I’m tired of people generating all types of reasons for not building engaging e-learning content.  I’m tired of seeing PowerPoint with an audio or video clip spun as a sound WBT course.

It’s not.

A story

When I entered e-learning, I did not have an instructional design, e-learning developer nor instructional technology background. I did not come from a training background. I did not take courses in education nor graduate with a degree in education.

I had journalism degrees. I never thought about being a teacher an educator. If it was not for the recession in 1991 (when I came out of grad school), I would probably being working for a marketing firm in New York City.

Yet, it didn’t happen.

I taught at the high school level for five years, at an inner city then affluent school. I jumped to the university level to teach full time as a faculty member. I received an e-learning grant and was doing research on online learning, pricing and how colleges and universities could achieve success.

After a period of time, I decided to jump to the corporate level as a training manager. I had no training experience, no training background. Nothing. I believed that anything was possible – you just had to spend the time to learn it.

I knew effective learning, scenario based learning a result of teaching at the inner city level and having the kids inspired to learn in an engaging and interactive process.

I followed the same approach at the corporate level. I spent hours learning everything I could on instructional design.

Success followed.

Fast Forward

A couple of years, I needed extra staff to build WBT courses for our employees and customers.  I did not have the budget to hire the additional resources. I turned to my executive assistant, who knew nothing about training, instructional design and e-learning. 

At the age of 62 with a high school education, with limited technical skills, she would appear to be the last person you would think could create sound interactive online courses.

How did she achieve success?

She went online and read everything she could find about creating online courses. She wanted to learn. She downloaded free trials of rapid content authoring tools, to find the right one for her, that would achieve our objectives.

What’s the point?

She was like many of you out there today. Doing something completely different and then being asked to create online courses, to jump into e-learning.  Yet, still having to do the job you were hired to do, when you came to the business.

What does it prove?

You can achieve success without any formal training or design background. Statements as “I can’t do it”, “I don’t have time”, “I have no technical background”, “This isn’t my job”,  are excuses.

If you think about, how many of these statements apply to people who take online courses. I hear it all the time.

When people start taking the online courses, their whole attitude changes. They enjoy the ability to jump around, to not having to follow a linear path, to learn on their own time, when they want and as often as they want.

They all were use to the ILT approach. Some of them, had experienced awful online courses. Page turners, static, boring courses.

They assumed that WBT, was like ILT but just online. 

Why? Because in their past, someone had followed that mantra and create courses based on ILT principles.

The new learners thought all content was like that. They assumed that someone taking pages of documents and shoving them online or using pure PowerPoint with bullet points was online content.

It was far from it. It was ILT.

ILT – the evil empire

ILT serves some purposes. I’ll admit that. It can be effective if done right. However, how often have attended an instructor led training class that bored you to tears? How often have you spent your time, looking on your smartphone, texting folks, reading your email on your laptop and doing something else, rather than paying attention.

How often have you entered the classroom or seminar room and immediately bolted to the back of the room, even though there are plenty of seats in the front?

When you attend a seminar at a conference, how many of you try to find seats that are closest to the door?

If this is happening at a conference event, where you paid to attend why would you believe that taking the same ILT approach would be acceptable to create online training courses?

Why would you assume that shoving a PowerPoint online with an audio clip, a video clip, which you see often in ILT, especially at conference seminars, would be fine?

If you were bored and not paying attention at your seminar, why would you think that others taking the online course, wouldn’t feel the same way?

For many people, they do not think that way. They figure that following the ILT approach and shoving it online, under the guise of a WBT course is an effective way to learn.

They are forgetting the number one adult learning rule – WIFM. What is in it for me?

Adult learners seek this all the time in training.

Who is to blame?

I would love to say that no one is to blame, but that just isn’t true.

• Books that state PowerPoint can be a successful online
• Outdated books on WBT – from 1999-2006 that people read and assume this is effective online course building – while it provides some foundation, new approaches, stronger design techniques are showing greater effectiveness then what was available in the past
• A few rapid content authoring tool vendors who pitch that taking a Microsoft Word document and changing it to flash is effective learning
• Books, presentations, blogs that state follow the PPT mantra
• Books, presentations – heck even webinars, blogs that push and talk about theory
• Instructors whether via education or business who just take the easy way out and follow a linear methodology and who have never offered real world scenarios, role playing in their own classes, seminars or presentations
• Antiquated classroom learning that starts at elementary school all the way through college
• Synchronous based learning, which follows the ILT approach but adds discussion boards, so that makes it okay
• Instructors who believe online learning is just like classroom learning, who just don’t get it
• People who do not want to spend the time searching online to  learn how to create engaging and interactive WBT, who do not want to spend the time reading an ebook or going to library or asking folks via social media on how to do this or that

Bottom Line

We pitch to our attendees, our students, our learners the importance of knowledge. Understanding it, comprehending it, synthesizing it and taking it to the next level. We implore learning as an effective means to achieve success. We constantly remind folks on the advantages of acquiring new skills, new approaches and the importance of change.

We fail to do it ourselves. 

I’m tired of the excuses.

E-Learning 24/7

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The data shows that what many vendors assume end users want is far from accurate.

Too many vendors are focusing on talent/performance management as the next feature/component in their systems.

While this makes sense from a revenue standpoint, there is a huge base of people who do not want any TM/PM functionality.

Equally they are focusing on compliance components assuming that this is a huge upswing for an extensive list of companies.

Yet, as you will see from this survey, what you assume isn’t always the case.

Survey

Lasted for one month. Provided a strong cluster sample, representing folks across the globe, not just the U.S. Respondents were from all size of companies, education, higher education, associations, non profits and other. On the total number of employees, over 44% were from businesses 500 or less.

36% were from 501 to 5,000 employees (16.6% from the 501-1,000), and 11% were from companies over 50,000 employees.

Experience

A tad over 36% stated they had seven or more years experience, with one to three years of experience coming in second at 30.5%.

Do you have a LMS/LCMS/Learning Platform

69% said yes

One important data point here – the term “LCMS” is on its deathbed. Back in the early 2000′s, LMSs often had content mgt features built within their system, but called themselves learning management systems.

By the mid to late 2000′s, the split returned with LCMS and LMS (and yes, there were vendors who called themselves LCMSs for as long as e-learning – online learning – has existed).

Today, however more and more learning management systems are bringing into content management features, inc. file repositories.

Types of Training (respondents could select as many as they wanted)

As noted earlier in this post, the whole “compliance” driven features is striking the market at a fervor pace. While it is true that regulatory feature sets are useful – it totally depends on who are your target markets/vertical niches.

• Product – 54.2%
• Personal and Professional Development – 51.4%
• Technical and IT – 45.7%
• Compliance – 42.8%
• Leadership Development/Performance Management – 40%
• Sales – 25.7%
• Microsoft Office – 20%
• Other – 2%

What Does it Mean?

Product training reigns supreme. Not a real surprise here, when you consider that for many organizations, especially in certain industries, knowing the product inside and out, would be highly advisable. As for personal and professional development, it truly amazes me how many vendors in the e-learning space as a whole, forget this type of training.

A few years back, I offered Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish to our workforce. The courses were 100% online, SCORM compliant, with video, audio – including recording your voice and comparing to the speaker.

Guess what? It turned out to be one of most popular courses we offered.

On another front, the number one reason people leave their company is lack of personal and professional development (according to research collected from various orgs. on this topic). Wouldn’t it then make sense to offer this form of training online?

Something to Consider

I always recommend going to the 3rd party content provider for my 3rd party courses – i.e. soft skills, MS Office, etc. rather then going through the LMS vendor. I have found I can land a better price then using the quick way via the LMS vendor.

The vendor is taking a percentile of the sales of the courses, so it makes sense to go direct and cut out the middleman. You would be surprised at the number of content aggregators who privately do not have an issue with this approach. So, why do they offer the LMS vendors their content to be sold directly into the system?

Another distribution and revenue channel. Rosetta Stone, as mentioned above, offers online courses to be used in a LMS, but you have to contact them directly. Never assume that just because the LMS vendor doesn’t offer xyz content, that it isn’t available.

Best Yet

The content vendor will deal directly with your LMS vendor to ensure that the courses work in the system. You do not have to be an intermediary and waste your precious time with acting as a go between. Always make sure that after the courses are uploaded and tested – to test them yourself. Never sign off and pay, until you validate.

What Features would be nice to have in a LMS? (select all that are applicable)

• Advanced analytics for administrators – 65.7%
• e-book publishing and development – 60%
• Podcasting – creating your own – 57.1%
• Audio/video/image editing – 51.4%
• Ability to use Skype – 48.5%
• Ability to send SMS (text messages) – 48.5%
• SEO (Search engine optimization features) – 40%
• Dropbox, box.net or similar – 37.1%
• Salesforce.com or customer mgt system integration – 17.1%
• Other – 14.2%
• Synch with accounting software ala Quicken, etc. – 5.7%

What does it mean?

For the second time around, consumers are speaking loud and clear that they want audio/video/image editing. Consumers made the same request regarding content authoring tools several months back, and at last count, I only saw three authoring tool vendors offering this feature.

Consumers also made the same request on the learning platform side too. Again, I’ve seen less then five systems enable this feature. It really makes zero sense on why this isn’t a feature in a system, when as a whole the consumer marketplace is going online to use these types of tools.

E-book development and publishing again is being requested by consumers as it was months ago – and again, it is being ignored. Just yesterday, a product called Inkling Habitat launched a collaborative cloud based publishing platform (its actually in early adopter stage). Genius. This follows the Apple angle on iBook publishing and Amazon as well.

As of right now, I only know of a few vendors who offer e-book development and publishing within their system.

Biggest Surprise

Advanced analytics for administrators. Actually it makes total sense. As more and more people are gaining experience working with LMSs, they are seeking another level for analyzing information.

We often focus on the end user side first and foremost for functionality and forget the administration side. Consumers are saying – no more.

The problem is that the majority of systems believe that ad-hoc reporting solves the advanced analytical data angle. It doesn’t. Definitely, ad-hoc is a must feature, but generating data and either reviewing within the system is no longer the only acceptable option.

BTW, one vendor told me, “they can export it into another database or program for deeper analysis” (congrats, this is the worst idea ever.. people want automation, not manual).

Let’s not forget that at the end of the day, ease of use stands above everything else. I have seen too many systems that have failed this test. It’s an absolute disgrace and one that is simple to fix.

What Features are essential for your LMS/LCMS/Learning Platform? (Select all that are applicable. Regardless if you have a system or not)

To me this is a very important question because it goes beyond, “what is nice” to what is “necessary”.

• Mobile Learning – 68.5%
• Peer Review, Chat, Collaborative Learning – 68.5%
• Social Learning – 57.1%
• Administration, wizards, stock images, templates – 57.1%
• ILT/Classroom mgt – 48.5%
• Talent/Performance mgt – 37.1%
• Skype – 20%
• E-commerce – 14.2%
• Other 8.5%

What does it mean?

Mobile learning rules. A recent forecast by BI intelligence projects a growth rate of 50% compounded each year for tablets/e-readers. The forecast also projects that tablets (inc. e-readers) will outsell PCs by 2015, with an estimated 500 million units a year.

Mobile learning though is becoming somewhat of a spin for the industry. Very few LMSs offer online/offline synch with a native app – heck, online/offline synch in general, but pitch that they offer mobile learning.

What they really mean is that you can view the LMS and courses via your mobile web browser.

Too me, that is not truly mobile learning.

While it has been reported that the next version of the iPad will have 4G, lets not forget that 4G data is not free. Yes, you get the card or however it is built-in, but you still need a service to use it – and 4G costs are high, especially when it comes to data plans. This is one of the big reasons why more tablets are being purchased with WI-Fi then with the 3G or 4G.

Hence the value of an online/offline synch with a native app is so important.

As you can see, social learning is no longer the must have feature in a system. I blame this totally on the industry as a whole – who focused too much on the same features as everyone else – forgetting the over 25 different types of social media available, or even creating a mashup of social types.

This doesn’t mean social learning is falling off the cliff, but it does mean that something has to give – and give for the better.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Hmm..talent and performance management as necessities – because everyone wants it – as a few vendors told me in the past month? Guess not.

Blended Learning

ILT/Classroom mgt – again, you would think this is obvious, but I’m still seeing vendors struggling with this, especially with calendars and event management as a whole. One big reason for the upswing, more folks coming in from ILT, with an ILT background. They are being pushed – either by force, demand or realization, that e-learning is the future.

Yet, they can’t give up on their ILT approach or classroom offerings (even though webinars are equal if not better then many ILT and WBT is far superior to anything ILT).

Bottom Line

Perhaps the LMS industry will finally take notice.

E-Learning customers want features that align to their experience in e-learning as a whole and in the consumer marketplace.

They are tired of some LMS vendors who act as though they are the Borg and the customer must assimilate.

They are saying “resistance is no longer futile”.

Rather it will evoke change.

E-Learning 24/7

Overall

Good

• Ease of use – Front end and Admin side
• $BlueBucks – (more in a sec)
• Multi-Tenet capabilities – it is after all ideal for an extended enterprise system
• Reporting – strong with the added bonus of ad-hoc
• File repository – another reason to boot LCMSs once and for all, this feature includes version updates and some analytics
• Accepts APIs – a must for anyone in today’s world
• Ability to offer ads for products or ads to specific sections for folks to visit – for each child (sub-portal) -  yes – every child can be skinned to look a different way then the parent
• Admin side – simple to find sections, easy drill down
• Ability to have video with audio  on the main screen, whereas end users enter – after logging in
• Can list “feature” courses
• Certificate tweaking capable – rather then just a standard one size fits all certificate
• Ability to e-mail a group of people or an individual within the product – ideal for classroom, webinars or even admin to send specific notifications without having to sent it to everyone. Can you use it for sending notices for courses – absolutely
• Auto – enrollment links

Average

• Assessment tool/survey
• Event calendar/event features
• E-mail notifications and reminders
• Course Catalog
• Works with any 3rd party authoring tool as long as its SCORM compliant

Poor

• Funky nomenclature for some of the terms  – like Grade Book – perfect education, not really for corporate inc. association space
• Under Categories – resources can appear, but you can also have resources under the title “resources” – seems redundant

Additional Specs

Mobile Learning – yes you can view it on tablets and smartphones.

Social Learning – No

Built in Content Authoring Tool – No. IMO, not a big deal. Many people today prefer 3rd party authoring tools and in fact, I recommend that route rather then using a vendor’s built in authoring tool.

Compliance Standards: SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, SCORM, AICC

Offers e-commerce module: Yes

It’s all in the Details

Upon entering the BlueVolt system, the end user will see the home screen. The screen will be skinned with your firm’s colors – including the header and footer. You will always see this header on each screen (as noted: it will be skinned to your colors)

Header

• Home – your home upon entering the system
• Course Catalog – View by Courses or Categories
• $BlueBucks – an incentive program whereas the end user can achieve BBs for completion of a course, and when they accumulated enough $BlueBucks they can turn them in for a gift card (at more than 100 locations incl. Amazon, Nike, etc.)
• Contact – Contact Technical support
• Help – Help section

Footer – appears on each screen/page of the system

• $BlueBucks – total amount accumulated by the end user
• My Courses – click and it goes directly to your list of courses you are taking, including any resources, video files, webinars, etc. – it fits all under “My Courses” with Categories as a secondary section
• My Account
• My Training

Under My Account

The default is “Transcript” which shows the following

• Year to Date Course Hours Completed
• Total hours completed
• Online Courses – under which includes the course name – please note that if you are having your learners view an online video or view a material online – it will appear under the online courses, since some people identify anything online even reading an ebook that has been assigned to them as an “online course”
• Length of the course
• Status of the course – On Schedule, Enrolled, Completed
• Enrolled in the course – if yes, it date appears when they enrolled
• Completed the course – if yes, the date appears
• Expected completion – (if applicable) – for companies who require a course to be completed by “x” date

Transcript tab also includes the ability to add a course to the transcript (I assume this can be turned off by the admin, if you do not wish your end users this capability) and the capability to print.

Other tabs within the “My Account”

• Profile – name, email address, address, phone (again, administrator can turn on or off these components) and Image which enables you to upload an image (if applicable)
• Billing – account summary and history (admin can turn this on or off)
• $BlueBucks – Account summary, also enables you to redeem your $BlueBucks
• Refer a Friend – I surmise that for most firms, this will be turned off

Please note, that you do not have to use $BlueBucks as part of your system. It is completely optional. Thus if you decide not to offer it, you would turn off the tab in the “My Account” section as well as in the header/footer.

While it offers some customizations, in general it typically lists

• Featured Items-  this can be WBT, seminars – online or offline (ILT), resources, videos, etc. – interesting to note, that for “events” color codes are used – orangewith the text “in-person”, blue with the text “online”.
• Enrolled – Courses, webinars, seminars, etc. that the end user is enrolled in – either via themselves or assigned to them

Under Featured or Enrolled the following information is present

• Course/Resource/Event Title
• Brief Description
• And if applicable – estimated total number of hours to complete the course/materials/etc.

Finding out the progress is a tad funky, because you can some customization involved – which while that may seem like a great idea – the customization does not enable a progress bar or some type of graphical interface.

In the trial, I saw the following:

• Not enrolled – blank
• Enrolled – Green text that says “enrolled”
• Completed – No longer visible under the Enrolled courses, but now appears in an archive of sort -

In another Blue Volt university used by Phillips, the following was seen under “Enrolled”

• a green like icon with the words “On Scheduled”

Ideally for me, it would be great to have a graphical interface identifying “not enrolled”, “enrolled” and “completed”. Thus, not enrolled would be blank on the progress bar, but with the words “not enrolled”, enrolled would be yellow in bar, with “enrolled” in the text and completed would be “green” with completed. If the course was overdue, the bar would change to red.

This format is common when people create effective user guides or QRCs for training, even a navigation guide for online courses. Anyway, its just a thought.

Hey Course! Hey Category

While this system is extremely effective, I found the whole “course” and “category” think strange.  I clearly understand “courses” and what falls under that, but “category” can appear as well, and under it could be courses, resources, etc. – In a way it seems repetitive.

Category can be beneficial with the subjects available, then people click on the subject/topic and drills down to the course. 

Categories can also be beneficial using the same hierarchy for say resources – either by subject area or type and then drill down from that.

While it is true that categories contains everything and thus a search can be done with a click  here or there, the same can occur in courses – as the above example illustrates.

Under course is a PPT 2010 QRC, yet under the categories section, you see “downloadable reference”. Guess what? The QRC is visible in there too.

It should be noted that a “search” function is available on the screen – so searching by keywords is available to the end user as well as by pin code.

Enrolling in a Course

Super simple. Click on the course title and it takes you to the following screen

The learner can view the “outline” of the course, by clicking “outline”.  If you are using the $BlueBucks feature, the number of BBs is listed too.

Once you click enroll, the following screen appears

$BlueBucks

By now you have to be asking yourself, “What in the heck are $BlueBucks and how do they work?”. While you can read up on it via their web site – which I found a tad confusing myself, here are the essentials:

• 1 point equals $1
• The client sets the $BlueBucks amount on the course
• The client sets their own budget, so they can assign as many or as few $BlueBucks as they want per course
• The learner receives the BBs upon completion of the course – the only drawback I have personally with the approach – because with true WBT – the whole point is to zing in and out as often as you want and as many times as you want without having to complete the course
• You do not have to charge your learners in order for them to acquire BBs – thus, it is not a requirement that you set a “fee” for a course, rather you can offer the courses for free – and the learner upon the completion of said course – land the BBs associated with that course
• If you decide to purchase the CEU courses that Blue Volt offers and thus offer them to your end users – you can get BBs too – this is totally optional and IMO for most businesses this would not apply – so if you don’t offer CEUs – don’t worry – you can still offer BBs

As with any incentive or reward program, the learner receives something “hence the incentive”. While there are a few vendors who offer the incentive angle, it is up to the customer to pay for the incentive or in many cases it is the usual “company mug” or “free courses” angle.

As early noted, while you could do this – I’ve found that most people want something tangible and specifically something more than the company t-shirt or mug. 

People love gift cards – and with over 100 vendors to select from – already put in play through BlueVolt – you simply select which gift cards and whalla – of you go.  Of course, you have to have a budget for the gift cards.

According to BlueVolt, companies – clients who use BBs have seen a significant uptick in the number of learners completing courses versus not offering BBs.

Administration

While I could equally spend a few thousand words with all the capabilities and features of the administration side, here is the initial dashboard you will see upon entering the admin side.

You can then pull down and see more specifics by course or by group

When you select a course the screen will change and include the following:

• Graphical interface showing enrollments and completions in the last 12 months color coded 
• Highlights: identifying view numerals – number of enrollments, completions and if applicable $BlueBucks awarded
• Quick Reports – Course enrollment report (Excel download), individual user results (Transcript), view course rollup (Grade Book), aggregated quiz and survey results
• Actions: enroll students, edit courses, manage schedules, choose another dashboard, e-mail this dashboard (which you can schedule), email students about this course

When you select a group, the screen looks a tad different from the course screen. While the graphical interface is still visible – with enrollments and completions for the past 12 months, the highlights are different.

They are listed by the group, with the top being “enrollments”, “completions”, “course hours” and “$bluebucks awarded”. Reports and actions equally change.

Under the reports section – Course enrollment report (Excel download), individual user results (Transcript), view course rollup (Grade Book) – are the same, but User $BlueBucks, training track progress and completed course hours are now visible.

Under the actions area – edit groups, add or remove groups, edit roles, create users in group, create user, choose another dashboard, e-mail dashboard.

The header on top of the administration screen always presents the following categories going to L to R

• Reports – contains very useful reports beyond what is listed under the “snapshot” of the dashboards – reports are broken out by users, courses and $BlueBucks. Under each sub-category contain the essential reports you need.  As earlier noted, Blue Volt enables you to create ad-hoc reports.
• Training – sections are  content and student management. Content includes: categories, course families, shared courses, course schedules, training tracks, course e-mailer and auto enrollment links

Student management – course enrollment, manual pass, allow retakes, approve activity, enrolled requests, track offline courses (for example: in-person), grade essay

• Users – “users” and sub category options, “groups” and sub-category options, “administrators” and sub-category options
• Settings
• Help
• Logout 

Bottom Line

While their core audiences are manufacturers, services, distributors and associations, this system can easily be recommended to any business or organization.

Overall this system is a powerful ride on the extended enterprise LMS highway.

E-Learning 24/7

Overall Expo Analysis

Good

• Nice selection of vendors – in general
• More goodies then in the past, but the vendor with the awesome monkeys – it was nearly impossible to get one – you had a better chance of allowing them to stick leeches on you, then getting one – what’s the point of marketing – if the product you want to show – yours – isn’t walking the floor with folks
• More vendors showing off their products then in the past – still a couple believe that a poster board will do the trick
• Significant increase in custom development shops – the most I have seen ever at TK12
• Wi-Fi worked a lot better, but vendors and end users still had issues inside the expo hall

Average

• Some vendors still required people to call to set up a trial, even though you were physically looking at them
• Some booths had too many salespeople in relation to the size of the booth, it felt cramped and in some cases easily could scare off potential leads – worse, I saw many salespeople chatting amongst themselves rather than customers
• Less vendors scanning people’s ID badges, which I found interesting. A couple of vendors used their iPhones to scan, which I thought was clever
• Heavy traffic in the morning, but by lunch- nearly dead on the 1st day, and stayed that way throughout the rest of the day – small pick up, the 2nd day – again solid traffic in the morning, dropped by 11ish or so
• Some vendors reported good lead gen – interest – will be interesting to see how many actually closed when it is all said and done

Poor

• One vendor, and they shall not be mentioned, had the event staff come over and complain to them because they were not always at their booth – I took an awesome photo of them “not being” there on the first day at 12:30. On the second day, people were waiting in a line in the morning to get their “stamp” on their “cards” and no one was there – classic.
• The “stamp” cards. I personally hate those things. You get this card, go around and have the vendors involved stamp it for a chance to win a drawing. Many vendors dislike it, especially when some folks will get in front of someone actually interested in the product and talking to the salesperson, just to get their stamp.  I heard this happen to two vendors.
• Worst booth: Meridan.  It was drab, had poster board things up and screamed “Avoid me”.  This space would have rocked if it was 1996, but it isn’t 1996 anymore.
• No free sandwiches, let along box lunches to attendees in the expo on day one. I’m sorry but there are hundreds of shows in various industries that give people this – at no additional charge. For the price of $1,500 or so to attend (non-member), and even near 1K to attend as a member, at least provide something, rather then free ice cream at 3 p.m.  Many vendors complained that folks were not coming in at the 12ish hour because they had to go and buy their own lunch elsewhere at the Rio (which is way off the strip).
• I also heard from many folks attending that the lines to get something to eat, in some cases took them 45 min to get food. No wonder, the vendors never saw them.
• No geolocation for people’s iphones. Again, what is the point of the map, if you still can’t find the vendors.
• Surprised at the low number of LMS vendors here. Really shocking.  This is the one show where you see a lot of decision makers walking around.  This isn’t the case with lots of other shows. I tell my vendor clients – this is a must show to attend, compared to some others out there.
• Custom development shops coming up with all sorts of names for what they actually do. I love marketing, but if people can’t figure out immediately what you do and you have to explain it, really what good is it?
• Zero web conferencing vendors – I guess business is booming for you – the economy clearly is not playing a factor.

Product Time

This year, I looked at more products then before, and listened to more sales pitches then before – which is always a mixed bag.

Commercial Time

I was surprised at the number of vendors offering a blended product – with ILT as more of the focus then their WBT counterpart.  One was intriguing, but overall, seems to be a backward concept not forward.

Yowsa Product

These were a few vendors that made me say interesting and real potential.  A couple just took me back a few steps in a positive way.

Panopto – this was the best product I saw – really a WOW

Scored high marks for me. Really liked what I saw, while be taking a major drive on the product early next week.

Cool Features

• Enables video to be recorded and guess what – SCORM compliant – finally!
• After video recording, you can search by keyword and it goes right to the video that the person says the keyword. Plus you can also see it with the text transcript that is viewable in real time
• Offers two products – one is a stand alone platform, the other is a stand alone product – you can integrate the video into your own LMS/learning Platform
• SaaS based
• You can remix, edit and combine material from different presentations or existing Podcasts by adding other rich media – this is the Unison product
• For PPT lovers, you can synch video files with PPT with drag and drop
• With Unison you can integrate right into their other product – the platform called Focus  – which provides video capture – oh, output includes mp3, mp4, avi, wav and mov
• Works on mobile devices, incl. the iPad – looked sharp
• Force: was equally very nice

Other Interesting Products (for various reasons)

Webucator

This is one of those blended learning solutions, I previously noted. While there were some things that made me think, uh oh, for the most part it has potential – especially in the education/academia space – for the online components, not ILT.

Albeit, they are see themselves in the corporate market.

The reason I say education/academia more so – is that it is geared towards synchronous based learning, which is used more than 95% in education/academia space.

Key Features:

• Ability to view in real time an instructor presenting a course via video, while the attendees are elsewhere. Think the old way of distance learning – with everyone shoved in one room, and the instructor somewhere else.  The downside to this feature is that people have to be online at that specific time to see the “class” “presentation”, thus it sort of defeats the whole anytime/anywhere angle. However, for K-12 and even some higher ed institutions I can see it being used.
• Ability to record presentations, video and people can view it at anytime – thus it is a flip off the one above – people do not have to be online at that exact moment to view it
• You also can purchase instructor led courses from Microsoft to Adobe to Hardware and OS, programming, etc. Thus you can have on-site training.
• They note that they have trained more than 70% of the Fortune 100, but I would surmise it is the on-site angle.

BrainShark

I’ll be honest here, this has never been one of my super favorite products, because  its whole premise is built on using PowerPoint. Simple yes, true WBT wow – no.

What really threw me for a loop was that they themselves have no idea what they really are when it comes to their product.

They are an online authoring system. They denied that to me, but after they gave me what the product did – I can state unequivocally that they are an online authoring system.

Here is my conversation with their sales person.

Him: “We are a content management, content development product”

Me: “So you are an online authoring system”

Him: “No. We also provide some reports and some analytics”

Me: “Okay, you are an online authoring system”

Him: “No. You can upload courses into our system”

Me:”Can you upload any 3rd party courses or does it have to be only your product?“

Him: “Only ours”

Me: “Okay, you can create your courses with your SaaS tool, upload them into your system – and only your courses built with Brainshark, you have some reports and analytics.”

Him: “Right”

Me: “You are an online authoring system”

SlideShark

Brainshark’s new product which they pitch is 100% free. It enables you to upload PPT onto the iPad and present it to people – on the floor, at a location, etc. You can also connect the iPad PPT to a monitor and show it there.  You are still able to add video clips, audio, etc. – anything you can do with PPT, but it is seen on the iPad.

They told me, that you cannot do this right now with any other other app, because you know that PPT does not work on the iPad.

Let you in on a little secret. It is 100% bogus.

There are dozens and dozens of apps for free that enables PPT on the iPad, and does the same things.  If you want to buy a robust app that can do more, including showing in real time the web – with web links you can.

Their salesperson told me that in order to view web sites, you can have to screen capture them ahead of time, and upload it into their product – i.e. you cannot visit in real time.

What disturbed me the most about their claim is that they are telling anyway who walked into their booth regarding PPT and the iPad. Unless you are aware that PPT can work on the iPad, you will believe their claims.

Another example of some vendors who remind me of the snake oil salesman of the wild west. “This elixer will cure baldness, the common cold and make you smile”.

ZebraApps

Seen it. Nothing that blew me away.

Yammer

Yes they offer some features for free, but the paid version looks exactly like any other social learning system that uses the FB like page.

I had a great conversation with them and after their pitch, explained in detail that this many systems do the same thing, if not a tad more then they do. They stressed it provides analytics and is secure.

Guess what? There are plenty of LMSs that offer the same thing – in fact, secure is a huge factor.

You can add various APIs to it, and it has some Yammer add-ons from other vendors, but why go through the hassle, when some LMS vendors take it to the next level.

I know why people love Yammer, but its fee based product is not super low cost.

Right now until they make some wowsa factors in it, it is in my “not recommend” section.

Bottom Line

ASTD TK12 had a lot of nuances that offered nearly something for everyone. Yet, for the number of cool e-learning products out there and very hip and going places vendors (some of which were in attendance), many were not.

Online authoring systems were few and far between (domiKnow was there). Content authoring tool vendors equally not over abundent (Rapid Intake, Allen Communications, Articulate, Adobe were there among a few others).

LMS vendors surprised how many didn’t show up. Especially from outside the U.S.

Assessment tool vendors – Questionmark was there, can’t recall anyone else. The usual makes no sense – “Soundview” were also in attendance.

Excluding niche shows – depending as a vendor whom you are targeting – TechKnowledge is the best show to attend.

ASTD International is nice, but you get everyone there, not just e-learning. Other shows are best suited for specific types of vendors in the space.

TK12 offered some highlights and low-lights.

Hopefully next year, it will only be highlights.

Otherwise, it will falter like so many others in our space. Lots of traffic, little sales.

E-Learning 24/7

The RCAT (rapid content authoring tool) market continues to be healthy with nothing to slow it down – uh, except maybe one thing (more on that later).

Early Signs for 2012

Yeah, I know we have just jumped into January, but in a review of the past several months, authoring tools continue to follow a similar path amongst themselves with certain feature sets. However, where you would expect some to move towards – they haven’t, which is disappointing on multiple tiers.

Jump on the Bandwagon

I am still surprised on how vendors who are offering assessment only tools are staying in the game. Perhaps their audience is unaware of LMSs who offer assessment tools. Perhaps they are unaware of online authoring systems offering assessment features. Perhaps they are unaware of the RCAT space as well.  Whatever the reason happens to be – they need not worry anymore – everyone is doing it.

Here are some other features that are RED HOT

• Templates – growing at quick clip. This will become one of the biggest features in 2012 – especially with people wanting to create simulations without being an e-learning developer
• Assessment/Survey/Polls – If your product doesn’t have it – you need it.  A scan across the market is clearly showing that this has become a required feature in an authoring tool. However, the ability to do real time via mobile – i.e. ask question, people in the room respond – real time polling – hasn’t caught on yet in this space. I hope it does – especially with SaaS products.
• PowerPoint – Ability to integrate or use PPT in your courses. I absolutely hate this – as it has damaged the content authoring tool space. Some vendors push heavily on PPT, implying that a great WBT is really a PPT converted to Flash.  It isn’t.
• Flash output – still red hot. Why?
• Lack of easy to use – You would think, rapid content authoring tool – i.e. “rapid”, means you need it quickly – at least for some folks. Thus,  ease of use is a strong requirement. I’m still stunned at the number of products who feel this does not apply.  Listen, Authorware is dead, so why create a product that is trying to bring it back to life with your own product?
• Peer Review – Gaining speed. If your product is SaaS based, push the pedal to the metal and make this a must. People want it.
• Proprietary – Gaining traction. In this case, I hope this never gets over the hill.  It is one thing to have a product which offers multiple options incl. proprietary, along with SCORM, etc., but it is another to offer only proprietary.  The latter is slowly gaining speed, which is an advantage to LMS vendors who have a CAT in their own product – which is SCORM,PENS/IMS compliant.

Over 98% of the LMS/LCMS/learning platform have at least one compliance standard, so why use a RCAT that doesn’t?  If it is the latter, and your system accepts SCORM 2004 only (which thus accepts 1.2 and so on – backward compatibility), then ur RCAT won’t work – if it doesn’t support it.

• Mobile with tablets – finally gaining ground. Still has a way to go. As in other e-learning markets, vendors seem bent on staying with smartphones for RCAT and not focusing nor utilizing the capabilities of tablets – especially iPad/iPad2 and to a latter degree Android. One vendor focuses only on Blackberry (not just Playbook but their smartphone like product). As a great quote from Batman Year 1 says, “Didn’t you get the memo”?  When the market data is validating that people are not using BBs even in the business world, why would you believe otherwise? The Playbook is a dud, don’t make your product one too.
• Desktop. Still in the majority. It’s bizarre really, when SaaS is red hot in every other e-learning segment and yet in RCAT, desktop still rules. Please make it stop.

On the horizon

• SaaS – while desktop still rules, SaaS is slowly gaining converts.  I believe SaaS is the way to go – the only way to go and consumers are showing that to be the case. While some of the big names are still clinging on to “desktop” only, some of their smart competitors are dumping it and focusing only on SaaS.  Smart, very smart. By the end of 2012, I’m forecasting that SaaS will finally overtake Desktop – but it won’t be by much.
• Characters – images of real people. While RCATs never really offered a robust set of Clip Art for their customers (heck, most offered ZERO), they are now slowly offering images of people – not cartoon like, or an outline – but actual stock people images. eLearning Brothers offers such a product – and RCAT vendors are starting to add it into their own product. Makes sense.  Super slow. Will it attain mass adoption – I doubt it.

Potential is there, but you do not have to buy a third party product to integrate into your own. Lots of royalty free stock photo options here – you still have to buy the license mind you, but you can find truly “free” without giving credit to anyone and add it.

• HTML5. In the latest podcast featuring Volkner Zimmerman who is on the executive board at IMC-AG, he explicitly states that HTML5 is necessary in any course output for mobile. The same statements are made by others in the space as well. I concur. Flash isn’t going anywhere, except maybe the route of leaded gasoline. HTML5 is the new “Green”. Get it now.
• Screen capture, audio editing.  Still in the infant stage. Vendor adoption is slow. Again, why?
• Avatars – moving them all over the screen, speaking (aligning to their lips moving).  Slow growth here. I believe once Articulate and some of the other big names truly launch products (such as Storyline), the market will wait. Which is too bad.

 If I’m a vendor and I want to make my product a “one stop shop” and dissuade people from purchasing Snag-It or downloading lots of freebies that do the same thing, wouldn’t I want this in my product? Seems logical, especially since it is a necessary tool in any content authoring toolkit for end users.

• Output to Facebook. I guess some folks believe that everyone wants to take courses in Facebook. That this is going to catch on like wildfire. That everyone uses Facebook, you know the 20 something crowd.  Here is a news flash: It’s not true.

Reality:

• StumbleUpon generated more traffic in the last two quarters then Facebook
• Many companies ban access to social media sites, especially Facebook
• Data shows that people tend to “read others posts” and information and not post themselves. Research from companies show that the majority of employees who have access to Facebook are “lurkers”. That is to say they go and check out to see if other employees are on FB, read their info and again, read their posts.
• 60 to 70 year-olds is still the fastest growing audience on Facebook (from an overall year perspective)
• The data in terms of how many people are using FB is misleading. The data is how many people have accounts. It doesn’t mean that they are actively or even barely using the product.
• Privacy issues continue to plague Facebook
• Not even in the education sector, are all students using the product. So, why force them to do so?

Barely moving (please change that)

• eBook publishing capability – I see this as a real winner by 2014, but right now only a couple of vendors are offering it within their RCAT, heck even LMS.  The Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble’s version are still heavy e-book driven. People are reading a lot of eBooks on tablets too.
• Widgets/add-ons. Think marketplace – whether it is free – created by the vendor or links to widget directories to use in your product – i.e. open source or APIs or an exchange.  People like free. A couple of vendors are offering this as a feature. I would love to see it grow, but I just do not see it in the foreseeable future – heck not even in five years. 
• ADA 508 compliant or the European version of ADA 508. Still shocking that this is not a standard feature in RCAT space.  Even in tools that are geared towards education, this isn’t a standard feature. More vendors seem interested in PPT, then having this as a spec in their product. Disgusting. 
• Text to Speech – This feature has been around for several years and now it is slowly appearing in a few RCAT products. It has real potential, regardless if you offer a standalone RCAT or have a CAT built into your learning platform. You want to be innovative and still have customers? TTS and even STT (speech to text) is the right way to go. I’d offer both.  There is a reason Dragon software is hot. People like STT.
• Works on Mac. For the desktop products it is still amazing at the number which do not work on Macs. This isn’t 1995 here. People are buying lots of Apple computers, especially laptops.  Interesting to note, that there are RCAT SaaS vendors who pitch working with Safari and thus all browsers, yet tell people in their own product – preference to IE.  I can’t tell you the number of SaaS RCAT vendors who pitch Safari, even Chrome and then their product looks funky in those browsers.  Funky doesn’t make people want to use your product.
• HD output. People love to pitch YouTube output and now they are starting to embrace HD. 

If you are going to offer HD output and even push it – then you have to offer tablet capability – since the iPad for example offers the ability to have it seen in HD.  Think how many people at companies, even in education, have HD screens? Heck, they are lucky if they have audio cards connected to their computers or even are using Windows 2007. 

• Gamification capabilities. This is going to be huge by 2013 in the consumer marketplace. Vendors who start offering this now in SaaS based products are ahead of the game. End users love gamification features. Should be a standard feature – not only in RCAT, but learning platforms in general (but, I digress). 

Bottom Line

The RCAT market better realize the obvious – they are being attacked on multiple fronts. From learning systems who have CAT built in, to online authoring systems to even mobile learning platforms.

Thus you need a new strategy, a new game plan. Even if you have never read Sun Tzu, the “Art of War“, you should know how to strategize and how to win.

Growing is what business is all about. There are lots of great products out there who have failed to grow and thus died because they failed to understand the market, especially where is it heading.

They ignored the obvious, believing that their product will always be great, so why change?

Change is invetiable. Winning is a necessity.

Losing is unacceptable, unless you like being in last place.

Note: Please take a moment and complete my new survey on LMSs and e-learning. The results will be published on this blog in mid February. As a thank you to those who fully complete the survey, you will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a Blu-Ray player. The Blu-Ray will be region free, thus you can set it to either PAL or NTSC.

Take me to the survey

E-Learning 24/7 (please note: due to TK12, there will be no blog next week – however I will be tweeting live from the event and posting frequently in the E-Learning 24/7 Linkedin group. Including mini product reviews.)

The buzz, hype, demos, salespeople, awful expensive food, hotels that overcharge (I always find better deals on Expedia or sign up for the hotel’s e-mail newsletter) and yes, sometimes beyond awful seminars.

The best way to prepare for the onslaught of trade shows (including seminars) is to be prepared. Hence, this guide. The first segment is for buyers, potential and current customers.

The second segment is for vendors – including insight from fellow vendors on various trade shows.

Trade Show Battle – Come Prepared

Before entering the floor, you need a game plan.

My game plan always includes the following:

• Scope the floor – I take a quick glance on where everyone is located – some people like checking out the map they give you – but half the time you can’t figure that out, especially when they number the booths.
• Observe who is on the path from the door right down the middle – these are often the vendors who paid the most money, especially at the entry points along each pathway, except for the farthest right and left.

Similar to the way stores setup their end caps, the same applies to trade show floors. Pricing is typically based on foot traffic – and it is no secret the most traveled pathway is the one right in the middle.

• Day 1 – review the floor. I look to see whom I’m interested in going back to and chat. I check out the giveaways (hey, at least I’m honest) and gauge if the vendor has a demo or just a CD/DVD with their product – for you to take back with you to your room.
• Part 2 of Day 1 – depending on interest, I may go back and hit a couple of booths. Only a couple, the rest can wait until the next day (Assuming the trade show floor is open for two or more days)
• Day 2 – I hit the floor full throttle. I know whom I want to see and visit. If I see folks who are chatting amongst themselves, I do not even enter, because they aren’t interested in me as a potential customer – they are interested in themselves. A red flag.

Reality and no it is not an episode of the Real Housewives on the Trade Show Floor

I know there are people who will visit the conference’s expo section, where the vendors are listed, prior to the show. However, the masses will not do so for a couple of reasons.

• You have other things to do – prepare which seminars to attend, what time is your flight coming in and leaving, coming up with a game plan or just winging it
• The expo site often is nothing more than a small blurb, the vendor’s web site and some shows now enable the vendor to have a contact/e-mail form. The latter is intriguing, but based on my experience, no one ever responds to the inquiries and if they do, it is a form letter
• You can download the map. Did I mention that it is typically worthless? Nowadays the trade shows/conferences have apps you can download. The problem is that for the trade show (expo floor) it is just a combination of the web site you can see and the map. How about geolocation as a component? That way, if I am walking around with my smartphone/tablet I can see where I am in relation to where the booth I want to visit is located.
• The expo app often contains vendors who list absolutely nothing but their name. Worthless.

Giveaways – Let the Games Begin

• Anyone who tells you they visit the booths just to take a look at the literature and is not interested in freebies is kidding themselves. On the first day, while I am scoping out the booths, I am also checking out the freebies. If it is a booth that I am not interested in – but has an awesome freebie – I assess if I need to talk to the person to score the freebie.

If it is a great freebie, I go for it. If I can do it without talking to someone I go for it – a great time to go is when the salespeople are talking to other customers and you can just go up there and grab it without talking to them.

If they are offering candies, I just walk up and grab one – if it is a tasty treat. The worst thing a vendor can do is not even have a freebie or some candy.

If you can afford a booth on the trade show floor, you can invest $10 to buy a bag of candy.

Demos

Never assume that the demo you are viewing is actually live and available for purchase. Always ask the vendor if it is available to buy and “live”. I recently attended a trade show, whereas the vendor showed off their new product. They gave the appearance the product was available and live. It wasn’t the case.

Another vendor had created a working demo. That is to say, it was still in beta and they had manipulated it to show what it will look like – or at least their vision of it. Hence, always ask.

Some vendors like to hand out just literature. If I wanted just that, I would download your white papers or brochures off your web site.

Equally, I have seen vendors who do not even have their product visible on a computer/laptop or even a monitor. You can rent a laptop/computer at the show (yes, it is not cheap).

It is quite likely you brought your own laptop – so why not show your product on it, rather then handing out a trial CD or telling people to visit your web site and sign up.

Let me ask you a question. How many people do you really think are going to go back to their hotel room and start up their laptop to check out your trial? If you said nearly nil – you would be correct.

Now, how many folks are going to take back your CD to their location and zing it into their computers to check out? If you said some, you would be correct.

There are companies who do not allow an employee to view anything on their computer due to compliance and regulatory issues. So no jump drive, no CD and yes they even block web sites.

The best time to show people what you can offer is on a trade show floor. Spend the time to do so.

Segment 2 – Vendor Venues

I talk to a lot of vendors during my days and yes, even nights. One thing that I always inquire about is trade shows – how did XYZ do for you, what about foot traffic, etc.

Vendors in turn will ask me which ones to attend, what are the winners and losers, what shows will best meet their needs and attract leads and thus sales.

Based on the feedback I hear from vendors, here is their take on a few shows (please note, these are vendors who actually exhibited at at least one of these shows)

Their Take:

• ELEC in Anaheim – awful. Apparently they stuck all the vendors on a lower floor with the attendees for the seminars on a completely different floor. A few vendors told me that they barely got any foot traffic and one even told me that ELEC folks had the gall to come to them, apologize for the show and then ask them if they wanted to renew – for a higher price.
• DevLearn – mixed bag. Some vendors had solid leads, others found that it was a waste of time.

On a side note, the leads vs. waste of time is a common theme when attending trade shows that are not directly targeting your specific niche or vertical.

• ASTD TechKnowledge – if you are an e-learning vendor this is a must show for you. Leads again are a mixed bag. It is one of the few shows I attend yearly. Albeit the one in San Jose was a loser. I’ll be at the upcoming show in Vegas – with iPad in hand, note taking and of course, live tweeting.

• ASTD International – This year it is in Denver, and again it often is a mixed bag. I have heard from vendors who tell me it is a waste of money and others who tell me they scored some sales. A mix of “tire kickers” and “decision makers”.
• Training magazine’s show – A number of vendors who attended told me it was awful and that they were disappointed at the traffic and lack of real leads. I know a couple of vendors who did solid work, but it is not on the high list this year for many vendors.

Another issue comes down to purchasing power. Some shows have lots of traffic, but the majority of folks are “tire kickers”.

I always recommend to my clients to identify shows that have a high percentile of decision makers. There are plenty of shows that are out there that achieve that objective.

Shhh… it’s a secret

Many vendors I talked to tell me that in reality, most shows are money losers for them. They go to be seen – i.e. for folks to remember their name. I know quite a few vendors (more than you would guess) who are cutting down the number of shows in 2012.

I give them kudos – it is a smart business decision.

Salespeople Scary Stories

My biggest pet peeve on the trade show is the lack of interest from salespeople and lack of tact when it comes to them being in a booth. Here are some constant issues I have seen at numerous trade shows:

• Salespeople or salesperson eating their lunch or snacks in the booth. It screams unprofessional. Set up some breaks and go eat elsewhere.
• Sitting down. If you have salespeople at the booth, they should always be standing.
  
• Checking out your e-mail or talking on the phone. Go elsewhere. Your job is to sale your product, not have a chat with Mom nor see who has been emailing you today.
• Never following up. I absolutely hate this and yet it happens all the time. They scan your card and you never hear back from them – then they complain that they are not generating any real leads.
• If a person tells you they are a hot lead or they are extremely interested in your product – follow up after the show ends. I recommend waiting two days after the show since many people are just getting back into the office and catching up.

It is true, that people will not respond to your e-mail, nor your calls. That is reality, but if someone says they are really interested or they want to setup a demo, then follow up.

Bottom Line

A trade show floor can be an experience of a lifetime for both the attendee and the vendor. Some people find it awesome, others find it nerve racking.

Regardless, have a game plan when you enter the floor. It will save you time and energy.

Energy which can be better spent walking out off lame sessions.

Note: I have launched my debut podcast series: E-Learning 1 on 1, featuring CEOs and Senior execs for various e-learning companies. To listen or download, please click – E-Learning 1 on 1. This week’s episode: Robert Gadd, President and Chief Mobile Officer for OnPoint Digital, makers of CellCast.

Note: Join my “circle” on the new E-Learning 24/7 Google+ page. I will be posting daily on the page. Plus providing exclusive data and materials, that will not be available anywhere else.

E-Learning 24/7

In 1999, Jones International became the first online university in the U.S. to be accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.

By 1999, other online universities were on the scene including the University of Phoenix and Western Governors University which was a consortium of small colleges in the rocky mountain area.

Some online universities offered degrees for as low as $4,800 USD, and a doctorate as low as $12K. Other online universities sounded like brick and mortar institutions: University of Northern Washington, for example.

Some public and private colleges were offering online degrees. Duke for one had an online MBA, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln offered a Ph.D. online (albeit you had to attend two classes on the UNL campus to fulfill the requirements).

Smaller colleges were getting into the act too. At the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where I taught, online classes began in 1999. My offering was the first online journalism class in the University of Nebraska system – a result of a grant from the system itself.

On the K-12 side, nothing was really going on. Everyone seemed happy with traditional classroom learning, although they were unhappy with its output in terms of learning.

Looking at the global landscape, the same – in terms of online universities, it was close to nil. By the mid 2000′s, that started to change.

Positive change that came from a resource you wouldn’t expect – the government. Not in the U.S. mind you, but in various countries around the world.

This change was a result of people taking a closer look at e-learning, its capabilities and possibilities.

The argument that online learning in education was equal or superior to traditional classroom learning began to appear by late 2008. It still has a way to go, but it is happening – and happening faster than its corporate counterpart.

As for the systems people used, well it varied. Popular ones included Lotus Notes, Blackboard and WebCT.

For the masses, it wasn’t all sunshine. They just didn’t believe that online learning in education could really achieve success. After all, classroom learning was the best way, the only way.

They were wrong.

The Results are still coming in

• 6.1 million students took at least 1 online class during the fall of 2010 (Sloan Consortium, 2011) – The survey defined an online class as being at least 80% online
• 21% growth rate for online enrollments compared to 2% growth in the overall higher education student pop. (Sloan Consortium, 2011)
• 385% increase in online enrollments compared to eight years ago (Marketdata)
• 75% of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased the demand of online programs/courses (Sloan Consortium – survey based on 2,500 institutions)
• 51% of college presidents say that online courses provide the same value as traditional classroom, however 29% said that online learning offered an equal value as traditional courses in the classroom (Pew Research Center)
• By 2015, Marketdata predicts that 37% of all post-secondary enrollments will be in online programs
• 50% of college presidents of 4 year colleges and 75% of college presidents from 2 year colleges predicated that by 2021, a majority of undergrad students will be taking an online course (Pew Research Center)
• 77% of college presidents report that their institution offers online courses, 89% of 4 year public colleges reporting the same (Pew Research Center)
• OpenCourseWare, from MIT, started in 2001 and now includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses which have been used by more than 100M people
• 19% of middle school students and 30% of high school students took an online class in 2010 (Speak Up 2011)
• Over 40% of students now designate online classes as an essential component of their learning experience (Speak Up)
• At the Idaho Digital Learning Academy, over 10,000 students are taking online courses
• 75% of prospective online students expect the cost for an online program to be lower than the cost of a classroom based program of similar length and content (Aslanian eLearners Poll, 2011)
• A new state law in Florida requires all entering 9th graders to have at least one online class before they graduate
• Other states who have enacted similar laws: Michigan, Indiana, New Mexico and Alabama
• The Florida law also states that by 2013, a full-time K-12 Florida Virtual School can offer high school diplomas

Okay, sounds great. But funding is an issue here.

Actually its not, at least according to the Start Up survey which found that only 36% of administrators believed limited state funding was a barrier to online courses.

So, if that isn’t the case, what is the issue?

Governmental support

In the corporate setting it is all about buy-in and for most companies, buy-in has to come from the top. When it does, it is easier to move toward and forward with e-learning (granted not everyone is every happy about it). The same can be said at the education level. If the district doesn’t support online learning, it trickles down. If the state doesn’t support online learning, it trickles down.

Thus, if the government doesn’t support online learning, it trickles down – it doesn’t wipe it out though, since many states are going forward anyone – same with districts, but having a government that fully endorses and supports the implementation of online learning can be massive.

With the noted exception of the United States DOE (which while it offers multi-billion dollar grants, it does not specify that you have to use the funds for online learning – it leaves it up to the grant winner), other countries have talked the talk, by providing financial support and resources, specifically for online courses/programs and yes, even online universities.

Just a small sampling of countries

• U.K. which founded the Open University, the U.K.’s only university dedicated to online learning. Attendance is around 150,000 undergraduate, 30,000 graduate. Most of the courses are available throughout Europe, with more than 25,000 living outside the U.K. The U.K. continues to provide funding to Open University and sees enormous value in it.
• Australia committed 31.4 million to support the Australian Curriculum Online. It is part of a 41.2 million package to support the development of online and interactive education and training projects.
• Russia has publicly committed to online learning and even mobile learning in education
• Indonesia recently committed funds and resources to an online university
• Canada has constantly provided funds and support for online learning in education
  
• Since 2007, India has had its universities post videos of their lectures online
• China gives grants to dozens of universities to help them improve their undergrad teaching materials – by putting the materials online
• Kenya continues to be the leader in e-learning commitment throughout Africa

However, the biggest player in Africa is the African Virtual University (AVU), which has graduated more than 40,000 students.

AVU now offers 219 course modules in math, science, teacher education, basic ICT skills and ICT classroom intregration through an online interactive portal. AVU recently received an additional grant of 15.6M USD from the African Development Fund to help strengthen its capacity.

Okay, Got it. Where is this taking us?

Over the past several months, I have been analyzing the market. Assessing, forecasting and projecting based on current data, as well as looking at past data. The assessment is not just focused on the United States, but globally.

One item that has clearly come out is the issue of regional. Despite colleges, universities and the “for-profit” universities such as UoP, there seems to be a lack of interest or perhaps a “wait and see” mentality to penetrate into other global markets.

Not just emerging markets mind you, but countries outside their native country where the college/university or for-profit is based.

Sure there are minor exceptions, but as a whole, international growth is underwhelming disappointing. This approach is similar to what I see on the commercial side.

A vast majority of SaaS companies based in one country, who focus only on that country or region, even though evidence shows more and more people buying systems, regardless of location.

As costs continue to increase at colleges/universities in the states and elsewhere, institutions have to find ways to generate revenue. Rather then charge students more – to offset their budgets – expansion in targeting outside of their region/country for students makes business sense. Especially, when we are talking about online programs and courses.

If I do not have to appear in the classroom, what difference does it make where I am located? It doesn’t. In fact, if you look at colleges and universities that offer online programs at the graduate level (inc. degrees), you are likely to see more students outside of where the school is located than within.

Forecasts

• More students in the traditional age bracket of college (18-22) will be taking online courses/programs than their non-traditional age counterparts (25 and above) by 2020 – as a whole
• More undergrad students at community colleges and small colleges will be taking online courses than their traditional classroom counterparts by 2017 if not sooner
• Online degree programs will see an enrollment increase in the range of 20-25% by 2013, I’m talking about yearly average, again as a whole
• I’m projecting around 7.5-7.8 million students taking at least one online class by early 2013
• Government funding for online learning in education to increase by 15-20% by 2014 – if not sooner, the global economy plays heavily into this
• Increase in costs for some online programs – equal rather then lower to their traditional B&M classroom counterparts – at private universities
• More states offering a universal “online school” or as some states refer to “virtual schools” – a term I hate.
  

It is time to use the same nomenclature to eliminate confusion. In the biz sector it is e-learning, but often referred by some folks as online portal, online university, etc. Why keep it as “virtual” or even the antiquated “distance” learning, which implies something completely different (can we say tv viewing from the heyday?)

Bottom Line

This is a new area that I will be tracking and monitoring. It offers a lot of fascinating possbilities, especially when you toss the school/college/university/for-profit college implements e-learning and then needs to expand on that – i.e. mobile, social, Kinect.

Toss in the cost savings to all learners, emerging markets, financial gains for the schools themselves and yes, even government funding (from whichever country you are located) and online learning is set to surpass its classroom cousin, who has the education system to thank for its long usage.

An education system that is antiquated – not just at K-12, but also in higher education.

Let’s stop this nonsense and realize what many of us already know about online learning.

It works.

E-Learning 24/7

In 2011, I saw quite a few items that resonated. They involved talent management, “hello and goodbye” with vendors, social learning, upswing in mobile learning, new feature sets in the authoring tool space, flat lining in web conferencing and standalone platforms.

LMSs/LCMS/CMS/learning platforms in commercial and open space continued their presence. Some items stood out, others continued in an everlasting awful experience (customer and support service – as a whole).

Here now are five trends and their respected forecasts. These five stood out above the rest, albeit I really found ten that said, “Whoa!”.

The Future

#1

Augmented Reality and Kinect

I know its in the buzz phase, but every day new apps are being developed and launched in the commercial space. If emerging technology has taught us anything, it is only a matter of time until it bounces into our space.

Actually it already has with some end users. I have seen continued interest and downloads for open source AR tool kits. In two past webinars on this topic, average attendance was 180 people from all over the world. One company even went so far as inviting me to speak on the topic to their L&D group.

There are consumer locations that have implemented augmented reality without using a mobile device to view it. Thus, if you are training people, you are no longer limited to using a mobile device with a camera, nor having to rely on geolocation – a big win.

If you have a mobile device with a camera, opportunities are endless. For the mobile learning space – it is a necessity. Especially when people are in the field whether it is with consumers, at a job location, meeting with business clients, whatever.

No longer are they stuck saying, well it would something like this – and show an image or hard doc, now the end user can experience it.

Best of all, whether you are utilizing AR in education (I see this as a massive win for all students) or at a business location, you are no longer stuck with courses, even sims that are either boring, lack constant engagement or as we all know, turn off folks who frankly do not like e-learning.

Augmented reality opens those doors. If you are still a huge fan of ILT or believe a blended learning approach is necessary, why stick only to PowerPoint, handouts and long talks? Why not hand people a tablet with an AR app on it and expand their horizons. Product training becomes real – they interact, engage and see it in real time, rather than a static experience.

Brainstorming? Remember those wonderful sessions. People break out into groups and write their thoughts on white poster paper and then review it with everyone. Boring.

Augmented reality style: people see in real time the brainstorming ideas, they are transformed into a visual design based on the app, people communicate with Twitter or a built in micro blog, voting is possible and final ideas are vetted.

Then in your next session, people see what has been identified, they are no longer left to wonder – what will it look like or will it work.

Kinect

When people think Kinect technology, they think X-Box 360. Yet this is no longer the case. Kinect technology was not created at a Microsoft lab, rather it was created by a group of folks in Cambridge, England.

The technology is revolutionizing every day life. From helping stroke patients, senior citizens at healthcare facilities, to fitness to robotics and in education.

In the past year:

• Apple has filed a patent for 3D Kinect experience using touch free gesturing
• Another Apple patent includes allowing users via touch free gesturing to move content from one device to another (example from your iPad to your television)
• Allscripts merged hospital software with an accurate gesture -based system
• XTR3D is developing gesture recognition software for televisions using 2D cameras such as a computer webcam or the one in your smartphone – to extract 3D out of a 2D image. They plan on launching a version next year on smartphones.
• PrimeSense sells a device without using a Kinect device. You simply hook it up to a computer and it provides a Kinect-like experience.
• Qualcomm acquired GestureTek, which uses ultrasound sensors to track movement via a microphone, rather than a camera. GestureTek develops motion control for tablets, e-readers, smartphones and televisions

Forecast

Expect a few commercial vendors to jump into the augmented reality space for e-learning. Most likely with tablets and smartphones. Open source toolkits already exist, so I am projecting an increased use with education and businesses who have the tech folks in house to build such apps.

These vendors, I believe will consist of:

• Vendors who offer an authoring tool or game sim and will develop additional product lines tied to Augmented Reality
• Vendors new to the space focusing on developing and launching AR apps for the mobile crowd
• Custom development shops developing AR apps for customers (business, education, etc.), who do not have the inside staff to build such an app

Costs and quality will vary. A very good or great custom shop, whether it is one person or dozens, will be pricey. For vendors creating standalone apps for the masses on a variety of offerings or new product lines, costs will need to be significantly lower, otherwise it will not be successful.

It would not surprise me, if a vendor or two develop partnerships with AR houses to build, or create AR apps using open source toolkits.

Those that enter this space will truly be cutting edge and thus adoption will be slow.

Kinect technology and gesture free will equally make an appearance in 2012. I am projecting that the number of vendors who enter this space to start slow, but gain steam – at least with some aspect, by the end of 2012.

If you had to decide which of the following: AR or Kinect technology will be more widely used in 2012, I’m betting on Kinect technology.

Great opportunities in education (K-12 and higher ed) and even with companies, although I see it more with mid size and large. Costs will vary, again lower price points are needed. What is great about Kinect technology is that it will work with tablets, eventually smartphones and televisions.

#2

Talent Management

Continues to be a growth market. The Big Dog vendors jumped in two years ago, with some components and have now vastly expanded. Smaller size vendors are now entering the foray.

The problem though lies in the fact that once you add some features, eventually you will need to add more and more (HRIS modules for example), which then places you into the ERP space and those vendors.

Thus, your competition expands:

• Large size vendors such as Saba, Cornerstone On Demand, SumTotal, Taleo, SuccessFactors – recently acquired by SAP
• Talent Management only systems that have existed in the market for years
• ERP solutions that offer various HR modules plus Payroll, Billing mods

Some of the Big Dogs are offering as close as you can get to a mini ERP system with modules targeting HR specs including compensation and billing.

My take is that some systems with such features, perceive there is a market of those who are not interested in such solutions from Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft, Lawson or Workday. The would rather have a streamlined solution.

Downside to such an approach – especially for small to mid size vendors

Loss of customers. Despite what some people are saying in the space, there are still a large quantity of customers who are not seeking and/or do not want any talent management functionality – even if it is turned off in the system.

I have a client with over 100,000 users who had no desire to select a system with talent management, because they had no desire to use it. Thus the argument that companies plus 10,000 or even 50,000 all want TM/PM functionality, is ludicrous.

Forecast:

Continued growth, especially with small to mid size vendors. Added capabilities for mobile (please read my forecast on mobile learning – regarding future growth).

For the larger size vendors, I expect that by the end of 2012, to see a few systems drop their core learning features to 10% of their entire product. They truly become a mini HR ERP with robust talent management functionality, rather then their initial premise of a LMS.

#3

Social Learning

Total stagnation. I will admit it is one of the most disappointing features that failed to deliver in 2011. The “gerbil in the wheel” mentality continues, despite over 30 different types of social media. Here are a couple of reality points that most vendors fail to recognize:

• Most end users access off site their systems, unless they are hourly and their only option is to access via work
• People who use Facebook and Twitter prefer those over your own FB like page and micro blog. I only know of a few vendors who have integrated FB and Twitter APIs into their systems – so it is actually Twitter and Facebook.
• Video blogging exists – so why are we still seeing blogs?
• Wiki usage is down – again, why I am still seeing wikis?
• Collaboration is only as good as those who constantly use it and utilize it – it is like anything else that involves groups – some people are active, some are not – but if you offer collaboration offer some additional feature sets that people want to use, and helps them with their jobs, not just “collaboration” which consists of features we have seen in web conferencing
• Skype – add it – its “hot”
• Thousands of API directories out there with thousands of social media components you can add – any commercial vendor today could implement these, right now open source people are – so why lose it potential revenue?

Forecast

Flat. I have seen very few vendors moving forward with cool functionality. Social learning is becoming a generalization of anything that involves collaboration. It is embarrassing and worse a disservice to learners.

#4

Mobile Learning

Hot. I’ve talked about this topic extensively, so I won’t bore you on repetitive details.

However, at the minimum you should be offering (regardless of your product line)

• Online/offline synch – there is a demand here, and recent data shows that more consumers are selecting tablets with Wi-Fi over 3G or 4G
• Self contained app for content authoring tool vendors – iOS should be a priority here, then Android, Windows. Blackberry is flat and it no longer is the king kong in the business world
• iPad/iPad2 and future version support – utilize the features, beyond just having it be seen in Portrait mode or landscape
• Add dropbox or something similar – I have seen this with a few vendors in the RCAT space, and it makes sense – Dropbox is hot – why not offer instantpaper capability too?
• HTML5 support – sorry Flash fans
• M-Commerce

Forecast

Still going to be red hot in 2012, regardless of the product line or market – i.e. web conferencing, content authoring tools, standalone platforms, content aggregators or LMSs. If I am an extended enterprise system that enables mobile learning features, my new term is now m-commerce.

You can still say e-commerce, but there are people who are now recognizing the buzz word, “m-commerce”. The new talk is the power of talent management with mobile.

A wonderful article on it, is here. Recommended reading for anyone using or planning on incorporating talent management, incl. recruiting.

#5

SaaS

Super hot. If you are not “in the cloud” jump in. A recent review of my directories are showing a significant jump in SaaS only solutions. If you are a RCAT, move to the cloud. Desktop is finished.

What is amazing though, is how many SaaS based vendors are failing to grasp the global marketplace. If you are in the cloud, there is a strong likelihood that people are exploring your system, that are not in your country or region.

My personal view is the brick and mortar philosophy still exists with many vendors. They see themselves only for a specific region or a few regions, forgetting they have a web site and more importantly, a SaaS based product.

Even if you do not have a sales office in a specific country, don’t worry – you will still attract customers. A huge key is digital marketing.

Forecast

On Fire. Expect a large swath of vendors to move into a SaaS only product. Multilingual is a must here. As noted in previous posts, people prefer their native language not just English.

Bonus: One of the hottest emerging markets is Mexico.

Too many vendors are focusing only on the U.K. – it is already becoming saturated.

Double Bonus #6 – since it is the holiday season

Online Authoring Systems

A year ago, the hot ticket item was Lite LMSs. They are still around, but what I am seeing is an uptick in online authoring systems.

Components include:

• SaaS based course authoring tool – it is the primary feature
• LMS streamlined functionality – some reports, minor analytical date, e-mail messaging (I have even seen SMS – sweet), batch uploading of users and yes, I have seen two vendors add some tracking functionality
• Assessment/Survey tool – I’m starting to see this as a feature (not required mind you)
• Low cost
• Proprietary content – again, typical feature (these systems do not enable you to upload content using any other tool but there own – hence online authoring system)
• Non compliant – i.e no SCORM, AICC or PENS – however, I am now seeing a few vendors offer PENS (created by AICC back in 2005, but slowly gaining traction)
• Peer review

There are quite a few vendors in this space, but IMO the best one is dominKnow’s Claro. Many folks know of Mindflash.com and Articulate Online. Please note that not all vendors in this space offer the above components.

There are some vendors who are going beyond these components. Claro enables true HTML5 output.

Forecast

Expect a large increase in the number of content authoring tool vendors implementing online authoring systems. Those who want to get ahead of the competition should explore course marketplaces – including those that offer free courses. If I am a RCAT vendor who has a LMS, ditch the LMS and switch to an online authoring system.

This is my major hot trend for 2012.

Bottom Line

Based on what I am seeing, 2012 is going to be the best yet.

E-Learning 24/7

The line to get in was long. Chatter was everywhere. Anticipation was running high.

When the film ended, there was no joy. To put it politely it was horrible. Not bad, horrible. The graphics were underwhelming (I saw better with Logan’s Run), the storyline was boring. Overrated was the universal opinion by moviegoers.

The same can be said for Cornerstone OnDemand. Everyone wants to see it. The hype on the product was huge, after all, the company’s revenue has increased significantly over the past two years.

I thought to myself – “wow, this is going to be great”.

Afterward, my feelings changed. Just as they did with Tron.

Overall Ratings

Good

• Career Center
• Search Connect – their search capability within the product
• Setup of Pricing – extremely robust – impressive
• Podcast capability – every LMS should have this feature
• Leader board within “Connect” their social learning component – however, I did not see any type of incentive tied to it
• Administration side – extensive set of options
• System preferences

Average

• Social Learning in general – can’t anyone come up with something fresh?
• E-commerce
• Performance Management feature sets
• Reporting
• Event management
• Customization for the front end – nothing extraordinary – pretty much the same I’ve seen on other products that offer branding/skinning and the client creating their own design

Poor

• User Interface – outdated and confusing – oh and bad
• Admin – overwhelming at times and confusing as well
• Viewing courses and the catalog
• Product in general

What?

• Additional charge for “Connect” their social learning set, unless you purchase the Extended Enterprise Cloud (then it is included). With more systems including a solid social learning component, it should be included in all their products at no additional cost.

COD provided me access to their “Learner” and “Performance” clouds. You do not have to purchase all their clouds, rather you can pick and choose.

Cloud Offerings

• Learner
• Performance – according to COD many of their customers only want this cloud. The cloud comes with succession, performance and compensation.
• Recruiting
• Extended Enterprise

Main Features

Home Page

Upon entering the LMS, you will see the home page. You can customize it with your own look and feel.

Here it is in its original form (with no design changes)

With a different look

Because the product enables the ability to do some serious tweaking to the home screen, the following can be viewed or hidden

• My Training – courses selected, date, start/not yet started/completed, launch
• Browse for Training – think course catalog
• Curriculum – identifies pathways (term used by COD) to the best courses to meet your developmental goals
• Month at a Glance – view upcoming instructor led trainings or webinars
• Browse for Training – typically identified by subject then drill down (example: accounting, finance)
• Browse by Topic
• Your interest and waitlist tracking
• Advanced Search

The home page also lists a series of headers, which I would state are similar to tabs.

The tabs are

• Home
• Learning – view your transcript, events calendar, browse for training, interests and waitlists, distribute training units (admin view only)
• Connect – additional fee unless you purchased the Extended Enterprise Cloud. If you did not, this tab does not appear
• Performance – assuming you purchased the “Performance Cloud”, otherwise not visible
• Succession – see above
• Compensation – see above
• My Team – visible only to the manager, dept. head, etc. and admins
• Reports – visible only to the admins and managers (if selected) – dashboard, standard reports, custom reports
• ILT – view events, manage events and sessions (only visible to admin), vendors & instructors (only visible to admin), facilities & resources (only visible to admin)
• Content
• Admin
• Certifications

Whichever tab you select, you will be provided additional options. For example, under the “Home” tab

• Welcome – your main screen
• Scheduled tasks
• People finder

As noted before, you can decide which sub headers you wish to include, as well as tabs.

One of the most interesting features of COD is the way to view courses/content/materials etc. While most systems enable this with simply clicking “course catalog” and/of offering a keyword search, COD offers three ways.

• Advanced search – recommended by COD as the best method. I found it to be worst especially for end users who are totally brand new to a LMS or e-learning in general.
• Browse for training – end user can browse via topic, plus see “suggested training” and a list of content/courses that might benefit them
• Browse by topic

For me, “browse for training” seemed to work the best, especially for newbies or those of us with limited patience.

How to view the catalog

Regardless of the option you select, the screen will go to the catalog area whereas a toolbar is viewable by all.

If you decided to go with “Advanced Search”, the toolbar appears with all the boxes checked and you will see everything in the catalog.

Let’s stop right here. One of the most irritating components of this catalog is this darn toolbar. While it may suggest simplicity, I found that hardly the case. Part of my reasoning is because of how COD defines terms within each little area. On more than one occasion, a learning item could appear in multiple areas, thus creating redundancy.

Online Class

• WBT
• Webinar
• Online course – your own or third party

In my initial discussion with COD, defining an online class was no easy task. Especially when the redundant factor kicked in.

Event

• Webinar – yep, you can view it also in online class – makes perfect sense to me – okay not really
• ILT/classroom training
• Calendar to view events you are assigned to or have signed up to attend

Curriculum

• Courses under subject headers – example “accounting”
• Courses can be online or ILT or both
• You can drill down under a subject, so you have a sub-subject area

Library

• Resources – docs, video/audio files, podcasts, PPT, etc.
• COD informed me that the library could contain links, but I was unable to verify if they would work because I was in a demo site

Posting

• Announcements or posts in general

Test

• Any test related to any course OR any test not related to any course

In all my years, I cannot recall one time I was asked to take a test within a LMS that was not part of a course. Sure, if you offered the GRE, that would qualify under test not related to any course, but why have that within your system?

Material

• PDF, docs, clips – nearly the same as resources – again, repetitive

Certification

• View certificate
• Print out certificate

I’m not going to lie, but this was an exhausting catalog search when selecting the advanced search function. Sure, you can go with a keyword, but considering that most people do not use keywords, let alone wildcards, stating that this is the best method to find what you are looking for in a catalog is hard to believe.

Here is the window for the course toolbar. As you can see it includes some filtering options.

I strongly recommend using the filters for the catalog, especially if you have a significant amount of content contained within.

While I could continue with the variety of different windows on the end user side – because this is an extensive system – it makes sense, especially in time constraints to jump over to the admin side.

Let me be very clear on this – the admin side is extremely robust but at the same time, cumbersome.

Admin Side

Before delving into this side, grab a cup of coffee or tea and listen to the soothing sounds of Booker T and the MGs.

Take a deep breath, because we are off on a wild ride.

As aforementioned, this may be one of the most robust admin sides I have ever seen. But seeing can be deceiving, especially with COD.

Don’t get me wrong, the feature set and capabilities are all there – perhaps more so then needed – especially if I am not selecting the Extended Enterprise Cloud.

I found the admin side on the whole daunting. Unless you have solid experience being an administrator or lots of time, the amount of info, features and capabilities can be overwhelming.

At times I felt exhausted and wondered out loud if someone who had zero tech skill sets could utilize this product on a daily basis without cursing their superiors. I can’t decide.

Part of the problem I had with the administrator side was the lack of a home dashboard. With people today having so little amount of time, this could be a very useful and beneficial feature for any administrator.

Yet the product prefers to go with the toolbar and sub set of options.

The toolbar

• Tools – extensive
• Catalog – lots of options
• Preferences

• Proxy Enrollment
• Org units
• Security
• Users

When you selected any of the above options, an extensive set of choices are visible.

For example, under catalog management

• Coupon administration
• Course catalog
• Curricula administration
• Evaluation administration
• Library administration
• Manage materials
• Order form management
• Subjects management
• Training forecast administration
• Training providers
• Training purpose administration
• Training request form administration
• Training unit administration
• Training update tool

Whew.

Let’s take a quick look at the options under “course catalog” that the administrator can set.

Without turning this review into the next “The Blah Story” (with a reported 7,300 pages and yes it is a real book), I wouldn’t be doing COD justice unless I informed you that this solution offers a lot of reports, from within you are offered an uber selection of choices.

The product also features a very impressive assessment tool which is worthy of an “A”. Again, lots of capabilities as part of the tool.

Bottom Line

This isn’t a bad system, but it is not a system that can match up with some of its other competitors in this space.

I’m sure COD will argue that people have options – lots of options, that their end users and clients love the product, and that people always want more then less.

Yet, research on the brain does not back this up.

Studies in neuromarketing have found that although consumers say they want lots of options, in the end they find it difficultly in selecting which ones best meet their needs. It is all tied to how the brain works.

But you do not need research to present information that many folks in e-learning already know – that people tend to use the same features over and over again. Thus, having more isn’t always a good idea.

Unless you are like the band Queen and want it all.

E-Learning 24/7

Before announcing the winners, I have seen a trend regarding mobile learning, that can easily mislead folks.

Mobile Learning

Two years ago there were some folks who believed that mobile learning where tools, etc. that you could not access via a LMS nor were available on a desktop or SaaS based solution. It was an interesting concept, but as we continue to move forward, I believe can no longer apply.

What has been applying is the term mobile learning and how it it pitched to consumers in the e-learning sector, especially with LMS/LCMS/Learning platform vendors.

Here are the spins

• Our system offers or has the capability for mobile learning (some use variance of the system offers)
• A few systems pitch that they have full mobile learning capability, especially with the iPad including the angle that you can see it full screen rather than the standard universal look – which shows up similar to the smartphone look – i.e. small

Reality

Mobile learning is not just seeing the LMS (or LCMS or platform) via a mobile browser. The fact people are pitching this as mobile learning is just plain wrong. As noted in an earlier blog posting, that would be saying your car has air conditioning because you can roll down the windows as you drive.

Yes, it does have a/c, but it is not in the dashboard of the vehicle, nor in any real sense – what people often perceive as a/c.

Under this mobile learning misrepresentation, I can tell you that nearly every system out there – can make this argument – because if you can open up Safari and go to the vendor’s web site and then into your SaaS based LMS – then guess what? It shows up in your browser.

Even some of the folks who have an app in the Apple store or Android store, follows a similar pattern.

Click on the app and your default browser opens and off you go.

As I often say to folks, what is the point of having an app, if all it does is open up my browser. I can do the same thing, without using your app.

On behalf of a blog reader, I had the opportunity to listen in on a webinar for the Taleo Learn Business Edition. The reader asked the individuals presenting the webinar, if they had mobile learning.  Their response? Yes.

When the reader asked for specifics, they stated you can view it in a mobile browser.

Three essential features

• Standalone mobile platform – it has its own reporting, analytical information, etc. – I would even be willing to accept a platform that can either be standalone or integrated into your LMS
• Standalone app – i.e self-contained with online/offline synch – honestly any e-learning solution, especially content authoring tools should have one of these, but for the LMS space it makes equal sense. Yes, I know the apps are not cheap and they take time, but having a self-contained native app, especially for the iPad/iPad2 is smart. Again, I would be happy if the minimum is having an Android standalone app for tablets, rather then one which is universal – best seen on a smartphone
• HTML5 output/publish – if you have a built in course authoring tool

If at a minimum you can implement at least one of these features (and yes, there are content authoring tool and LMS vendors who have it/working on it now), that works for me.  At this point, you can pitch that you offer mobile learning – and it would be an accurate statement.

 Award winners for 2011

Award Categories

• Open Source Commercial
• Academia/Higher Ed Open Source System of the Year
• K-12 Commercial System of the Year
• Extended Enterprise Commercial System of the Year
• Talent Management System of the Year
• Commercial System of the Year

The 2011 Open Source Commercial System of the Year goes to 

Docebo – Community Edition

What I love about this system includes the following:

• Constantly updated – a huge factor with open source systems
• SCORM 2004/1.2 support
• Over 25 languages supported – I know some fee based systems that support not even ten
• Works with all browsers and OSs – inc. Windows 64 bit and Mac OS
• Works with Articulate – i.e. you can upload courses from the authoring tool
• Content authoring tool, built in assessment tool
• Course subscription/catalog which can be viewed by group, job role, etc.
• Nice set of admin features
• Accepts APIs and Mashups
• Accepts Google apps – first 1o users are free

Open Source Education System of the Year

metacoon – Please note you may see the site in German. If you do, use a translate such as Google Translate to change it to your native language. To see the modules, select “products”.

Ideal for higher education and academia, it packs a whallop.  The two free modules you can download and use as you see fit are:

• metaStudy – LMS, with over 70 features
• metaAuthoring – Onyx is the course authoring tool that comes with the solution

The product offers a nice set of modules, but alas, only the two above are free.  The challenge with open source freebie education solutions is the ever increasing “free” systems available for teachers/students, which compete against the open source solutions (which can be free or fee based).   A future blog will look at the free systems, which technically are not open source.

Commercial Systems

Education System of the Year

itslearning

When I saw how you could customize the front end for K-6, I feel in love.

From a feature standpoint the product is slick. Here are just a few:

• SMS messaging
• AICC/SCORM/IMS
• SIS integration
• SSL
• Gradebook
• App library
• Plagiarism control – test mode browser, plus lots of test options
• Cloud e-mail
• Individual learning plans
• Audio/Video conferencing
• Course archive
• Course authoring tool
• Assessment tool, inc. surveys/polls
• Some social learning functions
• ePortfolios
• Tasks
• Projects
• Collaborative writing

I must say it is one of the most robust systems I have seen in awhile and for those of you, who want the parent dashboard – it has it as well.

Extended Enterprise System of the Year

Absorb LMS

A tough choice this year, between two systems – BlueVolt and 2010′s winner Absorb LMS. 

However, I had an issue with BlueVolt’s training catalog-classes-resources, which I found some redundancy that was not needed.

The product though has come a long way, and with some clever additions, it was just by a narrow margin, I selected Absorb LMS.

The product continues its dominance in the EE market and has for the past two years been heavily focused on the EE space. Yet, I do have some concerns, one of which is whether it can continue to add features and functionality to match or surpass what its competitors are using in their products.

That said, it is the product to beat.

Its lack of mobile learning (as I define it) and lack of social learning, hurt it – but in looking at the entire space, nobody seemed overly hardcore in pushing this aspect.

CertPoint was a consideration as well, and they do offer mobile learning with some social learning.

However, I found the UI, especially on the admin side, not strong enough to surpass BlueVolt or Absorb. 

It is solid product nevertheless, and if you want a strong Point of Sale solution, I would recommend taking a look at their Tango product – which is the best m-learning product for the iPad I have seen. Tango is a different product line from CertPoint – fyi.

Talent Management System of the Year

Taleo Talent Management

This area (an upcoming blog post) is dynamically changing. At one time only the Big Dogs were in the space, but now more and more small to mid size vendors are entering it as well. For some of these vendors their approach wouldn’t be the route I would go – despite the potential for strong revenue – because there are still large masses of folks who want a system that does not offer a TM component (even if it is turned off).

Despite my difference of opinion with a Taleo sales manager who told me that people want more than just a LMS – i.e. more than a standalone per se, and people are seeking, what I surmise he meant – talent management offerings (which I seriously disagree on), his product – the Taleo Talent Management system wins my award.

The user interface on the front end is nice, the best I’ve seen in the TM space, and features are beyond solid.

I found the admin side, which equally was solid a tad overwhelming a times, but overall doable.

Key wins for me was the easiness of the career component, succession planning and to a degree the compensation part. Overall, the TM space has a way to go – especially for UI and super ease of use.

I do wish to clarify on one aspect – if I was looking to purchase a LMS, this would not be my product of choice. It would however be for talent management, which is increasingly becoming a separate entity.

2011 Commercial System of the Year

SumTotal Learning Maestro

Before you scream, “WHAT?”, let me explain.

This is the former GeoLearning Maestro solution, which is now listed as SumTotal Learning Maestro.  Thankfully, at least IMO, ST has barely touched it – and left it to the former folks at Geo to take the reigns.

I admit, I wasn’t expecting much when checking out the system, but came away very impressed. They have built upon previous versions of Maestro to take this one to another level.

Personally, I found the product better suited for the mid size crowd, rather than large size. What I believe hurts the system – is cost. I found it a tad high for small business, thus I do not see it as a SMB product.

Features I enjoyed included

• Continued use and expansion of widgets – the product comes with a nice chunk, but you can also add your own widgets or those on directories on the net
• Ease of Use – simple UI that from an admin side – you can put as much as you want out there or as little. I like that. Nowadays some vendors are tossing lots of junk into the end user dashboard, which becomes beyond overwhelming to the end user
• Admin side was the same – but what really intrigued me, and which I liked, was the use of wizards.  This is a time saver in my book. 
• Social Learning features were a disappointment, unless you purchased a SL pack they offered (can’t recall the name). Even then, it didn’t wow me

However, as I have noted in the past, I am seeing a trend of stagnation with social learning. 

Bottom Line

With over 422 vendors it is always a difficult task to select ones I see as beyond outstanding. Honestly, there were more this year, then in 2010, that easily could be in place of ST Maestro. I wish I could have selected them all – but in an upcoming blog article, will try to do my best.

One vendor who really intrigued me was eCampus, a LMS vendor from Australia.  I have them on my watch list for 2012, and I hope they change their name – after all they are targeting businesses not education.

In an upcoming blog, I will be writing a listing  of the top 50 vendors to watch for in 2012.

Speaking of which, I believe 2012 is going to be an exciting year.

I’m actually quite stoked about it.

I hope you are too.

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