On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show.  You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center of the SyberWorks web site.

Press Release:

The e-Learning Lingo Podcast #114: "Generative Learning Model"

Blog:

e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series Blog

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
 SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
 SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
 e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Learning Management System

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I have also posted it below:

Spreading the e-Learning Word (Part 1)

By David Boggs, CEO and Founder of SyberWorks, Inc.

The Web is where many of our customers and users will increasingly “live” for their information needs. This means that anything we do to both deliver e-Learning and spread the word about our products and services “over the Cloud” will both serve our audiences and build our businesses.

Most of us already deliver e-Learning over the Web in a variety of ways, but the following Web channels also may be used to promote our products and services:

• Search engines
• Web blogs
• Webinars
• Wikis
• YouTube

These are all places where your e-Learning business can live on the Web to good advantage. But people must first be able to find you there. So let’s first discuss:

Search Engines

Remember when your parents bought their first encyclopedia, to bring the world’s knowledgebase into your home? How times have changed. Now, the Web itself is the world’s knowledgebase, and engines like Google are its keyword-searchable Index. In a very real sense, if an e-Learning product or service isn’t widely present (and readily found) on the Web, it doesn’t exist.

Why do I add “readily found”? Because peoples’ willingness to wade through masses of text (and pages of Google hits) is limited. So even if you do have a Web presence, you also need to worry about where you show up in browser search results.

Even I rarely venture past the first three pages of Google hits. So in effect, three Google pages (about 36 items) is my personal Search Horizon. And if your firm’s products or services fall beyond it in my searches, then you’ve fallen off the edge of my informational world. I won’t know you exist until a different search pulls you inside my Search Horizon.

And the key to making that happen is to broaden your presence on the Web, increase your organization’s “hit rate,” and raise your position in search-result lists. This article and the next will help you do just that, by promoting yourself on as many different Web sites as are appropriate for your products and marketing plans.

Web Blogs

Blogs are basically online chat rooms about specific topics. Google any area of interest to you, your company, or its markets, and you’ll probably find online blogs that are already discussing it. Track those that seem well targeted to your markets. Watch them. And as much as possible, throw in your own expert comments, advice, and product links. Or if you see a need, consider starting your own targeted blog.

Every time you post a blog comment (or use any of the other web sites we’ll discuss), you add a tiny piece to your presence on the Web. Google and other browsers can find these pieces, and by scattering as many of them across the Web as possible, you’ll gradually draw yourself into potential customers’ Search Horizons.

Webinars

“Web-based seminars” are done in so many ways, using so many technologies, that a summary cannot do them justice. They’re like Online, Instructor-Led classes, delivered in real-time to free or paying customers or prospects. They may be lectures, workshops, or presentations delivered across the Web, and usually involve audience interaction (which differentiates them from “webcasts”).

Just Google “webinar” and you’ll find millions of links about them and specific webinar offerings. But also examine your own LMS/LCMS system. It may already include web-conferencing capabilities that you can use to deliver your own webinars to both prospects and customers, both quickly and inexpensively.

The bottom line here (as elsewhere) is that if your products or services lend themselves to promotion via webinars, consider trying them.

Wikis

When you Google a topic of interest to you, your company, or its markets, you’ll frequently find related Wikis at or near the top of your results. That’s because so many other people have found and viewed them. So when you do, check them out. And if you see anything blatantly incomplete or incorrect in them, fix it, and make sure your firm’s name and products are at least mentioned in your addition. (By definition, you can edit most Wikis once you “join” them.) Who knows, you may even decide to write and post your own Wiki.

Either way, you’ll expand your firm’s promotion and presence on the Web, and make it easier for existing and potential customers to find you there.

YouTube

This is a great place to make promotional videos available for anyone around the world to view. More can be said about this than a short article permits. And not all e-Learning products lend themselves to promotional videos. But if your products or services could be promoted through short videos, then get to know YouTube.

The above are only a few of the more “mainstream” Web avenues for getting your organization and its e-Learning products before your audiences. In Part 2, we’ll explore some less obvious channels, ones that you might not have considered!

About the Author:

David Boggs is the Found and CEO of SyberWorks, Inc. in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has been involved with computer and web-based training for more than twenty years. Before founding SyberWorks, Dave was the VP of Sales and Business Development for Relational Courseware. He holds a BS in Physics from Union College in Schenectady, NY, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

About SyberWorks, Inc.:

SyberWorks, Inc. is a leader in the custom e-Learning Solutions and Learning Management System/Learning Content Management System (LMS/LCMS) industries for Fortune 1000 corporations, law enforcement, healthcare, and other industries. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions to create, manage, measure, and improve e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and around the world.

Here is the pdf version of Spreading the e-Learning Word (Part 1).

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
 SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
 SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
 e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Learning Management System

 Join the SyberWorks Learning Management Technology Group on Linkedin
 Follow SyberWorks on Twitter

e-Learning Lingo Podcast:

Items of Interest:

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series:

SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast:

SyberWorks News & Events:

SyberWorks Media Center Presents a New Article: “Web 3.0, Schmeb 3.0”

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
 SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
 SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
 e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Learning Management System

 Join the SyberWorks Learning Management Technology Group on Linkedin
 Follow SyberWorks on Twitter

On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show.  You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center of the SyberWorks web site.

Press Release:

The e-Learning Lingo Podcast #113: "Uniform Resource Identifier"

Blog:

e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series Blog

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
 SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
 SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
 e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Learning Management System

 Join the SyberWorks Learning Management Technology Group on Linkedin
 Follow SyberWorks on Twitter

I have also posted it below:

“Distributor-Modeled” Training

By Steve Pena, Instructional Designer and Implementation Consultant for SyberWorks, Inc.

Can your distribution partners access your training-services infrastructure, to quickly train their employees about your products, while also building a university-like organization to deliver and track training of their (and your) end customers? In a distributor-oriented organization, your LMS should be able to support many levels of such “Distributor-Modeled” training… and deliver benefits to you, your distributors, and your customers.

At the simplest level, your distributors would be able to send people to your LMS training site, and have them registered as customers of each distributor (as shown in Figure 1). This would allow you to generate reports about courses delivered, classroom scheduling, and training results for each distributor’s customers over the past month, quarter, and year. It will also allow you to create more complex training solutions for heavy users of your training services, while being able to identify distributors who might benefit from special training promotions.

Figure 1: Distributors push their customers to your LMS.

The next logical step would be to give distributors themselves restricted administrative access to your LMS (Figure 2). In the simplest implementation of this model, the distributors would be able to:

• Modify training accounts for their own customers.
• Assign online training.
• Enroll customers in your LMS' scheduled classes.

And on a more advanced level, distributors could:

• Assign Training Certificate Competencies and their related learning events to their customers.
• Create and run their own onsite training sessions.

Figure 2: Distributors have restricted administrative access to your LMS:

This model will improve your relationship with distributors, enable you to provide them with more services, and reduce the training-administration overhead for your company. Some of the advanced services it also enables are:

• Linking a class with a specific distributor, so that only that company can enroll its customers in the class.
• Customizing training catalogs, with a reduced set of courses/classes and/or individualized course/class pricing for specific distributors.
• Offering these catalogs with either a prepaid training-account that end customers can tap, or a standard e-Commerce “customer pays” set up.
• Allowing distributors to order training for their customers.
• Creating special reports to track the training and certifications of distributors’ customers.
• Setting up customized user-interface paths for distributor-administrators, to control their access to specific LMS functions.

This model also allows you to create a “Super Administrator” role for more advanced distributors, which allows them to perform such functions as:

• Creating classes.
• Entering class results.
• Creating user accounts.

And finally, to extend this Distributor Model to an advanced level, think about branding separate campuses for each distributor (Figure 3). This allows you to create completely separate, distributor-branded training sites for each distributor within your LMS, while still permitting you to do complete rollups of all their training information and results.

Figure 3: An advanced distributor-branded implementation

Among this model’s advantages are that it allows distributors to:

• Keep their corporate branding throughout all customer training materials.
• Create one-to-many levels of structured reporting, allowing each distributor to produce hierarchical training reports for its own operation.
• Receive a single point of contact in your company, with Registrar rights and privileges, to help distributors maintain their training operations.

So if they fit into your operation, these three levels of Distributor-Modeled training can improve your relationships with your distributors and provide them with much better levels of service, support, and training functionality. These models can also both save you money (through reduced administrative costs) and increase revenues (through branded training campuses).

About the Author:

Steve Pena is a Senior Instructional Designer and Implementation Consultant at SyberWorks, Inc., Waltham, Mass.

About SyberWorks:

SyberWorks, Inc. is a leader in providing Learning Management Systems and custom e-Learning Solutions for Fortune 1000 corporations, higher education, and other organizations. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions for creating, managing, measuring, and improving e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries.

Here is the pdf version of “Distributor-Modeled” Training.

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
 SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
 SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
 e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Learning Management System

 Join the SyberWorks Learning Management Technology Group on Linkedin
 Follow SyberWorks on Twitter