Online Training, Learning Management System, Blog. Litmos

Share Screencasts with Screenjelly

2009-07-07T16:30:00.000-07:00

Today on TechCrunch there's a review of a cool new browser-based app called Screen Jelly that has just launched today.

It's from the same people that brought us ScreenToaster and it allows you to record and share short screencasts. You can capture 3 minutes of screen content (video & audio) which you can then tweet out a link to or you can use the link to put content in to your Litmos online courses.

@Schnicker

Online Learning More Effective than Face to Face

2009-07-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

The results of a new Meta-Analysis & Review of Online Studies released June 26th 2009 by the U.S. Department of Education suggests that online learning at a higher education level, is more effective than face to face learning.

"The overall finding of the meta-analysis is that classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction." (pg.18)

Students in the study completed the same courses online and under face to face instruction and while online learning proved highly successful, the most effective of all was a "blended learning" solution combining elements of both online and face to face. Three factors emerged as variables in the contrasting types of learning: time, pedagogy and curriculum.

'Time' was one reason why online learning proves to be so successful, because it allows for students to go at their own pace instead of one pace for the whole group. The report states: "Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning" (xv).

Another pattern that emerged was that video and quizzes in online learning did not seem to increase learning effectiveness. However, more interactive media and objects where the student was in the driver seat did: "Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection." (xvi)

There are far too many interesting findings for me to list here, but for a nice summary of the meta-analysis take a look at Scott Jaschik's article The Evidence on Online Education, or click here for the full 93-page report.

@Schnicker

Online Compliance Training is the New Black

2009-06-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

With today's economy not looking so hot, classroom-based (or face-to-face) training is not always the most cost-effective or feasible option for many companies. More recently it is compliance training that's moved online for a number of reasons, one of the most persuasive being the ability to maintain an accurate record of employee training completion and results.

Compliance training is put in place to educate employees about laws, regulations and general company standards. It will hopefully reduce the risk of legal issues resulting from wrong-doing by an employee. Evidence that your trainees have completed this training is often imperative to maintaining a defense against legal action and it can ensure that legal responsibility sits squarely on the shoulders of your employee, not the company.

A large percentage of Litmos customers use our online training platform to deliver compliance training messages to employees, as well as other more specialized courses. Compliance training can be anything from sexual harassment to Occupational Health and Safety, in the office, or on a construction site.

Required online training does not have to be synonymous with 'boring' either. Online training courses can always be made more exciting by incorporating varied media like videos, Flash, PowerPoint presentations, audio, surveys and assessments. There is a wealth of information on here to help you design interesting courses, create engaging training videos, and build PowerPoint presentations that won't put your trainees to sleep. Take a little time to check out some of our blog topics listed on the right side of this page.

@Schnicker

Share Your Litmos Courses with the World

2009-06-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

You'll notice on your personal course listing page that we've provided a "Share" button at the bottom of your course listings.

When you click on this button you can instantly share a link to your courses via Facebook, Twitter, Digg, MySpace and a number of other social destinations which means you can spread the word about your courses even further across the globe! This is the perfect tool for everyone selling courses online.

Here at Litmos this is just one more way that we're working to help our customers publicize, advertise and monetize their hard work and course creations!

@Schnicker

Litmos Course Listing Widget

2009-06-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

As a follow on from yesterday's post which introduced our latest new customer feature - personal course listing pages - here's some further detail on how to incorporate your personal course listing page in to a website or blog.

Can I insert my course listing page in to my blog or website?
You can! Check our Help Guide for all the instructions you need to get your Litmos course listing widget up on your site or blog.

Easy!

@Schnicker

Advertise and Publicize Courses in Litmos

2009-06-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

Until now the only way to advertise the courses Litmos customers had created and wanted to sell was via their own website.

But things have changed.

Today, we've released a feature which now gives each and every one of our customers their own personal course listing page! But it doesn't end there. Each page is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), which means it has been built in the best possible way to be found by potential students and trainees that use search engines like Google.

How do I set it up?
No need! If you're a Litmos customer with eCommerce enabled on your account, then your course listing page is automatically generated and populated with those eCommerce enabled courses in your account. To take a look at your personal course listing page just go to:

http://your-unique-web-address.litmos.com/courses/

('your unique web address' is the unique login url you chose on sign up i.e. your company name)

Litmos customers who do not have eCommerce enabled on their accounts yet will need to take a quick look at our Help Guide to set it up, then you too will have a course listing page.

The reason why we've built this new feature is to provide our Litmos customers with an effective way to advertise and publicize the courses that they spend so much time and effort creating. It's often just about getting the word out there to potential students, and this is just one way to do it.

The next few blog posts will outline more ways to make the course listing page work for you..

@Schnicker

5 Things I Learned from Edward de Bono

2009-06-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, in a stroke of luck, I won a ticket from Flokka (online blog community for women in business) to see Edward de Bono speak at a half-day seminar.

For those of you who aren't familiar, Edward de Bono is a very well-known 'Maltese physician, author, inventor and consultant who's the originator of the term 'lateral thinking'' (Wikipedia). He is best known for coming up with creative ways to approach the same problem and tricks to sharpen your thinking.

Now, there's only so much he could cover in a few hours, so really I felt he just scratched the surface of a bunch of his ideas. Probably the most useful part was all the exercises he had us do as a group on each table, which really worked to emphasize the different ways to view and think about a topic or problem.

I've skimmed over my notes and these are the 5 main points that I took away from his seminar:

Creative thinking is a learned skill, not a talent
Always sell the benefits - not the novelty - of your idea
Understand the values of the people already buying your product and you're ahead of the market (In response to my question - what question should a small but solid brand be asking itself to draw out the characteristic that makes it exceptional in a competitive market?)
90% of the mistakes in thinking - outside technical matters - are mistakes of perception. The rest are mistakes of logic. (David Perkins)
If you're looking for creative recession ideas go to www.debonopost.com

The final participant question of the day was:

"What do you see as the next phase for us i.e. agricultural, industrial and so forth?"

To which Dr de Bono's response was:

"Complete robotization - but we'd have to teach them some manners..."

@schnicker

How SaaS is Changing the Franchise Industry

2009-06-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

The most successful businesses invest a lot of time and money in achieving brand consistency, whether it be in their marketing or sales message, or in how their employees actually represent and embody the company's values.

Geographically disperse organizations have more of a challenge maintaining brand consistency because although the offices all share the same brand, it is generally managed centrally from a head office. Franchise businesses and retail chains suffer this exact problem by their very nature with many outlets spread out across a city, a country or internationally, often with each one owned by a different person.

Coming back to brand management, you can imagine that the chance of a franchise brand becoming diluted or distorted along the way is actually quite high because of the number of people involved and the geographic distance. Yet the promise behind the franchise business is to provide customers with a consistent experience no matter which store they may enter. Therefore, brand consistency is paramount.

Lately we're noticing an increase in interest from franchise businesses in our product. It turns out that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products are proving to be just the solution that Franchisers have been looking for whether it be a CRM, accounting package or online training system. Basically any system that centralizes data and facilitates fast communication helps franchisers to manage the many franchisees and their staff.

On further discussions we're finding that their interest in SaaS products is for the following reasons which all make a lot of sense:

Ease of account set up and maintenance
Low cost - pay for what you use each month
Scalable system
Connectivity between all levels
Accessible from any Internet connection
Zero infrastructure

Look out for more franchises making the switch to SaaS products as they drive brand consistency and improve team collaboration.

Are Your Trainees Logging in to their Online Training?

2009-06-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered whether a trainee is logging in to their online training account, but just avoiding doing their courses? Or maybe you're curious to know if they have ever actually logged in? In this case there may be a valid reason why they haven't - maybe their login activation email is stuck in a spam filter or maybe their email address was entered incorrectly.

Today we've released a new feature which identifies those trainees that have never logged in to your training system, so that Trainers can follow them up and find out why.

This screen shot shows the Trainers view of the People tab, with a list of users that have been set up in a training account. Now note the red circular icon on the right side of the lines associated with John Paul and Karen Smith. In your account this icon will actually be flashing on and off to draw your attention and notify you that this trainee has never logged in to their account.

At this point you have the choice of re-sending the same login information out to the trainee again (with one simple click on the red icon), or you can follow up with the trainee to find out why they have not logged on.

Easy!

@schnicker

Social Learning Poll Results

2009-06-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

I just want to share some interesting results I found from a Social Learning poll, designed by participants in the Masie Center Social Learning Lab and Seminar and done March 12th, 2009. It was sent out to Learning TRENDS readers - Global Learning Professionals, to which they received 1069 responses.

It's a great snapshot of where organizations are at with feelings on social learning and plans for implementation. Here's a link to the results, complete with comments from Elliott Masie:

Social Learning Survey Results

Learning Management Systems Turn Social

2009-06-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

It looks like Web 2.0 online training and eLearning systems have reached another plateau and they're in need of the next stage of development: the integration of social and collaborative tools to enhance the learning process.

From a technical point of view I find this very exciting because historically Learning Management Systems (LMS) offer a relatively static one-way learning experience from content --> learner. The bundling together of what I consider to be more 'fun' social concepts like wikis, blogs, social networks and microblogs in with an LMS not only transforms it in to a more dynamic offering for teacher/learner, it also gives the learner a voice to contribute, share their knowledge and become part of a collaborative learning program. It's that idea of 'transforming people from content readers into publishers'(Wikipedia).

A recent study I read, which I can't seem to find again for the life of me, (will update this post when I find it again) showed that people using social media enjoy sharing knowledge and answering people's questions, not because they selfishly enjoy knowing the answer, but because in sharing they help educate and raise the level of knowledge of their connections. I find that to be a very hopeful message because it supports the notion that people will happily and actively engage in knowledge sharing if given the opportunity. Maybe people won't have to hate training?

Now all of this resulted in the team at Litmos having a long, hard brainstorming session a wee while back to nail down the next steps in development for our LMS. It's like the barriers have come down and a new era is unfolding where online learning can become a two-way process because the concept of social, collaborative learning is now being endorsed by many learning professionals such as Harold Jarche here in this quote "Successful collaborative efforts are the measure of a successful organization."

We've got some exciting developments on the way to compliment our current formula for course delivery, so watch this space as we prepare to incorporate ideas of knowledge sharing and collaborative learning.

@schnicker

Picture courtesy of cartoonstock.com

5 Great Social Learning Resources

2009-06-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

It's been talked about for years, but 'Social Learning' is more recently becoming the big buzz word in learning, and you should probably pay attention because it's being pegged as the next generation of eLearning (heavily debated of course, as is everything in learning).

My definition of 'social learning' as I understand it is learning that takes place through the use of a collection of web-based tools like wikis, blogs, and social networks which build community and conversation around a topic encouraging a collaborative knowledge sharing environment. There's a fair amount of literature coming out regarding what it actually means for learning, how effective it is and will be, security considerations and many other interesting arguments for and against.

I've just chosen 5 recent social learning resources /articles to share that I've found really interesting of late (in no particular order):

Jane Hart of C4LPT on Social Learning

SLQOTD - Social Learning Question of the Day (read how it works here on the Engaged Learning blog)

ASDT ISPI Social Learning Workshop - Dave Wilkins
Overcoming the Top10 Objections to Social Learning - Dave Wilkins /Kevin Jones

Effective Knowledge Sharing - Harold Jarche
A Practical Guide to Implementing Web 2.0 (AKA Social Networking Tools) in Your Organization - Dave Pollard (also What's Next After Knowledge Management for some background on the 'problem' social tools solve)

That's not really 5, it's more like 7, and then there's such an amazing web of links within these articles that you really could be busy reading for days on end. Enjoy!

@schnicker

5 Benefits to Outsourcing Your Training Delivery to an Online Platform

2009-05-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

Moving your classroom-based training sessions to an online platform, is pretty much just outsourcing your training delivery method.

There are many benefits associated with outsourcing some of the services your business requires. Small companies might outsource because they don't have the expertise, while larger companies may outsource to save money. Whatever your reason, outsourcing your training delivery to a web-based training platform is just one way to get ahead of the competition.

Here's 5 benefits to outsourcing your training delivery:

Cut Your Costs: Instantly cut costs like venue hire, instructors, I.T Support, catering and travel. It doesn't have to be all of your learning program that moves online, a blended learning program is often preferred because every person learns differently so it helps to combine different methods. But even if you get the bulk of it up online - bingo! - you're substantially reducing your costs.
Increase Your Efficiency: Now you don't have to spend all that time preparing for the class each time, delivering the content at a pace everyone can handle, doing Q&A sessions or marking assessments, you can put your focus in to your content, course design and delivering timely, effective feedback.
Focus on what you're good at: Design your learning content (or outsource that part again, depending on what your exact role is), put it up online as courses and then let the delivery specialists do what they're good at. It's their job to provide you with a fully functioning, easy-to-use framework to manage your training program, deliver your content out to your trainees efficiently, while notifying you of their progress and recording their achievements.
Size Doesn't Matter: Most smaller companies can't afford to offer the scale of training program that big companies can. Moving your training to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) training platform that charges based on usage means you can have access to the same tools as the big guys, and puts everyone on a level playing field.
Reduce Risk: Hosting your own training program whether it's on your own servers, or in those classroom sessions, involves multiple levels of risk. You or a trainee could be sick on the day of the course, something could go wrong with your IT connections or servers, with the catering company, or with transport and all of these risks are on your shoulders. With outsourcing, your outsource provider assumes and manages all risks involved in their area of expertise.

Audio Modules in Online Training Courses

2009-05-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

When you're using Litmos to build online courses there are lots of different types of modules you can include: Video, PowerPoint, Flash, Surveys, Assessments and Embedded content.

Up until now it has only been possible to attach audio files to your online training courses as additional reference material.

But not anymore! As of today it is now possible to upload mp3 files as audio modules in their own right, which means it is also possible to track and report on them.

To find out how to create audio modules just check out the demo video here on the Litmos Help Guide entitled: Uploading audio tracks to a training course

Calling All Learning Professionals on Twitter

2009-05-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

There's a great group on Twitter called #lrnchat that meet every week to talk 'learning'. Learning technology, instructional design, semantics - you name it, it gets discussed.

Each week questions are submitted to the Lrnchat blog and one is chosen to be the topic of discussion for the chat time which happens every Thursday night 8:30-10pm EST / 5:30-7pm PST.

If you're on Twitter and interested in learning, eLearning, online learning or anything related, make sure to visit their blog and find some of the key organizers and follow them. That way you'll know it's on when you start seeing your Twitter stream filled with the #lrnchat hashtag.

Although I haven't been actively involved in the chat yet, I really enjoy reading their discussion comments as they sail by and always make sure to catch up on the conversation at a more convenient time for me by using the Twitter search function. Sometimes the conversation gets pretty heated and other times it's downright hilarious.

Whatever happens, you're bound to learn something.

Oh and I'm on Twitter here: @schnicker

Companies Cut Costs with Online Training Platform

2009-05-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

May 2009
Press Release: Litmos

The last few months have seen Auckland-based software company Litmos pushing their online training product to new heights.

Litmos, an online platform that enables trainers to deliver web-based courses, has been on the market for over two years, but never before have they received the kind of attention as in the past 6 months. Customer numbers look to be on an exponential increase as companies scramble to save dollars by moving to hosted online services.

CEO Rich Chetwynd says “It’s amazing how quickly the connection has been made between moving training online and dramatically reducing training and development costs. Classroom-based courses are a thing of the past; the future is blended learning and online training”.

Litmos recently released Version 3.0 which not only continues to offer companies a way to save money, but also now enables individuals to sell their courses and create an additional revenue stream. Chetwynd says ”In this recessive market, any business that offers people a way to reduce costs and make money is definitely in a win-win situation.”

www.litmos.com
Twitter: @litmos

-Ends-

NComputing and UN to Bring 500,000 Workstations to Developing Countries

2009-05-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

A press release just issued by NComputing has revealed a partnership with a new United Nations Program to provide computing access to schools in developing countries.

"NComputing, the leading provider of ultra low-cost computing solutions, today announced that it will partner with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) to bring computer access to primary and secondary schools in developing countries around the world. The initiative has strong support from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and aims to provide 500,000 workstations to schools in developing nations by 2012. The program is being developed by the UNDESA Global Alliance for ICT Development (GAID).

"Access to computing technology is a cornerstone for education, social, and economic development in the 21st century," said Sarbuland Khan, Executive Coordinator of UNDESA-GAID. "This initiative will play an important role in closing the digital literacy gap that exists in the world's developing nations.""

The details of this fantastic initiative will be presented by Dr. Paul Jhin at the eLearning Africa conference in Dakar, Senegal on May 29th 2009.

Click here to read the full press release

Online Learning for Low Skill Adults

2009-05-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

The May 2009 report Online Learning for Low Skill Adults has been released, authored by Heather McKay at the Rutgers University Center for Women and Work. The report has highlighted the importance of access to high speed Internet connections amongst lower-skilled adults in the U.S.

A recent press release by Communications Workers of America states:

The report finds that there’s no question that “education is the key to moving lower-skilled adults into jobs that pay wages that meet family needs and enable families to be self sufficient.” Yet many educational credential programs don’t take into account the barriers to education and training that many of these adults face: irregular work hours, lack of access to transportation, child care and family responsibilities, and more.

With education and training being the 'key' enablers for lower-skilled adults to progress beyond their current skill set and become eligible for new opportunities, learning online has naturally surfaced as the way to combat the above-mentioned barriers. However, the report found that many people interviewed only had access to dial-up or low quality Internet which proved to inhibit their progress from the outset.

What seems to be a very timely solution to problems highlighted by this report is President Obama’s economic recovery plan which includes $7.2 billion to promote high speed Internet programs that “facilitate access to broadband service by low-income, unemployed, aged, and otherwise vulnerable populations in order to provide educational and employment opportunities to members of such populations.”

It will be interesting to follow the success of these initiatives as they roll out as I'm sure this is a microcosm of a much larger global problem (much like my previous post on the desert communities in Australia).

You can read the full report here

Desert Communities to Access Online Services?

2009-05-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

Highly mobile desert communities are quite common in Australia. In fact, they account for about half a million people. If you then factor in the number of people visiting the outback like tourists, contract workers and researchers you've got a fairly large populous in an area which is not yet widely accessible by quality Internet and phone services. This poses obvious communication problems, but more than that, the lack of services may actually be disadvantaging those living in these areas.

Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (DKCRC) are at the forefront of mobility studies which encourage extending the reach of online services to include desert areas so that services like tele-medicine, video conferencing, online education, online training and online technical advice are available to these people. They're working towards flipping the traditional approach on it's end by taking online services to mobile desert communities, rather than asking them to come to the cities, which has never proven particularly successful.

It's pretty amazing to think that considerations are being taken to give Australian desert populations access to the range of services mentioned above. I mean, just stop and think about that for a second - it's huge! There would be no end to what a person could learn in their own comfortable environment.

In addition, Desert Knowledge CRC don't just see their efforts as being specific to the Australian outback. They see it as a microcosm of an increasingly larger global issue of higher mobility populations and more people traveling in to remote areas. They hope to apply what they learn about mobility patterns and enabling access to online services in outback Australia, on a worldwide scale.

Read the the full article entitled Deserts on the Move

Online Training Boosts Staff Performance in Travel Industry

2009-05-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

As a follow on from my last post about the transport industry which talked about bus companies and airlines moving training programs online, I've now found a luxury cruise company doing something similar.

Princess Cruises have been making waves (excuse the pun) by becoming the first company of their kind to offer a fully comprehensive range of online tools to help their agents become experts at what they do. As part of their collection of online tools which range from reporting tools to online booking engines, they have long had an online training program called the Princess Academy which has "hosted more participants than any cruise curriculum in the industry".

The cruise line's acclaimed training program is not just used for new staff coming in to a role with Princess. It is used to regularly deliver on-going courses that offer valuable sales training and product knowledge to give employees ways to improve their performance, make more commission and give them access to further bonus incentives. The more training a staff member completes, the faster they progress up through the ranks earning perks and valuable bonuses as they go, culminating in a free 'graduation' cruise. They even dare to say their courses are supposed to be fun! These guys understand the real value of training to their business and it has earned them a reputation as one of the premiere cruise lines in the world.

The value of training was summed up nicely by someone in a LinkedIn group the other day who pointed out a very simple truth:

Great Training = Great Staff = Higher Retention Rates (staff & customer!)

Transport Industry Moving to Online Training

2009-05-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I've found some interesting articles that show the extent to which online training is now being used in different industries. I thought these two examples from the transportation industry were worthy of a mention as they demonstrate the scale and credibility that online training is achieving.

Firstly, Ohio Country Schools are now using online training to train their school bus drivers for their school bus operator certification, as well as re-certification. The purchase of 10 laptops has meant drivers can now do their training at their own pace and the company no longer needs to worry about finding facilities to hold training sessions for the 63 employees. Not only is this a cost-saving initiative, it also means training can be done at any time from the main office.

On a larger scale, Ireland's national airline Aer Lingus, has recently implemented an online training system to manage the annual courses that their 500 pilots must take to comply with EU aviation regulations. The airline says the switch to an online system will "save money on trainers and related course fees". Plus, as you can imagine there are huge benefits due to the fact that pilots can access the course from anywhere in the world and their progress is tracked and reported. Previously, these same people had to attend training in a classroom which is not only expensive, it is also very difficult to organize when considering the nature of their job.

These companies are just two examples of many online training success stories out there. By introducing these online initiatives they show that they are capable of being nimble in a down-economy and are successfully adapting as necessary. I don't just mean to budget constraints either, but in response to busier employee schedules they are offering more flexible, self-paced learning alternatives that employees can do from the comfort of their own home.

Litmos Online Training Blog Wordle

2009-05-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

I checked out Wordle today which is a pretty cool little "toy for generating “word clouds” from text". I put the Litmos blog address in the box to see what it would come up with. I think it looks pretty cool, and I'm very happy to see that the dominant themes of the Wordle (therefore, the blog) are spot-on.

Image courtesy of http://www.wordle.net/

Franchise Success with Online Training

2009-05-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

When you think of successful franchises, the first ones that probably spring to mind are fast food chains like McDonalds and SUBWAY®. Whether you like these brands or not they are undeniably successful, and it is 'training' that has played an integral part in that success, yet each has achieved it through a different training mechanism.

McDonald's say they have just over 31,000 local restaurants, in 118 countries on their website. This franchise realized the importance of training from day one. The world famous Hamburger University that opened in 1961, was built to emphasize consistent restaurant operations procedures, service, quality and cleanliness. It actually provides such a high level of training that the restaurant manager and mid-management curriculum is eligible for about two years of college credits. To top it off, they teach the curriculum in 28 languages just to make sure no one is disadvantaged. Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonalds, began his empire saying: “If we are going to go anywhere, we’ve got to have talent. And, I’m going to put my money in talent.”

SUBWAY® is similarly spread across 31,000+ locations in 90 countries around the world. But in contrast to McDonalds, they offer their training online at the University of Subway. Since they moved online in 2006 they are seeing huge returns on the investment they have made in their staff.

Two different franchises, two different training systems, but both hugely successful proving that either method can work. My question is - how much money do you have to spend on training? In reality not many franchises have the kind of money McDonald's has to throw at a 130,000 sq ft training facility, but nor do you need to these days. Training online is proven to achieve similar results, and online training systems do not have to be expensive. An added bonus is that some have become so intuitive and easy to use, you can pretty much get your program up and running all by yourself.

If you already run hands-on training sessions, you're half way there. Just take all of that content, push it up online in to a training system, tweak it for online viewing and you're ready to create accounts for your trainees. Not only is it a fast, efficient way to deliver a consistent message to large numbers of trainees at once (many more than can fit in a classroom), it's also the ideal mechanism to keep tabs on the progress of your teams. You'll be able to spot weaknesses in real-time, see knowledge gaps and fix them pronto.

An added benefit is that changes can be rolled out almost instantaneously. If a law changes, a product needs to be taken off the shelf or important news needs to be announced, you can be sure your online training system will get everyone up to speed immediately.

Good quality, consistent, on-going training is paramount to ensuring franchise success. While hands-on or classroom-based training might do the trick, it is very expensive and slow. An online training system achieves those same results while catering to the needs of each and every franchise, no matter how big (or small) the budget.

Why not sign up for a free trial of the Litmos online training platform now?

5 Reasons Why Litmos Version 3.0 is Better

2009-04-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

The recent release of Version 3.0 of the Litmos online training system means a lot of things have changed for the better.

Here are 5 major reasons why Litmos 3.0 is better:

User Friendly Interface This is probably the biggest change you will notice. We got together with a usability expert and figured out a way to make Litmos work for you. So you should notice now that it has a dramatically improved, more intuitive and friendly flow to it. Plus, on log in you'll now see a nice clean snapshot of account activity on the Dashboard which displays recently opened courses, assessments that need marking, recent emails and news items.
Less Clicks to Complete an Action Whether it's assigning training to people, building courses, or creating trainees, all clicks have been massively reduced to the absolute minimum which means your productivity level will increase. For example, it used to take 15 clicks to create a new trainee and then assign them to a course. Now it takes just 3 - wow!
Bulk Trainee Account Creation Litmos now automatically creates trainee accounts for you. All you have to do is go in to the course you want to assign, type your trainees email address (or a list of email addresses) in to the 'Add User' box, and voila! Each trainee is sent an email to tell them they've been set up with an account, they click on a link in the email, choose their password and begin training. Too easy!
More Comprehensive Reporting Area Reports now have increased flexibility to allow training administrators to drill-down in to information. You can see aggregated results across courses and teams, see if your trainees have completed the latest version of a course, and unlock their assessments to be repeated.
More Trainee Notifications Now trainees will receive automatic system notifications when you a) Create them an account b) Assign them a course and c) Add them to a team. This means less work for you as the Trainer, and you can rest assured knowing everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing.