Engineering the Future of Digital Learning with Tom Riendeau скачать в хорошем качестве

Engineering the Future of Digital Learning with Tom Riendeau

Tom Riendeau, Vice President of Workforce Learning and Skills at Magic EdTech, joins Work Forces to discuss the critical infrastructure powering the future of online education. While AI dominates the headlines, Riendeau argues that many organizations are still held back by "static" legacy content that fails to engage the modern learner. The conversation explores the operational reality of digital transformation, from improving student retention by streamlining the user experiences to using AI as a "smart assistant" for curriculum design. Riendeau emphasizes the importance of moving beyond transactional vendor relationships to find partners who can "see around corners," anticipating challenges like cybersecurity risks and accessibility compliance before they become crises. He offers practical advice for leaders on how to thread "durable skills" into technical training and build scalable learning ecosystems that truly support career advancement. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. Julian Alssid: We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, in so many of our recent podcast conversations, we have discussed AI and its impact on the future of work and learning. We are all grappling with where this new technology will take us and its long-term impacts on education and the workforce. However, we have spent less time exploring the very platforms and tools that support effective online learning at its core. Kaitlin LeMoine: Indeed. While online learning feels ubiquitous and like it has just “always been there,” many organizations still hold on to static content—PDFs, textbooks, traditional curricula—that simply wasn't built for today's digital-first, immersive learning environments. And other institutions have adopted advanced technology solutions, but find themselves challenged by how to most effectively integrate tools into one seamless platform or experience. Julian Alssid: To really modernize, you need partners who can engineer that transformation. It requires deep expertise in both learning design and software engineering, and you need teams that can build everything from custom platforms to AR simulations to fully accessible digital content at scale. Kaitlin LeMoine: Which brings us to our guest today. We're joined by Tom Riendeau, Vice President of Workforce Learning and Skills at Magic EdTech, a provider of AI-powered digital learning solutions. Tom has spent over 35 years driving enterprise growth at the intersection of learning, technology, and workforce transformation. He has served as a trusted partner to higher education institutions, career training providers, and EdTech companies, enabling them to reimagine their content. And we’re looking forward to speaking with him today! Tom, welcome to Work Forces. Tom Riendeau: Thank you so much. This is a terrific opportunity and I’m thrilled to be here. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Tom, to kick us off, please tell us a bit more about your background and what led you to your role at Magic EdTech. Tom Riendeau: Sure. You know, I have always been focused on education; that was the goal coming out of my undergraduate years. But I student taught and then said, I want to do something different. And I was very fortunate to get a job as an academic advisor at one of the first what we would call online universities in the early 1990s. And I had a really special moment there. I was an academic advisor to nursing students—and at that time that institution was set up to direct students to learning that already existed in their local communities and aggregate it into a college degree. I spent almost my entire day on the phone with students. And I was on the phone with a student who was pursuing her nursing degree, and she burst into tears on me. And she started to tell me about what was going on in her life and how if she didn’t finish her nursing degree by the summer, all of the disaster that would mean not only for her, but for her children, and how she was newly a single parent and all of the stress. So it wasn’t even an education conversation at that point; it was...