Brian Dusablon

The new learning architect designs environments that enable specific target populations to take maximum advantage of all these opportunities for learning.

- Meet the new learning architect

Very cool new book from Clive Shepherd. You can pre-order it now, but they will also be releasing a chapter each month for free.

Decent try at clearing up SCORM. It gets the basic concept down – I like the teacher analogy.

Matthew Valencius from IBM

Improving Search

• Search = learning. If no decent results, it’s weird. You don’t expect.
• Making learning search part of ALL searches.
• You have to clean up the old stuff. If it’s irrelevant, get rid of it so it doesn’t show up in search.

Personalization and Guidance

• Learning recommendations from training department, directed at roles, profiles, etc.
• Experts availability – if searching for Excel, a list of experts available to chat with or contact.
• SmartTips – widget tied to words and acronyms on mouseover or click get a definition. Tips added by learning department.
• Edvisor: learning plans and mentors, personalization (built on basic web technologies)
• Search for other learners.
• Guidance for roles (managers, employees, facilitators, mentors, etc.)
• If a mentor is assigned, both mentor and employee will see it.
• Facilitators see the people in their classes. Can see profiles, etc.
• Learning Toolbar: to go along with the Edvisor tool. Simple, includes links to your personalized page, quick search tool (options for directory, websites, learning). Again, simple web technology. Learners take a little bit if IBM with them wherever they are, but also adds value.
• Looking into prescriptive options (like Amazon recommendations – very cool)
• Give users an option to provide feedback quickly and easily – when they do a search, ask them if they found what they were looking for, with an optional form for more details…great idea.
• Reporting, analytics will track usage and search topics to see what the people want.
• Other departments coming to the learning group to use the data they’ve gathered.

Bersin & Associates

Agenda:

• Forces Driving Change
• LMS Marketplace (Provider)
• LMS Marketplace (Buyer)
• Portals, Learning 2.0
• Choosing a Provider Today

LMS providers definitely have Web 2.0 on the brain. Social networking is in their plans.

Bersin will be publishing Learning 2.0 study in Q1 of 2009. Best practices, etc. Biggest challenge today is overwhelming volume of information. How do we make sure we’re getting them the right information (that is valid) at the right time?

Context and Standards – two things that the industry needs.

New goal for T&D is to enable Learning 2.0. Enable the workforce and the knowledge workers to do more.

Directions of the LMS Market:

1. Increase in Enterprise Learning Capabilities, including L2.0
2. Increase in Talent Management Capabilities

Most recent activity (in development and purchasing) is in Performance Management (integration with LMS), including development plans, goals, etc.

Vendors:

• LMS Training Administration is moving to Talent Management
• LCMS is moving to On-Demand

Buyers:

• Only 60% of those surveyed (850 companies) have an LMS – interesting number.
• Tracking and reporting the biggest function needed from an LMS.
• Reducing training costs is very low on the listed benefits (6%!)
• Biggest challenge is customization and content integration.
• Current LMSs do not provide the information the user needs (60+% said it was poor or fair)
• LMS consolidation or replacement is in the plans for the majority.

Learning Portals:

• IBM Learning On-Demand (I need to look more into this)
• Personalization (What I need, right now; what skills/competencies do I need)
• Search (IBM returns info, courses, and experts to contact – very cool)
• Web 2.0 Social Platforms (companies selling canned networks and softwares to companies)
  Alternatively, could you just open up to existing networks (Facebook, Twitter, Yammer) but have guidelines and lockdown?

Four Cs of Social Software:

1. Conversations
2. Content
3. Connections
4. Collaboration

Companies using social software mainly for succession planning and onboarding.
Why not combine the two, gain succession planning by using the experienced workers to mentor the new workers and capture the information shared.

What I want:

A knowledge portal containing instant info, knowledge gathering and publishing, good search that brings it all together, tied to elearning, instructor-led training, virtual training (webinars) and documentation, and an AIR app to launch it from desktops and distribute with alerts, reminders, etc.

Final Notes:

Attending this following Dan Roam’s speech on using pictures was painful. Boring, text-filled slides with bar charts we can’t read. Different types of charts and color schemes, so no continuity. And yikes, some of the colors they used were not projector-friendly. Think people, think! I need to do a session next year on how to present at DevLearn. I think I made that comment last year…hmmm.

Adobe Presenter converts PowerPoint to Flash for delivery via web or LMS.

First, I wonder if Articulate has filed a lawsuit yet.

• Embed video easily
• Reviewing is easy
• Editing is simple, not very robust, but good for the basics.
• Attendee feedback: audio editing is poor. (New Articulate has good audio editor).
• Import quizzing (more app crashing).
• This presenter did not handle questions well – I think she was only ready for her scripted presentation, not being grilled on the app’s shortcomings

Aside: I see a lot of issues with software that’s embedded in PowerPoint. Articulate Presenter crashes for me all the time. I currently have Articulate and WebEx embedded. Does it slow PowerPoint’s performance and cause it to be slow and crash? If it’s not crashing, it can sometimes be very slow. Is this on the embedded App or on PowerPoint not being built for embedded (or overlay) software?

Q & A:

• Q: How to use Captivate within Presenter (like we do now with Articulate Presenter)
• A: Integration is a little tighter with Presenter

• Q: Developing quizzes in Captivate, why can’t branding can’t be carried over to Presenter?
• A: Captivate quizzing is very different than Presenter quizzing (Wrong Answer: WHY?)

• Q: Presenter slide shows inside Acrobat?
• A: Yes. Simple.

• Q: Can you record video across all slides, or do you have to chunk it?
• A: No, you have to record video in segments. Same with audio. It’s possible in future.

• Q: Collaboration – does it only work with Acrobat.com
• A: Will not work without Acrobat.com (probably a dealbreaker)
• —My Note: I need internal collaboration. Legal is not going to let us upload docs to Acrobat.com

Quote of the session: “it’s not really that sophisticated right now.” That explains a lot.

I’ll add links to the actual presentation decks as soon as they are available.