No More Smile Sheets with Maria Schubert and Rochelle Miller

Most workplace learning still assumes that if people understand a tool, they will know how to use it effectively, so we demonstrate software, explain workflows, and share best practice. And back at work, very little changes. We've been solving the wrong problem, and emerging technologies are making it ever more obvious! As AI and the internet makes knowledge easily accessible, we are starting to recognise that professional expertise more about making good decisions about when, why, and whether to use a tool at all, than is ever was about how to use that tool. The scarce resource is judgement, not information. This session introduces a scenario based approach to learning design which creates environments that deliberately develop judgement rather than simply transferring knowledge. I developed this approach through merging my work in education, AI governance, and workplace learning. During the session I'll show how structured constraints, authentic trade-offs and justification tasks encourage deeper reasoning than unrestricted exploration or feature demonstrations. Participants will experience examples from three very different contexts: an AI governance workshop where every decision carries genuine risk; a strategic negotiation simulation where constraints drive complex thinking; and a professional development model in which practitioners work with tools they didn't choose rather than defaulting to familiar ones. Although the examples come from education and digital transformation, the underlying principles are applicable across L&D. Whether we're introducing AI, leadership behaviours or new systems, the question is the same: are we helping people remember information, or are we helping them make better decisions? This session asks a fundamental question: what if the primary purpose of professional learning isn't knowledge transfer, but judgement development?