Learning Management Systems – Trends and Issues (Brandon Hall Research) Webinar

My notes taken during today’s webinar.

Presented by Tom Werner & Richard Nantel

What do they do?

Automate the administration of training.

What do they contain?

Databases: learners, course offerings, content, progress.

Quick History:

1980 – paper age

• catalog, approvals, registrations, class info (all manually)
• attendance, evaluations, tests (all manually)
• count, charge-backs, reporting (all manually)
• process is dependent on people (admin staff)
• trainer dependent (collect and hand out materials)
• supervisor depended (boss had to tell you of courses available)
• measured by productivity or # of hours of training
• training very decentralized

1984 – Training Management Systems

1990 – Internet

1990s – Amazon, Yahoo, Ebay, Google

• online training started being just courses posted on line, then moved to tracking who was taking them

2001 – Learning Management Systems (term coined)

7 Trends

1. Still many different LMS vendors (Brandon Hall tracks 92 of them, adding appx 15-20 each year since 5 years ago when they began. To be in the Brandon Hall report systems do not pay to be in it, but do have to answer an extremely detailed questionnaire. Updated every 12 -18 months.)

• consolidate? No it does not appear to be occurring, but is a continuing rumour.
• why so many? Good customer service generally. Once they have a customer they often don’t lose them. Continue to innovate. There has not been a “Microsoft” or “Google” type of enterprise to buy up smaller companies.

2. So many features

• 88% have built in test systems
• 80% offer more than just English
• 80% offer many portals
• 78% offer classroom management
• 74% track certificate deadlines
• 64% have built in authoring
• 60% have LCMS features
• 50% handle e-Commerce

3. Interoperability with content (how lms and content within talk to one another)

• early standards were AICC
• standard now is SCORM (military pushed), This is a collection of standards including AICC. This is important to look for in a system.
• 87% are compliant,
• 86% are SCORM 1.2 (look for this as a minimum)
• 48% SCORM 2004 compliant (most recent version of SCORM).
• Just because it is compliant does not mean it will definitely run perfectly in your LMS. LMSs will tell you if they have tested with interoperability. (eg. tested with a vitural classroom, or with a SkillSoft course)

4. Integration with other large systems

• 43% have connected with PeopleSoft
• 40% with SAP (both of these are large HR employee tracking systems)
• 34% with Oracle

5. Software Hosting (SaaS)

• 68% of vendors say that more then 50% of their implementations are hosted
• hosting used to seem as an unsecure way to go, but not so much now as more banks and governments have gone to hosted solutions.

6. Talent Management

• many systems call themselves “Talent Development Systems” now
• (paper age – people issues were in silos e.g. career path, separate from training, separate from goals, etc) Now these can all be melded together.
• 60% of LMS they are tracking ….. (item missed)
• 38% offer feedback
• 38% offer succession planning

7. Web 2.0

• 2 way training, not just the trainer creating content but learners are too (Facebook, blogs, twitter, etc)
• Need to understand that there is learning then as a designed activity and that there is just generally keeping up with subjects (newspaper, rss, tv, blogs, journals) keeping up with information sources
• People are now learning on Google – search, amazon – recommendations, cnn – snippets, youtube – sharing, facebook/twitter – belonging
• (debate is this learning or not continues)
• 42% of systems allow searches
• 40% … slide 116 (item missed)
• 26% peer ratings
• 20% blogs
• 17% wikis

Three Current Issues

1. LMSs for small and medium businesses

• needed affordable, minimal IT, limited training staff

2. Open source systems

• most know – Moodle, Sakai, Claroline, dokeos, OLAT, ilias, eFront

3. LMS’s place in the “ecosystem”

• LMS as a piece of a larger system or collaborative learning environment
• Does it contain all the stuf, or is it a piece of a bigger environment