Field Notes: Learning at the moment of need

Most adults are already proactive learners. They Google (or ask their best AI friend), check with a colleague, watch something quick between meetings, or sign up for a course because a new challenge at work made it clear they needed to.

The question isn’t whether people are capable of directing their own learning — they already are, and in many cases, they have to be. The real question is whether the platform you give them at work supports that behaviour, or gets in the way.

Most learning platforms were designed around a model that prioritises structure: learning is assigned, completed, and tracked. That model still plays an essential role, especially for compliance, onboarding, and any training that needs to be consistent across an organisation.

At the same time, the way people learn day to day looks very different. It’s rarely a full course, taken start to finish in a single sitting. More often, it’s something smaller and more immediate — a concept, a task, a quick explanation that helps someone continue on with what they’re doing. This is where approaches like microlearning have gained traction, making it easier to access short, focused pieces of learning when they’re needed.

But while learning often happens in smaller pieces, development doesn’t.

People don’t just need isolated content; they need to build capability over time. They need to see how one piece of learning connects to the next, how a set of small steps adds up to something more meaningful.

This is where many learning environments start to feel fragmented. Courses exist, and they can be well designed, but the connections between them aren’t always visible. It’s not always clear what builds on what, or where a particular area of learning might lead.

For that, learners need more than access to individual courses. They need to be able to see the landscape of learning available to them as something connected and navigable.

They need to recognise that a structured pathway of courses (over here at Moodle we call this a Program) around something like project management, leadership, or a new tool — exists, and decide to start it at the moment it becomes relevant.

In Moodle Workplace, that place to explore learning is the Learning Catalogue. The Learning Catalogue is where learners can see what’s available, explore what’s relevant, and discover featured learning that helps them decide where to go next. But until now, the Catalogue has only shown individual courses.

Programs — the structures that bring those smaller pieces together into a coherent journey — weren’t visible there. If someone wanted to take a Program, they needed to be assigned to it. Discovery wasn’t really part of the experience.

That changes in Moodle Workplace 5.2.

In Moodle Workplace 5.2, Programs live in the Catalogue alongside courses. Learners can browse them, search them, filter them, and self-enrol into a full learning pathway with a single click.

So the leadership development pathway your L&D team has been building? It’s no longer something you have to push out to people. It’s something they can find the moment they’re ready for it.

That single click matters more than it seems. The shift from “I was assigned this” to “I chose this” is small in practice, but enormous where motivation is concerned. 

The research backs it up. The conversations we have with admins back it up. And — frankly — the way your people treat their own learning every day backs it up. The same person who skims a mandatory course will read every word of one they picked themselves.

Letting your people choose doesn’t mean L&D loses influence. It means L&D’s role changes — from pushing content out to curating what’s worth choosing, so people can find their own way.

Moodle Workplace 5.2 also brings Featured Learning for Programs, giving L&D teams a way to spotlight specific learning pathways directly in the Catalogue — whether that’s an AI upskilling community of practice, a leadership development track for aspiring managers, or training for a newly launched tool. It helps guide people toward learning that matters right now, without forcing them through a rigid assignment process.

The shift from assigning to inviting is good for learners. It’s also pretty powerful for the people whose job it is to think about learning in their organisation.

When people self-enrol into Programs, you learn something you couldn’t learn before: what your workforce actually wants to grow into. Which pathways draw interest. Which skills people are gravitating toward without being told. Which Programs need a little more visibility to gain traction. The Catalogue stops being a delivery mechanism and starts being a feedback loop.

The day-to-day burden eases, too. Programs that used to require manual enrolment, manager approval, or one-off requests can now run themselves. People find what they need. You spend less time pushing, and more time curating.

Compliance training still needs to be assigned. Onboarding still benefits from automation. Some learning is, by definition, mandatory — and Moodle Workplace’s tools for managing prescribed learning haven’t gone anywhere. Rather than replacing assigned learning, Programs in the Catalogue should be viewed as an addition: a second mode of operating, complementing the original.

The point isn’t that everything should be self-chosen. The point is that the most important learning — the development that turns into real capability, the growth that drives retention, the skills that show up in someone’s next role — almost always is.

When people can see what’s available, understand how it connects, and choose to step into it themselves, learning becomes less about completing what’s required, and more about continuing what’s useful. Less about isolated courses, and more about progression over time.

It’s not removing structure that creates that shift, but making what’s possible with learning visible – and giving people the space to act on it.

Check out the on-demand webinar Learning that keeps them: Inclusive design strategies for employee retention. This session, presented with Moodle Certified Integration ReadSpeaker, explores how small design choices — from navigation and cognitive load to learning discovery and self-directed pathways — can improve engagement, completion, and confidence across your workforce. You’ll also see practical examples from Moodle Workplace, including the Learning Catalogue and Programs in action.

And you’re thinking about how to give your people more ownership over their learning — or you just want to see the Learning Catalogue in action — we’d love to talk.