1. A very structured site with an individual learning plan, with step-by-step instructions for learning one’s job (analogous to a degree program at a university)

…or

2. A site full of learning opportunities with articles, reference books, video-based content, FAQ boards, user-generated content, all neatly tagged and ready to be consumed (analogous to walking into a library, where learning is just waiting to happen).

Most learning professional would say they want both, but that’s where things get interesting. There are loads of discussions about how to merge the best of structured learning and informal learning, which has caused learning technologies to react the best they can. Learning Management System providers are adding informal learning tools to their infrastructure; however, most of what I’ve seen to date places informal learning as a support module to individual learning plans and structured learning…and NOT as the entry point (what learners see first).

The purpose of this blog is to let you know about a whole new class of enterprise learning tools that I’ve been seeing lately that are dramatically changing the front end experience, where learners log into the portal site and it feels more like walking into a library of information than into a structured class with additional resources. I’m not sure what to even call this class of software. They still have LMS functionality, but really aren’t designed to conform to the old notion of how LMS’s function.

Here are some of the systems that have caught my attention in this space:

Instancy (www.instancy.com). They call their system as On-Demand, Learning Portal. Created by industry insider Harvey Singh. When you go inside their system, it feel much more like a transactional webpage and not so much like an LMS.

Mzinga (www.mzinga.com). This company was formerly called KnowledgePlanet. They created a whole new front-end portal interface and they call their system “On-Demand, Social Software.” Their LMS is still part of the mix but not the main learning interface unless learners dive into structured courses. This isn’t just an informal learning add in. It is now their flagship product.

Xerceo (www.xerceo.com). This company built their “Social Learning Network” software from the ground up on the idea that learning is a social activity and that the role of an LMS is to launch, track and report; but is not the best metaphor for sharing learning.

Sclipo (www.sclipo.com). Also calls their system a “Social Learning Network.” What’s cool about this system is that individuals can connect learners with learning resources inside the system based on dialog and discussion. Most interesting is how they’ve also carried over the learning environment into Facebook.

Blue Mango Learning Systems (www.bluemangolearning.com). Blue Mango adds a twist to on-demand learning. The system was created specifically for customer support reps to share the learning experience with customers. Customer service staff creates personalized tutorials and guides for customers, even as they engage with them on the phone.

Again, you see why the LMS moniker simply doesn’t describe these systems, although ultimately the task is about providing meaningful learning experiences.

I would like to keep adding to this list as a resource for others. If you know of a system that provides an alternate front-end experience for learners, please either submit a comment or email me a link to add to this site.

On a side note, in my consulting I’m not running into too many companies who are willing to make such dramatic changes to the learning experience. The most common reasons site as to why they don’t want to make the switch include:

1. We want to be the subject matter authority and are not willing to relinquish control
2. Collaboration can lead to a waste of time. We need people to learn their jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible.
3. Legal issues. If we allow users to create content, they could add things that are not-accurate leading to liability issues if the information comes through our learning site.
4. Information overload. People are already finding it hard enough to find the learning they need. We don’t want to confuse the issue further opening the floodgates to more information.
5. If we provide access to more informal learning resources, how to we track, measure and know that it is helping.

There are some valid issues here and questions that should be raised when mapping out your overall learning strategy.

Why is that? How can we better use music in learning, even for stuff that may seem relatively routine?

Check out the following video as an example of gaining attention for something that we hear all the time. Do you think you might have paid more attention in this situation?

Next time you see me at a conference, just ask. I’d be happy to thrill and amaze you by naming all the books in the Bible, in order, in less than 30 seconds.

I look forward to seeing your future, rap-based tutorials!

Here is the URL for the video, for those of you on my blog subscription list who have commented that embedded video isn’t showing up in the email versions - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivjybzdXVmI&feature=player_embedded

Here is a chart from the RAND study showing some of the most predominant obstacles:

I was fortunate to be able to assist the RAND team as they collected data for this research study, having been a long time participant and observer in best case uses of LCMS.

The RAND report is available for free download. Click here to go to the download page. Don’t be confused, they do offer a printed version of the report for sale, but the full PDF version can be downloaded for free.

Enjoy. This is an important work for the learning industry!

Enter, Siftables. Have you seen them? Very cool. Check out the video below.

It would be fun to put this idea in front of a bunch of instructional designers and see how they might propose using Siftables for common training tasks. I like the examples they show in the video, but can you come up with some more ideas for how they could be used creatively.

If you do, please leave a comment to this blog message sharing your idea.

I’ll start off. For teaching history, what if you let learners reconstruct a timeline in the right sequence. When they move them out of sequence, perhaps an outcome block on the far right of the timeline could predict how the outcome might have changed given the change in sequence. Perhaps other alternate events could be shuffled in to see the change that might occur. How fun would that be?

You ideas?

P.S. How coincidental that the inventor is named “David Merrill?” — same name as one of the instructional design greats.

http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=72-1

I recently participated in a panel where the question was asked “how long does it take to work through the LMS selection process?” The first consultant, who I greatly admire, and with a vast amount of experience in helping companies work through the LMS selection process quickly replied that in his experience, the process usually takes about one year to “do it right.” He went on to explain that LMS systems and process can be very complex and that there are some tough decisions to be made. TRUE!

However, I started feeling a bit uneasy, because for the last 9 years of specializing in LMS selection and touting services that walk through the entire process from beginning to end in about 2 1/2 months; I began to wonder what is the big difference between his process and mine. The general model looked somewhat similar, but there was one major difference. In my model, I have learned the value of moving the demo upfront, rather than waiting until after the RFP. It makes all the difference in the world.

Here is the 5-step model I strongly recommend (whether someone uses our services or not). I have tweaked and refined this model for many years now and it works.

Step 1: Short Listing. With over 140 LMS’s on the market, you will spend way too much time chasing down possible leads for the project unless you narrow the field right up front. The biggest mistake made during this phase is creating massive feature and functions list and then starting to weigh them against every system available. I have seen such documents with feature numbering in the thousands. In fact, I just saw a recent document with statements such as “The system shall allow a learner to log on to the learning environment.” Yikes. Have you ever heard of an LMS that doesn’t already do this? The process for short listing is so much more straightforward than all that. Just come up with some highly differentiating characteristics of your learning infrastructure or project. Make a small list of such critical needs. Our team works to keep the number to 10-20 items maximum. For example, one recent client wanted to build a customer-facing learning environment where their customers could self register and set up a learning account and their information would also set up a customer profile in SalesForce CRM. So, the critical needs list included (1) Looking for LMS vendors with experience working with SalesForce, (2) LMS must have e-commerce capability, and (3) potential users must be able to browse the LMS catalog before they create a profile/account. With these few items, the list was narrowed very quickly. Overall, I like to try to narrow the list to somewhere between 3 to 5 systems max during this phase.

Short listing is also where the Brandon Hall Research, LMS Knowledgebase comes in extremely handy. It has all the tools you need to quickly narrow your list. Click here for more information.

Step 2: Use Cases. Use cases are very different than features/functions. In fact, when I’m meeting with a stakeholder group for the first time; whenever someone throws out a feature, I make them tell me a story about how they plan to use that feature from beginning to end. Writing down the story is the use case. When the use case document is complete, it is a bigger story telling exactly how the LMS will be used. The document is written as a script for the 3 to 5 vendors selected during the short list phase. The purpose is that you want the vendor to come in and show how they might fit into this storyline. Consider how this is so fundamentally different than a typical LMS solution demo you might get if such a document did not exist. I generally try to keep use case documents down to around 10 pages in length. The idea is that the vendor should be able to tell the story in apx. 4 hours (length of the demo). I also refer to this part of the process as the “speed dating” phase. Spending 4 hours with each of the vendors quickly lets you know if they are a match or not.

Step 3: Scripted Vendor Demos. I put the demo much sooner in the process than traditional models of due dilligence. There are many reasons to do this: (1) it helps members of the stakeholder team solidfy in their common vision by seeing 3 to 5 different approaches to their common needs, (2) the vendor is much more focused on client needs from the very beginning (no dance of formality), (3) vendors walk away from the experience much better equiped to write a proposal/bid for the project, (4) the stakeholder team is much better prepared to read proposals (visualizing systems that they’ve already seen in action, and (5) it exposes issues such as “ease of use,” “visual appeal” and other subjective measures right up front. Something that is hard to capture through the RFP/Proposal process.

Step 4: RFP Development. By moving the demo ahead of the RFP, writing the RFP just became about 10 times easier. You write the RFP to the use cases and storyline. Certainly you can add detail to the story, but this is so much better than pasting in an Excel spreadsheet with 500 features all ranked from “must have,” to “nice to have” to “future need.” The vendors, instead of pencil whipping your included features list (”yes, we do that”) will tell you how they fit in your story and also what it will cost to reach that goal. So much better!

Step 5: Evaluate Proposals. When the proposals come in, you can go through the traditional process of grading their responses, but with the demo occuring prior to RFP, you have a very good idea about what they mean when they saw “yes, we have e-commerce,” because you’ve actually seen their model of e-commerce and you have an opinion about how well it will work into your processes.

The idea is to use the five steps to narrow the list to one (or perhaps two systems) before spending valuable time going extremely deep into the system, through sandbox testing, extensive discussions with the vendor, negotiations, etc.

Back to the orginal question. How does this all boil down into 2 1/2 months. Here’s how:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Week 5:

Week 6:

Week 7:

Week 8:

Week 9:

Week 10:

How long does it take to select an LMS?

Answer = 2 1/2 months

Click on this image to see a larger version. NOTE: You are welcome to use this in your presentations, just please quote the source. Thanks!

Although there is clearly a big group that hasn’t dipped their toe in the informal learning pool, the surprise is the number of organizations who classify their informal learning strategy as “rogue” at best. This supports what I’ve been seeing anecdotally over the past year. There still seems to be heavy resistance by those who oversee corporate learning strategy to fully embrace (or at least spend money on) informal learning programs.

Anyway, I thought this would be an interesting datapoint to share (data junkie that I am). Enjoy!

One of the funnest things about working in this industry is all of the innovation that occurs, especially when it is low-cost, or better yet free. For a while now I’ve had a blog on my blog roll that is one of the best indices for free stuff out there, created by a friend and colleague, Zaid Ali Alsagoff, who I met while teaching a workshop in Malaysia. He has the uncanny ability to find useful tools, services, etc. that are mostly free and readily available on the web.

Just recently, he compiled the best-of-the-best recommendations into an e-book. And wouldn’t you guess….it’s a FREE download. I thought some of you might enjoy this resource, so I’m linking to Zaid’s document from here.

Click here to download the FREE e-book.

You can find Zaid’s full blog at: http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

I’m still a strong advocate of LCMS. That’s why I’m intrigued with today’s announcement that Outstart has acquired Eedo, clearly the number 1 and 2 players in the space. Industry pundits have long predicted consolidation of learning technology providers, but anytime two leaders merge, it’s big news.

Click here to see the full announcement.

For years, I have admired the leadership and direction of both organizations. I really look forward to see what comes next. Putting these two thought leaders together should result in dramatic evolution of next generation learning content management. This is great news for the industry and I wish the new combined entity all the best!

It’s survey time again. Do you teach computer programming skills where you work? If you do, please download the following survey (Word format), answer the questions, and return to me as soon as possible.

Click Here… to download the survey

Everyone who participates in the survey will receive a free benchmark.

We are gathering best practice information on how computer programming skills are taught inside organizations and trying to answer the following questions:

1. Do you expect all employees to have a full array of programming skills when they walk through the door, or do you provide structured courses to teach specific programming skills?

2. If so, what areas do you focus on?

3. Do you create the training inhouse or buy training from a 3rd party provider?

4. Do you use e-learning to teach programming skills or are they most often taught in a classroom?

5. Finally, if you are using some good courses, can you tell us which ones are the best.

Again, everyone benefits from this level of benchmarking because we can all learn something from each other. Think how powerful it would be to know (1) what technical areas companies focus on most, (2) the mix of e-learning vs. classroom, and (3) receive a list of the courses that companies use the most.

The deadline for submission is May 16th, but we welcome your submission after the fact.

Please feel free to pass along the survey to someone else in your company if they may be in a better position to answer the questions. You can be assured that your company information or your own contact information will not appear in the benchmarking report. All the results will be tallied and summarized (so you can’t tell which company the information is coming from).

We will send around the benchmarking results by the end of May. Thanks!