CA has a TON of people to help learn – mostly customers. Their group wanted to extend beyond the classroom,
What they did:
- Went to one LMS, instead of many
- Implemented an eBook platform
- Standardized the virtual classroom
- Integrated podcasts, vodcasts and Learning Collaboration
They needed something that used SCORM, ahighly configurable, moderated discussion threads, blogs, wikis and RSS Feeds, a resource library, subscription options, chat and virtual classroom, tagging and full-text search capabilities, training centers, wrapped and transitional (pre-post learning) learning and it had dto enable push and pull of information.
For the tool they chose: Q2 Learning’s: xPert eCampus. It looks customizable from a UI perspective. It does not have the ability, however, for the user to customize what they want.
Best Practice Tips:
- Use the ADDIE model – identify business and learning needs up front
- Involve stakeholders from the beginning
- Make use of RFPs and Test-case scenarios
- Used seasoned Project Managers
- Evaluate the effectiveness during and after
- Be able to use templates in your tool
- Over communicate
- Crawl before you walk, walk before you run, run before you fly
They won the Bersin & Associates Learning Leader for 2007.
Tips & Tricks – What should you be looking at when you choose a tool?
- It needs to map to real human interactions – people like to interact with people. There are levels of
He states the conversations are THE core business process – particularly ‘Sustained conversations for action.’
Affordance is the word of the day: The features that ‘call you’ to do certain things. A coffee cup calls you to grab the handle. Question: What are the affordances for sustained conversations? (Great thing to think of and evaluate.)
Ha, he just labeled Jive’s Clearspace as a Social Networking platform linked with Facebook instead of a Collaboration platform. Interesting. (UPDATE: I talked with him afterwards and found out that he misspoke – he meant to say NING, which would be correct.)
What is the difference he shows?
Community platform:
- Small Town mentalilty
- Norms & Practices
- Real Names
- Read all new
- Email participation
Social Network
- Large city mentality
- Anonymity
- Avatars
- Report Abuse
- RSS Feeds
Four different key Affordances:
- Conversation: forums, blogs, wikis, IM , chat, webmeeting,email, attach files and pictures, track and read new material, RSS, Discussion reads as transcript, post in discussion, reports on utilization by forum and person, lenear & branching discussions.
- Content: Attach files to posts, resource library, Full text search, tagging, rating, version control, check in/out
- Community: Profiles with photos, Online status, directory, personal home page, endorsements, share photos/videos, reputation management (rating the file and that goes into their rating)
- Corporate: Enterprise architecture, role-based management, multiple sites, interoperability
They built a custom connector between this tool and their LMS. What usage are they tracking? The conversations and linking them to the courses. Interesting… I am not sure why it is being tracked.
Personally, they lumped Jive in as not fulfilling these and I completely disagree (AGAIN, SEE UPDATE ABOVE). I do agree with the “Four different key Affordances” however. These are all parts of the evaluation you will need before you start choosing a tool.
