Achieving Success with Portalbased Rapid eLearning using SCORM 2004

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Achieving Success with Portal-based Rapid
eLearning using SCORM 2004

• Timothy J. Potter
• Staff Engineer
• techniques.org LLC
• Wheat Ridge, Colorado

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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)

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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

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Implementation Challenges

• Authoring
• Key is to allow those closest to an
  organizations 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

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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 dont 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

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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

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SCORM 2004 is the integration glue
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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

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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 organizations 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.

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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

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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.

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LOB du jour Demonstration (LIVE)
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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.

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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_at_techniques.org or
  720-898-8577 to discuss your eLearning needs.
• NOTE Were looking for BETA customers for our Q1
  rapid learning portlets offering.
• Q A?