Seriously, this is uplifting. I believe 2009 was the year of “more cowbell.”

Another Friday and another LMS that kicks ass! This week’s featured system is OutStart.

I interviewed Jeff Whitney, Vice President of Marketing.

By way of background, Jeff told me that OutStart has two flavors: Participate, their general social software solution and TrainingEdge.com, their SaaS solution which includes LMS, collaborative authoring, and social media specifically configured to support learning. OutStart acquired Participate Systems in November, 2005 and since then they’ve enhanced the system extensively and integrated it with their other learning solutions. Their acquisition included the Participate team – a group with 12 years of social media experience dating back to the mid 90s.

Most of OutStart’s implementations are within organizations with less than 5,000 learners. 90 organizations are using OutStart with a total number of registered users at 700,000. Their LMS is available in SaaS, hosted and enterprise modes with a relatively short average implementation time of 1 week.

Q: What is OutStart doing with social media integration in their LMS?

A: Jeff Whitney – To set the stage, we don’t think about incorporating social media capabilities into our LMS. Rather we see social media platforms and LMSs as two distinct systems. Each has very different objectives. LMSs control, track and report on formal learning initiatives while a social media platform enables rather than controls informal learning. The systems should be able to work standalone or in concert. This is supported in our customer base as many of our social media platform customers are successfully deployed standalone from a LMS. So we don’t believe a vendor should make a LMS a requirement to implementing a social media platform, but certainly there should be tight integration points to enable informal learning in support of formal learning initiatives.

With that said, there are capabilities that we believe are crucial to the success of a social media platform and which we have incorporated into our system. Communities, blogs, and wikis are just the start. The system should enable knowledge contribution from popular tools like MS Office and email; it should have connectors to outside information sources such as learning content, document repositories, transaction systems and the web; it should include an expertise exchange enabling the automated identification and organic capturing of knowledge from experts; provide for the clear ranking of knowledge; the knowledge should be readily accessible without having to search through different silos; and users should be able to access all the knowledge without a care as to where its located, retrieve knowledge by simply emailing the system and be readily accessible through mobile devices.

Q: What drove your decision to use social media tools in your LMS?

A: Jeff Whitney - It just makes sense to offer a social media platform to support the 80% of learning that occurs informally. We developed our social media platform separate from our LMS as many informal learning initiatives do not require the formal reporting and tracking features of an LMS. But we also integrated the solution with our LMS to support activities like the invaluable, ad hoc student-to-student and student-to-instructor knowledge sharing that surround formal learning initiatives.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Jeff Whitney – We see the LMS market splitting. Many vendors are turning to Talent Management. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but we see HR’s requirements for talent management as an important but separate requirement from an organizations learning and development requirements. OutStart is committed to focusing and enhancing our solutions to support the learning and development requirements within organizations.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Jeff Whitney - Successfully deploying social media is really a matter of having a set of proven, best practices. We’ve been deploying social media systems for years and have created a set of best practices which we proactively advise our customers on to avoid the pitfalls that can derail a project. Some of the keys include selecting a contained, but important project to get started; be prepared to launch and market the project and reward users – often times this can be as simple as recognizing people within the system for sharing quality content; and don’t forget to measure use and impact and make adjustments on a regular basis.

Thanks Jeff!

Check out other kick-ass LMSs in this series:

Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning
Meridian KSI
Learn.com
Saba
Mzinga
Element K

Probably just three years ago, if you said Element K I would have immediately thought about off-the-shelf courseware. However, Element K has made substantial, progressive improvements to their LMS, most recently by building custom integrations between Jive Clearspace and KnowledgeHub, Element K’s LMS. They announced this in October, 2008.

Via email, I asked Sue Rodeman, VP., Platform Prod Management & Marketing, Element K about their social media capabilities. Here’s what she had to say:

Q: What social media tools is Element K incorporating into their LMS?

A: Sue Rodeman - We recently launched a suite of Collaborative Tools into KnowledgeHub – Element K’s Learning Management System. These tools are powered by Jive Clearspace and provide integrated access to Wiki’s, Blog’s, and Discussion Forums so that they can be included in a development plan, returned in integrated search results, and linked to from our e-learning courses.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: Sue Rodeman - We believe the way learners want and need to learn are changing. This is fueled by the various Web 2.0 tools at everyone’s finger tips and by the changing demographic of today’s workforce. We are attempting to stay ahead of the curve by allowing our customers to include these tools into a variety of Learning Programs. For example, let’s say an organization needs to roll out a new product to its sales force. An effective use of a Blog would be having the Product Manager author a series of articles around that new product. Additionally, a Wiki or Forum could be used to allow sales reps – who are typically geographically disbursed – to ask questions, share success stories, and collaborate in general. Both of these could be part of a larger Learning Program that includes more traditional online or ILT based training – all of which are delivered and reported on via the LMS.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Sue Rodeman – I believe that in the next few years, one change to the LMS is that it will be more of a ‘behind the scenes’ engine and more completely integrated with an organization’s portal or internal application. The need for informal learning continues to grow and likewise the ability to easily access it or contribute to it will improve. Successful LMS’s will be modeled after the way people are sharing and accessing information today. As a result, the way content is categorized, displayed and accessed will be driven by personalization options like ‘tagging’.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Sure Rodeman – The biggest difficultly is helping organizations understand how to adopt it, insert into their culture, and apply it to their learning needs. A wiki or blog isn’t the answer for everything, but can be extremely useful in supporting initiatives such as performance support or new product rollouts. Keys to the success include careful planning, strong governance around the management of the communities, and topics and authors that encourage strong participation.

Thanks to Sue, from a fellow upstate New Yorker!

Check out other kick-ass  LMSs in this series:

Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning
Meridian KSI
Learn.com
Saba
Mzinga

It’s Friday yay! That means it’s time to feature another LMS that kicks ass! This is the seventh featured system in my Friday series highlighting LMSs that are doing innovative, kick-ass things with social media.

Mzinga is the result of a merger between KnowledgePlanet and Shared Insights at the end of 2007. My first encounter with them was when they were still known as KnowledgePlanet. I was at a demo of their system at a company near where I live – an area that is not an easy destination to fly to. (Case in point was my husband’s trip last week to Minnesota via Toronto and Winnipeg.) Anyway, the rep I was working with at the time was Jen Chambers. I remember Jen telling me about her travel experience which – if I remember correctly – included sleep in a rental car and perhaps a minor concussion. I also remember the incredible amount of upfront work she did on knowing the company. So this demonstrated an “in it for the long haul” attitude that puts them in the kick ass category even before we talk system capabilities. Kudos Jen (if you’re out there).

My more recent contact at Mzinga is Dave Wilkins. I’m a more recent reader of Dave’s blog and occasionally have conversations with him in Twitter. I spoke with Dave via email about what Mzinga is doing with social media.

Q: What social media tools is Mzinga incorporating into their LMS?

A: Dave Wilkins – Mzinga has taken a comprehensive approach to social learning by developing three models throughout various components of our entire Social Learning Suite. The first, the “Embedded Model,” weaves social learning opportunities throughout the asynchronous learning experience. Mzinga believes that while traditional web-based training and eLearning courses have provided great ROI and cost reduction, they lack the social aspect of learning—the diversity in perspective, the insights, and the real-world stories and sharing that have always happened in a classroom.

In Mzinga Publisher, our collaborative authoring tool, we’ve integrated social technologies within both the collaborative authoring process and the learner experience. While authors could always share resources within Publisher, they now can communicate more effectively and share their expertise through social technologies such as developer blogs; a presence monitor that indicates not only who’s online, but what they’re working on; chat functionality, an authoring dashboard and individual project dashboards, and deep audit and report capabilities.

Publisher further fosters learner social interactions through a variety of social media within the courses themselves; authors can embed course-specific blogs, comment and ratings capabilities, and even YouTube videos and Google Mashups.

Mzinga’s second Social Learning model, the “Amazon Model,” is broader in scope; much like Amazon.com, it involves closely wrapping social media and networking around a particular item—in this case, any kind of formal learning within our LMS, from curriculum, certification, courses, and simulations to ILT, virtual classroom, assessments, surveys, and off-the-shelf content. The social media available within the Mzinga LMS includes blogs, discussions, rating, comments, and social profiles.

Mzinga also makes social media via a Community Model, in which users can create social profiles, blogs, and discussions—independent of learning resources—in two ways: through the LMS and through a separate Community solution.

As with the learning resource-specific features, these social technologies are enabled individually to help organizations bridge more easily from today to tomorrow. Alternately, for companies ready to move beyond a course- and LMS-centric view of social learning, Mzinga can provide a Community strategy where social networking and social media are more prominently featured and formal learning elements take on supporting roles. In this model, Mzinga “hides” the LMS, but still exposes certifications, compliance, curriculum, virtual classroom, and courses through deep, direct links. These links can be included in any discussion, blog, comment, idea, file or any other community content.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: Dave Wilkins - There were three driving factors. First, we think training and learning today are flawed. According to most research (including Jay Cross, the U.S. Dept of Labor, and others), the majority of what workers do on the job is not learned through formal training. Some studies suggest that the average worker relies on formal learning for only 20% of what they do on the job. The remaining 80% is learned socially, informally, or through on-the-job experience—all of which occur in a complete vacuum, about which the organization knows nothing.

Another key driver for us is demographics. By 2010, over 50% of organizations will be some combination of Millennials and Generation X. Between now and then, 30% of Baby Boomers will be retiring or scaling back their hours. How do we capture the expertise of Boomers before they retire or leave the organization? On the flipside, how do we attract, retain, and develop Millennials who have very different expectations about learning, communicating, and collaborating? A “formal training” model doesn’t have the scale or reach to properly address the content capture and creation needs associated with Boomer retirement, and it has almost no cultural fit with Millennials. Again, these issues require something different than formally delivered training.

A final driver in our decision to enable social learning is the fundamental disconnect emerging between how we learn and contribute in our personal lives versus how we learn and contribute at work. In our personal lives, we can create a blog post, edit a wiki, share bookmarks, follow each other, microblog, discuss virtually any topic, find expertise and experts, connect to those experts, share ideas, rate and review any sort of material—and we can do all this in an afternoon. At work, we’re lucky if we do any of these things at all. This disconnect can only last so long.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Dave Wilkins - We’re at the beginning of a schism in the LMS space—many vendors are moving their LMS to be part of a larger Talent Management vision. Others, such as Mzinga, will focus on social learning, which is much more of a catalyst for the development of talent. The difference is that Talent Management focuses on top-down planning and management—succession planning, compensation management, etc. Social learning, on the other hand, empowers organization from the bottom-up through transparency, trust, and self-direction. True social learning solutions will eventually lead with peer-to-peer exchanges, social networking, and user-generated content—all of which enhance and accelerate knowledge sharing, enabling learners to become more proficient in their roles and areas of expertise. This does not mean that formal learning will go away. It never will; certifications, compliance, curriculum, etc. will always be a required part of any learning strategy. We believe that as an industry, we have disproportionately focused on formal learning at the expense of social and informal learning, and it’s time to begin addressing the other 80%.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Dave Wilkins - There are two key difficulties organizations are facing in the adoption of social learning: strategic issues and tactical issues. One strategic challenge is normal change resistance by senior managers. This is partly an issue of the digital divide and will resolve itself in time. Another strategic challenge is in the way learning professionals see themselves and their mandate. Learning professionals today have a very high degree of control over a very narrow niche of information flow. What the future requires is that we augment this model with a very high degree of influence, but very little “control” over a very wide range of information. This is a big shift for many learning professionals.

Tactical challenges mostly fall into the more traditional buckets of enterprise change management, communication plans, adapting work cultures to support new tools and approaches rather than just layering additional work on top of existing systems, and mapping a long-term strategy that is achieved through incremental wins and release phases. It’s a mistake to overlook these sorts of issues. The adoption of social learning, social media, and social networking inside organizations is, first and foremost, a change management issue; the technology is the easy part. Fortunately, we’ve been at this game awhile and have some experience in change management—remember when LMS was a change and culture issue? This isn’t really very different.

We should also note some unique change elements in this new world: moderation, community management, and self-efficacy. The first two are required elements in any social learning or social media strategy and are critical enough that most initiatives will fail without them. Moderation is the safety net to ensure that bad information does not expose the organization to risk, and community management is about keeping the community alive and vibrant until it becomes more self-sustaining. Unfortunately, these skills and competencies are not found in most organizations today, and this is a big challenge in adopting these new approaches.

Again, this is where strategy, community management, and change management come into play, but for many organizations this can be a challenge in getting started. Community, social learning, and social networking are not initiatives that can be mandated and forced onto the organization. The community needs to emerge from within; social learning is born from a willingness of colleagues to share and help each other, and social networking grows from a desire for people to connect and reach out to one another. All the technology and consulting in the world can’t force these cultural requirements into existence. Fortunately, these characteristics are true for most companies today and provide the foundation on which social learning strategies can be built.
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Thanks Dave! And thanks Susan Koutalakis for coordinating the details so that I could write this feature.
You guys rock!
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Here’s a video from last August where Dave reviews the current state of the LMS market and suggests how it’s changing.

Prior LMSs in this series:
Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning
Meridian KSI
Learn.com
Saba

(Disclosure: Mzinga was a sponsor of Brandon Hall Research’s IiL08 conference.)

The sixth LMS in the LMSs that kick ass Friday series is Saba. Saba’s primary market is corporate learning with just more than half of all implementations installed behind-the-firewall (largest implementation 2,000,000 learners). Their total number of registered users/learners worldwide is 17,000,000 at over 1300 organizations. Saba is a major player among corporate LMSs -you can say it’s a benchmark system.

I interviewed Ben Willis, Sr. Director, Product Strategy who is responsible for Saba’s Social Media strategy about their product “Saba Social.”

Q: What social media tools has Saba incorporated into their LMS?

A: Ben Willis- Saba has had social & collaborative capabilities in our product suite for a very long while (since 2004 and the 3.x generation of our suite; we are now moving into the 6.x generation of the suite). Saba’s native & long-standing social learning toolset includes Wikis, Communities of Practice, User-generated content capture and exchange, Discussion Forums, Q&A, Expert location, RSS, Search-based learning and — significantly — Saba Centra, a real-time collaborative capability for Web-conferencing, e-Meetings & Virtual Classes. Saba’s most recent social learning announcement is called “Saba Social” and is a robust enterprise social networking solution that uniquely combines a rich person profile, competency-driven expertise, real-time collaboration, and a comprehensive Web 2.0 suite . Saba Social is a productivity tool designed to engage employees & customers, build connected corporate communities and accelerate high-quality knowledge exchange.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: Ben Willis - For all the recent buzz around Web 2.0 and the Social Social software phenomena, Saba has long held the point of view that these are meaningful technologies and philosophies that can and do drive real productivity. The concepts are real and can be applied very effectively in a variety of contexts to engage people (friends, peers, employees, customers, vendors…) and accelerate a process, whether that process be learning, communication, performance, innovation or general social interaction. In the context of Learning, for example, social media tools are defining the “New Blended Learning Toolkit” — expanding the options available to learning leaders just as e-Learning and Virtual classroom delivery did upon their arrival. Saba feels it is critical to have these tools in a unified platform to be able to deliver learning that is both current (speaking the language of today’s workforce) and highly effective (tapping new delivery modalities). The same is true in the context of successful Talent Management — people should be fairly assessed and rewarded for both their formal and informal contributions to an organization. In short, social software tools & philosophies can be powerful enablers of true peer-to-peer learning and people productivity.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Ben Willis - NextGen learning management systems will be highly user-centered “learning environments” (vs.. management systems) and ‘learners’ will not think of these environments as learning systems at all; instead, they will be viewed as a collection of networked people and indispensable productivity tools where information is exchanged quickly and with a high degree of transparency. The LMS will shift from a focus on the “learning application” to a focus on being powerful “learning platforms” that are super-interconnected with other systems on both sides of the firewall.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Ben Willis – One common barrier to social media adoption is concern over the notion of “user generated content” and the possible organizational issues or risks surrounding that idea. There are legitimate tensions between those that view these new notions as enabling productivity & transparency and those that view them as introducing risk and/or loss of control. The good news is that the very same “Web 2.0″ concepts that introduce these concerns offer opportunities for solutions to address those risks and Saba has been successful in demonstrating to our customers how we have designed those ideas into our offerings.

Thanks Ben. I agree that one of the greatest barriers in implementation is overcoming a culture of control. No easy answers there but good to hear that Saba is addressing the concerns in their design.

Prior LMSs in the kick-ass series:

Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning
Meridian KSI
Learn.com

Next week: Mzinga

(Disclosure: Saba’s Centra was recently named the Webcast platform for Brandon Hall Research’s Webinars and virtual workshops in 2009. Saba was also a sponsor of Brandon Hall Research’s IiL08 conference.)

This week on the Friday series, LMSs that kick ass, I’ m pleased to feature Learn.com’s LearnCenter system. By way of background, Learn.com’s primary customer base is corporate universities and their total number of registered ‘learners’ is reported at over 2,000,000 worldwide at several hundred organizations. So, they’re one of the big players among commercial learning management systems. When reviewing systems, you’ll find that a key differentiator of this system is that it is homegrown and not an integration of several outside products.

I spoke via email with JW Ray, COO and Don Cook, Senior VP of Marketing about what’s up with Learn.com – specifically with social media.

Q: What social media tools is Learn.com incorporating into their LMS?

A: Learn.com:

We have known since our inception that every user of an LMS is a SME of some kind and that capturing, sharing, cataloging, reusing and reporting on that information is the glue that keeps superior organizations together. Additionally we know that connecting these disparate SME’s is critical to organizational congruency and growth sustainability. We’ve taken major steps to bring the “at home” style of learning into the corporation without making it stereotypically “formal”.

The early incorporation of weblogs, forums, chat rooms and wikis into the LearnCenter platform was paramount in keeping pace with the informal way Americans are learning. We discovered early on that both prospects and clients were interested in this technology. Further, our LearnCenter platform has always had a ability to upload, launch and track audio files, both our clients and our company are currently using our LearnCenter software to launch and track Podcasts. Our LearnCenter even has the ability to upload RSS feeds.

We are currently in the final development stage of our WebPad® module for the LearnCenter platform. The WebPad will give employees the ability to have their own web portal that is completely customizable, much like a Facebook or MySpace account. The employee will not only be able to host a personal website, but also manage their profile, manage personal blogs, wikis, forums, chats, upload content including flash files, audio files, podcasts, RSS feeds, images, and documents. All while having the ability to keep their WebPad private or invite other team members. What’s even more impressive that that employees will, for the first time, be able to create a course and offer it to other employees. This will become useful for mentoring and rapid e-learning! All without need to understand programming code.

Learn.com is also introducing “Pull Learning Technology” (PLT) through a Module we are calling MyProfile. PLT is the converse of the more traditional learning method known as “push” or “assigned” learning. The MyProfile Module for the LearnCenter puts the power of self development and learning into the hands of the individual employee for the first time ever. Using the My Profile Module, end users will be able to; Compare a current skill set against the skill set needed for another job profile within the organization, quickly isolating gaps and areas of improvement. In addition, employees can view a graphical representation of skills gaps that would need to be filled before an individual would be qualified for a particular job or role. They can also request a job profile from their manager with a single click to allow the LearnCenter platform to auto-assign goals, skills, development plans, competencies, courses and assessments needed to be an exemplary performer in that job role or job profile and import requested job profiles into a current development plan.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: Learn.com: It has been part of the LearnCenter since the first launch in 1999. We have modified it and extended it based on practical application feedback from the clients and the desire to bring formal and informal learning together in one centralized learning portal.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Learn.com: Over the next 3 years the niche providers in both the HR and HCM space will merge to form complete products or suites. The LCMS market will be the first to become obsolete. Followed by the Performance Management providers. The market is beginning to discover that content and appraisals don’t mean anything if you cannot tie them to learning or employee development in some way. The LMS will become the database of record for the employee development lifecycle. Stand alone LMS that just do learning and not performance management, not handling social networking or content management will go the way of the Dodo bird. Many vendors are currently partnering to provides these suites but as mergers and acquisitions continue to clutter the industry, integration partnerships with Performance Management and Learning Content Management vendors may become a liability rather than a new revenue stream.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Learn.com: None since it is included in the base product and we are launching Webpad in Q1 2009.

Thanks so much JW and Don. I’m especially interested in your predictions and like the idea of more learner-generated content within the familiar LMS. I imagine the organizations you work with have overcome some culture issues associated with the social web.

(Learn.com was a sponsor of IiL08 and hosts a monthly webinar with Brandon Hall Research staff: Learning Technologies 101)

Prior LMSs in the kick-ass series:
Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning
Meridian KSI

Continuing on with the Friday series that – each week – features an LMS that kicks ass, I’m pleased to feature Meridian KSI. I spoke with Roy Haythorn, Vice President of Operations for Meridian Knowledge Solutions, LLC. Let’s find out what’s new at Meridian KSI.

Q: Hi Roy. I know you’ve been incorporating some social media tools into your LMS. What is Meridian KSI doing with social media?

A: Roy Haythorn – Online communities and blogs are two of the biggest social media tools that Meridian has made a part of its LMS. One of our customers, which serves a statewide audience of K-12 educators has used our LMS to teach grade-school teachers how to be better instructors. To do that, they’ve set up more than 134 online community rooms in our LMS. Science teachers from across the state will, for instance, create and use a community room as part of an online or face-to-face course they’ve taken. At last count, I think 30,000 teachers had access to the system. The size of the online community rooms range from two people to an entire school district. It’s great stuff, and it brings teachers together on their own schedule to swap what works and what doesn’t, or just reinforce what they’ve learned.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: Roy Haythorn – We’re careful watchers of the marketplace. We watch trends; we have a lot of technophiles on the team who play with the latest tools. Some of these tools make sense for our customers, others are simply interesting. When social media tools caught our attention, we asked: How can we make use of this stuff with LMS technology in order to push the evolution of learning? That said, there are a lot of products, features and functions coming into the LMS market that, honestly, have no value to a learning and development pro. Instead, we take a “learning-first” approach to LMS development. And by that I mean every new technology Meridian looks at has to promise real value for training and development, or we don’t waste R&D dollars on it.

Q: It’s the time of year for predictions. If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Roy Haythorn -  No guarantee it’ll happen in three years, but I’d like to see all LMSs tightly integrated with portals. That way, users can grab pieces of LMS functionality, such as ROI for learning, from their portal while the LMS simply operates in the background. In other words, end users have no idea they’re even using an LMS. People won’t have to sign on to an LMS in the future and stay within that system to do their learning. Instead, the LMS will be launched by way of a portal, and users will interact with the LMS from other applications.

Q: Do you have any examples of your vision?

A: Roy Haythorn -  One example would be a plant manager tapping a materials planning tool inside SAP or Oracle. Once there, he finds he doesn’t remember how to run the program. So he clicks on a link that’s labeled “Learn More,” and from behind the scenes the LMS launches a three-minute course on the topic via a simulation.

Or, perhaps, an engineer is performing a safety audit. As she’s performing the audit, she demonstrates her proficiency and it is tracked by the LMS via her hand-held device, which then delivers an online assessment. Depending on how she does on the test, the LMS either records a passing grade or prescribes learning for a gap in her skill.

Q: Are you seeing any difficulties in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Roy Haythorn – These tools aren’t always used to the fullest by our customers. Frankly, some buyers fear that social software makes it more difficult to communicate, not less. They see social software as the purview of co-eds, gamers and nerds. Many potential buyers balk at the value of exchanging know-how in this way. In fact, they believe social software makes controlling a message or providing a consistent set of instructions impossible. They may believe the flood gates of information will open if you give everyone in a company an equal voice. When you look at tools like Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and an array of other social networking software for exchanging know-how, our challenge is to prove the success that businesspeople are having with these and other social networking tools. And, if we do that, then we’ll pique the interest of customers.

Thanks Roy, well said. I especially can relate to your last answer. It seems one of the greatest barriers we face today in the L&D field is change management.

Readers, feel free to ask Roy any questions you may have.

Prior LMSs in series:
Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning

(Meridian KSI was a sponsor at our IiL08 conference in September)

Continuing my Friday series featuring LMSs that kick-ass, I’m pleased to profile Latitude.  Latitude is a pure LMS so you may be wondering why the heck are they featured here. Well, because they kick-ass for their view of the role of the LMS. They feel the best way to address social, informal learning (powered by social media)  is not to integrate it into an LMS. Instead, they bolt the LMS on an existing CMS. (An example of a CMS would  be a website like iGoogle which can be personalized and widgetized). So the CMS is the front end, not the LMS.

I spoke with Kurt Crisman at Latitude about this.

Q: What ( if any)  social media tools is Latitude incorporating into their LMS?

A: Kurt Crisman – Incorporating social media tools directly into the an LMS assumes that is the best way to achieve the benefits of these tools for both formal and informal learning. However, LMSs are really better at managing prescribed learning, either mandated or suggested from the top of the organization. The benefit of informal learning thrives in a peer-to-peer environment. Tacking on social media tools to an LMS might not create this environment. Investing in LMS development to repurpose it into something it is not–a flexible web portal–might not be the most cost-effective either.

Latitude’s approach to developing a learning portal that creates a peer-to-peer, individual-driven learning environment depends on current existing technology, such as the Ektron 400 content management system. With features like WYSIWYG editors, Content Management Systems (CMSs) provide content management and rapid content update capabilities with a minimum of effort or technical expertise required. Many CMS solutions offer portal capabilities like personalization or the ability for users to customize their portal with content of interest to them. This content usually comes in the form of off-the-shelf widgets, including Web 2.0 gadgets (blogs, wikis, forums, chat, etc.) that can be used to build out your web site.

In other words, the software application to create the ideal learning portal is the CMS and LMS. The flexible CMS with the existing off-the-shelf technology should be the front-end, not the LMS. While the LMS might still be used by administrators to manage prescribed learning and as the delivery mechanism for web-based training content, the user should meet their learning, both formal and informal, through the CMS based learning portal. Access to LMS content through the portal can occur by using web services to integrate the LMS with the CMS.

Another advantage of this approach is that it does not require scrapping an existing LMS investment to implement social media for learning or being unable to use those tools if scrapping an existing LMS is unpalatable. Basically, Latitude’s delivers a learning portal solution that makes all of the social media tools available.

Q: What drove your decision to include social media tools as part of your LMS solution?

A: Kurt Crisman – The need to include social media tools in a learning management solution has been market-driven. Informal learning is being seen as a more effective way for individuals to find out what they need to know when they need to know it. The success of Google and the adoption of the social media tools makes them a familiar vehicle to acquire and transfer informal knowledge. As a result, customers are looking for these tools in their learning management solution to solve the learning challenges that their formal training has not.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Kurt Crisman – Just as people now tend to talk about Human Capital Management systems, of which the LMS is only one part, learning portals will be the consolidating factor for formal and informal learning. Some vendors will integrate LMS and CMS functions. Some LMS vendors will add CMS functionality to their offering. CMS vendors may develop modules with basic LMS functionality for their platforms.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Kurt Crisman – It’s a new approach for customers, so a more phased approach is required. For example, we have one customer where phase one is linking from the LMS that users are familiar with to the CMS where they can personalize their dashboard, use a Google search tool, and participate in forum discussions to exchange knowledge. A tighter CMS/LMS integration is scheduled for the next phase with more social media tools, like a Wiki.

Great stuff Kurt! Thanks. As with other LMSs featured in this series, you’ve given readers another interesting way to view learning, the LMS, and social media.

Prior LMSs in series:
Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21
GeoLearning

Of all commercial LMSs, I probably have the most hands-on experience with GeoLearning’s various products and services having managed an enterprise implementation several years ago. It was a multi-phase implementation (LMS, LCMS, Talent Management) that went off pretty smooth and the team at GeoLearning was great to work with. I found them very responsive even when I was a giant pain in the ass. I’ve been to their beautiful home office in West Des Moines, Iowa but didn’t get a chance to meet Will Hipwell who is GeoLearning’s Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Management at that time although I’ve communicated with him by email many, many times. (I will always think of Will as “Super Will” because of my ’super’ phase after watching ‘Superbad’ the movie and the super way that he picked up on that in our correspondence).

Anyway, GeoLearning’s LMS is pretty super too (AWESOME transition, huh?). Actually, it kick’s some ass and I talked to Will about that. Continuing my series of email interviews about LMSs that are doing innovative things with social media, here’s the scoop on what GeoLearning is up to.

Q: What social media tools is GeoLearning incorporating into their LMS?

A: Will Hipwell- GeoLearning’s GeoEngage module facilitates Communities of Practice (CoPs), enables social networking, and provides access to Web 2.0 technologies like Chat, instant messaging, email, file sharing and uploading, resource library, blogging, wikis, discussion groups and RSS feeds. These are all integrated with our LMS platform so that informal learning can still be tracked, managed and measured as easily as more formal training programs. Clients like Cabela’s and Computer Associates are using these tools to great success because they enable learning to occur with the flexibility and at the speed their marketplaces require.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A:  Will Hipwell- On-demand learning is critical to an organization’s overall learning strategy success. The extremely brisk pace at which job roles, individual responsibilities, the marketplace and even whole companies change and evolve make is absolutely necessary that learners can access just-in-time resources. Organizations and employees can no longer wait for the planning, creation and rollout of formal training programs. The world just moves too fast. To be successful, companies must be able to incorporate on-demand learning opportunities, just-in-time training, on-the-job-training, as well as the technologies that enable informal learning like blogs, wikis and instant messaging. In this “free market of learning”—just like the free market economy—learners (consumers) will find the best solutions to their learning and development challenges.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: Will Hipwell: Over time the LMS will increase the number of touch-points it has within an organization but at the same time become increasingly invisible to those who use it. The LMS will become more of a behind-the-scenes application that won’t require you to login or explicitly go to access or attend a learning event. It will become more seamlessly integrated with the workplace and will  be increasingly accessible via mobile device, and even recommend different learning activities based upon just-in-time experiences and the context of a challenge or need faced while on the job.

For example, a call center employee might access just-in-time tips for dealing with a customer call on the same screen where the interaction is taking place. The interaction can be tracked as both a successfully closed customer interaction (a business metric), as well as a learning opportunity that becomes part of the individual’s overall training record (and associated LMS data point). In this type of situation, informal learning, Web 2.0 and social networking tools become more and more valuable.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: Will Hipwell - In some cases, clients and prospective clients are either unaware of what 2.0 technologies and/or are not entirely sure how they can be practically implemented in the workplace and provide value. Another barrier is the perception that collaboration tools with “silly names” like blogs and wikis can be time-wasters, or they are associated with people wasting time on Facebook or MySpace.

Me: Thanks Super Will. That time-waster barrier is a huge one. It’s kind of frustrating – not seeing the collaboration but seeing the “silly named” tool. (I wonder if that’s because it’s sometimes pitched to management that way?) BTW readers…I’ve attached a nice checklist on collaboration and blended learning requirements that Will sent along. Enjoy!
GeoLearning’s collaboration-and-blended-learning-requirements-checklist

Prior LMSs in series:
Cornerstone OnDemand
Generation21

This post is part of the Friday series “LMSs that kick ass.” I’ll be highlighting one Learning Management System (LMS) every Friday. This week it’s Generation21 (Gen21).

I spoke with John Stearns from Gen21 about the social media tools and technologies his organization is incorporating into their LMS.

Q: Hi John. What’s new with Gen21? What social media tools are you guys incorporating into your LMS?

A: John Stearns- Gen21’s product focus is on its core product functionality. To that end, core collaborative features in the LMS cover the key aspects of social media – collaborative authoring, wiki’s, messaging, message boards, interactive web environments, content rating, library, etc. Imaginative use of these functions achieves a reasonable level of “social” interaction.

For example, some of our clients have developed blogs within the LMS. We also maintain a relationship with a strategic partner who offers an extensive social media product integrated with Gen21. At the same time, Gen21 doesn’t typically build-in extensive functionality duplicative of that widely available in the open market, thereby limiting our clients range of choice. On the front end, this spares our clients the burden of supporting development of stuff that’ll be used by a limited subset of clients. Clients who want to go full-bore into social media may consider the broadest possible range of options to insure their particular needs are met. In the case of rapidly-changing and evolving technology such as social media, we believe it’s especially important to maintain maximum flexibility for our clients.

We’ve built our LMS to insure any of their choices can easily be accommodated by designing in the “hooks” and “stickers,” (highly technical terms for API’s) to enable clients to integrate social media with their LMS.

Q: What drove your decision to incorporate social media tools into your LMS?

A: John Stearns- For Gen21, social media is simply another analogous function that clients may choose to use in their learning toolkit. The elements of social media in our LMS are those that related most directly to our mission to enable learning. Our overriding goal is to create a product that enables use of any supplemental tools clients choose. Therefore, in addition to core functions and our integration API’s, have and continue to explore more formal relationships with social media technology providers. Given the breadth of options, however, we believe restricting clients’ choice to a particular social media product would probably not be in the client’s interest. So, we maintain a gateway.

Q: If you could predict what LMSs will look like in three years, what do you see?

A: John Stearns - [*laughing*] – I can predict (if I could accurately predict, we could trade jobs!)

So here goes: from an evolutionary standpoint, there appear to be four general tracks – first, there’s the HCM approach; the LMS may be the “hook,” but most development investment seems to go into non- LMS components.

Secondly, there’s the Talent Management segment, where some old things get new names and secondary functions typically found in an HRIS move over to the TM platform .

The third track is the approach where the LMS trails another app, as in Mzinga.

And finally, there’s the more traditional LMS, where the focus in on enabling learning, with technology to link learning to other sponsor functions and platforms without duplicating them. A subset of that is the integrated LMS/LCMS platform – some of these are partnership products and some are a single code base.

I find it interesting that we hear often enough to be noticeable from clients and prospects that they “just want something that works for learning, without all the bells and whistles.”

So to answer the question, I think LMS’s will continue to evolve in various directions, but that change will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Clients will have a broad range of choice of function, emphasis, and price. I think users and sponsors are more comfortable with multiple modes of learning than ever before, and that the populations of both will grow.

I think LMS’s will become way more common in smaller companies than they are now. Things like ease of use, ease of implementation, the price/value equation, and performance will always be important. I guess it would be safe to say I think the 3-year horizon LMS will look a lot like the LMS that was promised in 1999 but never delivered. Ultimately, I believe that will spawn a reinvigorated demand for LMS’s that work they way they should. To a greater extent than we’ve seen, I think implementation decisions will be driven by primary rather than secondary and tertiary functionality.

Maybe a side note, I think content will improve greatly as developers become more comfortable with new tools and technologies, and start to discover how to use these things easily. More complex content is going to be a challenge for LMS’s. I think both standards and LMS’s will be playing catch up with how to deal with the huge amounts of learner/content interface data that newer content will be producing.

Q: What difficulties are you seeing in the incorporation of social media among your current customers/potential customers?

A: John Stearns -We find two principal stumbling blocks with regard to social media. The first relates to how unstructured social media fit in the structured business world. Some of this is generational of course, but some of it relates to concerns of regulatory profile, confidentiality, security, productivity, etc. Some of it also seems to be a mistrust among administrators that they either have the resources and time to filter content (wiki’s for example – contributions need to be vetted) or trust that the society will … behave. Will they spend more time in the social media than they should? Will they lose productivity? Basically, it seems that the Corporate Host hasn’t quite come to terms with the role(s) social media can or will play in their learning mix. No doubt over time organizations will devise their unique “best use” scenarios – and select a platform to fit. The other roadblock we see is cost. No doubt there’s a point where price and utility meet – but other than for the early adaptor market, that point doesn’t seem to have arrived yet.

Thanks John! Great insight and kick-ass flexibility in an LMS! Readers – obviously John has a great deal of knowledge of the space and I welcome your questions for John.

Prior LMSs in series: Cornerstone OnDemand