Learning Services

It is important to know your audience, their motivational factors, their cultural background and their personal interests to cater the same learning content in different style and flavour.  For instance I always fall asleep reading books on history while same topic shown on TV captures my attention.

To talk about a real time scenario; my previous organisation had a customised Learning Management System(LMS); a great learning portal linking to online library, thousands of E-learnings, podcasts, videocasts, blogs and all of Web 2.0 aspects.  Every quarter when we pulled reports, the statistic showed  as predicted that Consulting service groups took the most advantage of this portal, followed by Audit, Tax and least being utilized by the Financial Services. The global report further showed that US, Mexico, Canada utilised these  resources more than any other country. It was time to boost and motivate the UK employee to become avid learners. The strategies followed were the ten fold path listed  below:-

1.       Through Managers : - Tying the online learning content to Personal Development Plans

2.       Through HR :- Making relevant resources as mandatory and  to be part of compliance with HR policies

3.       Through Challenges :-  Assessments, Quizzes and Game based learning contents were part of weekly challengers on every Industry portals.

4.       Through Rewards :-  Motivating by rewarding with certificates/gift etc on course completions

5.       Through Active Marketing: - Showcasing the Top ten books of the month, the new online resources, videos, podcast etc.

6.       Through Promoting within Service Lines: - Each Service line had a learning curriculum where the online content was mapped, this gave a clear guidance to the learner on what learning was mapped for them. Similarly each Service lines and Industry learning portal had their own bookshelves mapped to online library.

7.        Through Blended Learning: - Introducing online resources as prerequisite for classroom session or as good after read content.

8.       Through Innovative technologies : - helping to enable learning portal to be accessed through company mobile.

9.       Through Leadership : By introducing  and re-introducing company's learning capabilities and resources during induction, orientation and other seminars and meetings.

10.   Through Learning Community: - A learning network of blogs, wiki and profiles to spread learning across the organisation.

Do you think the measures above helped the statistic get better?  Watch out for part 2 .

Posted by Moushmi Mahato at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are many eLearning providers to choose from. In an on-going set of FAQs, your decision-making process should include:

Q - Can the course be easily upgraded, edited, or modified?

The best e-learning solution is one that provides you the opportunity to make changes as needed. Industry standards can change at the drop of a hat, particularly when software or other technological progress is involved.

Continue reading "Choosing an eLearning Provider - Part 3" »

Posted by Kathie Dunn at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are many eLearning providers to choose from. In an on-going set of FAQs, your decision-making process should include:

A - That depends on you. If you go with a boilerplate from the development application, there is some leeway in adding logos or changing color. However,

Continue reading "Choosing an eLearning Provider - Part 2" »

Posted by Kathie Dunn at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most large companies can justify the business case for Learning Management Systems based on cost savings.  By automating manual processes and, often, centralizing them, companies can take a big bite out of their administrative overhead.

But what happens in a small or mid-size company, when the headcount numbers aren’t large enough to generate enough savings to offset the investment in an LMS?  We’ve run into this situation a number of times.

Continue reading "The Business Case for LMS at Small and Mid-size Companies" »

Posted by Tom Starr at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The typical challenges we are facing with what we call ‘learning 1.0’ or what we would say is a conventional model of learning. If you look at the conventional model of learning, it is basically faceted with typical characteristics, whereby there is an instructor who is supposed to be a subject matter expert and delivers instruction to the consumers who are the learners. The focus is on the expertise of the expert and the dissemination of that to the end users who, in the process, have to assimilate that without a say in what is being fed to them. So, that is a fundamental principle in learning 1.0.

Continue reading "Learning 1.0 vs Learning 2.0" »

Posted by Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Global Organizations have started realizing the importance of having a “LEARNED” working force and the impact they can have to their core business. Traditionally these organizations have been investing a significant amount of money in training infrastructures which include classroom trainings, e- learning courses and tracking the competency of their employees through integrated Performance Tracking tools. However, the effectiveness of such trainings has always been debated and of late most of the market studies have corroborated the fact that these trainings are not as effective as they are expected to be.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 in Learning space" »

Posted by Guest Author at 4:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is plenty of scope for Virtual Worlds to manage the learning needs of organizations; however I feel that it can be leveraged to the maximum extent in the following learning areas:

• Virtual classroom for geographically dispersed mobile work force
• Simulation of new concepts and processes

Let’s start first by defining Virtual Worlds. Virtual Worlds provide a 3D environment where each user has avatar. Virtual Worlds also provide real world objects like buildings, conference rooms etc. Examples include Second Life, Active Worlds etc.

Continue reading "Virtual worlds for Learning" »

Posted by Guest Author at 4:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)