It’s designed to maximise sales conversions and minimise support.

Just upload a SCORM course from tools like Articulate, Captivate, Composica or Rapid Intake then set a price and paste a link into your site, twitter or email.

Course Cloud is in closed beta whilst we tidy up the interace.  To sign up please head over to www.coursecloud.cc

But budgets are tight. The business case for changing things up is hard to make.

And there’s a problem. There are lots of problems there. Surely you can’t solve them all! Is it worth the cost?

Yes, it probably is.

Because behind many of those problems – boredom, struggle, stress, etc – there is often just one problem.

Modes of Learning

Some people respond to stats. Others prefer diagrams. Others prefer social learning. Some are happy reading slabs of text. Some hate slabs of text. Some people need personal contact. Some hate it.

There are many different ways of learning.

Some say preferences vary along based on auditory, tactile, visual, and so on, preferences. Other senses are combined in different ways in different people; some people (dancers) learning through movement, for instance. Others argue that people learn different things different ways. So a particular person might learn more abstract things visually, but learn practical skills through movement.

It quickly gets complex and controversial!

One model is the “VARK” system proposed by Neil D. Fleming, an academic from New Zealand.

VARK is a questionnaire that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences. These preferences are about the ways that they want to take-in and give-out information. read more here

The questionnaire is used to work out which category of these categories a learner fits into:

• Visual (V)
• Aural (A)
• Read/write (R)
• Kinaesthetic (K)

And, finally:

• Multimodal (various combinations of V, A, R, K)

That means for each skill or concept you need to impart, you need to prepare materials that teach it in a number of different ways.

The Cost Question

This isn’t necessarily going to cost 4 or 5 times the cost of doing it just one way. But it would be getting there.

So a middle way is found to save up front costs.

One that caters to the average learner.

Of course, there is no such thing as the “average” learner. That person is a myth, a convenient notion that allows you to produce learning materials that don’t really suit anyone.

A mishmash of Vs, As, Rs and Ks randomly assembled to a budget!

But the mishmash has one big advantage. It costs less than the more sophisticated approaches.

The problem is the cost of the average materials is hidden. In longer term costs. So it doesn’t figure highly in the business analysis.

But the up front costs are there for easy comparison.

But those hidden costs are there. Added downtime as people try to learn in a way doesn’t suit them. The cost on moral of training materials designed for the lowest common denominator. Inefficient ways of handling blending learning through manual admin. Stress. Boredom. Confusion. And so on.

Fortunately, elearning can be used to analyse learners and adapt to them. Methods such as the VARK questionnaire can be applied online. This feeds useful information to the learning platform. The system can then automatically adjust to the modality that suits the learner best.

And the system can also adapt on the fly algorithmically. A learner is not passing some tests, for instance? It may be that the materials don’t suit them. Switch to a different modality and see what happens. Without manual intervention.

Great trainers do this sort of thing all the time. But the notion is really only starting to take root in elearning now. But here’s a great example: Knewton.

Of course, no approach is going to be perfect. The model for analysing peoples’ preferences will be limited. But it is better than not doing it at all. Better than not acknowledging the problem – and letting those long term costs weigh down your elearning program over time.

Making the Business Case

But how do you make the business case for a better approach? How do you convince the organisation to adopt something such as VARK?

If you can relate, say, that extra downtime to a section of the course that is hard to understand, that’s a start. What if only certain types of people find it hard to understand? Wouldn’t it make sense to balance the cost of the downtime against the cost of developing new materials for those learners? And then proving it is more efficient later on. To be able to talk in dollars and cents terms?

But gathering this sort of data can be hard work.

The next phase for enterprise elearning is linking dollars and cents to everything from training time to learner feedback, to wider business measurements, the multi modality teaching to adaptive training. And making it easy to do t without spending time and money on special reporting systems, extra admin, etc.

That is: a simple way to keep track of return on investment on things such as VARK.

And simple way to make the business case for other improvements over time.

That is what Enterprise Elearning Analytics is all about.

In fact, developers working with Facebook’s “Open Graph” protocol can now feed Facebook nearly any noun and any verb. So if you listen to a tune on Spotify, then Spotify will tell Facebook what you’re listening to and that will appear in your “timeline”.

What has this got to do with elearning?

The Project Tincan propsoal for the new SCORM API works by allowing you to use a verbs, actors and nouns in a similar way. “Chris Thompson Scored 95% on New Hire Training” for example.

The technical details are here, and introduction is here.

There is a great video here.

The fact that elearning and social network design are starting to converge technically is a very interesting development!

It’s not exciting stuff.

Some trainers just read off the slides, which makes it even worse. Some trainers generate some excitement and interest. The slides are just there reiterate what they are saying. That’s not as bad. But take the trainer away and you’re left with a set of boring slides.

Elearning often ends up being that series of boring slides.

And slide-based, next-next-next presentations are often ineffective. Knowledge retention is low. Time taken for training is too long.

Why?

• Is it the whole next-next-next approach? No.
• Lack of interaction, perhaps? Partly, but that’s not the main reason.
• Lack of exciting subject matter? Partly, but not entirely.

It’s because there is a lack of mystery.

What’s more interesting:

Handling Support Queries from Angry Customers

It is import to calm the customer down. Make sure they realise you are working on the problem. Keep the customer informed about the …

Yawn.

Or:

What makes you customers angry? You probably think you know already. But it may not be what you think …

The main reason is next-next-next slide-based course simply passes on information. Stuff the trainer has already worked out for the learners. The trainer simply says: “here it is, remember it”. And learners do. For long enough to pass the quizzes.

And then they forget it.

Passing on pre-digested knowledge doesn’t make the learner pay attention. It’s not memorable. It’s not fun.

Instead, you need to get learners to pay attention.

How do you do that?

Think about what makes people pay attention in everyday life. A sudden noise. Something out of the ordinary. Something intriguing. Something that is surprising. Something that doesn’t make sense at first — but does once all the information is available.

You need to find out what is counterintuitive and interesting about the topic. What doesn’t make sense at first. What piques peoples’ interest.

How do you work that out?

People will have certain expectations about how things should work.

Find the things that run counter to that common intuition.

The things that are new, unusual, not common knowledge. Then set up a mystery. Like you would in a detective novel, a thriller, or just a good popular science book.

And then gradually reveal the information, strange twist after the next.

So -

What makes customers angry? Often it is the the result of being toohelpful …

The level of support required changed from group to group. Sometimes everybody just sailed through. At other times there were problems like the audio volume and the restarts.

In essence, the problem was simple. Some groups had better computer skills than others. So we were seeing wild fluctuations in support required.

In the rush to get the course finished a basic tenet of elearning had been forgotten.

Every elearning course is a test of computer skill.

Can you work with a browser, a mouse, an operating system, a navigation system, and so on? Basic computer skills are a prerequisite for elearning.

But computer skills are not always necessary to master the content itself.

(The content of a course on truck maintenance, for example, has absolutely nothing to do with computer skills.)

So how do you avoid the problem?

Solving the Problem

As a general rule:

• the lower the computers skills, the more personal support interaction will be required.

That may mean phone calls. It may mean have IT staff in the same room with the learners. It may mean quick access to screen sharing.

And more personal interaction means higher costs. And that needs to be added to the cost of maintaining the course. It may even make elearning prohibitively expensive.

So, before you create a course, ask two questions.

• “What computer skills / literacy skills / etc are inherent to the content?”
• “What additional computer skills are needed just to use the course?”

If the answer is: “there are additional skills needed just to use the course”, then you need a plan to deal with that.

Identify People Lacking in Computer Skills Early

First, you need to have a way of identifying learners who don’t have the computer skills, the required level of literacy, and so on.

Sensitive topics. How do you deal with them?

We all have tech support buttons, but how do you provide support in such a way to triage lack of skill? Some ideas here.

Support Triage

Implement a basic support triage system.

At first:

• try and solve the problem by email

Think about who will do this, what sort of responses you will give, what sort of process to take on. Build support into the course itself – help buttons, phone numbers, etc. Test the process.

• talk to the learner by phone

Sometimes simple human interaction can make a big difference. Empathy and knowledge of the course is needed. So make sure support staff know the course well.

This often leads to:

• use screen sharing to help the learner

That means you need to make sure corporate firewalls, PCs, etc, allow screen sharing.

Instrumenting Courses

It is also worth “instrumenting” your courses with support in mind. So add analytics, click tracking and so on. Then you can review how learners move through courses.

More here

The Face to Face Option

Finally, if the learner is still frustrated:

• send out a workbook or provide a face to face session.

(You can still minimise paperwork and cost by having the trainer conduct this as a blended learning session with a group.)

Finally …

This may all seem like common sense!

But the question is: do you really have a plan to do all this? Can you send out workbooks if necessary? Will support staff really understand the course? Is the course structured so people can ask for help while they are doing it?

Document the process you adopt at each stage.

If you can, test the whole process with a sample cohort of testers. Ideally, test with the type of learners you expect will use the course once it’s live.

And remember: Elearning doesn’t always work for everybody. If it would just be cheaper to train people in person, do that. You can always minimise trainer paperwork using computer-based assessment tools that interact with your LMS.

But there are other things you can do. Things that can tell you a lot.

Timing

You can report on the time spent in courses and modules, too. Why is this useful?

An example. Let’s say you change a course. Modify some quizzes. You remove some material. And add some new material.

Report on the time spent in the course before the change. Report on the time takenafter the change. Have the course changes slowed down your learners? Sped them up? Does the new version of the course take more time? Then the changes may have increased training downtime.

Question Analysis

You may also find specific questions in the course are proving difficult. Most learners are getting them wrong. This could mean a few things. Perhaps the course isn’t clear enough? Perhaps the questions are badly worded? It’s also useful to report on scores for multiple test attempts. Are there any trends?

Course Version Analysis

Let’s say you decide to change your course material. Try and keep the quizzes the same. Report on pass rates before and after the change. Do pass rates go up or down? This can help you work out if your course materials are getting better or not. It is only one data point amongst many, of course. But one worth thinking about.

If you have a lot of learners, create two different versions of a quiz. Send one cohort through the first version, another through the second. Compare time taken, pass rates, etc.

Addressing Staff Knowledge Gaps

Are some staff not clear on some things, even after training? Add very specific quiz questions on those things. But keep the course material the same. It’s a good bet there will be a high fail rate with the new questions. Now modify the course materials until the failure rate trends lower.

System Reporting

Sometimes you may need to track activity outside courses and modules. You can report on overall usage, learner logins, specific activities such as forum posts, avatar changes, etc.

Let’s say a learner logs in a lot. But never spends much time doing any courses. Is the learner finding the course structure hard to navigate? Is the learner seeing a glitch? Try contacting the user to find out.

A lot of forum posts from a learner is always worth noting. Perhaps you can ask the learner to contribute to the next version of the course!

These are just some of the things you can do with reporting in Ecampus LMS.

But you also have the practical, face-to-face side. One that involves face to face training sessions. (Learners are assessed for competency during these face to face sessions, too.)

Often, the online and face to face parts are kept separate. But blending the two can yield time and cost savings, reduce paperwork and allow for more innovative approaches to learning.

“Blended learning” is a combination of online elearning and face to face training and assessment.

What Makes Blended Learning Useful

It allows students to organise their own learning. At their own pace.

So, Jeff does the online quizzes and downloads a couple of documents to review. There are a number of sessions he can attend, he opts for one on a Friday afternoon. Usually, this sort of flexibility would require admin staff time, maybe a phone call or an email. But the LMS manages it all. The trainer is notified, the student gets a confirmation email or SMS and the coordination is automated.

But it gets better.

Self Paced Learning

Jeff can decide to do module 3 first, then 2 and 4. Prior learning means module 1 is not something he has to do, so the LMS doesn’t bother him with it. Module 5 is purely practical, so he books in a session to do that right away.

Helen, on the other hand, has no prior learning. So she opts to do module 1. But she only needs to do module 1, 2 and 3. That’s all she needs for her job, according to the HR department. She likes to work through things logically, one step at a time. And she can do that.

Jeff and Helen have their own needs. It’s likely everybody in the organisation does too. Quickly, this sort of personalisation grows into a huge admin task! But if this sort of personalisation is automated all that changes.

Synchronising Elearning and Face to Face Learning

Automated administration can make things that were too hard or too costly to organise before much more practical.

The beauty of blended learning is that online and face-to-face activity can be tracked and organised via the LMS. And face to face activities can be synchronised with online activities. For example, a group might discuss some topics in an online forum.  The trainer could review that forum and use that information to plan part of a face to face session. Online assessments could be discussed during face to face training. Perhaps assessments could be adjusted – based on new evidence of competency witnessed by the trainer. Videos that act as evidence of competency could be uploaded to the LMS. Staff could discuss a days training in an online forum later in the week. And so on.

Trainers can get on with training. Learners can help to work out their own learning path. Technology is applied to online and offline learning; to reduce admin headaches and allow for more flexibility.

This means time and cost savings for the organisation. And the records to prove it.

Answering the “shelf life” question will help you select your authoring technology.  Your choice will impact the instructional design and work process so make your choice early.  Consider these options:

• Free or purchase
• Online or stand alone
• Integrated with your LMS or not
• mLearning support

So how can you choose when there are so many tools to choose from? First let’s look at the two basic approaches to creating elearning courses.

Rapid Development

Tools in this category include Articulate and Captivate.  These are wizard driven tools that give you design templates to create “page turner” courses.  You make basic layout and design changes and fill in forms to create your course.  These tools let subject matter experts to place their own content.  That’s a good thing because getting the content right is often the hardest part.

Rapid is right for subjects that can be explained using just words and simple visuals.  However, these tools do support video and basic interactions.  Many have powerful features, placing them in the middle ground between rapid and advanced.

Advanced Development

Course developers turn to full featured tools such as Flash and custom coded web apps to author advanced courses.  Immersive simulations, serious games, and software training are best tackled with advanced tools.  These tools can be expensive and complex.   However, more sophisticated features create a more engaging learner experience that can justify the additional investment.

It’s important to note you should expect at least basic SCORM support from any tool you choose.  SCORM functionality is required for LMS tracking.

Are you more than a team of one?  Tools such as SmartBuilder and Unison support collaboration.  Ecampus is cooking up some exciting news in this area which we will announce soon!

Now let’s look at some examples:

• Allus Mines is creating their first elearning induction course.  This material is simple.  It’s important.  It will not change very frequently. Use your budget on video, photography and voiceovers from employees and a rapid development tool to wrap it together.  Don’t forget to add some knowledge checks using built in interactivity types.
• Horizon Metalworks has some pricing updates for their sales training.  This material is time sensitive but is expected to expire soon. Get this material out quickly by using a rapid tool.  Track completion in the LMS. Be sure to set the mood for learning with appropriate photos.
• The Department of Qualifications Assessment needs their 2010 Silo Safety qualification course updated with 2011 standards.  The existing training is paper only.  The course will be updated every 3 years. Only 30% will be new material.  The company sees the project as a valuable investment. Go with advanced development.  Structure the content so it can be easily changed in the future.  Include simulation interactions with advanced testing.

Note the shelf life of your project. Keep this in mind to help you choose an authoring technology that streamlines your development process and helps you work more efficiently.

There’s a labour shortage in mining. According to the Daily Mercury, Boom Two is expected to increase Queensland’s coal exports by 42 per cent by 2015.

Sure, state, federal, and local employment agencies are providing training.  However, it’s not enough. We still see mining projects suspended or operating under capacity due to labour shortages.

HR departments can lead by implementing a Learning Management System (LMS). An LMS can get training under control. It can automate large parts of the induction process and minimise downtime for trainers and other staff. This makes it cost effective to expand the list of potential recruits to people who might otherwise cost too much to get up speed. How? By automating parts of the training process.

Along the way, the LMS will provide valuable ROI and compliance data.

Picture these scenarios:

• A guy comes in to your company doing unskilled labouring work. But he builds up skills with some equipment on the job. He is assessed on site and becomes qualified in that equipment.
• An experienced employee passes along his expert knowledge by creating informal on-the-job videos. He uploads them to the LMS. New staff can learn from them without requiring downtime from that experienced employee.

In each case, the company gets a committed, skilled workers. The workers get a valuable qualifications.  The company benefits by controlling of the whole process – including costs and time lost to training – with the LMS.

Learning Paths

Learning paths are a feature of Ecampus LMS that let you group a series of courses together. The learner advances through the courses on the path at his or her own pace and in his her own way. As certain elements are completed, the system records competencies in the learner’s LMS record. This progress can lead toward formal qualifications, internal promotion, and other benefits for staff.

This kind of self-paced learning means staff can manage their own training time and participate in decisions about their own training.  Best of all, the result is reduced administrative overhead and more control over the training. By monitoring  your company’s results with the system’s comprehensive reporting, you can adjust the program to meet your goals.

Be a HR superhero

The sooner you implement an effective training program built on a good LMS, the sooner you will see results.  That’s when you can start wearing the cape.  The mask might be a bit much…

It was part of a program to provide feedback to Project Tincan, the project to create the next version of the SCORM spec.

Thanks to Ben Clark and everybody else involved. Looking forward to seeing the next version of SCORM!