Achieving Success with Portal-based Rapid eLearning using SCORM 2004

1. Achieving Success with Portal-based Rapid eLearning using SCORM 2004 Timothy J. Potter Staff Engineer techniques.org LLC Wheat Ridge, Colorado

2. Presentation Overview • What? • Rapid eLearning delivered through a portal can help infuse learning activities into the daily working environment of employees to achieve better training results. • What is rapid eLearning? • Why “Portal-based”? • Where does SCORM 2004 fit in? • Why? • Much interest surrounding training approaches like rapid eLearning that are better aligned with organizational training goals for enhancing worker productivity. • Employees have many short opportunities during the day to do a little bit of learning (Tom King, Plugfest 8). • How? • knowledgeWorks LMS 1.3 + Portlets (demo)

3. What is Rapid eLearning? • Smaller than courseware, developed faster than courseware, and is typically more time-sensitive than courseware; extends beyond the training department • Two ways to look at what rapid eLearning means: • Content creation viewpoint • Lowering the barriers to authoring instructionally sound learning content to enable subject matter experts (SME) to directly contribute to the training process, frequently. • Example: Macromedia Breeze • Delivery and tracking viewpoint • Delivering the learning content that is just-in-time, just-right, and just-enough to workers, frequently. • 4 Categories of eLearning • Broadcast of new information (rapid eLearning) • Important knowledge transfer (rapid eLearning) • Developing new skills (rapid eLearning & courseware) • Creating certified competencies (courseware) • Bersin & Associates, July 2003 Whitepaper

4. Implementation Challenges • Authoring • Key is to allow those closest to an organization’s training outages, such as a sales manager, to directly contribute to the learning content creation process. • Out-of-scope for this presentation • Delivery • Will be addressed at length in this presentation • Content Management • With rapid eLearning, the goal is to have more contributors involved across all levels of an organization. With more contributors, you need a system to manage the content. • Asset management for reuse • Metadata management • Learning content package management • Out-of-scope for this presentation

5. Rapid eLearning Delivery • The traditional LMS environment is not well-suited for rapid eLearning delivery! • Gains on the authoring side will be diminished if learners need to stop what they are doing, login to the LMS, and take some rapid learning; actually more of a distraction because of the short duration of the rapid learning event. • The premise of rapid eLearning is to give workers relevant, timely, applicable training when it is needed. • Workers don’t do “work” in an LMS • There is an IT system where workers (and partners and customers) are doing more and more “work”. The Portal • Trends in enterprise IT indicate that the Enterprise Portal is becoming the central gateway to data and applications where people do real work … not just view weather and search for phone numbers anymore • See Process Portals literature from BEA, Real-time Enterprise literature from Vignette, and People centric literature from Plumtree

6. Portal-based Rapid eLearning • So the evolution that many workers, partners, and customers are actually doing “work” in the portal makes the portal a powerful platform for rapid eLearning. • With the portal, you can deliver just-enough, just-in-time, and just-for-me learning content throughout the day to help employees learn more, more often. • But, portal-based rapid eLearning introduces new integration challenges … • Integration of personalization services with learner profile • Integration of HR and competency management systems • Integration of document and content management system for access to learning content and related learning resources • Integration of portal and eLearning launcher and tracker Enter SCORM 2004 …

7. SCORM 2004 is the integration “glue”

8. SCORM 2004 is the integration “glue” • eLearning is becoming more integrated into enterprise IT; especially with portal-based RL • SCORM 2004 is foundation for integrating numerous systems. • Authoring • SCORM 1.3 CAM for packaging learning content into something a CMS or LMS can work with. • SCORM 1.3 LOM for classifying learning content to power search engines. • Delivery • SCORM 1.3 CAM for importing learning content • SCORM 1.3 RTE for tracking learners • SCORM 1.3 SN for keeping training focused, relevant, and personalized … more on this …

9. SCORM 2004 Highlights • Allows smaller grained content objects and significant flexibility in content sequencing. These changes allow course/instructional designers to incorporate sequencing that will adapt to meet individual learners’ needs, improving the instructional value and time efficiency of training. • Enables content objects to be tracked by objectives. Learning objects can now be linked to an organization’s education and competency objectives to meet organizational training goals. • Enables cost-effective and fast integration of content. Conformance with SCORM 2004 removes the content integration challenges plaguing most eLearning initiatives.

10. How? • knowledgeWorks LMS 1.3 (released Feb. 2, 2005) • SCORM 1.2 certified (LMS-RTE3: highest level of conformance to SCORM 1.2) • First SCORM 2004 certified LMS! • Rapid Learning Event Portlets • Q1 2005 • Macromedia Flex-based UI • Template approach to allow customization; many ways to approach delivery in portal e.g. LOB du jour, Help Desk Top 10 … • JSR-168 compliant Portlets; deploy to many Portals, e.g. Liferay, JBoss, Plumtree, Vignette, WebSphere, and BEA WebLogic. • Q2 2005 • Additional UI for “best practices” discovered by partners and Version 1 customers • WSRP compliant Portlets

11. LOB du jour Demonstration Scenario • Learning object of the day in Sales Portal • A recipe for getting employees to learn more, more often by offering short, frequent training opportunities in the portal. • LOB du jour works because is puts training decisions in the hands of managers that are closest to the training outages and allows them to direct a continuous flow of training sessions. • Sales manager view • Use Scheduler portlet to create (or contribute to) rapid learning events for sales team and then schedule them for delivery to team members when most appropriate. • Use Training Reports portlet to view simple team training reports to gain insights into team training outages. • Sales team member view • Use LOB du jour portlet to access learning object of the day assigned by manager. • Use LOB du jour portlet to access learning resources and keep notes about training for reference.

12. LOB du jour Demonstration (LIVE)

13. What about my current LMS? • Rapid eLearning in Portal is complementary to existing training applications and LMS. • Courseware and classroom training not going away • More advanced reporting in LMS than should be provided in Portlets • SCORM RTE data model (CMI) is common denominator between knowledgeWorks LMS and any other SCORM compliant LMS. • Can use knowledgeWorks LMS + Portlets for rapid eLearning solution and keep your existing LMS for other eLearning needs.

14. Wrap up and Q & A • Where to go for more information: • Come see knowledgeWorks LMS in action in the Plug-n-Play area. • Go to www.techniques.org and use our eLearning Solution Assistant to register for a free evaluation license of knowledgeWorks LMS 1.3 … we promise you will be up and running in 5 minutes or less ;-) • Contact Ryan Gilmer at sales@techniques.org or 720-898-8577 to discuss your eLearning needs. • NOTE: We’re looking for BETA customers for our Q1 rapid learning portlets offering. • Q & A?