A server does exactly what the name would suggest: it serves. A server is a piece of hardware, very similar to a standard computer, assigned with the specific task of solving other computers "problems", such as storing data, executing operations and complex math, moving information and much more. The first one was built in 1981 by IBM and since then the technology has advanced so much that we hit the Cloud (more about the history of servers here).  You’ve always wanted to ask this question. You know it, I know it. Everybody talks about the Cloud, but what the hell does it mean? The Cloud The word Cloud was appropriately chosen as a metaphor for the new intangible way of approaching computing. Let me introduce two concepts: Virtual Machines and Cloud Computing. Some 15 years ago, people were trying to figure out a way to use the unexploited processing power of their servers, as these were not used efficiently. Companies like VMWare created softwares that basically allowed server architects to create multiple independent virtual servers that could be based on a single piece of hardware, optimizing the employment of the machine. This had a huge impact on the size of Data centers and energy consumption associated with servers as it allowed us to have multiple virtual servers on a single machine, instead of having the equivalent number of physical servers. Cloud Computing was the second big breakthrough in the way we use computing power. In fact instead of relying on a physical server or your computer hardware to execute applications or store data, it became possible to access a virtual server through the internet. The main advantage of Cloud Computing is that applications and data became "hardware agnostic", as you can access programs and documents from any computer or device, provided that you have internet and your access data. Great examples of Cloud technologies are Google Drive, Spotify and Dropbox. Taking the LMS to the Clouds Now that the concepts of Cloud computing and virtual servers are clear, I would like to talk about the Cloud LMS, what kind of benefits it brings to an organization trying to implement a learning strategy, and why so many organizations are moving towards this technology. As we said, Cloud Computing allows you to store data and execute programs through a Virtual Server accessible through any internet connection. Moreover this kind of infrastructure allows a certain degree of flexibility, as data, users and operations can be easily switched from one machine to another one. But what does it mean for the LMS administrator and the end users? The two main advantages of Cloud technologies applied to Learning Management Systems are accessibility and scalability. The first benefit is strictly related to the user experience. As we stated precedently, Cloud technology allows users to access programs and data from any device and location, provided that they have an internet connection and their credentials. In the era of mobile learning, the ability to access your learning material via your smartphone, tablet or laptop without losing your progress and data is extremely important and will definitely improve the learner experience. From the managing point of view, having a flexible infrastructure is always a benefit. Unless you are working for a project of mastodontic dimensions, where a difference of a 100 users doesn’t really affect the overall management structure of your program, you might need to change the number of users associated with your platform according to the number of learners you are expecting to have. With legacy technologies this required physically buying a different server and replacing the old one; with Cloud computing it is sufficient to click a button or to ask your software provider to apply changes as it is as simple as moving documents from one folder to a different one in your computer. Other benefits that come from using a Cloud LMS are improved security, faster deployment and maintenance. It has been proven that Cloud systems are more secure than standard IT infrastructures (you can read Google’s opinion on this matter here); To use a Cloud server it’s as easy as pressing a button (usually the purchase button on a cloud-based service provider’s website) Maintenance is easier when associated with Cloud technologies; by separating the virtual machine from the hardware, downtimes and failures are memories of the past. For further clarity, take a look at this blog post entitled "SaaS (Cloud) LMS OR Hosted LMS? Key tips to make your decision easy"   If you want to check out the benefits of a Cloud LMS for yourself, we invite you to test-drive the Docebo LMS for two weeks by activating your free trial at the bottom of this post! Sign up for a free 14-day trial or contact one of our consultants directly! START NOW SCHEDULE A DEMO CONTACT US The post To infinity and beyond: welcome to the Cloud LMS appeared first on Docebo.

Most avid readers will agree: no technology could replace the feeling of a book in your hands, immersed in its pages, flipping furiously from one chapter to the next. But that doesn’t mean technology doesn’t have a place in the world of reading. Quite the contrary, introducing new tools in your classroom can get students excited to read more and provide you with greater access to student data—which you can use to further enhance your teaching. However, these tools won’t teach your students for you. To make them effective, you need to maintain a learning-first attitude: "When you’re focused on ‘Learning First’ and not ‘Technology First,’ the technology is secondary to your good instruction," said Lauren Steinmann, a Digital Learning Coach and 11-year teacher. Find that delicate balance between teaching and relying on technology with these three tips. 1. Qualify Your Technology Needs There are dozens of tools available to help you teach reading with technology and all of them vary in one way or another. Take a minute to consider what it is you and your students need, which can help to narrow the options. To do so, answer a few important questions: What is my goal? What is the main goal of this product? Do I need the product to be common core-aligned? Will the product let me monitor my students’ progress? For example, you may think: My number one goal is to make reading more fun for my students. The main goal of the product will be to build a community around reading with my students. I need a product that comes with built-in, common core-aligned comprehension questions. I want to be able to check-in whenever at any time to see which students are excelling and which are falling behind. In this case, Whooo’s Reading, a social platform that encourages students to read more and makes it easy for them to discuss the books they love, would be the perfect fit for your needs. Other reading technology tools that may fit a variety of needs are: Guided Reader Books that Grow Footsteps to Brilliance Imagine Learning 2. Use Data to Improve Your Lessons One of the greatest benefits of using technology to teach students to read is that (in most cases) you have access to accurate data, rather than extracting it yourself manually. Use this data to improve your lessons; offering personalized learning opportunities for the students who need it and challenging those who are standing out as top readers. This data can also offer insight when meeting with parents or grading reading homework. 3. Take it Offline Your classroom doesn’t need to put all its focus on technology to reap the benefits. In fact, organizing offline opportunities to discuss and reward reading can enhance work your students do within the tools. Here are four offline activities to try: Hand out reading certificates: One could go to the top reader of the week or the student with the most thoughtful comprehension answer, for example. Organize a reading party: Plan to have a reading party once a month. Bring a special snack for the students to munch on while they get lost in their books. Organize a book swaps: Kids of all ages agree: the books they finish (and love) are the ones they pick out themselves, according to the newest Scholastic Kids and Family Report. A book swap encourages kids to choose the books they want to read. Create competitions: Challenge your students: Who can read the most this weekend? Who can finish their book by tomorrow morning? Technology makes reading more fun and exciting for students and provides you with accurate data about how they’re improving. Use these tools to enhance the great work you already do. Author: Jessica Sanders is the Director of Social Outreach for Learn2Earn. She grew up reading books like The Giver and Holes, and is passionate about making reading as exciting for young kids today as it has always been for her. Follow Learn2Earn on Twitter and Facebook, and send content inquiries to social@learn2earn.org. The post 3 Tips to Teach Reading With Technology appeared first on Docebo.

We’ve just released a whitepaper on massive open online courses (MOOCs) in which we explore their popularity in the corporate learning world and future viability in the academic world. This whitepaper follows a recent webinar we hosted with four online learning specialists: John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning Dr Mike Orey, an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia Aaron Silvers - a designer, technologist and strategist responsible for helping to bring massively adopted learning technologies into organizations around the world, notably SCORM and xAPI (otherwise known as Tin Can). Erica LeBlanc, the Operations Development Manager for the IP and Science division of Thomson Reuters The whitepaper considers ten MOOC-related questions: What’s a MOOC? What’s the future for MOOCs? From a corporate perspective, what types of MOOCs are there, how are they being implemented and why would a corporation want a MOOC? Are MOOCs really a disruptive force in learning? What’s the primary benefit to businesses offering MOOCs? Will MOOCs up-end the fundamental structure of teaching - especially in a corporate setting? What will be the effect of MOOCs in developing countries and immature learning markets? How do you see corporate acceptance of MOOC-based education? How can you close the gap between MOOCs’ high enrolment and low completion rates? Are MOOCs actually disrupting anything? DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITEPAPER Published by Docebo, a world’s Top 10 ranked SaaS E-Learning solutions provider In the whitepaper we argue that, while the idea of millions of people collaborating on a single subject in a shared learning environment is exciting, in reality MOOCs are unlikely to attain their original promise. MOOCs are still struggling to find a market niche within the corporate world - since it’s difficult for any but the largest corporations to generate a following around a subject that they’re willing to make freely available to everyone. On the other hand, MOOCs seem to abound in the academic world - but those offering the MOOCs are now wondering how to make money from the intellectual property that comprises these courses. MOOCs provide greater access to learning and a wider range of knowledge from different cultures and countries but technology isn’t beneficial merely because it’s there. Nonetheless, MOOCs have already shown their potential to disrupt the academic and corporate learning worlds — in terms of price, technology and even pedagogy - even if research shows that MOOC participants tend to come from the already well-educated and privileged in society. There are models that have proven successful within some organizations so, if your heart is set on a MOOC, there’s a case to be made to launch one. However, you should examine your business requirements and evaluate whether a MOOC is needed to solve your issue, or whether some high quality, targeted learning can achieve your objective.  Josh Squires, COO, Docebo EMEA   DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITEPAPER Published by Docebo, a world’s Top 10 ranked SaaS E-Learning solutions provider The post Do corporate MOOCs have a future? appeared first on Docebo.

Information is the driving force that has predominated the 21st century, and increasingly over the last decades and even years.  The ability to gather news quickly and process that information can make or break companies. In 2012 we created 2.5 quintillion (1018) bytes of data per day and because of this gigantic growth, having access to the right information at the right moment is challenging but necessary. So in order to help elearning professionals find essential elearning news, we gathered a list of resources that you will find extremely useful. LinkedIn As we are talking about elearning professionals, the most obvious place to start looking is LinkedIn, the social network dedicated business networking. Here you will find many interesting people to follow and a great number of groups in which market leaders share interesting news and facts about elearning, L&D and much more. The eLearning Guild Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals’ Group eLearn - An eLearning Training Group eLearning Global Network elearning 2.0 Mobile Learning in Education Facebook Facebook is mostly used by companies to share updates and engage with fans, but sometimes groups can be a good source of information. E-Learning technologies The eLearning Guild eLearning Club Google+ Google+ is having quite an impact with its Communities. As a matter of fact, Google has over 600 million users, mostly professionals, who use Google+ everyday to share and collect information, so here you can find some interesting communities to check out: EdTech Technology in Education Twitter 500 million tweets per day means you definitely need help filtering out the top Twitter accounts in elearning. If you could check one tweet per second it would take you approximately 16 years to check the tweets produced in one day! In order to save you a few years on Twitter, here are our favorite elearning Twitter accounts: David Anderson Jane Hart Connie Malamed Craig Weiss More resources! Now that we have covered the most relevant social media, I would like to give you a few more resources/ links that will definitely help you to keep track of what is going on in the world of online training: Here’s a Scoop.it page, which is basically a dashboard curated by an industry expert containing the most relevant articles on a  subject (e.g. elearning) according to him/her. An RSS feed using Google Alerts that will be updated everyday with the most relevant articles on Google about elearning! You can check it here.   The best elearning blogs Articulate Community: One of the most interesting blogs on modern training and instructional design. In this blog you will not only find great articles, you will also find a very active community of trainers, elearning experts and instructional designers who exchange opinions on the latest trends. Elearning Industry: Founded by Christopher Pappas, the Elearning Industry blog gathers some of the best blog posts in the market by guest bloggers on all elearning related topics. Kapp Notes: Instructional Designer and Gamification Expert, Karl Kapp helps companies to transition to elearning and shares his knowledge through his blog. Talented Learning: CEO and Lead Analyst (and blogger) at Talented Learning, John Leh is an LMS selection consultant who helps organizations plan and implement technology strategies that support extended enterprise learning. Elearning Provocateur: Ryan Tracy is one of Australia’s leading training experts and he likes to "provoke deeper thinking" through his blog. Rapid Elearning: hosted by Tom Kuhlmann, who has over 20 years of experience in the training field, the Rapid Elearning blog shares some practical tips and tricks for the elearning pro. Jane Hart Blog: Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, Jane Hart is the UK’s leading expert in Learning & Development. Stephen’s Web: Stephen Downes works for the National Research Council of Canada and has created a blog to demonstrate new directions in the online learning field for practitioners and enthusiasts. Elliot Masie’s Learning Trends: By Elliott Masie - an analyst and speaker focused on the changing world of the workplace, learning and technology. The post 26 resources for elearning professionals appeared first on Docebo.

News that the Canada-based venture capitalist, Klass Capital, has invested some $3m to help further develop Docebo’s disruptive Cloud SaaS-based e-learning solutions platform, allied to news from Saba that it’s being acquired by an affiliate of Vector Capital, are just two of several recent interventions in the learning management system (LMS) market which indicate the achievement of a further milestone in the industry’s development. They also indicate a further polarization among LMS offerings on the market. For the least two years, Docebo’s LMS has figured prominently among the world’s top ten LMSs - in the list published by the world-renowned independent analyst, Craig Weiss. The LMS is used by over 800 business-to-business (B2B) clients, in more the 30 languages and in over 80 countries worldwide. Clients include major brands such as Bloomberg Institute, Thomson Reuters, FreshBooks and Autodesk. Saba, which has a longer track record than Docebo and which has had an association with Vector Capital since 2013, claims to have some 2,200 customers across 195 countries using 37 languages. Having been originally funded by the Italian Venture Capital firm, Principia SGR, Docebo now has backing from Klass Capital - a company which provides expansion stage capital to high growth enterprise software businesses and has developed a portfolio of 15 high growth enterprise software businesses. Developing an LMS isn’t difficult. It can’t be - because there are currently an estimated 800 LMSs commercially available in the world, some 642 of which are examined in depth in Craig Weiss’ 2015 report. Much of the difference in these figures can be explained by the number of LMSs which are only available in certain geographies, such as China and Russia. Craig Weiss’ report in 2014 examined 582 LMSs. This is an indication of the current rate of market growth in this sector. According to Craig Weiss, some 90 percent of features are common to some 90 percent of LMSs. When searching for the right LMS for your organization, it’s important to identify those LMSs which offer exactly the ‘extra ten percent’ of features that you want. In his view, current key issues and trends in the LMS world include: Gamification - which is growing fast but many systems currently limit its use Modern user interfaces - notably with the move towards greater personalisation of the learning experience The ability of the vendor to provide support and service Speed of innovation from the vendor The vendor’s adoptability and adaptability, as well as acting upon consumer feedback Yet this overall figure - of 642 LMSs - disguises the growing disparity in LMSs. Only a relatively small proportion of these LMSs can cope seamlessly with the learning demands of a large - often global - organization. This is the area of the LMS market where there are large numbers of learners who need access to a large number of learning materials, often in a variety of languages and tailored to fit different cultures even within the same geography. The products from companies such as Docebo, Saba and several others, operate most effectively in this sector of the market - and, because the numbers involved are large, it’s these companies’ LMSs that attract the attention of venture capitalists. Their money is driving the further development and sophistication of the LMS - and, indeed, that of its ‘complementary cousin’: learning content management systems (LCMSs). One of the key developments in this sector of the LMS market began some five or so years ago with the decision to put LMSs ‘in the Cloud’. Commenting mainly on the UK market in 2010 but also looking at the rest of Europe, Learning Light’s Report, ‘The UK e-learning market 2010’, said: ‘In terms of technology trends, we see considerable innovation and potential disruption to business models driven by open source technologies, mobile and smart devices, e-books, Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS), along with the new style and demand of learners living almost all of their lives online.’ It continued: ‘The emergence of Cloud SaaS is, arguably, one of the big leaps for learning technologies. Unlike a lot of new wave learning (e.g. m-learning), it isn’t about clever technology awaiting a cost-effective application. The Cloud was simply inevitable… (The) Cloud really appears to have captured the imagination of learning technologists and e-learning specialists … with organisations as diverse as GITEX (Middle East), DCKTN (UK) and Microsoft devoting time and resources to publications and events on the subject. (The) Cloud is mainly seen in terms of data management right now but the acceptance of SaaS as a cost cutting and robust technology opens minds and reduces barriers to take-up.’ As with so many of Learning Light’s market predictions, its views on the Cloud and SaaS have proved to be extremely accurate. LMS producers were quick to see the possibilities of this technology in 2010. Now - after a suitable time lag, because they wouldn’t want to be seen as incautious - venture capitalists have seen what has been achieved in only a few short years. As a result, they are now prepared to invest in order to speed the development and application of learning, as well as monitoring that learning, via the Cloud. The market leading LMSs are those which cater for large numbers of users in national and international organizations and deliver that learning in diverse languages to diverse cultures. These - as Docebo and Saba have just illustrated - are the ones that are attracting the investment that will enable these Cloud SaaS-based systems to develop the leading edge gamification applications and modern user interfaces that all LMS buyers want to see - and which the major LMS buyers can afford.   By Bob Little For the last 25 years, Bob Little has been writing and commentating on all aspects of corporate online learning technologies. His work is published around the world. The post From Cloud & SaaS to Capital & Success appeared first on Docebo.

Marketing is communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers, for the purpose of promoting or selling that product, service, or brand. Wikipedia Today the internet offers such a wide range of possibilities in terms of courses, MOOCs, videos, slides and documents that it is quite difficult to stand out and be found. If you want to find an audience for your courses you should start to apply some marketing techniques and as we speak about online courses the most obvious choice is to start from online marketing. I’ve had the chance to test a variety of strategies and techniques and here I want to share with you four actions that I consider mandatory in order to market anything online, which you can apply to your courses. Build your website: The internet as we know it is based on websites. If you want to be found on Google (and trust me, that’s where you want to be found) the first step is definitely creating a web page. Doing so will contribute to your online reputation and, most importantly, will give a great boost to your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy. In fact Google and the other engines constantly scan the internet for pages (and in the past few years for social profiles) in order to create an index. As a result of this constant research, every time someone looks for a specific online course the search engine gives back a list of results that might help the user, and the better and more relevant the website is, the higher is its position in the search engine result page (SERP) (which usually means more potential customers). Start a blog: unfortunately having a website is not enough: anyone, given enough time and resources, can create a web page thanks to the great amount of tools available. In my opinion, the second most important strategy to stand out in today’s internet marketing is definitely creating a compelling blog. Through a blog you are not simply adding keywords to your website (which is actually a good thing for Search Engine Optimisation): you are creating value for your audience. In the end I really believe that creating value for your users is the ultimate in marketing, and sharing your experience and knowledge with them can definitely be considered ‘giving value’. Engage with a newsletter: now that you have your own website and blog, it is time to focus on creating a long term relationship with your audience. Modern Marketing techniques rotate around a relatively new strategy called Permission Marketing, a strategy developed by the marketing guru Seth Godin. While in the past people were simply bombed with advertising everywhere, modern marketers understood that to really get to people’s hearts you need to establish a relationship with them, based on permissions, such as the permission to send them an email every now and then. When people subscribe to your newsletter, they allow you to send them updates about your blog, news about your course offerings, reminders of how important they are to you and your activity. By creating a good email list and a useful newsletter, you will definitely find a long term source of customers for your courses. Boost your online presence with Social Media: February 4th, 2004: Facebook was founded. 10 years ago the king of social media was born and things changed forever. We have to admit it to ourselves: we spend a lot of time on social media, and not just for chatting with our friends. Nowadays Social Media are used as an extension of our online presence, as they allow us to communicate with fans, potential customers and partners. Once again, the trick is not to use social media as a simple outlet of information, but as a channel for interaction and value exchange. In order to boost your online presence in the elearning field I strongly recommend you create profiles for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin (as a start) and share the content of your blogs on platforms such as Scoop.it and elearningtags.com. You can also take a look at a few social media profiles that you should follow and interact with in this article we published a few weeks ago. Here are a few examples of very successful online courses / platforms: Ted Talks: Ted Talks is probably one of the most educational and motivational series of videos on the internet. One of the reasons for its success is surely the end goal of these videos, which were created in order to inspire people to achieve great things (i.e. offering value), but their website surely has played an important role in Ted’s history. As a very intuitive website, they manage to deliver value to the users as soon as they land on the page, while their videos are shared thousands of times through their social media channels. Ted Talks videos define virality! Khan Academy: with almost a million Facebook likes, 380 thousands Twitter followers and about 20 million monthly visits on its blog, Khan Academy has definitely mastered the art of marketing for online learning. If you want to learn more about effective social media strategies for your courses, you should definitely check the Academy social accounts. edX: only a handful of websites in the world have a PageRank of 10 and edX is one of them. If you try to search for "online courses" or any variations of related keywords, you will always find this website among the top results. The lesson here? Make sure that your course is in the top results for your specific niche and then wait for your customers to find you. If you still haven’t created your online courses but you would like to start sharing your knowledge, and why not, make some money out of it (!) here you can activate your 14 day free trial of the Docebo LMS and give it a shot! Sign up for a free 14-day trial or contact one of our consultants directly! START NOW SCHEDULE A DEMO CONTACT US The post How to market your online course in 4 easy steps appeared first on Docebo.

We invite you to read our just-released case study on Nuance, the Zurich-based travel retailer which employs more than 6,100 people worldwide and serves over 31m travelling customers a year. Nuance operates retail outlets spanning more than 60 locations in 18 countries and territories across the globe. The company also provides in-flight services and operates a wholesale and distribution business, supporting the travel retail sector.   DOWNLOAD THE FREE CASE STUDY Published by Docebo, a world’s Top 10 ranked SaaS E-Learning solutions provider Nuance is using the Docebo Cloud SaaS-based LMS to centralize knowledge within the company and make it available as and when it’s required. In the past, Nuance had made many attempts to develop a single Learning Library and a unique knowledge repository. The result was that the knowledge and training material had been compiled in different formats, with different tools and stored in different repositories. Moreover, it was difficult to update all the different libraries and ensure that they all had the most current, appropriate information. So the company’s HR department’s search for the answer to the challenge of minimizing training time and especially improving getting new staff ‘up-to-speed’ quickly led it to Docebo. Docebo’s LMS helped build a single, always up-to-date knowledge repository so that the various learning materials online could be effectively delivered to learners around the world. Docebo is extremely simple and intuitive both to install and administer and - importantly - end users also find the Docebo LMS easy to use. Moreover, we’ve found that Docebo’s standard of customer service is extremely high." Mario Pizzagalli, iqons s.r.l. (Nuance’s Project Manager) DOWNLOAD THE FREE CASE STUDY Published by Docebo, a world’s Top 10 ranked SaaS E-Learning solutions provider The post Learning at travel retailer Nuance goes places, thanks to Docebo appeared first on Docebo.

This post is based on a recent webinar, hosted by Docebo, on the Extended Enterprise. During the webinar, industry experts dig into the profitable topic of extended enterprise learning and show you what you really need to be successful. Contact us to receive your link to watch the webinar! Extended Enterprise (EE) learning is any training effort targeted at your non-employees with the goal of impacting measurable behavior change.  Every industry globally uses some form of EE learning and they all have the same fundamental challenge.  Extended enterprise users are voluntary users and thus need to be treated differently - better than employees. All extended enterprise audiences are voluntary but to differing degrees.  You can make your employees take training but you can’t make the EE voluntary learners do anything.  Organizations need to make voluntary learners want to take content, pay for content and come back and do it again and again.  As a result, experts in extended enterprise learning need to be equally skilled in business, marketing and measuring success as well as the traditional learning technology skill set. Extended enterprise learning comes in many shapes and forms.  Here are the top six examples of how you can use extended enterprise training to gain a competitive advantage. #1 — Partner Channel Training and Certification Manufacturers, software providers, insurance companies, investment brokerages and telecommunication companies usually have global, independent partners that resell and service their product lines as well as provide local value added services and support. These global partners often represent competing product lines from competing organizations.  The organization that best trains and certifies its partners on their products and services and provides just-in-time performance support will win the mindshare battle.  In every industry, those organizations that train and certify their partner channel see dramatic increases in channel sales, complexity of sales and end-customer satisfaction. #3 — Customer Training Academy Over the last few years customer learning has evolved into a strategic marketing, sales and support tool.   If you have a product or service that requires any level of customer expertise, then you better be training your customers in a measurable way.  A learning management system branded as a "customer academy" is used as the backbone of the customer learning system delivering eLearning, tutorials, videos and social learning that can be created once and reused countless times. Knowing if your customers have been trained or not gives you the power to measure the return on your investment by comparing their buying and use behavior.  Organizations with formal customer learning programs enjoy higher customer satisfaction rate, decrease in support calls, increase in customer renewal rates, upsells and cross sells. #5 — Continuing Education and For-Profit Training Many professional jobs such as accountants, architects, dentists, doctors, nurses and teachers to zoologists are required to take a certain amount of professional development training every year.  The amount of training is usually expressed in credit hours and varies by professional and geographic location but 20-50 hours/year is common.   Many types of organizations compete to provide continuing education content and certification to these professionals including associations, training providers and universities.  The ability to attract professionals, sell them content, provide them value and have them come back next year is vital to success, stability and longevity of any organization providing training. The professional continuing education industry is huge.  For example, the healthcare continuing education industry is centrally accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education,  In 2013, CME providers conducted over one million hours of CME instruction to 24,000,000 healthcare professionals. #2 — Dealer/Franchise Onboarding and New Product Rollout While channel partners can represent many organizations, dealers and franchises usually only represent one.   Automobile manufacturers, gasoline service stations, restaurant and hotel chains, car rental agencies and beauty aid organizations all sell exclusive dealer or franchise rights to independent partners usually limited to a geographic area.  These partners pay a hefty initial fee and ongoing royalty for the proven business model, brand recognition, marketing, defined products and training to make them successful. Most dealers and franchisers provide training and certification to their franchisees for every job role from owner to maintenance in a prepackaged LMS, content and performance support learning environment. #4 — Contract Workforce Compliance In the oil and gas, transportation, large scale construction industries and even retail, many workers are independent contractors.  The regulatory compliance nature of these industries and positions require employers to be incredibly diligent in training contractors and ensuring their training or regulatory certifications are current. An extended enterprise LMS allows contracting organizations to deliver compliance mobile enabled content and verify compliance adherence.  Using APIs these organizations integrate contractor ID card readers, building entry access, starting of vehicles or even a helicopter ride to an off shore drilling platform to real-time LMS compliance completion status records.  Compliance violations can cost lives at the worst and millions in fines at the best and can be solved with a good extended enterprise LMS. #6 — Public Training Governments at all levels and non-governmental agencies like the Red Cross have the mission of educating the public on a multitude of topics.  Emergency responders, families of veterans, new business owners, unemployed workers and traffic violators are all examples of the public audience that needs to be trained and it’s not always for free.  Selling courses to these audiences is common and is an amazing income generator due to the high number of users that are typically associated with public initiatives. Historically, this training was provided by live instructors or sending out paper materials, but has migrated to the extended enterprise LMS as preferred delivery method because of low cost of distribution and the ability to measure effectiveness and change in behavior. Conclusion Smart organizations provide opportunities for their extended enterprise audiences to learn.   In extended enterprise learning, it is the organization’s job to attract, engage and retain learners and the only way to do that combine marketing, business and training into one measurable program.  When thoughtfully designed and delivered extended enterprise learning is measurable and will help your organization make money, save money and accelerate your pace of your business. You shouldn’t wait to get started. Your competition didn’t. Join our free Webinar March 12th on: Top 10 Features of an Extended Enterprise LMS   Organizations are rapidly embracing the concept of training and certifying their audiences because done well, it becomes a significant competitive differentiator.  Do you want to learn more?   Join John Leh, CEO of Talented Learning, LLC and Alessio Artuffo, COO of Docebo NA as they dig into the profitable topic of extended enterprise learning and show you what you really need to be successful.  This fast-paced, entertaining and interactive session will include:   Intro to extended enterprise learning Top 10 EE Feature countdown Live EE demonstration Vote for your favorite features Question and Answer Register now!  About the Author John Leh is CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC, a research and consulting organization dedicated to the advancement of extended enterprise learning.  John has 19 years of experience in the eLearning and LMS industry having served as a trusted advisor to more than 100 learning organizations. The post Top 6 Uses of Extended Enterprise Learning appeared first on Docebo.

A couple of weeks ago we released a free whitepaper entitled "MOOCs: from Academia to Corporate". This whitepaper followed a webinar during which four industry leaders discussed the nature of MOOCs, the future of Corporate MOOCs, and MOOCs in academia. Today, MOOCs tend to refer to a collection of individual courses from one source, such as a university. MOOCs can also be defined as the learning management system (LMS) platform that allows people or organizations to create, host and deploy content. John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst of Talended Learning MOOCs are giving people a free trial of the experience of taking a university class and, at the end, you can get the continuing education credits for a small fee Mike Orey - Associate Professor at the University of Georgia Corporate partnering with MOOCs is something that’ll be evolving in the next few years. A reputable MOOC, coming from the universities, or platforms like edX, could be integrated with corporate development plans. So an LMS wouldn’t necessarily render MOOCs irrelevant. There’s a lot of information that needs to be transferred to employees. If the information already exists and comes from a reputable university, I’d take advantage of that." Erica LeBlanc, the Operations Development Manager for the IP and Science division of Thomson Reuters Over time, if you’re looking to hire a project manager and you find someone who’s gone through a MOOC experience to earn their project management professional certification, you’ll look at that person seriously Aaron Silvers, a designer, technologist and strategist responsible for helping to bring into being learning technologies DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER CHECK IT OUT ON SLIDESHARE The post Our MOOCs whitepaper is now on Slideshare! appeared first on Docebo.

This post is based on a recent webinar, hosted by Docebo, on the Extended Enterprise. During the webinar, industry experts dig into the profitable topic of extended enterprise learning and show you what you really need to be successful. Contact us to receive your link to watch the webinar! The evolution of cloud computing, mobile devices and social media changed the learning and development market in ways that no one could have predicted.   While progressive L&D experts have been leveraging these new technologies for their employee learners, the greatest beneficiary has been opportunistic organizations who maximize their interaction and training contact with their corporate extended enterprise learners. Are you impacting your business with extended enterprise training?  If not, you are behind.  Organizations in every industry globally - including yours - use extended enterprise training as a strategic tool to grow and improve their business and profitability. Extended enterprise learning is any training, knowledge, certification or performance support provided to your non-employees such as channel distribution partners, resellers, dealers, franchises, members, customers and end-users of your products and services. Winning your competitive race is a matter of percentages and few organizations outdistance everybody for a long period of time.  Continual investment and growth in training your extended audiences and providing them targeted performance support has a proven positive impact on core business metrics.  Smart organizations use this fact to their advantage. LMS is the Backbone of Extended Enterprise Extended enterprise learning is facilitated by a Learning Management System (LMS) to keep track of all your users, content and the relationship between the two.  For over twenty years corporate organizations have been using LMSs and eLearning to provide mandatory and self-service training to their employees.  Historically, LMS systems were successful in reducing training delivery costs and ensuring regulatory compliance but they fell woefully short in engaging learners, being easy to use or facilitating ecommerce.  They were all about saving money. The new cloud LMSs leverage the advances in technology to finally facilitate engagement with global extended audiences at a fractional cost in comparison traditional LMSs.  With these hurdles removed organizations are focusing on delivering a measurable impact through external training and they can prove it.    Training your corporate extended enterprise audiences is all about making money, impacting business change and winning your competitive race.  Measurable Benefits of Extended Enterprise Learning Unlike internal employee training it is easy to measure the business impact of extended enterprise learning.   An extended enterprise learning management system will allow you to report on the training completions of your extended audience groups.   Compare trained vs. untrained groups or individuals in any metric you are tracking such as renewals, support calls or channel sales performance to determine the measurable impact. The measurable benefits of extended enterprise learning can be grouped into three main categories: Increase Income -Extended enterprise learning is about making money for an organization.  If you train your channel partners about your products and how to sell them, channel partners will sell more.  Similarly, if you train your customers on how to use the software they just purchased, they have a better chance to get a good start, use the product as intended, be successful and renew their subscriptions.  Organizations also sell their content and certifications and create a new stream of revenue from the sale of content and channel partner certifications. Decrease Costs -Educating your partners, prospects and customers increases customer satisfaction and decreases the cost of customer support.   Extended enterprise learning technology also decreases overall training delivery costs through the reuse of learning materials and elimination of travel and instructor costs and also reduces the regulatory compliance risk.  Finally, the cost to build and support a growing and global network of partners and customers is greatly reduced through extended enterprise training and performance support. Accelerate Timelines - Through the use of extended enterprise training organizations can shorten timeframes for many activities.  Rolling out new products, expanding into new global areas, ramping up external sales are all measurable impact areas.  Onboarding new customers to successful customers is dramatically decreased with focused training and just-in-time learning interventions. Few activities in the corporate world have the ability to impact so many of the above business metrics.  Deploying an ever evolving extended enterprise outreach and training initiative can provide you a sustainable competitive advantage to outpace your competition. Extended Enterprise Case Studies To be really successful in extended enterprise learning it is important to develop a measurable success plan from day one.  Define who you are going to target, what behavior you want to change and how you will measure it.  By knowing the impact to the business you have all tools to ask for more budget and then prove the impact.  Here are four case studies of organizations that have proven the worth of training their extended enterprises.  Click on the company name to access full case story and many more. Veeam Software, a global leader in data protection, disaster recovery and virtual environment management, provides training content to over 50,000 channel partners and 90,000 customer users, resulting in 3000 learning engagements per month and 10,000 revenue generating certifications.  95% of trained partners agree that training helped them to improve knowledge and ability to sell, improving results and productivity. Autodesk certifies instructors who can train users and organizations to help them obtain the greatest return on their Autodesk software investment.  Autodesk lowered their training delivery costs, increased global reach, generated income and improved content consistency while certifying over 5000 instructors in 13 countries. Sealed Air is a global packaging and cleaning products manufacturer that developed and deployed a for-profit client academy to certify their clients on their products and how to properly use them.  Sealed Air analyzes training completion data combined with business data to benchmark goals and measurable performance. International Parking Institute utilizes Docebo to train, certify, measure and report on learning for parking professionals from member organizations in every industry globally. Conclusion Training your corporate extended enterprise audiences is all about making money, impacting business change and winning your competitive race.  There is a multitude of ways to impact your business with extended enterprise learning.  The important thing is to pick business metrics you can measure from day one and document how these metrics change with extended enterprise training.  You don’t have to start big.  You just have to start.   Join our free Webinar March 12th on: Top 10 Features of an Extended Enterprise LMS   Organizations are rapidly embracing the concept of training and certifying their audiences because done well, it becomes a significant competitive differentiator.  Do you want to learn more?   Join John Leh, CEO of Talented Learning, LLC and Alessio Artuffo, COO of Docebo NA as they dig into the profitable topic of extended enterprise learning and show you what you really need to be successful.  This fast-paced, entertaining and interactive session will include: Intro to extended enterprise learning Top 10 EE Feature countdown Live EE demonstration Vote for your favorite features Question and Answer REGISTER NOW About the Author  John Leh is CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC, a research and consulting organization dedicated to the advancement of extended enterprise learning.  John has 19 years of experience in the eLearning and LMS industry having served as a trusted advisor to more than 100 learning organizations. 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