Roundtable: The Missing Middle: Turning Learning into Performance

AI makes polished work easy to generate, so finishing a learning program now tells you even less about what someone can actually do. Durable skills are where the stakes are highest. Judgment, critical thinking, curiosity, and adaptability are the most valued skills, and also the hardest to see and measure. The answer requires redesigning learning around practice, feedback, and the productive struggle AI can quietly remove.

You know which learning experiences your people completed, and you can measure the business results that follow. What’s harder to see is everything in between: whether anyone practiced, received actionable feedback, or was ready to apply a new skill when it mattered. That’s the distance between exposure and proof.

Join us for an interactive discussion with Marcy Baughman, VP of Learning Science and Research at Macmillan, who will share what the evidence says about how skills transfer from understanding to real use. We will then move into a facilitated roundtable discussion, where you’ll compare notes with BHEF peers from industry and education on how you’re approaching the problem, what’s working, and where you’re still stuck.

Intended outcomes

You’ll leave with:

• Practical criteria for judging whether a program is intended for transfer or for exposure, including whether it builds in practice, feedback, and room to struggle productively
• A clearer view of how peers across industry and higher education are defining and measuring capability
• New questions, and possibly new collaborators, for the problems you haven’t solved yet
• The opportunity to shape the next steps for how we address this work through BHEF’s AI and Future of Talent Collaborative
• One change worth testing in a program you run today

To inquire about attending as a guest, please contact john.ruzicka@bhef.com

BHEF Roundtables bring together our network partners for conversations on emerging opportunities and innovations shaping the future of work and pathways between education and work. Designed to encourage peer exchange and practical insight-sharing, these sessions create space for participants to explore real-world strategies and discuss evolving trends. These sessions are intended for BHEF Network Partners and invited guests only. Topics are announced a few weeks before each session.