Session Details

EXPOA101: You're Not Starting From Scratch: Modernizing Learning Across a Complex Learning Ecosystem

November 4, 2026 9:15 am - 9:45 am

Most learning teams aren't building from a blank slate. They're working inside an ecosystem that already exists: hundreds of courses, multiple business owners and SMEs, compliance requirements, frontline training needs, and years of legacy content with unclear ownership or relevance.

U-Haul University supports a large, distributed workforce and faces exactly this. Gwen O’Neil, Director, U-Haul University, shares how her team is approaching modernization without starting over. That includes evaluating what's already in place, establishing clearer ownership and governance, building a more consistent development lifecycle, and using data to understand the real health of the learning ecosystem.

She'll also cover a question a lot of teams get wrong: where different learning solutions fit, and when a course isn't the answer at all.

Mark Schuster, Head of Product at CYPHER Learning, joins to discuss what a modern learning platform needs to support this kind of work, and where AI realistically fits into an established ecosystem today versus where it's still more promise than practice.

If you've inherited a learning environment you didn't build and need a practical path forward, this session is for you.

During this session, you will learn:

  • How to audit an existing course library and decide what to keep, rebuild, retire, or consolidate
  • A practical approach to governance that clarifies ownership between L&D, business owners, and SMEs
  • How to establish a consistent development lifecycle when requests come from many directions at once
  • Which data signals actually show the health of a learning ecosystem, beyond completion rates
  • A way to match the right learning solution to the need instead of defaulting to building a course
  • Where AI can realistically support an established learning ecosystem today, and where it is still maturing
Topic/Track: Leadership & StrategyLevel: Intermediate/AdvancedFormat: LIVE from DevLearn Expo Stage Session (30 Min.)