I wanted to share some discussions I've recently had around an interesting project where the company provided the sales team a collaboration, content distribution and expert access portal.  Do you have a case study for me? I'm hoping to do a lot of case studies over the next 6-12 months looking at interesting examples of the use of social/informal/web 2.0 learning.  If you have an example, please drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com.  Another example of this is: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank. Background I can't reveal the company used in this case study at their request.  They are a large, distributed organization.  Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets. Traditionally, the sales team searched for information on topics such as government regulations, product support and technology through a confederation of five Web-based collaboration and document management software systems.  The sales team often would find themselves spending time navigating the many software systems for archived knowledge and often found documents that did not exactly address their question. So, they would then go straight to the experts by phone and email for answers.  And then they would sometimes take these answers and create new pockets of information which made the situation even worse. This is a fairly common situation that many organizations face. And a big part of the genesis for the project was when an executive was asked by a colleague about where to go to find a particular piece of information.  The executive realized that they needed "One place to find all of our information."  That's where things really began to take off. Exploration They did a lot of exploration before landing on a solution.  They went around to ask employees what issues they had with existing systems and what they needed.  They asked what web sites the sales teams liked.  "MSNBC, CNN and ESPN were good Web sites and simple to use. They could find just about everything from the home pages. If they didn’t, they could easily find what they needed by searching the site." Clearly, they wanted/needed the  knowledge-exchange platform to be easy to use. Employees needed to be able to find information with a few clicks of a mouse. If the information did not yet exist in the system, employees wanted to be able to route it to an expert and get a timely response. They also wanted the expert’s responses to the sales team’s questions to be captured by the system. If the information already existed, employees should be able find information without repeatedly asking the experts. The software would also need to appeal to a cross-section of demographics. The team went around to other companies to explore how they had addressed similar issues, what their solutions looked like and what their experiences had been.  One particular conversation was with McDonalds where they found that a similar kind of system took several years before it really took off. Initially they considered just doing the solution as a search solution that would be able to find content across the various systems.  But the need was really for more than that.  They needed to make sure that content was consistent.  They wanted to be able to access experts and begin to build better communication.  They really felt they needed more of a portal. They looked at several different portal options and chose OutStart Participate.  Part of the decision was also based on that they had good experience with Outstart products previously and they knew that it would be easier to get approval from IT and information security - which it was. They then went around to executives within the sales organization to talk about what they wanted/needed.  Of course, a big part of the conversation was making sure they had executive support and to set expectations about what was going to happen.  They coached the executives around the need to point people to the system.  They talked about patience.  They discussed iterations.  And they set reasonable expectations around the system. Solution The heart of the site is the document repository.  Most all of the sales materials that sales people need are found on the site.  This makes it a mission-critical part of their work.  It means that sales people can upload selling documents or pass best practices back and forth easily without relying on e-mail.  The site is segmented into eight communities based on different departments.  Those departments have some flexibility in their design and can have their own documents.  Each community has several team members responsible for that community and certainly some communities are more active and creative with the site than others.  For example, the clinical team uses the portal to share updates on new clinical offerings and services as part of their roll-out package. One of the key features of the portal also is the "Expertise Exchange," where sales people can communicate with experts.  If you have a question about a particular product, just type in that question and get an answer from an expert or from the existing knowledge bank.  The portal promises to get answers back within 48 hours, but the median time is roughly 4 hours. The system has a section dedicated to looking at current news and what it means.  For example, if a major publication does an article on the company or their specific part of the industry, it's important that a sales person is ready to address questions on their next sales call.  So, a few directors in Sales Communications continually look for interesting news and then create a piece that links to the article, provides a bit more background and helps the sales person have a good answer to questions around the piece. Originally this system started out as a replacement for several existing systems that had lots of content.  Unfortunately, during the planning of the system the team came to realize that much of the existing content would not be usable in the new system.  A lot of it was outdated or never approved. Branding, Marketing and Roll-Out One of the areas that I personally think the team did extremely well is in the branding, marketing and roll-out of the system. The Sales Operations team branded the new system with a catchy name. They designed a nice logo for it.  Came up with various associated things like the popular pen.  They spent time making sure that the site would come across as something different and fun.  Posters were funny.  Yes, they highlighted useful features, but also made sure it was different from the posters they were used to seeing.  This goes along with the nature of the site in that it's designed to be social.  It's not complete (iteration required).  And while it has a serious purpose, we can celebrate the fact that its not perfect. To roll-out the project, they went on a road-trip where at each stop he led the users through a game based on "Who wants to be a millionaire?"  The game required people to tell him how they would find some piece of information, get help, etc.  Basically they had to show how they would use the system.  They gave away prizes.  And everyone had a good time. If you look at the case study Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank, you can find some similarities in how this system was rolled out and the need for a lot of help for users to get things moving.  The team clearly recognizes the importance of branding, marketing and roll-out.  A lot of similar kinds of sites get launched with an email.  People just won't adopt if they don't really understand it and don't think about it. Results There are approximately 1,500 employees now relying on the portal for information, expertise and knowledge exchange. These employees are mainly comprised of sales executives, account managers, clinicians and consultants. The collaborative nature of the portal is starting to change the culture. More and more people are using the portal as a place to update the sales organization about industry or product news and to share their latest experience.  This practice eliminates much of the mass e-mailing that has gone on in the past, and experts are receiving fewer and fewer of the same kinds of questions. After unveiling the portal, surveys were sent to several hundred members of the sales team to gauge reaction. Ninety-three percent felt the ability to ask for documents or support was "very or extremely helpful." Ninety-five percent said the "training was clear," and they "enjoyed learning about the portal." Ninety-two percent said they would "visit the portal regularly each week." On a weekly basis, there is more than four times the number of active members on the portal versus the old patchwork of tools.  The portal handles 17 times the number of questions from employees that the old tools fielded. All the answers to the questions are immediately available. In addition, sales people can ask a question using their wireless devices and get immediate answers if the data is available. If the question goes to an expert, the sales person will get an e-mail when the answer is available. Where's Learning and Development? You may have been wondering as your read the case, where's L&D in this?  In this company, L&D falls under the same unit as Sales Operations where the team sits.  Yet, interestingly, L&D was not really involved in project. They have another tool they use to put up learning content.  They are discussing merging some of the content going forward.  And they are discussing how we can merge learning tools inside of the portal. To me, this may have been a missed opportunity for the L&D organization.  If they want to be seen as providing day-to-day value, they need to get into the flow.  And the flow is now going through the portal.  Likely there are some fairly simple technical solution as to get learning content to come through the portal. Have Patience Executives, users, and other stakeholders often go into this kind of project having the expectation that as soon as you launch, everyone will immediately jump in and use the system.  Even with the great job that the team did around rolling out the system, he still preached that everyone needed to be patient around adoption.  You will get an initial burst, followed by a lull and then slow adoption.  Be prepared for that.  And know that you can provide real value even with partial adoption.  You also should expect to iterate to make it better.   The team regularly conducts focus groups with 6-8 users in a room (no executives).  You need a thick skin during this, but you will get some real nuggets.  And again, you need to set the expectation that this is a work-in-progress.  Lots of changes will be required.  For example, discussion boards and blogs have not been used that much in the system.  The team has some ideas on where these might go.  They also expect to have lots of changes to the UI over time to make it easier to use and easier to find information. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I've had a similar discussion several times over the past few months.  These discussions center on what requirements should go into an LMS RFP and more broadly how the LMS should really be integrated into the organization. Initially, the conversation was about having learning content appear on the enterprise portal.  Many LMS vendors provide portlets, gadgets or widgets that allow for access of learning content (most often meaning courses and courseware) through the corporate portal.  Assuming that your learning audience regularly visits the enterprise portal, then its great to be able to show employees upcoming learning events, training requirements, content that might be of interest, or other similar things. This has been a common requirement for a number of years.  And it's definitely a nice thing to have done.  It's certainly better than putting a static link to your LMS somewhere on the corporate portal / intranet. But this only scratches the surface of what it means to integrate the Learning Management System (LMS) into the systems that people use day-to-day in an enterprise.  And this whole question is becoming more complicated as we look at the integration of the LMS and Social Learning.  There's a question of whether social tools will be part of the LMS or outside the LMS.  My gut says these tools are going to be separate from the LMS, e.g., SharePoint.  So, this naturally brings up how you integrate the LMS with social tools as well. So, when I'm thinking about eLearning Portal Integration, I'm now thinking about: Exposing links to learning content in the enterprise portal Searchable learning content integrated with enterprise search Integrating social tools with learning content Integration learning management with other day-to-day tools Links and Searching Content The first two items are a bit more common today and it really starts with the question: Is there content and knowledge in the LMS that would be useful day-to-day?  In the post What Goes in the LMS? the general conclusion was that the LMS was really about housing finished course materials that need close tracking.  But generally some of that content would be useful in a day-to-day context. The first stage of integrating this content is to simply provide links to individual content items that are housed in the LMS.  This requires the simplest kind of deep links.  You can refer to a SCO from outside the LMS and launch directly to that SCO without the user needing to do anything else.  FYI - deep linking is the ability for learning content to be linked to and launched from outside the LMS.  Many LMS vendors provide this capability.  And it can be really important if you want to create web sites outside the LMS that might provide context to a set of courses in the LMS.  For example, a Plateau case study (PDF) talks about: The biggest benefit Reuters has seen from its Plateau LMS to date is from deep linking functionality. Previously it took users up to 15 clicks to go from system access to content launch. With deep links in Plateau, users can launch content in two or three clicks. Deep linking also enables Reuters to have a centralized, single point for all content. Which also addresses why we don't really want to plan to send the user directly to the LMS for day-to-day access.  See also:  Tools for On-Demand Information - An LMS?  But the next level of content access from outside the LMS is search.  The idea is that the course content should be integrated into enterprise search so that it can be found and used when the person needs help with something. This is a more complex requirement as it means requirements for enterprise search, the LMS and most often the content as well.  The content must  content must be indexable, in other words, the search engine must be able to run through the content to see what's in there.  For web pages, wiki pages, PDFs, Word Docs and other standard content that's easy.  For courseware it can be hard.  First the search engine may not be able to index the content because it'd buried in a proprietary format.  Second, even if the search engine can find it, it may not know how to get a user to that piece of content.  Launching a user to the beginning of a one-hour course because there is something in the middle that relates to the search is not a great result. I would definitely like to hear from people who've made this level of integration happen - search level. There are some off-the-shelf content vendors that have done a pretty good job around search integration.  For example, Skillsoft along with its Books 24x7 provide good hooks for search and deep linking.  And what's interesting about both of these requirements is that we really are talking to exactly the issue that David points out in Who wants to see the LMS anyway: Afterall, with the exception of the LMS vendor and the team who put it in, who really wants to see an LMS anyway....? Integration with Social Tools or Other Day-to-Day Tools A couple years ago, in New Kind of LMS?, I raised the question of whether we are headed to a new kind of LMS that will be much more integrated with day-to-day activities.  What seems to be happening in the market is that LMS vendors are integrating social capabilities, but I'm not sure that gets us where we need to go.  It somewhat relates with the issue above around search.  Is the LMS only aimed at big pieces of content that will be used separate from the job?  Or will it try to integrate into day-to-day. If it's separate from the job, then having embedded social tools might not make a lot of sense. Other vendors are looking at taking things a different way.  For example, SumTotal Systems recently announced SumTotal Stream that provides integration with particular tools: Microsoft Outlook: SumTotal's integration allows access to Talent Development tasks within the widely adopted Microsoft Outlook email client.  Not only will employees be able to react directly to Application alerts, they will be able to view Profile Information and provide real-time feedback to other employees with the SumTotal profile launch button that is available next to each User within the email view screens. Facebook: With SumTotal's new Facebook Application, employees who typically use this Social Network will be able to receive Talent Development alerts and connect with colleagues all while in the Facebook site. LinkedIn: SumTotal's LinkedIn API integration will allow employees to maintain their Portable Career Profile in LinkedIn, and then make this information available through SumTotal's ResultsOnDemand Performance application.  I applaud SumTotal for recognizing that these tools exist in a network of other systems.  The interface is not really even the enterprise Portal.  The interface is all of the places where that user goes and does things.  Great move SumTotal! This is really all about the issue I raised 3 years ago in terms of strategic choices for LMS Vendors in a few different posts such as: Moving from One to Many - LMS Products are Two Generations Behind and Point Solutions vs. Suites and Composition. Of course, the challenge is deciding what you really want from your LMS today. The reality for today in most cases is to try to keep solutions relatively simple and hence keeping these requirements to a minimum.  However, I am very curious what other people are doing around all of this today.  Please chime in. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I received an inquiry from a reader and I'm hoping that people can chime in on their thoughts. It relates to my post about eLearning Costs, which bases cost estimates on seat time of the eLearning course. So, the basic question is: We current provide a two day (16 hour) classroom training course for our employees. We are planning to prepare an e-learning course based on this classroom course. How should we estimate the e-learning course duration for this lesson? What are the important criteria in estimating eLearning duration when its based on a classroom course? Conversion Estimation Some resources on the conversion of Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to eLearning / Web-Based Training (WBT) - found through eLearning Learning using Convert ILT as the starting point: In What Training Costs Part I: Converting Content from ILT to WBT, they discuss compression of ILT when its converted to eLearning: Compression ratio: What would the length of the course be if it were online vs. classroom based? There's been a lot of research on this, and answers vary anywhere from 20% to 80% of the original length, but there's general agreement that an average compression ratio is typically about 50%, or a four hour course in the classroom should take the student 2 hours to complete online. In Costs, Donald Clark talks about seat time during conversion: Seat time is the time spent by the learner in a learning environment. For many types of content, elearning clearly offers an advantage. The research generally shows that there is at least a 50% reduction in seat time when a course is converted from classroom learning to elearning. Brandon Hall reports it is a 2:1 ratio. "Brandon Hall, editor and publisher of the Multimedia & Internet Training Newsletter, cites an overall 50 percent reduction in seat time required for a student to learn the same content using online training as compared to in a classroom (Puget Sound Business Journal)." Of course, a lot of this has to with the type of content. For example, we normally read at least twice as fast as compared to someone speaking. Thus such courses as compliance training offers a seat time advantage due to rather than having an instructor do all the talking, we can now just read it. However, if we are practicing a new skill, then there is normally no real time advantage as we need the same amount of time to practice in an elearning environment as we do in a classroom. And Donald makes a good point about the fact that it takes more time when you are listening to audio as compared to reading (or skimming). The 50% compression ratio is similar to what I've heard, but in almost every case there are a whole lot of factors the come into play. In Case Study: Converting an Existing Course to E-Learning, they detail a series of factors. Quite a good article when you are thinking about this conversion. If there is an existing ILT course, how complete is it? Are there any hands-on labs in the ILT course? Will these need to be converted? Is it feasible to do so? Is the person doing the conversion already familiar with the ILT course? Is the person doing the conversion already familiar with the product or service being taught? Will subject matter experts (SMEs) be available for consultation as needed? Will the person doing the conversion be dedicated to this project exclusively? How many people will be working on the conversion team? How much animation is required? Is the scope of the conversion effort clearly defined? What is the approval process? Who will sign off on the project? How will the finished product be implemented within the organization? Does the organization use a learning management system (LMS)? If so, will this product be required to interface with that LMS? How will learning be measured? Is the person doing the conversion familiar with the e-learning software? Does the person doing the conversion have prior experience with similar projects? What factors do you consider? Do you think rules of thumb are okay to use? Cost Comparison The other question the reader asked is about calculating the value of doing the conversion: For example, the current ILT course takes 2 days (16 hours). There are 10,000 employees who will take the training. Travel is not as much the issue as it is time away from the job and trainer costs. How do we go about calculating the possible return of delivering this as eLearning instead of ILT? I'd recommend using some of the resources from a fairly old post ROI and Metrics in eLearning such as: Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led Vs. E-Learning Assessing the ROI of training Comparison of Web-based and Face-to-Face Training Concerning Patient Education Within a Hospital System They look at a whole series of cost comparison factors and the last of these compares outcomes and costs in a research study. Quite good. Again, I'd welcome pointers on this topic. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar slides.   Access the webinar recording. Additional resources and links: • eBook: Employee Training - Why Short Video Gets Big Results • White Paper: The Terrible Too’s of Training • Research: Department of Education - Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning • Infographic :  Using Video to Improve Employee Training and Development 8 Tips for Getting Started: Commit to video - just do it Supplement existing content Pick an area where you can make a big splash Find someone to become your VIDEO instructional design expert (it’s not a "long throw") Get the right tools based upon WHAT YOU NEED!!!!! Camera Sound Editing Make sure you know how you will deliver the video Don’t try to build everything! Have fun, and learn from the mistakes you WILL make (BTW - hint - save the out takes and bloopers - there are a ton of fun to watch later!!!!) Looking for online training for creating videos? Sign-up for a free trial here ! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

Just a quick note that I will be up in Vancouver for E-LEARN 2009 - World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education. If you are attending and see this post, please drop me a note. It's always good to connect with people face-to-face at events. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

We've put up a preliminary schedule for LearnTrends 2009. You can find the conference description, preliminary schedule and session descriptions at: LearnTrends 2009 Conference Agenda Topics and Speakers include: Introduction: Convergence in Learning - George Siemens, Tony Karrer & Jay Cross The Immernet Singularity - Tony O'Driscoll Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations - Charles Jennings & Andy McGovern - Thomson Reuters Reinventing Organizational Learning - Clark Quinn & Jay Cross Enterprise 2.0, Convergence, & Innovation - Deb Schultz & Jerry Michalski Building a Social Learning Environment - Jane Hart Breaking Down Walls - Laura Overton Convergent Learning and Web Squared - Jon, Jay, Clark, Charles, Jane, Harold Merging Information, Learning and Social Media - Christy Confetti Higgins - Sun Microlearning - Janet Clarey Personal Knowledge Management - Harold Jarche Challenge of Convergence - Pam Borios - Skillsoft - Books 24x7 Tools for Diverse Communities at Xerox Global- Jack Merklein & John Smith - Xerox eLearning Outside the Training Box - John Smith & Nancy White Register Now - Its Free - To register, you must first register on the LearnTrends community and then register on the Conference Event Page. Innovation Awards - The conference will also include the LearnTrends Innovation Awards 2009. Please see that post for details. Win the Twitter Content - And don't forget that you have until tomorrow to help promote the conference and win a free copy of Nancy and John's book. Contest - Win a Free Copy of Digital Habitats via LearnTrends 2009. Please help promote the conference and maybe you'll get a great book as a result. I think this is going to be a really great online conference and discussion. One of the things we are doing this year is asking speakers to keep their presentations to 25-30 minutes so that we have lots of times to have discussions. I'm particularly looking forward to discussions around: How information services and enterprise 2.0 are intersecting with Learning / eLearning? Where does social really fit? Are social features really heading in the right direction or do we need to be thinking about stitching things together? How are people thinking about structuring organizations with all of the stuff going on? How and where do networks and communities fit in? How the heck am I supposed to come up with an eLearning strategy when there's so much change going on? One thing I should remind people is that a big part of the genesis of this conference was George, Jay and myself lamenting that while we go to conferences all the time, the presentations and discussions were most often aimed at broader audiences and more introductory topics. The purpose of this discussion is to dive into meatier topics that the three of us are interested in exploring. If you are a beginner, this may be a bit of a fire hose. If you've been in the industry for a while, but are grappling with some of the questions I've listed above, then please join us in the discussion. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I've been asked numerous times over the past couple of years by various types of people and companies a very similar question: I plan to or have been conducting and charging for training workshops for clients. I'd like to creating this as self-paced eLearning possibly with other capabilities as well. And I want to charge for this. How can I do that? Two years ago, after quite a bit of discussion with most people who had this general question, I would figure out that it was going to be relatively easy for them to figure out how to author the eLearning courses, but it was going to be a harder decision on how to get that posted somewhere and available to their existing or new clients. I was just asked the question again the other day. It's a company that has been offering 3-day workshops and now they want to put some portion of that content online. Ideally, they would offer it both publicly for fee and as well to particular clients. While there are a lot of different Learning Management Systems with very different features, the requirements in this situation are a bit different. So here are some of the requirements I see for this customer that are a bit different from what you would find in a normal corporate LMS RFP. To me this is a new kind of system. I'm temporarily calling this a Rapid Learning Management System. It's hosted. It's easy to use. It's a bit like rapid eLearning authoring tools, but aimed at the learning management side of this equation. If you know the right term for this, please let me know. White Label For their existing customers, they should be able to point them to a system that looks just like their own site. Company Clients / Groups of Learners Many of their customers (companies) come in with several learners. They need to be able to have these learners grouped together and provide reporting over those learners. The company will have a single administrative contact. The system should look and act like an individual LMS for that administrator. Also, if they make changes to the LMS overall, the company should inherit those changes. Marketplace for Content While they are going to need to take the lead on driving traffic to their courses, the system should allow for individuals and companies to find and sign up for their content. My impression though is that despite the claims that the marketplace will help you get new customers, you should plan to do the work needed to get people there. Thus, you probably should be thinking about all the normal internet marketing approaches to driving people to sign up. And once they get to your landing page, it should be easy to get them across to the marketplace and have it transact with them. Instructor, Virtual Classroom and Social Learning Support In some cases, all that is needed is for the self-paced eLearning to be hosted, but in this case, they also still want to be able to interact with the learners. Instructors will still be there for the companies. And there should be some basic capabilities for asking questions, getting answers. Possibly some forums. In this case, it's limited, but I've run into situations where the plan was for 8 hours of self-paced online and then 1 day of online virtual classroom. Authoring Support or SCORM? A lot of the systems on the market seem to start with some kind of basic rapid authoring tool. I personally believe that it would be better for these systems to accept SCORM content from a few of the top authoring tools. Of course, that implies additional cost. However, if you are really authoring several hours of content and are going to take this seriously as a business, it would seem like that should be a good investment. Or maybe you just use an open-source or free. But I'd rather not have to learn all the quirks of one of these platforms. And I'd want my content to be transportable in case the platform goes away. Other Requirements? What am I missing? What other requirements are important in this situation? Systems? I'm currently pointing people to the following rapid learning management systems. I'm not claiming these address all of the above requirements. Rather that they generally are a hosted LMS solution that roughly corresponds to most of the requirements: Coggno LearnHub Litmos Odijoo Learn.com Personal Edition Articulate Online CourseMill CourseMax Xerceo TrainingAtom Geo On-Demand Upside Learning Upside LMS UltralearnTOPYXSclipoCoursePark What other systems should be on the list? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

In 1996, Bill Gates published an article titled "Content is King."  In the article, Gates predicts that, "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting."   These days, it’s not difficult to see how accurate of a prediction that was.  Everything you do on a daily basis, whether you are posting and reading on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms, listening to music on Pandora or Spotify, watching video on YouTube and Netflix or reading, sharing and discussing news, trends and current events on sites like Huffington Post, Reddit or Buzzfeed, it’s driven by content.      According to research by DOMO in 2014 , each minute of the day there are over 4,000,000 Google searches performed, 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube, 2,460,000 pieces of content shared on Facebook, 277,000 tweets and 204,000,000 emails sent.   In the article, Gates goes on to assert that "One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create."   As a Manager, Training professional or Business Owner interested in the success of your employees and the message they receive, let that sink in for a moment.  If anyone can post anything they can create, who is responsible for making sure what they create is both current and accurate?  Do you or your Customers have the time to curate content?   I’ve seen many training initiatives fail or be delayed in the "find or create the resources" stage, and failing to meet a training need can have huge organizational costs.    According to a McKinsey report , employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information to do their job effectively.   The Cost of Content Clutter noted that "in the past 12 months, content searches cost companies $14,252 per worker and 494 hours per worker."   A simple Google search on "How to be a good Manager" returns about 325,000,000 results.   That’s where BizLibrary comes in, we help organizations decrease the time spent by employees searching for knowledge by taking the time to curate for you.  Our library contains thousands of course titles covering a wide range of topics, we give our Clients and Partners the ability to offer already vetted content from trusted experts.  We have sought out and sourced our Producer Partners based on the quality of their content, and the needs of our Clients and Partners.  We are continually analyzing our library to identify gaps, or areas of opportunity to add new courses or Producer Parrtners.  If we have a hard time finding high quality content, our BizLibrary Productions Team will create it.  We constantly ask for course ratings and feedback, placing lower rated courses in a queue for review and possible retirement.    By providing the most up to date and updated course library in the market, Bizlibrary helps our Customer and Partners to spend less time looking for and creating content, and more time delivering training and coaching.  To learn more about how to help your Clients decide if our Off the Shelf Library is the right fit for them, download our recent eBook titled "Got Content?" here .  It shares ideas on deciding what course topics to build vs buy or borrow, as well as how to effectively select and use an Off the Shelf Library.   Based on the research above, if we can provide an employee relevant and timely materials just 1 out of 20 times (5% of the time), we can save our Customers $712.60 per employee annually.   Make it a successful month! Tom

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.     More information and resources: Weekly Planner Sample Worksheet The Cutting Edge Communication Series     Looking for online training for stress and time management? Sign-up for a free trial below! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

I saw an interesting post by Mark Oehlert "Learning 2.0" and why that name suddenly is torquing me off...  Mark's main complaint and one that I've seen voiced before is that people are not really learning differently: I really don't believe that humans are learning differently - meaning, I think we are constituting memories, adapting behavior, practicing new skills - those activities that typically make up learning from the human standpoint - in much the same way as we have for hundreds if not thousands of years. I'm talking about our internal processes. This is pretty much what was discussed in New Way of Learning and the general answer was that it's doubtful that there's really a new way of learning, but there certainly are many related metacognitive tools and methods that have changed and that we need to adapt. Still, I believe the crux of Mark's concern and where the disagreement comes … So there is no "Learning 2.0" from the learners' view - there could well be "Instruction 2.0" or "Teaching 2.0" but think about what is really different there - those last two (and you could throw in Government 2.0, Education 2.0) address organizations and not learners and this gets to my second bothersome point about "Learning 2.0." Let's put the burden on us and not on the learner. That's exactly it.  We aren't really talking about the learning itself, but rather the way in which we support learning within an organization.  What is the role of the Learning Professional?  And I would claim that there's a fairly substantial change when you go from eLearning 1.0 to eLearning 2.0 solutions. The reason you can't call it "Instruction 2.0" or "Teaching 2.0" is that the very point of eLearning 2.0 is that it's learner driven.  We are no longer in charge.  We take a supportive role.  We create an environment.  We foster.  We coach. To do this, it requires a considerably different mindset.  It makes sense for us to discuss this as 2.0 just to indicate that there's this substantial shift. Certainly this has been debated quite a bit (see Is eLearning 2.0 Meaningful? - You Vote and 2.0 and Interesting Times).  But I think the discussion is over.  We've come to accept that we'll use the 2.0 moniker. Mark - how about if we agree that if your Oregon State Beavers go down to defeat this weekend, we'll just agree that it's okay to use the terms Learning 2.0 and eLearning 2.0? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.