Learning Conversations

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Learning Management Systems on the market. Most, if not all, come from the position that learning interventions are to be managed in a top-down manner; employees will learn when the management direct them to do so.

Real work is not like that. Employees will need to learn outside of your carefully directed interventions. They might want to follow-up something with a colleague they met on a course. They might want to refer back to a particular page in some elearning content. They might want to look up some information, but they're not sure where to find it.

Companies invest thousands, perhaps millions, in their learning management systems, yet there is a huge amount of untapped return in that investment. The following questions might help purchasers to get a system that can really make a difference, and they might even make the LMS providers get up-to-date with expectations.

How does your system drive learners into it?

We want to make sure our systems are used to their maximum, to get maximum return on the investment. If all we do is send out reminder emails about new courses we are missing out on everything that's been learnt in web applications over the past ten years.

Some examples of how systems can drive users to use them:

• Intelligent, recommendation-based marketing - that links up prospective purchasers (in our case, learners) with products (ie. courses/content). Our systems should be building up user profiles that allow them to make suggestions based on prior history and what other people are doing
• User-based connections - if a learner likes something that they've done/seen on your LMS, why isn't there a button that let's them share it on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on whereever they connect with their colleagues?

How does your system go to where the users are?

All too often, we build systems that rely on the user having to login at their PC to see updates, or to interact with it.

The world has changed. These days, the systems that people interact with most are those that build multiple routes into them. Some examples:

• Buttons in the browser toolbar, or browser extensions - If you have a page that you want people to update on a regular basis (eg. a learning record), then provide a button they can drag to their browser toolbar so it's there and visible when they need it. Even better, build a browser extension that provides that form without them having to visit the page.
• Mobile apps - Think about the activity a learner/manager might want to do when they are away from their desktop, (eg. find some information, approve attendance at a course) and build a mobile version of your system that exposes those key functions. It doesn't have to be a device-specific app, just a mobile version of the web site.
• Prompted interactions - Is it enough to just collect evaluation data straight after the course/event? Shouldn't we be collecting it from the learners (and their managers) after some time has elapsed? Simple prompts by email (just like Amazon prompts you to review a product) will increase take-up massively.

How does your system support people who need performance support, not training?

We try to package up our learning interventions into neat parcels, like SCORM packages or courses. But learning doesn't happen in neat parcels. Mostly it happens when people need to learn. Usually that's not when their working through one of our interventions, and they don't often need the whole intervention, just part of it.

So, you've put a great MS Excel training package in your LMS, but you find that people are still using Google to find web-based resources to help them do pivot-tables. Why is that? Because the LMS materials aren't searchable. Perhaps the learners didn't know they were there, or perhaps they couldn't face trawling through a long flash presentation to find the bit they really needed.

If learners can't easily find what they need in your LMS, they will go elsewhere. For this reason, a good search engine, which indexes the content of your materials, (not just the metadata about them) is critical.

How does your system allow learners to connect with other people in similar situations?

One of the major benefits of a face-to-face event is the way it allows people to interact with other people, from other parts of the organisation.

Online learning, in contrast is a lonely, isolating business. Yet we have the technology to link people together who are undertaking the same or similar courses. Why don't our LMS's make more of that? Or are purchasers going for a divide and conquer approach? The rest of the world is designing systems that are all about helping people to connect, communicate and learn. Surely this is part of the remit of L&D?