The LMS is Evolving...NOT Dying! (audio)

If you'd rather read the blog post you can find it at Litmos.com/blog.
 

Brent Schlenker Joins the Litmos Team

Today I announced on the Litmos blog that I am now the Chief Learning Strategist for Litmos.  This is an amazing opportunity that I've been looking forward too for quite a while.  You can read the post here.
I've been less active on social media over the last couple years, with a couple attempts to jump back into the game only to fizzle out shortly after (re)starting. But now I can say with certainty that you will be seeing a lot more of me on the internet and at industry events. And, of course, with my new friend Lenny.

Lenny! 

And I'm certain some of you are scratching your heads and wondering "why Litmos"? Well...read the post on the Litmos blog first.
But the REAL reason is that any company willing to let me bring a magician/entertainer (the amazing +Brian Brushwood ) to their booth and drive a nail through his nose...well...those are fun people I want to work with. :)

Brian Brushwood and the amazing nail-in-the-nose trick!

I look forward to meeting the Litmos customers and continuing to help the industry move forward in new and exciting ways. 

The Learning Polemic [Guest Post]

[Guest Post by Jeff Katzman, Founder and CLO, Xyleme] The views of this post are that of the guest and not my own. However, you can feel free to comment here to engage with the author.

We're seeing a polemic emerge pitting proprietary systems and exclusive content against open systems and open content. Recent developments in standards have the potential to up-end the status quo, and re-draw the competitive landscape of learning technology providers, and learning content providers. It will be interesting to see how the stakeholders in the proprietary camp will react to the changes brought with the adoption of the new standards.

We know what proprietary systems look like. It's what we have now in the current breed of Learning Management Systems. Typically, they are closed systems that offer a limited choice of tools to draw from in designing your learning experiences. If you wanted to include a discussion, or take a quiz, or have students write a blog for an assignment, you had to use the system’s native capabilities. And once you did this, the content became proprietary and could only run on the system on which it was created. While there have been attempts to develop standards, they have largely fallen short. For example, if you create a course in Blackboard that uses native tools, then export that course to Common Cartridge (the standard package format), and re-import it, the course is unrecognizable. The idea behind Common Cartridge was to provide an interchange format where you can run the same course on different systems and have it work the same. Unfortunately, the set of features that is common from LMS to LMS is small, which means the standard can only address the lowest common denominator.

Coming changes in standards will also impose new challenges on the traditional educational publishers. Historically, K12 curriculum choices were made by a committee that decided which one-size-fits-all textbook the teachers should use. Curriculum providers have enjoyed lock-in exclusive deals. This has tied the hands of teachers and stifled innovation in the classroom. 

K12 is in the midst of radical change driven by race-to-the-top initiatives where the focus is on individualized learning.  By aligning education to standards, students take assessments that measure the student’s proficiency toward the standard. The teacher then can use this information to create customized assignments that match the student’s needs and learning style. For this to work in practice, learning content needs to be re-imagined. It needs to be granular, and aligned to the standards. To date, the publishers have had a difficult time disaggregating their content and have continued the “swallow it whole” business model of exclusive lock-in deals. 

Cloud services, enabled by adoption of new standards, have the potential to disrupt this dysfunctional system of proprietary technology and content.

The IMS Global Consortium is defining the next generation of standards that make this market transformation possible. The emerging model will have open content, open ePortfolio, and open tools. 

• Open Content - Content exists in the cloud where vendors stand should-to-shoulder and compete on a level playing field. Users make choices best suited for their needs and are informed by quality and price. 

• Open Portfolio - A cloud service that is the single place to store your learning records for your entire life. It’s your portfolio, untethered from your school LMS, or the corporate LMS, allowing you to maintain lifelong learning records that follow you from institution to institution and job to job.

• Open Tools - Like content, learning designers seek the ability to not be bound to the capabilities of the LMS they are using. IMS has released an update to Learning Tools Interoperability that allows learning designers to connect to remote services, authenticate the user, and return a result.  

The cloud is pushing the market toward openness and this is threatening to powerful interests. It will be interesting to see how the benefactors of proprietary systems will react. 

2012 - The Year of the LMS

I guess I never thought I'd hear myself say that.  But something strange is afoot in the Learning Management Software market.  With the shift of the internet from 1.0 to 2.0, and beyond, it was easy to envision a world no longer needing the LMS of old.  So the question remains.  What does the new incarnation of the LMS look like?  Or does it just go away?

I'll admit that I've often ignored the LMS market. I've always been very interested in LEARNING, and management systems just never really had much to do with learning.  The early systems had everything to do with tracking, recording, reporting, and monitoring.  These are all business functions that need to occur  at some level and so these systems do serve a purpose.  I will readily admit that.  But rarely does an LMS have anything to do with instructional design.  But maybe that's about to change.

I don't have any links to stories that back me up on this, but I get a strange feeling that 2012 is the year we begin to see major changes in the LMS market.  And I'm not talking about the continuing mergers, and acquisitions in this space.  I'm thinking about a new breed of Learning Management Systems/Software. Perhaps someone figures out how to convert social engagement into tangible learning points, or other type of corporate currency that proves, or identifies, competency.  But, honestly, I'm just not sure what that means, or what it might look like.  I know some of you do.  Because I know you're out there working on it.

Maybe the LMS finally gets completely sucked into Talent Management software and course completions simply become part of your HR file...as many do already.  And maybe the big story will be that there IS no story: Every possible LMS either dies or gets acquired into HR or other management software.  And maybe what that means is that instructional designers need to start seeing the bigger picture.  If the enterprise is pulling together all these, once separate, software systems into something called Talent Management, then maybe there needs to be a hybrid study of Talent Systems Design.

What do you think?

And Happy Holidays!!!

LearnSense? - Googles AD Sense to deliver content

Ad Age Audio Reports - Google is talking about adsense as a content distribution technology. Google adsense recognizes the context of a web page and delivers relevant content. Currently that content is advertising. But in the near future that could be ANY type of content. Are you following me here?

Doesn't this sound a lot like "what you need, when you need it"? What if the content delivered was training content? Just in time. Just what you want. Right when you needed it.

This is why I like staying tuned into the Advertising and Marketing world. They get all the good information and technology first. This is why you'll never see a GoogLMS. They get the bigger picture of content and context. They will never need to fight Blackboard over the LMS patents because those patents become irrelevant in the content/context conversation. However, it is precisely these new tools, technologies, and applications that will put the LMS out of business.

So, stop rolling your eyes at me. Of course the LMS will be around for at LEAST another 10 years. Just make note that what you are seeing today is only a transition towards a much larger trend.

The eLearning Guild Annual Gathering 2008 Conference & Expo - April 14-17 - Orlando, FL

Kill Compliance Training

Actually Donald Clark's post title is Compliance Killing Training. But I prefer mine ;-)
Donald nails it. And every now and then it takes a sobering moment to see that 90% of what training organizations do is done out of fear. USERS care about their learning, but they don't go to their training department to get it. Donald sums it up nicely here...

The driver is NOT learning or people development, it's 'fear'. It's a crude attempt to reduce risk by delivering crude courses, measured only by bums on seats, that do nothing more than protect organisations against their employees.

This is why training departments make a huge mistake spending large headcount dollars on Graduate educated ISD professionals. You simply need anyone with a highschool diploma and some tech skills to fire up the latest rapid development tool and start entering content. Remember, governing bodies don't know what effective training is nor do they care. So if the goal of the training is to be compliant then you're wasting your money doing anything more than just a simple converted powerpoint with a test at the end.
Training departments are a traditional tops down organization and I think this helps answer Donald's question. Most of what training departments do is because of Senior management mandates, Gov't regulations, or in some way complying with an external driver (ISO certification comes to mind). Keeping the business compliant is now just part of the business. This is why rapid development tools are so popular. We all know WHY the training needs to get done, and so we just get it done in the most painless and cost efficient manner. Nobody really cares if people learned anything in the sexual harassment training course. Its only important that there is a report that shows how many people have completed the required number of training sessions or hours. This is what drives both the rapid development and LMS industry. Automating the mundane process of compliance training. It has NOTHING to do with learning.

So, once we can all get past that, then its not so frustrating. It is what it is...a good business decision that has nothing to do with learning.

Side note: Please send all of your hate mail to Donald...he started it ;-)

DevLearn - The eLearning Development Conference & Expo
Co-located with the Adobe Learning Summit
November 5-9, 2007
San Jose, CA

Facebook for eLearning evaluations - testing

One step closer to the Facebook LMS:



This little Facebook app is TV Trivia Quiz. I was surprised at how many questions I could answer. I was also pretty successful utilizing the theory, "when in doubt, B".
That worked a lot for me. I could also guess many of the questions based on the image and poorly written distractors...but that's beside the point.

Basically what we have is multiple choice testing with feedback. The other cool thing is that the community gets to make up the questions. Now how cool is that? You can also ask a friend...I like that feature. I wonder if we could ask the developers to make it opensource so that any content/topic could be used? Astromony? Geography?

I also wonder if tool makers like Articulate Quizmaker, QuestionMark and other testing creation tools are considering a Facebook app version.

Of course the obvious question would be WHY? And I'm not sure I can answer that specifically. However, there is something very cool happening in the Facebook space and I'm not sure it takes that much programming muscle to make these apps happen. So, my question is WHY NOT?

DevLearn - The eLearning Development Conference & Expo
Co-located with the Adobe Learning Summit
November 5-9, 2007
San Jose, CA

gLMS is coming - Google Gears

This post isn't about Google Gears as much as it is about what it signals to the learning industry. When I get more hands on experience with Gears I'm certain to comment on how its working for me. Please let me know how it works out for you!

So blackboard patents the stupidity of eLearning systems... so what's all the fuss? Isn't everything basically a learning system? Reading a book still works for me at times. Talking to others has always worked well. Reflecting on my "research" (i.e. reading, talking, listening) by writing it down helps organize everything in my mind and allows me to share it and begin to understand it even better. Presenting it to colleagues for differing opinions was also valuable. That was all done pre-web2.0. The only problem is that it took so much more effort...libraries, etc.

Today, all of that can be done on a single topic in a matter of hours: thinking, collaborating, sharing, reflecting, researching, reading, writing, listening, conversing, arguing. AND it can all be done without the use of ANY eLearning system. That's right...sans LMS.

The learning industry has spent much time and effort creating systems that allow developers to create eLearning "courses" that can be "taken" OFFLINE and then critical evaluation information is transferred back to the LMS when the system is back ONLINE. Cool right? Sales people being trained while flying and blablabla.

Well, geez, why not just build that capability right into the browser? Google did. Its called Google Gears and its just another step closer to the browser being the ultimate delivery tool for learning. Actually, it already IS...but some of that critical functionality required in many learning environments sits server side with the browser acting as the conduit through which the other client tool launches. Its not a bad idea, just the current reality. Open APIs give us the ability to add our "learning" features directly to the browser, so why don't we go that route?

One of the only reasons why I tried using client side feed readers was for the offline capabilities. They worked just like email, but of course some people only feed teasers to your reader and force you to the site to read the entire article...not so good for offline work. But now Google Reader functions OFFLINE...bye bye client side readers.

Remember, MOST of what we learn and know (I'd say >98%) isn't from the traditional learning systems (that includes the non-tech industrial era school systems), its from the informal life experiences that shape and mold who we are, and who we are to become.

Your LMS may be adding wiki and blog functionality, but chances are your IT department already has that covered and launched, or plans too in the near future. So, why do they (the learning vendors) even bother? The trick for the learning industry isn't too create and launch the tools but too work closely with IT departments and figure out how to influence and leverage the use of the tools.

I believe MediaWiki is the single greatest learning tool you could implement in your organization. Its editable, linkable, taggable, and social. The learning departments can be more effective to the company by teaching employees how to use these tools to increase their productivity. YES, do the traditional workshop, classroom training, 1:1 training, or whatever it is you do. But, first you MUST learn to use the tools yourself.

Oh yeah, my point! With the release of Google Gears MediaWiki (and ALL wikis for that matter) become infinitly more powerful once they re-code to take advantage of the offline capabilities of Google Gears. Now you can take that corporate wiki with you on your harddrive. Yes, being connected 24/7 is important, but it just became a little less important.

gLMS - Could it be coming...

With LMS2007 coming up in April, I'm reminded of some of the discussions in the blogosphere.
LMS, we hardly knew ye is classic Jay Cross. I love it. Or this from EducauseCONNECT End of LMS? Of course the only 2 comments reference Legal and privacy issues regarding open alternatives. Which are only relevant if you are an institution fearing legal recourse. When we eliminate the moneymaking institution we eliminate the target of legal action. So for the sake of conversation lets just not talk about Legal and privacy issues.

Disclaimer: I've used them, I've participated in needs analysis for purchasing an LMS, but other than that most of my career has been focused on Learning, technology, and Content development...until now.


Has everyone seen or read about Google Apps for Education?

"Imagine how valuable it would be if your entire campus community -- students, faculty, and staff -- could share information and ideas more easily. With Google Apps Education Edition’s free communication, collaboration and publishing tools, including email accounts on your school’s domain (like student@your-school.edu), you can start bringing that vision to life.

You can select any combination of our available tools and services and customize them with your school's logo, color scheme and content. Manage your users through a web-based control panel, or use the APIs to integrate Google Apps into your existing systems.

Best of all, it's all hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software to download, install or maintain. You can get up and running quickly with minimal support from your IT staff."

Check it out right NOW!

hmmm....

thinking...hmmm..

hmmmmhhhhmmmmm...

okay, you back with me?


Did you notice the 6 apps that are included? There is the obvious gMAIL, docs, spreadsheet, calendar, talk, etc. HOWEVER...did you see Extensibility APIs. Yea! I know! WOW! Wait...you still don't see it? Look again! No...read BETWEEN the lines...

Did you see gLMS...Google Learning Management System? I didn't either, at first, until I started thinking about it as a techno-geek instead of a learning-nerd. Its nothin' but a tiny chunk of work from your friendly neighborhood coding ninja and you end up with everything you need to completely manage your "school". I put school in parenthesis because web2.0 will completely change the image of what that word actually means. The gLMS supports the Learning Ecosystems of the future not the bricks and mortar environments of the past.

But you say..."Brent, there's no database! It can't be an LMS without a database!"

I say...hmmmm...what if we used spreadsheets? Besides isn't that what we used before the databases? Databases are columns and rows...spreadsheets are columns and rows.

I'll be interested to hear from those techno-geekier than me can help me understand if this is possible. And I'd love to hear from those that are learning-nerdier than me to understand...well...not sure what I want to understand there when it comes to an LMS.

A quick look at the LMS2007 Sponsors does not show the presence of Google, however I'm certain there must be someone there just chomping at the bit to make this happen. If not Google...then anyone interested in starting a little project with me? ;-)

I'm not able to attend the LMS2007 conference this year, but I'm hoping someone will be live blogging it. I'm VERY curious. It should be a great show because its definitely relevant and contextual in these web2.0 shifting times.

Joining the LMS conversation from e-Clippings

I'd like to get in on the group think over at e-Clippings. The new thoughts on what learning widgets and LMSs might be like is very interesting to me. I've long been thinking about the Learning Dashboard. The Google analytics view is a great example of dynamic data presentation. It doesn't matter WHAT the data is, so why not load something like that up with the typical tracking data we want in an LMS? Student history? Content Viewed Path/History? Certifications? Lists of others who have viewed the same topic?

The concepts being explored and exploited in Web2.0 apps will no doubt blend into Learning. Its a natural progression that is simply going to take some time, but it will happen. Remember, its always been about the people, NOT the technology. Web2.0 tools simply support the connects and the data presented simply improves the quality, and quantity, of the human connections.

Who knows, really, how it will look. But one thing is certain in my mind: Closed off Exclusive Social networks - Blackboard-style are NOT going to fly...at least not very far.