The holiday season is here and things have slowed a little with many people taking their vacations. Next week will bring in a new year and with it new strategies and energy for bringing learning technology to the masses.
We will be launching several offers to gather interest in our latest version of Liquid Authoring with some nice discounts. Check back for more next week and have a Happy New Year.
More and more people are working from home to do the same job they do in the office. With all the technology many people are finding that they can do their job at any location there is internet. Coffee shop… check. Home office… check. Mobile device… CHECK! VOIP is now so normal, I bet you don’t even know that the number you are calling is not going to a land line in a cubicle, in an office. The number could be a Skype number or ringing someones mobile phone, or perhaps someone is answering the Skype call on a mobile phone!
The point is to catch a person in the office will become more rare as time moves forward and technology allows people to do their job literally from where ever they want. So with this thinking, why are companies still tied to the mindset of only training their people face to face or having them meet in the conference room on a Tuesday. Companies need to wake up and wake up fast to realize that the future of learning and training is digital. No one wants to be dragged into the office for a day of training when you can get the same training delivered to you where ever you are via any digital device.
Learning technologies are running rampant and new ones are popping up all the time. The core to any company should be an LMS that integrates all the technologies you need and use. This basic software allows companies to deliver training in way that mirrors the physical location of your learners. The training goes to your learners no matter where they are at, and now gives learners the freedom of not having to be chained to a physical location. What a concept?!?!? Going out to your workforce instead of having to inconvenience them and force them to come to you.
There are obvious benefits to this like the ones mentioned but beyond that, the money that companies save is literally incredible. Instead of room expenses, travel expenses, per diam expenses for all who go to this training, the company can replace those with a simple software investment which will probably pay for itself very quickly. And on top of that, you can hold trainings more often for almost no extra expenses. The other area that companies benefit is from the database of all information collected and tracked from these trainings. Saying you are compliant and proving you are compliant is another big dollar expense that a basic software can protect you against.
Technology may not let all of us quit our jobs or even alter what some of us do a great deal, but for many of us it does. Companies should take advantage of the technology available and not be scared of it when it comes to training your own people.
The role of video in today’s world is huge from YouTube to Vimeo to the standard old school news networks. Video is everywhere even in your pocket on smartphones which are capable of taking HD quality video. And there are products to match in every shape and size and form. Apps for the phone or professional software is there for all to edit their video’s as well.
What is the role of video in learning? The old days of school when watching film or tape or a video clip was rare and seen as a break from learning is currently a standard and accepted way to teach and train. In fact learning without the use of video can be seen as a little out of date. This has been a very fast change in an acceptance of technology and the speed of change is only getting faster.
In any eLearning course the new standard is to teach with video. For the learner to understand what they are to learn, hearing-seeing-interacting with the material is critical. With the the big move to tablets by many people, interacting with the device is second nature. These devices are made for media and as more and more eLearning is consumed through tablets, the video is a natural way to deliver important data. Video is now the norm and not the exception in eLearning. Just make sure that your videos get right to the point and don’t go on too long. Also with the attention span of today’s learners, make sure the videos you use are visually stimulating and attention grabbing, otherwise the attempt at video might be more effort that what it is worth.
gary:
How many brands can you follow?
Success is each to his or her own, but let’s call it like we see it: when you survey the landscape of your creative world, your industry, your career or hobby–whatever field you’re in– there are several fundamentals to achieving success, regardless of the measure. There are commonalities that are…
- Activity - tasks for students to undertake that provide an experience likely to lead them to the desired new understanding.
- Scenario - reason or motivation to undertake an educational activity if the learning is to be memorable and considered valuable.
- Feedback - provision for feedback that…
2012 is nearly here and what a year it has been for eLearning. Actually the year was very disruptive with regards to technology having an impact on eLearning. What I am getting at is the popularity of the tablet. In a little over 18 months since the iPad was released there are a host of competitors that now play in this market and it is only a matter of time before tablet replaces the PC.
This itself is a good thing for eLearning in general, but now all the eLearning providers of content, authoring tools, and even some LMS’s have to adjust their long term strategies very quickly in order to deal with this demand by the public of mobile learning. Influenced by Apple, most tablets today do not play Flash content. Big issue for people who have almost all courses built in Flash and want to push that content to mobile devices. Also in the past Flash was the go-to technology for eLearning because of the rich media and interactivity by the learners. What do we do today with tablets not playing flash?
The answer- HTML5. Fascinating how one product can change an industry, and this time it is eLearning’s turn. Even Microsoft is on the HTML5 bandwagon now saying that their Windows 8 OS (which is intended for tablets) will not support Flash either. With most tablets not playing Flash now or in the future, and a ton of eLearning content in Flash, the “you know what” is hitting the fan -fast! Many authoring tools are in the process of getting the ability to publish to HTML5. A few already have it. Even when they get the HTML5 output done initially, there will be a constant effort to refine it and make it better just like Flash.
You will see in the next few months a rush to market by all authoring tools to have HTML5 output. The next rush by the same companies will be to better the initial offering and add many more interactions and improve upon the graphics. HTML5 is still very young and the process of understanding how to get it up to the level of interaction Flash currently has will take some time, but not as long as you think. This is a gold rush for these authoring tool companies. The key is now interactivity but in a mobile platform, all due to the market demand of the tablet and mobile devices.
Here at LandMark eLearning we have been assisting companies with their eLearning needs and lately there have been some exciting discoveries by our clients. I know everyone dreads the process of evaluating LMS’s, the time and money it takes to make a decision not to mention the actual process of implementing them. At times there really seems to no logical reason to put the company or YOU through this dreadful process!! But in the end the LMS does do basic things you need, like access by learners to training online, a central location for all training records, and on and on.
The real mark of any LMS is how well you like it after it is up and running, and from what we have seen, there are very few people who tell us that their system is awesome and that it was everything that was promised. Almost all the time people have very specific complaints about their system. Very common among them are, hard for admins to use, reporting sucks, difficult to get right information to right people in an automated way. You name it and we have probably heard it.
Recently we brought on a couple of clients who switched from an LMS they were currently using, and in the switch and learning the new LMS it gave us time to reflect on their current processes. Some of the processes they were trying to replicate proved to be very difficult to replicate. This was due to the order things had to be done but also with a mindset of “this is they way we have done it in the past.”
This was a great moment for all of us to step back and look at this with new eyes. We were trying to put a round peg through a square hole. All of us re-evaluated the process and saw that the reason it was in place was because that was how the old LMS forced the process to work. With the new LMS there was not a restriction and therefore it was concluded that we could come up with a new (more simple but more flexible) way of doing the same thing. We made the LMS work to how the company did business. On top of that the new process we came up with benefited many more of the admin users than was thought possible and also gives the flexibility and scalability in the future to adding the function to new users not currently on the system.
Basically the process we came up with trimmed some extra fat and the system truly conformed to how our client did business rather than make them conform to a limitation of the system. This has proven to be much easier for all involved and would have never been possible if the client was not interested in switching LMS’s and just limping along with the old one.
So although no one wants to go through the process (pain) of switching an LMS, this client is actually excited to be using the new system because now they have an LMS they like using and not one they are forced to use with limitations on how processes and functionality are laid out. Don’t look a switching LMS’s as a huge pain but rather an opportunity to learn from all the previous mistakes made that led to the current LMS you are not entirely happy with.
We have been working very hard to get Liquid Authoring to the point of release and now it is. We are constantly improving the tool to enhance it at every turn. We are offering a free trial currently that you can sign up for at any time here http://liquidauthoring.com
We want this tool to appeal…
