Social learning was a feature of Learning Management Systems (LMS) long before social media was invented.  In the 1990s, threaded discussions, coffee groups, collaboration centers, forums, FAQ and chat clogged up a seldom used "tab" in every major LMS.  "Extend the learning out of the classroom" or "Let the baby boomers share their knowledge before they retire" we used to say in the LMS sales business. Training and development leaders and instructional designers loved the idea of social learning.  Setting the business case aside, it was easy to dream blissful holistic learning theory dreams.  The possibilities were endless and so were the starting spots.  Many times after the purchase of the additional cost, social learning LMS module, C-level executives started asking the L&D folks about the following: How much time is all this going to take away from work? Do we have the bandwidth (personnel or technical) for this? What are we really getting out of this? Why are we doing this? What happens if we do nothing for now? Because there were no concrete, measurable answers (except for the last question), many organizations chose to do nothing.  Those learning and development organizations that did try to launch the social LMS [...] The post A Brief History of LMS Social Learning appeared first on Talented Learning.

Since 1992, RISC with their Virtual Training Assistant (VTA) learning management system has focused on solving the administration challenges of compliance training in regulated industries. Organizations in regulated industries like energy, financial, pharmaceutical and transportation have complex compliance training and certification management challenges.  Regulatory standards and the associated training requirements vary at local, state, national and international levels and organizations that operate across these regulatory lines have little choice but to juggle the administrative complexity or pay the piper.  If an organization is caught out of compliance, they pay substantial accumulating fines. Compliance management is not glamorous.  It is hard work.  Think LMS in overalls.  Grown over two decades, RISC has a level of granular configurability that can support any mandatory training scenario.  It’s admin heavy.  Real heavy. For all the complexity and options available, the learning curve for RISC was manageable.  With a couple hours of guided demos and few hours on my own, I was getting around pretty easily.  Once you learn how to do one administrative task, you can pretty much do most tasks as the icons, steps and options are very consistent. To set up RISC though, you will need and want a full service implementation to [...] The post LMS Reviews: RISC VTA appeared first on Talented Learning.

LEAP Ahead eLearning Conference Learn. Educate. Accelerate. Profit. Discover how to use elearning to train employees and your channel, and propel your business with LEAP Ahead. The two-day elearning conference includes more than two dozen sessions led by industry experts on content development and training program management. Learn directly from: Jane Bozarth Julie Dirksen Art Kohn Judy Katz Jeannie Sullivan Jenn Dryden Stacy Friedman Anne Derryberry And more! Who Should Attend at LEAP Ahead eLearning Conference? Training content designers and developers Training program managers LMS/training administrators Why Attend at LEAP Ahead eLearning Conference? You are tasked with developing a new training program for your organization You are new to creating online training and need help getting started You are experienced with content development and are ready to take it to the next level You are a BlueVolt LMS or course administrator and want to learn more You need a good excuse to visit Portland Oregon in June Register online today This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

For LMS vendor eyes only… When I was an LMS sales guy, I personally demoed or watched a solution architect demo the same two LMSs an average of three times a week for 13 years.  In the last 12 months as lead analyst and an LMS selection consultant, I’ve watched another couple hundred demos from 70+ vendors.  In all, that’s about 2200 LMS demos (give or take a 100) I’ve been a part of in my career.  As you might suspect, I’ve learned a thing or fifteen about what makes a good demo. Here is a most important item I learned that most LMSs vendors forget -a demo can only be considered good when you ultimately win the LMS opportunity.  Second place is meaningless.  Many sales reps and solution architects take the demo step lightly because they have done the same presentation so many times that they think they have seen it all and know it all.  As a result, they prep too little, make a vanilla impact with the customer and get lost in the herd of possible LMS solutions. The LMS sales cycle is typically 12-24 months long.  There are 600 LMS vendors.  It is foolish to take any [...] The post 15 Tips to up your LMS Demo Game and Win % appeared first on Talented Learning.

X International GUIDE Conference The X International GUIDE Conference "Optimizing Higher Education for the Professional Student: A balance of flexibility, quality and cultural sensitivity", will be held on September 16-18, 2015 at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien (Vienna), Austria’s largest technical university of applied sciences that offers both traditional and distance degree programs. The conference aims to promote discussion on improving higher education, bringing to light the needs of the evolving 21st century student and proposing new pedagogical strategies and technologies for meeting those needs. Particular attention will also be given to the continuing education and training of the working professional student, as well as the essential role of international collaboration and cultural sensitivity in the advancement of higher education research and technology. Participants Prof.ssa Alessandra Briganti, Rector of Guglielmo Marconi University, General Secretary of GUIDE Association, Italy Prof. Marco Rimanelli, Saint Leo University, USA Prof. Dr. Martin Lehner, Vice Rector for Teaching, Head of Department of Social Competence & Management Methods, Head of Didactics and University Development, University Development, UAS Technikum Wien, Austria Prof. Robert W. Robertson, PhD, PGDip, Director of Academic Affairs; Fellow, Center for Workforce Development Research, University of Phoenix, USA; Visiting Scholar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Prof. Dr. Jörn Loviscach, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, Germany Prof. Pucher Robert, Head of Department, Computer Science, Universtiy of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, Austria Dr. Dieter Grasedieck, Didactic Vocational Training, University Essen Duisburg /Babes Bolyai Cluj, Germany Anna Grabowska, Poland Douadi Bourouaieh, Full Lecturer, Computer Science, Universite 8 Mai 1945 Guelma, Algerie Priscila Gonsales, Founder and executive director, Educadigital Institute, Brazil Corinna Bartoletti, Researcher, Youth policies, Comune di Perugia, Italy To submit your proposal as a speaker or to register as a co-author or an auditor, please see Registration. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

If you are going to buy an LMS and stick your neck out professionally, commit $100,000 or $1,000,000 and impact every employee, channel partner and customer in your organization, it is prudent to speak to the LMS vendors’ customer references first and confirm you’re buying what you think you are buying.  It’s usually your last chance to avoid making a bad decision. The reference step in the sales cycle is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.  Vendors, references and buyers are all involved.  All three have some shared interests, but have different priorities and perspectives that need to be considered.   The LMS Vendor Perspective Customer references are tough for average and poor LMS vendors.  A typical vendor might work 50 sales opportunities in a given year.  If every prospective buyer asked for three references that would be 150 references calls to field a year.  That’s a lot of satisfied customers required and the exact reason buyers should always ask for references.   If a vendor is not doing a consistently fantastic job with their clients, the demand for references will always outweigh the supply. Great LMS vendors run their business in a way that they have a [...] The post A Multi-Perspective Look at LMS References appeared first on Talented Learning.

The theme for the ICOFE 2015 is ‘Making Learning Mobile and Ubiquitous’ Openness and flexibility are major trends in contemporary education, influencing the whole spectrum of education institutions across the globe. Technological advancement and breakthroughs are bringing about a paradigm shift in contemporary education. Modes of learning and teaching are becoming more open and flexible in terms of time, space, curriculum contents, organization, pedagogical methods, infrastructure and requirements. This change does not only happen in both open universities and conventional tertiary institutions. The rapid development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is one example that well manifests the global trend of open and flexible learning. With this background, the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) has organized the annual conferences of open and flexible education, which aim to: provide a platform for sharing research, practices and views relevant to open and flexible education facilitate networking and cross-institutional collaboration among researchers and educators in both open and conventional universities promote open and flexible education to enhance educational access and quality. Following the success of the Inaugural International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014), the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) will be held on 16-17 July, 2015 at Jubilee College, the Open University of Hong Kong. ICOFE 2015 will explore the approaches, means and experience of adopting latest technologies and innovations, particularly mobile technologies, which facilitate learning anytime and anywhere, in a flexible and personalized mode of education to cater for the diverse needs of different learning communities. Subthemes of the conference include the following mobile learning and open/flexible education modes ubiquitous learning and open/flexible education modes use of technologies to enhance ubiquitous teaching and learning innovations in open/flexible curriculum development and pedagogy social media and ubiquitous learning open educational resources and ubiquitous learning. The 2nd International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) will be held at The Open University Of Hong Kong on July 16-17, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

  It wasn’t the shot heard around the world by any means, but it should have been.  Last week LinkedIn announced plans to acquire content aggregator Lynda.com for $1.5 billion.  I am a learning technology analyst focused on the business of learning and my jaw literally dropped when I heard the news.  I quickly recognized the strategic significance of this move and how LinkedIn completely outfoxed and disrupted the learning, talent, content, higher education, extended enterprise, social media, continuing education and workforce development industries.  Not bad for a day’s work. Let me explain my uncharacteristic acquisition optimism.  In my opinion, LinkedIn is quietly the best and most useful of social media sites from a business and professional perspective.  For free, it allows anyone worldwide to create a living resume and build a personal network of colleagues throughout their entire career.  By collecting skill endorsements and recommendations from your network and posting content, comments, presentations, awards, articles, certifications and other relevant data, you create a historical profile of credibility that any other LinkedIn user recognizes and values - more so every day with 347,000,000 users and growing in 200 countries. A LinkedIn user (or now learner), by participating in groups and [...] The post LinkedIn Outfoxes Many with Lynda.com Acquisition appeared first on Talented Learning.

Have you met your new authoring tool yet? Throughout February and Multi-device March, we have been introducing you to gomo in a series of webinars revealing how easy it is to create beautiful multi-device content with our authoring tool. These webinars cover: the key features of gomo examples of responsive and adaptive design the pricing plans a live demo of our new SaaS tool. There are still lots more webinars to come, allowing you to ask Managing Director Mike Alcock your specific questions about gomo. However, if you can’t make it to the next session, you can find a recording of a previous webinar on our YouTube channel. We will be uploading more gomo videos soon, so please subscribe to our channel to be the first to find out more. The post Missed our recent gomo webinars? Catch up on YouTube appeared first on gomo Learning.

The Hottest Training Technologies To help Learning and Development professionals stay abreast of new training technology, we've given a summary of some of the hottest new training technologies below: Tin Cap API. SCORM is the current hosting platform standard for content in a LMS, but it has some limitations in that it does not easily allow you to link training data with job performance data, meaning you can't easily show a link between training and productivity. Tin Cap API is the new hosting platform for content in LMS- which promises to make huge wages- as this allows you to easily track and evaluate a much broader range of learning experiences in a much more end-to-end way. It will enable you to make that link between training and productivity gains from within the system. 3D Virtual World Training. Now, we know there's nothing new about virtual reality as its been around for a while. But, what is new is that we are really getting the hang of it, and are now incorporating exciting new technologies like 3D. This means that for the first time ever, virtual training experiences can be as good a training tool as the real world. The study reported in Neo Academic highlights a 3D Virtual World police training tool that delivered far more superior training and learning than traditional, face-to-face training. As 3D worlds become more convincing, expect virtual training to become an increasingly important and cost effective training device. AI Virtual Coaches. AI based virtual coaches are starting to appear and are showing themselves to be effective teachers. Northeastern University developed their own virtual coaching technology for a study where they were trying to get a group of learners to train and exercise more to lose weight. The coach helped the learners to set goals and provided personalized feedback on how well they were doing. As you might have guessed, those who had access to the virtual coach showed significant improvements versus those who didn't have access to the virtual coach. Watch out for the various AI virtual coaches that are hitting the market. Robot Patients. A recent ABC news piece has shown how a 'simulation man', a robot patient that responds in a similar way to a real person, is being used to help train medical staff at the VA. Learners can do lots of medical procedures on the simulation man, such as resuscitation and intubation, and the robot patient responds like a human making this robot an excellent learning tool. This could have application in first aid training and many other training scenarios. Have you heard about these new and exciting training technologies before? Do you think these training tools will make a significant impact on overall corporate training or do you believe traditional training methods will still reign supreme? Let us know what you think and if you have any other cool new training technologies you'd like to share that are coming out in the near future. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.