I’m not a fan of a lot of the compliance e-learning I see. They are often boring and the relevance to the learner is poorly articulated. The topics are usually important; policy and safety-related. Unfortunalty, in a lot of cases, the instructional approach and media used does not reflect the significance of the topics.

Nevertheless, organisations make a decision to implement these courses (usually to reduce corporate risk), and a lot of effort is put into implementation. Staff are instructed to complete these mandatory courses. Maybe the reason for completing the e-learning courses has been well articulated, or maybe not. Nevertheless, the e-learning courses have been deemed mandatory. So, what does this mean?

Mandatory assumes someone will look up the LMS SCORM report and see that all staff members have passed the course and have completed it in the anticipated timeframe. That’s what SCORM standards are for – to provide these reports. So, how come the reporting and follow-up is often so poorly actioned?

If you are communicating “this course is mandatory” then, ensure there are processes in place to reinforce these instructions. If you don’t, you risk the following:

1. De-value the e-learning strategy
2. Put the organisation at industrial relations risk
3. Put the learner at risk
4. Put at risk any future “mandatory” courses

What is a satisfactory e-learning completion rate?

Really, mandatory e-learning cannot have any less than a 100% completion rate. Anything less than 100% has failed the meaning of ‘mandatory’ (**see below). A hundred percent of your cohort must complete the mandatory e-learning course and passed the assessment (if assessment was included).

Additionally, individual’s completion should be within about 30% of your expected completion time. i.e. use your SCORM reports to identify people who completed a 30 minute course in less than 20 minutes.

Key Messages for mandatory e-learning

1. Have a policy in place so that everyone is clear of the consequences if a mandatory e-learning course is not completed in the allocated time
2. Have a clear allocated time period in which staff must complete mandatory e-learning courses e.g. within 30 days of joining the organisation
3. Make sure managers know their role in ensuring staff have opportunity to complete mandatory e-learning courses
4. Ensure someone is tasked to run reports
5. Make sure the person who runs the reports has a mandate to a) contact those who have not completed the course and find out why (look for genuine issues)  b) action consequences for non-completions (or too quickly completed, in the case of non-assessed e-learning courses)
6. Evaluate your mandatory e-learning courses to a) ensure people are able to correctly apply their learning into the workplace after completion b) get user feedback to help inform future instructional approaches

** To achieve 100% completion rate you need to be confident that your course is tracking correctly on all operating environments, or you will have lots of staff who will say “I did complete the course, but the system isn’t registering it – it’s not my fault“. Be sure to do lot’s of testing before releasing a mandatory course.

A question from an organisational learning partner:

What are some tips for implementing social media into formal learning?

Implementing social media for formal organisational learning is not easy. It’s success is very dependent on learner motivation. We can expect students to participate in online social learning activities as part of assessment for tertiary programs, because the carrot is a qualification and the stick is no qualification. And, as anyone who has taught in a tertiary institution knows, students will usually contribute the least amount possible to gain the assessment points.

Additionally, it has been well documented that social media works because it is the users choice (“I Choose”). The personalisation available on social media platforms makes them work “just for me”. Such personalisation is often missing in the functionality of corporate and academic social media platforms.

So, how can we implement social media into formal organisational learning? The ease of adoption is dependent on at least four considerations:

1. The length of the course or program. If the course is short, then likely not enough time will have passed to enable participants to become familiar with the rules and norms of contributing in an online space. Additionally, participants may not have had the opportunity to get to know each other well enough to have built trust to share openly and meaningfully in an online space. Longer programs, such as a 12 month Graduate program, has a better chance of success.

2. The degree of clout you have to enforce contribution. If the activities designed in the social media space are intended to help embed learning into the workplace (for example, through action learning), then this must be driven by an online facilitator who ensures learner accountability. If the activities are not mandated and reported upon, then it is highly unlikely employees will do the activities.

3. Synchronous versus asynchronous social media. Asynchronous social media (e.g. blog, discussion forum, wiki) take a lot of effort for learners to contribute. And their contributions are captured for ‘eternity’ – so bad luck if your posted opinion is ill-informed. This makes asynchronous learning activties unattractive.

Synchronous social media, such as webinar (virtual classroom), instant messaging and video streaming takes far less effort to attend, respond and contribute. In my experience, if you are looking to implement social media into formal learning curricula, a well designed and facilitated webinar is a good option. Webinars are very successful pre and/or post classroom events to support learning transfer - just one example.

4. Facilitator skill. A number of pedagogical frameworks have been proposed to help guide the design and facilitation of social learning activities. For example, refer to Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model. Designing and facilitating in a social media space is a new and very different skill for most organisational learning professionals.

Other tips such as proximity of the platform to participant workflow, ease of use, clear purpose etc are similar to my work-based social media tips and should also be considered in formal social learning design.

Social media and blended learning

If you are considering social media for your formal learning offerings, then you will probably need to think creatively about what this will look like, and the motivation of your intended audience. Perhaps the best approach is to create a holistic, blended learning approach; to use social media to create informal work-based opportunities that will support participants to embed what they have learnt from the formal learning event. Our role as learning practitioners in this scenario is to be an informal guide to learning; to be very familiar with participants, their work, behaviour and motivation.

I hope this post has been useful. For more posts and video tutorials on social media, click “Social media” in the categories list.

If you have a tip you would like to share, or a question, feel free to comment or use the Contact Us form.

A question from an organisational learning partner:

What are some tips for implementing social media into the workplace?

Here are my questions & tips – in no particular order:

Analysis questions:

1. Who’s idea is it? Is it yours or the end users? If it’s your’s, then you need to check that the intended end users also think it’s a good idea, or you may be wasting your time. Ask the real end users. Ask lots of them. And get to know their workflow and pain points. What kind of social media space would help them to do their job better?

2. Is our organisation ready for social media? This question is about organisational culture and climate. Is the organisation autocratic, hierarchical, democratic or collaborative by nature? Are there high levels of trust? Do staff inherently understand cooroporate behaviour and responsibilities? Get some early HR and OD advice.

3. What’s the imperative to join? Intended users will not sign up or join unless they are compelled to do so.

4. What’s its purpose? Once the end user is in the space, they must be able to quickly assess it’s purpose to them, or they will leave and never come back. Make sure a new space is already filled with useful stuff when it’s launched.

5. What are you asking users to do? Be clear about the agreed expectations of the community, including contribution and behaviour. If the expectations are onerous, this won’t be appreciated by busy users. We are all time poor – even contributors to social media.

Tips:

1. Make sure the platform is easy to use and interacts with workflow. Conduct UAT early, before full implementation. Sit next to the testers and watch them sign in and orientate themselves to the space. Then ask them direct questions about their decision-making in the space.

2. Make sure the platform functionality interacts with user workflow. Ensure posts come to users rather than users having to revisit the space. Think LinkedIn. The weekly digest functionality with embedded hyperlinks makes going back to the online discussion really easy.

3. Be realistic about uptake. It takes time to create a critical mass that will self-feed and propel conversation. Be prepared to ‘force feed’ the space for a while. Remember, not only are contributors learning – so are the ‘lurkers.’ Don’t simply measure contributions. Measure site visits as well.

4. Use a competition to promote the space and it’s purpose. There’s nothing like a bit of fun to create interest and conversation about an initiative. Make sure the competition isn’t too arduous – you are looking for users to experience simple success.

5. Make sure you have executive engagement. This is important, not only to ensure you don’t run into issues with policy, but also to ensure executives understand the social learning benefits of social media. Get them to lead by example. Get them to contribute to the space and to publicly reward the behaviour of contributors by responding to them.

6. Implement a rolling change strategy. Think 1. Communication, 2. Education and 3. Modelling behaviour. Communicate early success. Educate by providing “how do I” videos or tips in the space itself. Model behaviour yourself. This means visit the space every day, and contribute regularly.

7. Wear the shoes of an end-user. Notice how difficult it is to write your first posts – not only functionally, but just getting the words out. Don’t expect 600 word posts. A simple couple of sentences can be a very useful contribution.

8. Get design advice. If you’re designing the space from scratch, you need to consider the principles of human-computer interaction. A website designer can give you some practical advice.

9. Keep it tidy and up to date. New users will make mistakes where to post. Discussions and resources will become out of date. New resources that users expect in the space may be missing. A dedicated someone is needed to fuel the conversation, tidy mistakes and keep resources fresh.

10. Plan for redundancy. The space will not live in it’s current form forever. New technology will make the space seem old. New functionality will be missing from this space. Platforms will need upgrading for tech security and tech support reasons. Discussions will need archiving. Don’t be surprised if the implemented social media platform has only a 3 year shelf life.

I hope this post has been useful. For more posts and video tutorials on social media, click “Social media” in the categories list.

If you have a tip you would like to share, or a question, feel free to comment or use the Contact Us form.

Next post I will address social media for formal organisational learning.

Recently I have been supporting a client who has engaged a vendor to build a number of e-learning courses. Internally, my role is to test the courses on the corporate LMS prior to ‘go live’.  

The e-learning uninitiated may expect the courses to simply be published to the standards required of the LMS (AICC, SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004) and all would magically work. The course runs well, all the functions work, the course bookmarks correctly for when the learner returns, the course tracks correctly in the LMS, the administration reports are correct, and the learning progress on the employee’s LMS home page is accurate.

I’m no SCORM expert, but from what I understand from experts (and from what I experience during testing), the standards are not reliable. Every LMS interprets the standards differently, and the standards the e-learning developers apply to your course can be incorrect.

There are four lessons I have learned from this recent client experience:

1. SCORM 2004 standards are far more complicated than SCORM 1.2 (I don’t have experience with AICC).
2. Not all developers have access to a LMS for each of the standards, so they could be relying solely on the test results of the client to check the course is functioning correctly (a final test on the client LMS will always be required, as all LMS have their own quirks)
3. When you receive a prototype from a developer before the full e-learning build begins, make sure it contains ALL functional variables (including the assessment behaviour) and test it thoroughly on your LMS.
4. Always use a comprehensive test script to validate e-learning courses on your LMS.

More on Test Scripts:
A test script is a document that outlines all processes that must occur correctly – from publishing to course reporting. It helps to ensure the course works properly on the LMS. The test script should cover every action associated with the following procedures:

1. Publishing the course into the test server of the LMS
2. Attaching the course to the test LMS and adding all meta-data correctly (description, expiration date, approval workflows etc)
3. Making the course live on the test LMS
4. Going through the course as if you were a learner, using as many ‘learner variables’ as possible
5. Checking the course has tracked approporiately in LMS administration

If there are no detected issues and the test script is approved, then this process is repeated in the production (live) LMS.

The test script must cover any variable that the learner may do in the course of completing a piece of e-learning, including bookmarking at anytime, failing in different ways and passing. Test scripts may need to be adjusted for each unique e-learning module, to reflect different functions and assessment types.

Testing and validating e-learning courses on the LMS is pivotal to ensuring confidence in the accuracy of the LMS data. Remember, many organisations use e-learning and LMS to meet employee compliance requirements. If the courses cannot be validated as tracking and working correctly, then the validity of the data can be brought into question. Be sure to save all completed test scripts for later reference if required.

Again, I’m not an expert in SCORM, nor is testing systems my forte. But, our practice as learning professionals is changing. In my earlier roles, the IT department did this testing for L&D. In my more recent client settings, the testing has been part of L&D function. Our challenge as learning practitioners is to stretch our preferences and inform ourselves of best practice so that we can be active participants in this field of learning technologies.

Tony Karrer has published an interesting blog post on this topic, with a number of helpful comments from others – for further information and insight – http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/test-scorm-courses-with-lms.html 

One more thing – make sure you schedule plenty of time for testing e-learning courses on the LMS, as it’s very likely you will need to return to the vendor for a fix or two.