?

Amanda Davison  
Do you mean like, like, learning and development platforms are like, Yeah, okay. So before I was using Litmos, which is a pretty, pretty big and well developed platform. And now the one I'm working with is Docebo. So there, there's a lot of similarities, honestly.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, I think I can't remember, you know, catesol, who's in the audience right now, we probably know, I can't remember if he is, I know that. It's either Litmos or chaebol that he uses. But yeah, um, yeah, I've heard that they, they have some similarities there. And I can't recall. I remember when they were both coming up. Yeah. And they were probably just like, taking a lot of taking a lot from one another as they were as they were building things out. So we're gonna back up and just what how about your l&d background? How did you get into this into this into this career? And like, yeah, you know, how did you find it?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting, because I'm sure a lot of people can relate that you kind of you often don't set out to do learning and development, you sort of start building kind of adjacent skills and then end up you know, coming into learning and development. So I'm, I suppose a similar story there. I actually. So, I decided that I wanted to go into education a few years ago, and I had worked in in some school settings. And then I went to do my master's. So I did my Master's in, in educational leadership and policy at U of T, University of Toronto. And then for From there, I had already been working in a company while I was doing my degree, and we had a lot of changes going on there. And the one of the partners decided they wanted to kind of develop the learning and development side of the organization. And knowing that I was studying, it is adult education. It wasn't like precisely like instructional design or anything like that, but it falls under the adult education umbrella. So knowing that I was studying that, and I had some I had some applicable skills, I was offered a position in learning and development. So that's, that's how I entered. And then, of course, from there, I I learned a lot about, you know, instructional design about LMS management about, you know, the process of needs assessment and sort of the business side of it more from experience,

Luis Malbas  
just from assuming he didn't go back to school or get a certification or anything like that.

Amanda Davison  
Let me tell you, yep. Yeah, it was tough. I actually didn't really have anyone to mentor me to when I first got into it so very, very much having to kind of seek out my own my own learning resources and figuring it out along the way. So it was, it was a journey. That's, that's what I can say about that. But yeah, it was yeah, I didn't go back for any formal education there.

Luis Malbas  
No, I love it. I think that's, that's absolutely, I you know, I'd like to hear that. Because I think that there are so many instructional designers that I talked to, they just come from such varied backgrounds, including, including, like theater and acting, and, you know, and they just kind of find themselves in this situation where they become trainers, and, and they can't, I've met a lot of successful instructional designers that have never taken, you know, a class or anything that books and they've done, you know, YouTube, different things, but you know, listen to podcasts, and yeah, do a lot of LinkedIn stuff. But you can you can succeed in this career without having to, you know, to get a formal degree or anything in instructional design. So what else have you done? Probably, you know, um, you said you had kind of had a varied background, and that it's helped sort of your instructional design career. Is there anything? What else do you think that has helped?

Amanda Davison  
Well, I think I think having worked in education, it now it was, it was with children. So it's, it's different. But a lot of the sort of concepts do do transfer, I find it's very, you know, learning how to break concepts down and learning how to put it into palatable pieces, and sort of building the, the scaffolding of the learning is, is definitely an applicable skill. And sometimes it helps to start with children, because that's kind of the most basic way that you can break down concepts. So I think, I think that did help. My formal training in my master's degree there were, you know, there were also applicable things from there. I managed to do some courses that were great for, I think, the diversity aspect of it, I took a it was a trying to remember the exact title of the course. But it was basically indigenous indigenous ways of thinking, basically, the course was about and it was taught by a really great indigenous professor. So I was able to also kind of learn a bit more about the some of the different mindsets and different different, you know, philosophies of learning that I that I might encounter at work. So yeah, that was that was really great as well. It was a great experience and, and really interesting, indigenous worldviews. That's what it was called. Nice. Yeah, and it was definitely, definitely different from from the other courses that I was taking. So you could really kind of start to see how, you know, a different way of thinking about about the world. So what's great,

Luis Malbas  
so you've been How long have you been a functioning l&d professionals?

Amanda Davison  
Almost almost three years now? Yeah, sorry.

Luis Malbas  
In that three years. Is there anything that you wish you had known when you had started out anything in particular?

Amanda Davison  
You can go back. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I wish that I had had some more like business acumen. Because I when I first started out, I didn't fully I didn't fully appreciate how linked it was to the business aspect of an organization. Which kind of sounds funny because now it's like, oh my gosh, it's so obviously I You know, part part of the business itself. But, you know, if you haven't studied business, if you haven't, you know, held a more, you know, senior position in a business, you don't always have exposure to things like KPIs and, and, and how learning in an organ organization is supposed to support the business goal. Right. So that, that I think was really tough and maybe where a more formal education in something like instructional design comes in, because the studying that I had done didn't didn't involve business very much. So I think I think that's been the biggest struggle is really, really building my understanding of how how to tie in what I do with with the greater goals of the organization, and how to show that what I'm doing is, is contributing to that.

Luis Malbas  
How are you? How are you learning that? Is there anything? Or the resources or anything that you're finding? Or is you're someone that's mentoring you to help you understand, you know, like, how to tie these things?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, I mean, I did have in a previous position that was working a lot with the CFO. And while he wasn't, like coming from a learning sort of perspective, he was very helpful in in kind of giving me that introduction to things like KPIs and what what sort of information the leaders business leaders are looking for. So that that was helpful. There was a lot of sort of, again, like self seeking development. So LinkedIn has been a great resource. There are some really, really great people in the learning and development community that give their time to kind of help people who are developing in their career. So I definitely have attended lots of lots of webinars, and I tried to tune into to more advanced, you know, people in the field, so that, that has been very helpful. And then now I'm working with, I'm working with someone with a business background. So that's also been really helpful in like, letting me understand, you know, the kinds of the kinds of information and metrics that I need to produce and support.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, totally. I think I'm working with a CFO will definitely kind of steer you in the right direction. And it feels like most of the l&d leaders that I've spoken to, that is kind of their, their emphasis and why they're leaders is because they have that kind of that business connection, know, know how to speak that talk. And, and I've seen, I feel like when I've seen marketers that have turned into like l&d professionals, people that are probably tied more to, you know, following data and metrics and things like that, like they they tend to, to, to have more success, like being able to talk the business. Yeah, I hear some cheering over there.

Amanda Davison  
Oh, sorry. There's, there's a leafs game going on. They just they made it past the second round of playoffs, and so everyone is very excited about that. Oh, no, that's awesome.

Luis Malbas  
That's hilarious. Yeah. All right. Um, so let's, let's talk about a little more about your background. So what other jobs? Have you worked prior to l&d? Is there anything that you did that has kind of influenced where you are now? Or just altogether? Like, what's your background? Like?

Amanda Davison  
Ah, so I began in anthropology. That's what my BA is in. And so actually, I worked as an archaeologist for a while, which is very different from from Ella D. But very interesting, all the same. And that air five, so Cindy? Yes. Um, so yeah, it was very interesting. And I would say, you know, didn't, didn't so much contribute to what I'm doing now. But it definitely, definitely gave me some interesting experiences. And, and also, I mean, it's, it's mostly academia, but it does. It is there is a lot of learning involved. And the reason that we do archaeology has a lot to do with teaching about, you know, different cultures and history in the past and really kind of looking at it in a more analytical and scientific way. Yeah, so I guess in that sense, it kind of it kind of fits in with my desire to kind of switch into education. Because I was looking for something that was a little more I really like the analytical aspect of of training and development and education. So

Luis Malbas  
that's awesome. Well, yeah. Cindy, just through this question, how do you measure the results of the training that you're creating?

Amanda Davison  
That is very good question city. It's, it's hard. Because there's often not a very black and white relationship between what we do in training and, and the outcomes, that sometimes there are, if it's, if it's sort of a very tangible thing that we're trying to teach, but I think I think it's just key to, to really pay attention to, like knowing knowing your objectives before you develop the training and knowing what you're trying to affect. And then sort of very, very much paying attention to what the indicators of that are. Sounds kind of vague. And I know that. But a lot of it also depends on whether your organization has been keeping data in the past, right. So I did work in an organization where there was not really any historical data. And that is really difficult. Because how do I show that what I'm doing is making a difference, if I can't compare it to something. So I would say the best as a learning and development professional, the best way, the best place to start is to, to know your objectives and to know what you're trying to do before you, before you give the training before you develop the training even. Because having that direction that's going to help you know what to look for. And then obviously, if you have the historical data, that is great, you know, compare it to that, and that, that helps sort of paint that picture.

Luis Malbas  
Right. And, you know, and I think also, just as long as you're prioritizing your intent to measure results, you know, sometimes that's, that's all you can do is just, you know, it's just prioritize it, and then hope that you can actually, you know, achieve that goal of, of measurement and then being able to analyze accordingly. Because not in, you know, it's not always possible in every instance. So, yeah, um, I also want to hear about your interest about, you know, with AI tools you had mentioned in which in that you're looking at this flow of AI tools, and just, you know, I'm actually, I am doing a broadcast tomorrow on how I've integrated chat GBT into my own workflow. Okay, yeah, cuz I didn't even you know, I did it because I thought, okay, the six people that are gonna show up might, it might help them understand how important this is, but then I have like 80 registered which is kind of freaking me out because I didn't expect that you know, so So tell me a little bit about this flood of AI tools that you're saying.

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, so I'm sure you've probably seen a lot of it on on LinkedIn as well but I have come across so many different tools so from like some of the ones that I've tried for example, I don't know if you've heard assembly have not so it's what it is meant to be is like a virtual assistant that attends meetings with you or even sometimes for you and then it breaks down the the notes basically into actionable items into you know, different different categories so that you don't have to go through and categorize your your notes. So I've tried that one out and the application that I liked the most of that actually was getting it to pull a transcript from a video and then convert it to the SRT file for captions. So putting captions sembly So like, you know, like an assembly but just assembly. Yeah, Sen BL y. So that one that one I really liked using I also tried out one called Super creator, which is a it's it's meant to create those quick sort of short form videos that you see on Instagram or Tik Tok like the stories but I feel like it probably has some applications for micro learning, and it might make make that easier. So that's another one that I've I've started trying out and then of course chat GPT chats, MBT is fabulous.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no. Actually, I'm still uncomfortable kind of talking about chat GBT sometimes because I don't know for sure how much I rely on it. But but at the same time I don't, you know, like I do, but I don't. But it the implications of it consistently blow my mind I have to like, just step away from my desk and like go outside and think for a second about how much this is going to change the world. Um, that's great. So, um, with super creator, have you successfully been able to use it for a project? Or is it just been testing them?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, not not yet I have, I did make a couple short videos just to share with my, our learning and development team, we have work kind of a collection of companies. So we have a few different people in the different companies also doing learning and development. So it's, it's really nice to have some other people to bring together. So really, at this point, I just, I've just kind of shared with them. And we're kind of trying to get an idea of whether or not it would be useful. But I don't know, I like the concept I have to I have yet to figure out if it can work for things like microlearning. And, you know, a format that you would see in a professional setting, but it's definitely got potential.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. So is there an AI tool that you wish existed that that you can't use? You don't currently know of? This is a kind of a tough question, but I just thought about it. And I'm like, Oh, I'd love to hear something that you wish you had that you don't that maybe somebody hopefully will build one day. I know, for me, it's like, I just wish that I could get I wish I could find an AI tool, and it probably exists. And I just don't know about it, that can take some of the long form videos, we have like, for instance, this, this broadcast and be able to, to use AI to edit and just output like the interesting moments into in one say, you know, two minutes? Yeah. Yeah, I

Amanda Davison  
don't, I don't know of anything that could do that full cycle, it may be out there. But I do know, like tools like sembly are pretty good at like, kind of pulling out important moments, and at least kind of making it easier for you to break up the video rather than having to kind of listen to the whole thing again, and then go back and cut it. And, you know, you know how time consuming it is? Yeah. For me, I think I think I'd like a more user friendly AI for data processing. Because that's such a time consuming task. When you have you know, for example, you want to you want to look at support tickets to see what kind of issues are coming up the most and decide, Okay, is there a training solution for this, um, you know, you can have the 1000s and 1000s of entries, and I have yet to work with a system that's like, made it really easy to kind of, boom, categorize them, go through them, you know, give you those insights. I know, there are tools like Power BI, but that's not I wouldn't call it user friendly, really, like you still have to really learn how to how to give it the input that it needs. At least that's from my experience. That's what

Luis Malbas  
I bet there'll be something that'll be like that, like, within the next six months. Because it seems like you should be able to dump like, your data into like, what do they call it, like an LLM the large language model and then sort of be able to pull from that. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough is, it's, it's totally mind blowing. It's crazy. And so I know the next you just even the next the next six months is going to be interesting to see what what happens. All right, so last question. And thank you so much for doing this. If you weren't an l&d professional, what do you think you'd be? What would you demand?

Amanda Davison  
Yeah, that's, I don't know. That's a good question. I think I'd still want to stay within education. I really feel like that's something that I that I just gravitate towards. I like I like, not just teaching but I like sort of breaking down concepts and making them political and then finding interesting ways to, to make that information accessible to other people. So I think I'd probably still be in education, maybe maybe in like curriculum or program planning. Because again, like I like that kind of stuff. I like the analytical stuff.

Luis Malbas  
Do you like the LMS admin work?

Amanda Davison  
To a point I really like it when you spend that time setting it up, and then you try it out and it works the way you want it to. That's that's really cool. And when the automations work especially I love when when I can automate something and just make it like, you know, smoothly flow. But I wouldn't I wouldn't want that to be my full time job. That's that's kind of an area that I like to dabble in, but I don't I don't want to be doing it all day.

Luis Malbas  
Hear me I hear Yeah. Awesome. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for doing this. It's actually it's literally been months since I've been able to do a member showcase. And so I really appreciate you responding and, and doing this one, we have a ton more set up all through pretty much August, I think we're just going to be doing several of these every week. It's, it's really a great response, this time with the membership. And so with that, I want to remind remind everybody, next week, we've got that games and gamification event. It's called learning by doing. And I think we have last I checked, there's something 11 or 12. Speakers, Cindy, who's in the audience has been working diligently helping me build a program that thing and I'm still trying to get a couple of the speakers in their time slots, but it's pretty much ready to go if you want to sign up for that one. It's free. Go to that cldc.com. And you'll see there's a banner for it. Learning by doing 2023. And you could join us there next week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And then what else do we have going on? That's pretty much it. We're planning the AITC events and more weekly conversations like we just had with Amanda. And with that we're gonna just sign off. Amanda, thank thanks again. Thanks, everybody for for showing up. Live to

Amanda Davison  
yeah, thanks for having me.

Luis Malbas  
All right. See ya. All right. Bye bye.

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