Measure for the right fit
A recent post Amit Gautam on the Upside Learning blog looked at Five Ways to Use an LMS for Effective Learning Measurement. Admittedly, this isn't an easy exercise, since, as Gautam points out, "Learning Measurement is a very challenging exercise and not one that can be executed easily or quickly with some calculator. The best way (but probably the most difficult one) to measure learning is to measure for the right business indicators like sales figures, productivity measures, defect ratios etc."
We agree with that assessment, and also agree that measurement needs to be part of the process from the beginning - or even before the beginning, that is, when you first start looking for a learning management system vendor.
Training lessons from India
Part of the secret of India's business success is workforce training, entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa writes TechCrunch. In his post, "Why America Needs to Start Re-educating Its Workforce Again," he notes, "Workforce education increases productivity, decreases turnover, and leads to greater corporate growth. I was myself surprised to see this correlation when I researched the secrets of the success of Indian industry."
Wadhwa's post of pretty detailed - and persuasive - but if you want to learn more, you can download the report published by his team from Harvard and Duke, "How the Disciple Became the Guru," which looks at the employee development practices of 24 of India's top companies.
Pitfalls to effective learning
The reality of employee training doesn't always (or often) meet its promise, writes UK-based learning and performance consultant Charles Jennings on his blog, but he offers some suggestions for businesses hoping to change that by explaining the Five Barriers to Effective Learning in Organisations.
‘Awesome' elearning tips
The eLearning Brothers (Shawn and Andrew Scivally) put together their "Top 10 Do's to Create Awesome eLearning" for a presentation at this year's Learning Solutions Conference. Even without hearing the actual presentation, the 55-page .pdf gives you the gist of their Do's, which include dead-on suggestions about style, text, graphics and much more.
Last-minute checkup
Over at the Rapid e-Learning Blog, Tom Kuhlman offers "10 Things to Consider Before Your E-Learning Course Goes Live."
All the tips make sense, but our favorite is "Is your course too sexy for its body?" (i.e. don't go so far out of the box that the learner can't follow you.)
The buzz on corporate learning and elearning tools only gets bigger, so if you don't have time to track down all the relevant news yourself, stop on by and we'll pass along what we found. Your suggestions are always welcome, of course, so please post a comment if there's anything you want to share.
