Dive deep

LMS experts, trainers agree on one thing: Usability is key

What is the most important thing to look for in a learning management system?

When we asked a dozen elearning and training professionals this question, we thought it was the kind of query that wouldn't have a simple answer. After all, while everyone has similar needs - employee development, customer education, executive training - they don't have the same needs.

We were flat-out wrong.

Yes, there are plenty of things that people want in an LMS - cost, adaptability, tracking, etc. - but the item at the top of pretty much everyone's list is even more basic: ease of use.

When you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Good training software shouldn't have a large learning curve, or, for that matter, any learning curve. It should be practically invisible. Users should be able to hop right on and begin training without being challenged by a confusing interface. The same goes for trainers: they shouldn't have to jump through hoops to create online training modules or generate the reports and documentation they need.

The director of an elearning consultancy in the United Kingdom summed it up this way: "My life for the last 10 years seems to have been trying to work around illogical LMS functionality that simply isn't user friendly for the learner!"

Our admittedly unscientific survey of professionals on LinkedIn and current Ziiva Prosperity LMS clients was intended to develop a list of starting points for businesses thinking about purchasing an LMS system. While we found a common, overriding theme in usability, we also heard about some other important factors you may want to consider as you conduct your own search for learning management systems.

Here are some of the other key points raised by survey respondents:

• Implementation: How fast can I deploy the system? How much support will I need?

• Security: Does the system allow secure remote login? Does it protect proprietary corporate materials?

• Adaptability: Can the system support various file types such as Flash, streaming video, podcasts, etc.? Can it support classroom elearning, instructor-led training and self-paced web-based training? Can the system be modified to accommodate new or revised learning modules, as well as scaled to organizational growth?

• Cost: What are the startup costs? What are the long-term costs of service fees and licensing?

• Data collection: Can the system retain records and monitor learners' progress at the level you need to document employee completion of safety, ethics/compliance and similar classes?

These items should provide a useful starting point for anyone looking into LMS software, but if you have any other issues you want to add to this list, please add a comment below.

IntegrityFX provides broker services to foreign currency traders around the world. In the off-exchange retail foreign currency (Forex) market, banks, corporations, governments and others entities - including individual retail traders - seek to profit by taking advantage of fluctuations in exchange rates. With average daily volume in the trillions, Forex is one of the world's largest and most liquid financial markets. Individual traders are a small but growing segment of this market.

To give its Forex retail traders the knowledge and confidence to succeed, IntegrityFX created an Education & Training Center powered by Ziiva's Prosperity Learning Management System.

"Our Education & Training Center serves a niche market and the education that has historically been made available has been both expensive and poorly developed for one reason or another," said Patterson, who oversees the development, implementation and dissemination of the curriculum via computer-based training, webinar presentations and in-class lecture. "Thus, our greatest challenge is to market our training in a way that makes clear that our curriculum has superior quality in content, quantity and delivery."

To meet this challenge, he turned to Ziiva for an enterprise LMS.

Having used other learning management systems over the years at several colleges and universities, Patterson knew what he wanted: the ability to import e-learning content, robust data collection technology for learner tracking, reasonable ease of use for course management and contact management, customizable reporting features, a feature-rich exam management suite and a reasonable cost.

He found those things with Prosperity.

"Their customer service is excellent and their staff is knowledgeable about the products and services they sell. In addition, the cost of their LMS with its large assortment of stock features was very reasonable," said Patterson, who singled out Prosperity's course-management features as a big plus.

IntegrityFX currently offers a half-dozen Web-based training courses such as "Introduction to Forex," "Technical Analysis" and "Risk Management." The curriculum was recognized with the 2009 Best Forex Education Provider Award at the ME Forex Expo in Dubai.

"All feedback has been generally positive," from students taking and/or evaluating the courses, Patrick said. "However, almost everyone has said that the sheer volume of reading is daunting, and they have recommended more audio/visual elements - we are currently working a new multimedia version."

In addition, Patterson said IntegritryFX plans to incorporate instructor-led webinar scheduling and training into the Prosperity LMS.

While courses currently deal with foreign currency exchange, IntegrityFX has a number of other curriculum programs in development including spot gold, spot oil and "contracts for difference" trading. Down the road, Patterson said he sees value in not only using Prosperity for customer training, but also for employee training.

Patterson, who set up the courses himself, said he appreciated Ziiva's willingness to let IntegrityFX customize the interface, but noted that customer support was readily available as needed.

Overall, Patterson has been very happy with his experience.

"Their staff is approachable, knowledgeable, and prompt," Patterson said. "That has not been my experience with other LMS vendors."

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.

This isn't a brand new idea, but even two years ago it was still somewhat of a novelty.

According to Rick Nigol, blogging on BreakthrougheLearning.com in 2008, it was an "aha moment" for him when, on a consulting gig, he heard a pair of vice-presidents explaining how eLearning software would help them meet their strategic focus of becoming an environmentally sustainable company.

These days ­- despite recessionary pressures (and possibly, in some cases, as a result of them) - the idea of sustainability continues to grow.

What in it for you?

Here are some green benefits of using an LMS for computer-based training:

Stay home: eLearning is available anywhere you have employees, so travel and lodging costs associated with training - and their resulting environmental impact - are no longer an issue.

Save paper (and ink, and energy): Who needs handouts - which often need to be updated multiple times during a product rollout or large-scale training effort - when you can keep everyone on the same (virtual) page with an easy-to-update LMS? Going this route means using less energy to produce and distribute training manuals and other documentation, as well as less waste.

Green culture: Beyond using an LMS for your regular training and employee development needs, consider creating some green training modules to give your employees practical ways to reduce the company's carbon footprint in their daily activities.

Carbon offsets: If you want your business to be as carbon neutral as possible - whether out of environmental concern or simply as a pragmatic marketing decision - there are several calculators and companies out there that can help you understand what you need to do and certify the results. No matter how intense you want this effort to be, eLearning tools are one of the easiest, most obvious ways to cut your carbon footprint.

When you look at the above list, it's obvious that many of the benefits of learning management systems - such as increasing productivity through reducing travel - transcend reducing carbon emissions and can save your business time and money in other ways, as well.

The bottom line

We've come across some companies - mainly outside the U.S. - that are promoting the environmental benefits of eLearning as central parts of their marketing efforts.

That's all well and good, but while LMS vendors may no longer be surprised to hear customers talk about sustainability, one point Rick Nigol made two years ago still holds true: Using eLearning simply to reduce travel, while noble, isn't in the best interests of any organization.

Finding a robust eLearning system that can meet all your training needs is the real holy grail of corporate learning, and anything else is gravy.

Green gravy.

Blogging on Bersin.com, Karen O'Leonard recently wrote about the need for a new breed of L&D professional. In O'Leonard's estimation, the ongoing global economic downturn has led to a more centralized approach to learning management as businesses cut back on training development staff to save money. This shift has led to the need for traditional training personnel to evolve into performance consultants who can assess the needs of individual units - and employees - and align them with the overall corporate strategy.

While that may be true, another implication to reductions in employee training personnel is the need for companies to have a scalable, customizable Learning Management System that can handle and track company-wide training development initiatives, as well as specific modules for individual departments and executive training and employee development efforts. In other words, the right training management software for multiple challenges.

Think about it. Everyone is doing more with less, so taking the time to find the right LMS to meet your needs is more crucial than ever. In fact, it's a decision that will have long-term implications for your ROI.

And forget about cutting back on the amount of training you provide - your competitors certainly aren't. An ongoing corporate learning program remains a must-have in the toolkit of any business or organization - large or small, global or local - that wants to remain competitive in a 21st century economy. However, the economic upheaval of the past two years has changed the way that training is delivered, with e-learning and virtual classroom training accounting for one-third of training hours delivered in 2009, which represents an all-time high. That trend is expected to continue, as evidenced by recent projections in the growth of spending on self-paced e-learning tools and services over the next five years.

At Ziiva, we're confident our product and ongoing customer service can meet the needs of your organization.