We are about to start a short review of how Human Resources (HR)  departments in educational institutions support staff with the development of their digital capability.

HR departments in universities and colleges increasingly recognise the need to contribute towards supporting staff to respond to challenges and opportunities offered by technologies. In 2016 their annual conference focused on the  The Changing Face of Work where they explored ‘How can we best equip our organisations to respond to our increasingly digital world and to meet the needs of our Generation Z employees?’  Helen Beetham presented at the conference about the Jisc digital capability work.

HR teams have a range of roles that require an understanding of the impact of technologies on staff:

• recruitment
• induction
• staff health and wellbeing
• conflict management
• CPD support

HR staff also need to effectively use technologies and tools to deliver services. They need to ensure that their own digital capabilities are sufficient to make the best of available data and metrics and be aware of how social media and other technologies can impact on the changing relationships between students and staff. It is timely to find out how far HR departments are engaging with these challenges and to identify new and interesting practice.

Organisational approaches to developing digital capabilities

Jisc has been working with educational institutions to consider organisational approaches to developing digital capabilities and produced a supporting guide earlier this year. We hope that this work will build on those relationships we have already established with some HR teams and help us generate new links.

The work will review practice of HR departments in colleges and appropriate professional associations, and will also include an exploration of the role of trade unions in digital capability discussions and identify opportunities for developing strategies for their involvement.

Contribute to this review

The review will be carried out by Lou McGill and Tim Gray. If you are interested in contributing to this study, or know someone who may be interested, please contact Lou McGill. We will be launching an online survey soon to capture a snapshot of current practice.

I’ll get right to the point.  I totally dislike the term, “learning experience platform”.  It really makes no sense, because anything and everything we do, can turn into a learning experience.  Secondly, it does a major disservice to any platform that is called by that name.

Allow me to elaborate.

I put together a tiny list (three) on learning experiences that I “learned” in just the last week:

• One of my dogs, Voodoo has “learned” that if he digs a deep hole he will find the gopher tunnel, because he hears them.  Thus, a learning experience
• I learned that a Doubletree I stayed at in London has a theft problem with people taking bottle openers, which is why I was told, no one has one in their rooms.  A learning experience, was never more present.
• I learned that my neighbor seems to enjoy parking his cars in front of my trash can on garbage day. Thus, the garbage truck often misses it. If I had super human strength, I’d probably have learned how to pick up his cars and heave them over the hill I live on.  Sadly, I don’t, nevertheless a learning experience.

Now I ask you, would you want your platform to be defined as a learning experience?  Especially, when a buyer really has no clear idea on what this actually means?  I say this in all honesty. Because, I asked others in the L&D space what a learning experience platform meant to them, and each one had no specific response to provide.  Although one said to me, “isn’t it the same as an LMS?”

And here lies the rub, it has some functionality as an LMS, but it is by means, not an LMS.

The name

I’ve spent quite a bit of time this past year, exploring these platforms to get a real sense of what they are and are not.  There are multiple features/functionality that all of them possess, at some level.   Then on top of that, they go a little of this and a little of that way. 

What stands out right away, is that in all of them, engagement is a big driver.  In fact, I’d argue it is the key essential takeaway with each and every one of them.

Thus the appropriate name should be Learning Engagement Platforms.

And therefore going forward, I’m going to reference them as such. 

Before diving into the functionality they all possess,  I’d add a few points:

• They are ideally suited as a “bolt-on” to an LMS, while they can be a standalone, in nearly all cases the vendors have told me, that the majority of their customers already have an LMS.   There are exceptions, but it is really few and far between.
• They are a subset, a niche genre of the learning system industry.  The biggest player in the learning system space are LMSs (just an fyi).  
• They are a growth market segment, but they will need to constantly evolve because the big player, LMSs are starting to add similar functionality to what Learning Engagement Platforms can do.
• I will be developing and launching an RFI template specifically targeting the learning engagement platform space at the end of Nov.  It will be available for download and free to use.
• Three of them are in my Top 50 for 2018. They are Learn Amp, Degreed and Grovo. 

The Functionality

Every learning engagement platform (LEP) is about engagement and content.  Content is the queen here, next to the engagement (king).   You need both with an extensive amount of content, constantly being added.  Content can be – video, audio (inc. podcasts), courses, micro-learning courses (a favorite among LEPs), documents, PDFs and various other types of files (depending on the vendor).    

As noted above, micro-learning is utilized or at least pitched often in an LEP. 

What all of them offer in terms of functionality

• Modern UI –  It is a must.   None of them look like something from the late 90’s or even mid 2000’s.
• UX driven –  User experience is another must.  This is visible immediately, when a learner sees their content (in an appearance vendors often note as “Netflix” like)
• Under the “content” on the main learner screen

a. Content currently being taken or required to be taken

b.  Recommended content – can be an aggregator of the entire community and/or of your own company.  Some LEPs allow the administrator the choice of either, some do not.  If it is “not”, it is of the entire community. 

c.  Top content, popular content, something along these lines – A favorite among LEPs.  Again, could be based on the entire community or your own company (depending on vendor).   

d. Content Acquisition –  This is where a couple of vendors in this space differ – as in you buy the platform and they give you their content (you cannot go to a 3rd party and buy directly nor do they offer such an option to you).  As a whole though, LEPs provide you with a wealth, err extensive list of content providers, some are free (i.e. TED), the rest and thus majority are fee based.  An example of fee based is Udemy, which appears in some of the LEPs.  Another name seen is Lynda.com (but not in all of them).  

e. Buying the content, usually can be done within the LEP.  However, taking the courses/content from a third party provider (when fee based), usually occurs on the 3rd party vendor site.  There are exceptions, but when I say exception, I mean minimal.

e.  Extensive – an understatement here – on the amounts of content.  And it is noted in their marketing of the LEP. I mean having a small library isn’t going to fly.  You need a couple hundred at a minimum.  Some pitch “thousands”.  

• Container is a popular – In essence it is adding pieces of content and making it a learning path.  Some vendors call it by another name, but the format is the same.
• You can take your pieces of content or modules in a linear format or bounce around (admin selects)
• Each module contains a listing of “items”.  Again, the vernacular may be different, but they all have the “items” angle as in multiple pieces of content, and yes they can be multiple courses are in the module, per se.  It could be a couple of lessons, micro-learning courses (in some cases, they are listed as chapters), materials, presentations, etc.  Again, the admin decides if you go linear or non-linear (bounce around).    And yeah, you can have assessments here too.
• Tags and ability to search using “tags”
• Social at some level.  A few LEPs have a strong social component, others have the moderate, even minimal (as in one). However, no one has hit impressive in the social category, and utilizing the social capabilities of late 2017, nor the soon to be 2018.
• Links – Link to courses, link to content, link to web sites that have articles of interest, in other words, links.  
• Topics of Interest – Most have the ability for the end user to list “topics of interest”.   The vernacular here can be different.  Nevertheless, it plays a role in LEPs, because the learner can then have/view courses/content that are in those topics of interest. 
• Metadata search of content
• Employee driven system.   Could you do B2B with this?  If your B2B is internal, i.e. franchises, retail locations, that type of scene, then yes.  If it is clients of yours, where you are willing to give them access to content you bought – and thus free to them, then yes.   But you cannot resell the content (although one vendor does offer this as an option – but it is their content (100%) – and it is via a 50/50 revenue split).   That said, these systems are employee oriented. 
• Skills are presented – with the learner here, and thus content is tied to that
• Ratings –  could be by stars, thumbs up – Facebook “like”, or other
• Comments, usually seen when you click the piece of content.   One vendor did not offer the comments option, but as a whole, comments do appear.
• Mobile responsive and mobile learning –  not everyone has native apps, nor on/off synch (rare), but you can view it on your mobile device.  Which is amazing, since you can view anything on the internet on your mobile device.  Whew, I was worried there for a moment.
• Sharing of content at some level.  Sharing via social media.  What you (as the receiver) can actually view when you click the link to see the content is another matter, but there is a sharing component here.
• Categories of content always include sales, compliance or similar nomenclature, customer service, tech, leadership development.
• Uploading of your own content is a mixed bag.  Some allow it, some don’t.  The same issue with course standards, some allow the ability to upload SCORM courses into the system, others have you link to the SCORM course which is hosted by you somewhere.  Heck, there are those who do not accept any course standard.  If they do accept SCORM reigns supreme. 
• For the freebie content, it can be viewed within the platform.  TED is a popular one vendors in the LEP space like to note (if they offer it).  One vendor told me that since TED has an open API they can view within the system, whereas with Lynda.com, it has to be on Lynda.com’s site.   Uh, okay.
• Create your own content – They all offer it at some level.  None of these creator tools are robust authoring tools, so you can stop drooling. 
• Analytics and Reporting –  In the reporting side, the common approach is downloading the reports and then view them.  Rather than viewing them within the system.  Again, exceptions here. 
• Gamification –  It’s there.   At what stage, that is open to interpretation.  Seriously, just like the term learning experience – ha, zing!
• Certificates –  A few allow the option to add your certificates to Linkedin.  I like that, although, I do not see the real value here, unless that certificate is tied to a topic whereas you need to improve your chances for a new gig or entice someone and showcase your level of certificate.  If I have a certificate in bowling, unless I’m about to hit the PBA tour, who cares?  Besides the PBA. And you local bowling buddies.

The players

There are four that really stand out in this space, and I’m going to add a fifth who no doubt will disagree with my assessment that they slide under the learning engagement platform market.  When I say standout, I should say, are solid, with two rising to the cream of the crop.

Here they are in ranked order.

Learn Amp – The best one on the market that no one has heard about it.

Degreed –  The dominator in the space.  Very good LEP.

Grovo –   Well-known and never really defined.  They started out as one thing, switched to another and now full charge ahead.  Good, and yeah, better than Pathgather.

Pathgather –  A platform that generates a lot of interest from potential investors.  Solid, not great.  There are better one out there (see above).  I should add they have changed their model, err approach, multiple times.  From an analyst standpoint that is cause for concern. 

Linkedin Learning –   I’m sliding you folks in this space, based on the functionality as a whole.  I’ve written about Linkedin Learning, here is one review (latest), and an earlier review.   Out of the five here, I’d rank them #5.

Bottom Line

I introduce you ladies and gentlemen, to learning engagement platforms. They are not learning experience, unless that experience explains nothing to me as the buyer, nor consumer of the content.

Engagement on the other hand,

Usually leads to marriage of two parties

Interest and Knowledge Attainment.

Presided over by Content.

Isn’t love grand?

E-Learning 24/7

No blog next week due to Thanksgiving in the U.S.

I reviewed the numbers from 2016 for predications for 2017, and despite a couple of hiccups, still crossed over the 90% percentile once again.  As I recall, it was 92-93%.   The hiccups were along the lines of slower than anticpated adoption of data visualization, and sluggishness of LRS too, which although I thought wouldn’t be fast, I was surprised how bad it really was from within an LMS.

As for new readers, each year, I list up some forecasts (not all mind you, after all I have biz clients).

The Forecasts

Projection HOT

• Knowledge reinforcement tools.  The key here is mobile. As in mobile driven.  I’m not a lot of on/off synch app here as part of the tool, which is a shame.  If it appears, it will be slow.  What I do see though is a big boom in KRTs.  The essentials are mobile driven, with the learner focused on using the mobile side of the house, while the admin functionality is web based.  Some KRTs will play both front on web, using your browser and with mobile as the primary.  Ideally, and by 2019, I think you will see mobile only for learner, and web only for admin.  

Regardless, if you want into the space, and are not seeking LMS route, I’d go here.  Big time.   And if you have an LMS, better add the tool. 

• Skill based assessments  – Anything related to skills and skill gaps will be strong.  Skill pre-assessments are gaining traction, with the preference being the assessment tool in the LMS, and not in an authoring tool per se.  What some folks will do, vendor wise, is tie-in the skills driven angle with their system itself or within the KRT.   The challenge here is that LMSs as a whole have been about training gap analysis, which wait for it… involves skills – as the learner to gain, increase, expand.  So the whole notion of someone’s system being skill driven only as something new is a stretch.  The difference now, is that expansion of skill based assessments, even the utilization of skills as part of…
• Deep Learning –  Still on the fast track here, but the algorithim is the key and without going back into ad nasuem on this, the ability for admins to change the weights/points, so that people who use WBT (for non-linear) and without having to finish the content/course are not penalized nor weighted as high for someone who completes.  When a vendor does this, the “must complete it” it tells me they were/are unaware of why WBT and online learning was designed in the first place.

Anyway, right now it is all about the content/courses that folks take, complete, etc. as the key indicators for DL (aka as machine learning in the consumer world).  A few vendors have recognized the value of adding other variables if you will, with skills being the primary. I see this as continuing.  The key if you will, is having the admin be able to change what someone sees their skill level at/and/or if they really have that skill.

Research shows that people tend to rate their skills higher than the actually are (for the most part).  As a result, your data will be skewed.  Think this way, I run into many folks who tell me they are experts in PowerPoint.  Then I ask how do they do VBAs?  Silence.  Ok, your not an expert.

Other indicators, variables will start to appear as well.  Job roles for one. Another are “interests”.  Expect to see some slow growth with HRIS tie-in variables.  

• Built-in authoring tools.  They are BACK! In the early days they were all the rage, then by around 2010, started to go the way of Bigfoot, now returning.  It won’t be at the level nor amount compared to mid 2000s (in relative to the number of vendors), but it still will be strong.  

Consumers please be aware that a built-in authoring tool will not match a 3rd party authoring tool such as Storyline 360, Captivate, Flow, etc.  They are designed to build courses quickly and easily.   I’ve seen now four in the entire space, that could be standalones because they can be robust.  

• Sales Enablement Platforms –  Another heavily mobile driven product.  The top players here are MindTickle and Qstream.  MindTickle is far superior.  In case you are wondering what these platforms look like.  They sort of follow the KRTs in the aspect of lack on on/off synch app, and while mobile focused, the learner can utilize the system in their desktop/laptop browser with some feature sets.   The admin side is viewed in your desktop/laptop browser.   SEPs can and often will note that they have customer support/service folks on it too.  And yes, I concur.   This is going to be a strong market, but I see KRTs even hotter.     
• 3rd party courseware/content providers showing up in your LMS.  YOWSA, sunny has never been better.  As previously noted, the majority of the content is not free, that said..
• More LMS vendors to offer some content/courses for free.  In my experience, it is around avg. at best.  I see a lot of yuck, but hey it is free.    Anyway,  you will see more of it – uh, the free content/courses, and hopefully not the yuck. 

 Mid-growth

• LRS tied to data visualization.  Yeah, I know I thought it would be better than it is, i.e. the usage of data visualization, but everything points that it will get there.  So, I’m giving it solid and steady.  Not fast or even 30% has it.   The funny thing, or maybe not, is that LMS vendors are not utilizing the purpose of an LRS (data record movement), rather are using it for its other benefits.  An important benefit is what it can capture, which in turn can be visualized.

The vendors who have an LRS and tied it to some type of data visualization have not harnessed its full capabilities.  This will continue to be a problem in its growth.   A second problem, is that vendors who have an LRS usually fail to note it in their marketing, a factor I see related to the lack of benefit explanation to the customer. 

On the LRS side,  my data shows that vendors as whole, will continue to build their own, rather than go third party.  Yes, there will be folks that go 3rd party, but more will build on their own.

• xAPI – slow and steady.  Again, those who have it, really are not maximizing it.  Those who don’t seem indifferent about it.  And there are those who have it, who repeatedly say it isn’t working as it should.   It is a still a work in progress, and for the amount of time it has been in the market, that is an issue in of itself (and for another day).   But it still has so many advantages over SCORM, let alone any other course standard, that it is a must in my functionality.  The data though says steady. 
• Coaching/Ask and Expert – Another on the steady front,  and still not fully at its full potential.   Ditto with content curation.
• LMS ecosystems – Here they come, walking down the street. Hey hey, wait.. I am seeing the Monkeys here, any who ha,  ecosystems have been around, but now they are back in higher gear.  I anticipate solid growth for 2018.  Think of an ecosystem as a one stop shop.  Toss in the free courses/content; add the online course marketplace/providers, built-in screen/web cam recorder, video management, multi-tenant, free sandbox (post go-live), KRT and few of this and that.  Tada! Ecosystem.   You can have one for employees, customers or both audiences.  Oh and you do not need PM/TM to be listed as an ecosystem.   The ones I see as upside are those that do not have TM functionality.  You want that? Get a TM, HCM or HRIS platform
• Next hot market for vendors –  Western Europe.    You do not need a physical location, btw.  If you do, well, a couple of great locations (sorry client only).  : )

Technology and Technobabble

• Screen recorder/web cam recorder  – Expect an uptick.  These are in the system, not 3rd party.
• Video management – YOWSA, battle hands on deck. Super speed hot for 2018.  Video management to me include the following:

                          a. Video overlays, most folks who have VM are doing video assessment pieces within the video content itself.

                          b.  FPS auto-detection, frames per second, whereas your mobile can auto detect the bandwidth/speed and thus show you the video with the right FPS. 

                         c.   Video streaming – although for vendors that offer it, some do it for free, some charge you.  It should be free.

                        d.  Upload to highest quality of video.  

                       e.  Video bookmarking –  slow growth here.  An awesome feature for consumers though and something I’d want if I was a learner.  For vendors that offer it, usually it is via points if you will within the timeline of the video content.

                      f.  Video editor – Slow growth.  Great potential and something that seems to be a no-brainer, but still in slow mode.  

• Mobile recording/web cam recording and playback in the LMS.  Ties best to coaching/ask an expert.  Expect solid growth for 2018.  Only one vendor in the space, that I have seen, has come close to its potential.  And even then, they are not seeing “IT”.  The glass breaker if you will. 
• VR/AR –  Slow.  Vendors will pitch that you can view it in a system, content that is, but it is somewhat misleading.  Yeah, you can see it, but you need to have the right VR smartphone headset or VR headset with the latest Chrome VR, to view it via an LMS (in the cloud).     I do think VR courses can be amazing, and have seen them firsthand, but in order to have the all amazing experience, the LMS would have to offer a greater VR experience in of itself.   And that is way off in the distance..way off.      Therefore I see a better, again, still slow rate with
• Digital learning courses.  Here is a link to how I define digital learning in today’s world.   Uh, it is not the same as online learning.      DL courses are ideal for mobile. In fact, that should be the only way to go about it, but I understand the trepidation. 
• HCMs jumping into the learning space, as in adding a LMS or learning platform.  Too much money here.  And if you are missing the one component that is hurting you landing your customers, what would you do?  Add learning.  

Other

• Micro Learning – Super growth here, but let’s not be caught into the idea that micro learning is something new.  It isn’t.  Any LMS even back in the late 90’s accepted micro learning courses, heck I built a few (with a TOC no less). 
• What you are seeing now though, are vendors pitching their system as a micro learning platform or system.  Pure marketing spin.   As for micro learning itself, just because it is short doesn’t mean it is better.
• So, yeah short is better, but to have effective micro learning you need to have SBL – scenario based learning, bringing in real world – real life scenarios for your learners.  Do that, and you scored the winning goal or touchdown or – well you know what I mean.
• Mobile first! – Still a nice buzz word, but without on/off synch, means nothing.  Hey, I can see this blog in my mobile browser.  Yep, mobile first!
• On/off synch app – Slow still.  Frankly for retail vertical it is a must, but yet, plenty of vendors who target retail do not offer it.  Strange. 
• SMB is the rage.  This ties into the “Enterprise” whereas the term rely no longer applies, I cover this and more in my latest newsletter.  Anyway, SMB is the big gorilla for 2018, across all online learning systems.

Bottom Line

There you go.  Several LMS forecasts for 2018.  I define corporate as anything that is not in the education K-12 or higher education markets, in case you were wondering if your vertical is under coporate.

Let’s check back and the end of 2018, to see how I did.

And I’ll check in regulary to see how you are doing.

With my crystal ball,

Of course.

E-Learning 24/7

Say it ain’t so – DEAL DEAL $100 OFF MY Top 50 2017 Report, Use promo code “NEWS”.

Would you like to contribute to a new Jisc study and shape future developments in this area?

Jisc want to find out what HR departments are doing to support staff in dealing with the challenges and making the most of the opportunities offered by technologies? We are also keen to find out how confident HR teams are of their own digital capabilities to support staff in their institutions?

We have just started our short study and hope to find out from HR staff how their activities link to institutional strategies and activities around digital capabilities.

By participating in the study HR staff will have the chance to inform future developments and to highlight the good practice that is already happening.

We have produced a short (5 minute) online survey to help us create a snapshot of current practice in the UK and to find out about HR staff levels of confidence around digital capability.

Please let your HR teams know about the study and ask them to complete the survey.

https://jisc-beta.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/hr-support-of-staff-digital-capabilites

Abstract

Strayer Education and Capella Education just announced a merger.

Strayer has the upper hand in the merger, taking a 52% controlling interest in the new company, which will be called "Strategic Education" and will maintain Strayer's "STRA" stock symbol. With combined enrollments of close to 80,000 students, the new company will be one of the largest for-profits in the US.

As the company touts, there is a high degree of complementarity between the two entities. First, both kept their noses clean during the for-profit scandal era and maintained good reputation. Capella has, in fact, shown a willingness to actively collaborate with the broader university community, including not-for-profits, by sharing best practices and collaborating in research on topics like learning analytics. Strayer's degrees are largely concentrated in business and IT, while Capella has a broader portfolio including education, health care, and criminal justice. Strayer has a number of physical campuses for classroom or blended learning, while Capella is focused on fully online. Strayer is known to be particularly good at building partnerships with employers, while Capella is known for its work in new educational trends like learning analytics and Competency-based Education (CBE). Strayer has a lot of working adults completing their undergraduate degrees while Capella has a robust set of graduate programs. Both dabble in other formats like code academies, and Capella has 51 certificate programs.

Assuming the merger goes through, both schools will continue to operate largely separately as independent brands. Faculties are specifically called out as remaining separate, though credits will be tranferrable from one institution to the other. The areas singled out for "consolidation" (read: layoffs) are "executive and corporate functions, certain marketing capabilities and IT operations." Corporate headquarters will be in Virginia, where Strayer's headquarters currently are, but IT will be run out of Minnesota, where Capella is.

When we look at this merger in the context of both Purdue's acquisition of Kaplan, DeVry's internal restructuring, and University of Phoenix's transition of ownership and leadership, some trends in the for-profit space begin to emerge.1

Still on the defensive

Despite the hype about the Trump administration being friendlier to for-profits than the Obama administration, the truth is that we continue to see defensive moves. University of Phoenix's old PE owner decided to sell the business, and the leadership brought in by the new owner promptly closed 20 campuses. DeVry fired its CEO after closing 14 campuses and settling a slew of state and Federal lawsuits.2 Kaplan decided to get out of the for-profit university business altogether. (What is left over of that company after the sale to Purdue, and what it will become going forward, is still unclear.) And the most immediate effect of the Strayer/Capella merger will be cost cutting in redundant operations.

In other words, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has not changed the laws of physics. These institutions were under pressure before and are still under pressure now. We should not be surprised to see more closures like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, particularly of second- and third-tier for-profits. They may not be driven by active prosecutions, but the damage to the sector has already been done. Government intervention wasn't the sole cause of the collapse of Corinthian; lack of cash on hand played a role.

The questions going forward are (a) is the for-profit crash bottoming out, and (b) if so, what does their next act look like? It's too early to tell regarding the first question, but we are getting some interesting hints regarding what the leadership of some of the larger for-profits think possible answers to the second one is.

Course design, analytics, and employer connections

A few details of the Strayer/Capella announcement stand out. The first one comes out of the rhythm of a merger announcement like this one. There's a format of "Company A brings strength X while company B brings complementary strength Y." The announcement touts one of Strayer's strength as "close relationships with employers" that complements Capella's "competency-based learning infrastructure, assessment capabilities and track-record of improving student success." To begin with, these are real strengths of the respective companies rather than made-up talking points. Strayer is good at employer partnerships and does fairly extensive profiling of their students' career goals and paths. Capella, for its part, was giving talks about their learning analytics work way back in the early days, before there were even products on the market.

The bit about CBE, which comes up several times in the released materials, requires a bit of unpacking. Capella offers two flavors of what they label Competency-Based Education: "FlexPath," which is a fully self-paced program in the style of Western Governors University or SNHU's College for America, and "Guided Path," which Capella labels as CBE despite the fact that it is instructor-facilitated, delivered within a term structure for a class cohort, and charged by the credit. What they really mean by CBE in this case is what Phil calls "CBE lite" or what is more commonly known in academic circles as "backwards design," where the outcomes and assessments are designed first and then the content is structured to match (rather than picking the content for the syllabus and then designing assessments after).

Only a relatively small percentage of Capella's degree programs are full CBE FlexPath programs:

So most of these programs are not actually self-paced CBE but backwards-designed and traditionally delivered courses. That may actually be a lot more important. As Phil has written, full self-paced CBE is still struggling to take off. Backwards design, in contrast is a good practice for course designs that drive improvements in student outcomes and is also a prerequisite for various types of learning analytics and adaptive learning approaches as well as full self-paced CBE. So when Strayer touts Capella's strength in CBE, the real value may be in the course design process and the ways in which those designs can be instrumented in the learning analytics.

Strong connections to employers, consistent application of backwards course design principles, and analytics supported by those course designs, are three areas where the centralized structure of for-profits enables them to move more quickly than many not-for-profits. Reading between the lines, it looks like the Strayer/Capella leadership think they have found a way to compete on quality. And they may not be the only ones tacking this approach. We see signs that at least pieces of these strategies are beginning to surface elsewhere. For example, it was interesting to see that the University of Phoenix's new owner chose a new president who was previously an executive at McGraw-Hill Education, which currently styles itself a "learning science company."

Kaplan is obviously different, but maybe not as different as it appears at first blush. They had a very strong learning science and analytics-driven approach to course design, driven by thought-leader Bror Saxburg (who recently left to work at the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative). Purdue, for its part, pioneered retention early warning analytics. Despite some controversy regarding one of their research papers, the university has deep experience with using analytics to drive outcomes.

It's still early days, but we may be seeing the beginning of a trend among for-profits to drive toward a particular notion of a quality education as a key competitive differentiator.

1. Disclosure: University of Phoenix was recently one of our consulting clients.
2. Disclosure: DeVry has recently been a consulting client of ours.

The post The Strayer/Capella Merger and What it Means for For-Profits appeared first on e-Literate.

How big should your HR staff and budget be?

While this is a question best answered in the context of your unique talent strategy -- what it will take to execute that strategy to drive organization success and what role HR plays in making that happen -- benchmarks can sometimes provide a helpful reference point.

Bloomberg BNA's 2017 HR Department Benchmarks and Analysis Report (its 40th annual HR benchmarking study), based on the responses of 681 U.S. HR executives and professionals, supplies some data points for consideration.

A few summary outtakes:

HR Staffing

• HR staffing ratios, at median across those reporting, have increased 40% over the last 10 years, from 1.0 HR employees for every 100 workers served in 2007 to 1.4 HR employees in 2017.
• Smaller employers tend to report higher HR staff ratios while larger organizations - who have the advantage of economies of scale - maintain a lower ratio of HR staff.

HR Budgets

• Budgeted HR spending dipped to a 10-year low in 2017, with a median of $1,087 per employee, down from $1,440 in 2016. This seems incongruent with the trend in HR staffing noted above; Bloomberg BNA hypothesizes that perhaps programs and activities have seen modest growth in line with HR staffing increases, but an expansion of the employee population has resulted in a decrease in spending per capita.
  population drove down per capita costs
• As with HR staffing, employer size and ability to leverage scale appear to impact HR budgets.  The median per capita HR budget ranges from $594 per employee for employers with 2,500 or more workers to $2,966 per employee among those with less than 250 workers.

More details on the BNA research and report here.

Thoughts and reactions?

Creative Commons image "Group of People" by Karina Freitas

"Traditional" workplace learning has focused on developing domain-specific skills. Other skills, including “soft skills” are usually assigned a lower priority. Continue Reading →

The post A Holistic Approach to Workplace Competencies appeared first on E-Learning Curve Blog.

Abstract

Takeaways from Ignite 2017

To ask someone working at Microsoft about the capacities of digital transformation is increasingly comparable to a ‘how long is a piece of string?’ analogy. It’s ever-changing, ever-developing and largely, the pulse of Microsoft’s innovation story. At the annual event, Ignite, Microsoft revealed the pulse’s latest beats.

Ignite is an annual conference run by Microsoft where technical and business leaders come together and get immersed in the industry’s latest technological advents. Last week, AlfaPeople had the pleasure of sending our Director of Dynamics 365 Enterprise Architecture, David Tunnicliff, to the 2017 event.

Here’s are some of Dave’s key takeaways…

1. The conference was quite literally, huge.

Microsoft Ignite was massive. The Orange County Conference Centre where it was hosted is the second biggest conference centre in the USA. As always with these things, there was a lot of sitting, but thanks to the size of this place, a lot of walking too! I was getting in 13-17km a day!

2. Accelerating Digital Transformation

The event this year continued to focus on accelerating digital transformation through ongoing investment and rapid development of the Microsoft platform and graph. Backing this up were plenty of examples of Microsoft using its own technology in Microsoft’s internal transformation under the direction of Satya Nadella.

You can find some great videos here, including the Vision keynote from Satya Nadella here.

3. Enriching the Microsoft Graph

One key message was that the Microsoft Graph was becoming more enriched and more tightly integrated with Microsoft applications.

As part of this, we are seeing that LinkedIn is finally starting to become more available across the Microsoft tools. Ultimately, LinkedIn will feed into the business applications, providing more contextually rich data and as such, hugely enhancing sales, marketing, and recruitment throughout. Dynamics 365 for Talent will be further enriched with ‘Attract’ and ‘Onboard’. Not to mention from an HR perspective, having LinkedIn data associated to the Office 365 suite enables great networking facilities for colleagues. Microsoft also announced that Flow and PowerApps will become more deeply integrated into Dynamics 365.

4. Microsoft Teams

It wasn’t that long ago that Lync became Skype for Business. Microsoft announced at Ignite that over time (no time frame was given) that SfB will be rolled up into Microsoft Teams.

5. GDPR and Data Governance

GDPR and data governance was a big topic this year which was good to see. Azure has a load of useful tooling for GDPR – including threat protection. To find out more about GDPR compliance at AlfaPeople, read the article here.

6. Improved AI

Unsurprisingly, AI was big this year, including improvements to the bot tooling. Specifically focusing on Dynamics 365 CE and Dynamics 365 F&O, intelligent conversion, customer care and customer service channels are benefiting from AI components. Cognitive services were also shown off throughout, not to mention some cool things around speech to text and the OCR capabilities of MS cognitive services.

7. Connected Data

Common Data Services/Common Data Models (CDS/CDM) are clearly key to connected data. I spent a decent time talking to some guys from a commercial database company who are going live with a Dynamics 365 implementation using CDS/CDM to orchestrate centralised data. It was great to hear of a real-world implementation.

LogicApps was another area where huge advancements were shown. Some great demos and great examples of using real world no/low code integrations through logic apps and swagger endpoints – even a pretty whacky example of mapping a route between Orlando and Miami, picking up the traffic incidents along the way, then searching Spotify for tracks matching those incidents and creating a playlist from them. Not particularly enterprise, but an interesting example of the power of LogicApps nonetheless.

Focusing on PowerApps, data integration services are getting some power through the addition of power query. This brings the same capabilities provided through Power BI and Excel into data integration services as well. ‘Prospect to Cash’ templates have been hugely extended within the standard templates in PowerApps admin.

8. Advancements in Finance and Operations

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations was an area I paid particular attention to – and I’m glad I did. Advancements in Retail, Talent, CEO Overview Dashboards / reporting, the new Distributed Order Management (DOM) model which is an upcoming feature, and connected workplaces all add to the overall power of Dynamics generally. Summarised below:

Keen to find out more about the latest events at Microsoft? You can also read our blog article on key takeaways from Inspire 2017 here.

The post Latest Beats in Microsoft’s Pulse of Innovation appeared first on AlfaPeople-UK.

Twenty years ago I was finishing my Master’s thesis on learning in the information technology workplace. A significant part of my research relied on the work of Marshall McLuhan, especially his laws of media. My job at the time was the development of all training related to a fleet of helicopters employed in tactical aviation: from pilots, to technicians, and including flight simulation and computer based training. The web was a new thing in 1997. But I was convinced, based on my readings of McLuhan and many others, that it would create an epochal shift in how we work and learn. I decided that understanding this shift would become my professional focus.

I retired from the military in 1998 and took a position as project manager at The Centre for Learning Technologies, a now closed external department of Mount Allison University, here in Sackville. This is why we live in such a remote place. Later I was in charge of professional services for an e-learning company. In 2003 I started my consulting practice and soon after, this blog.

Over the past +14 years I have always had a challenge describing what I do for a living. Today I came across an article on the future of work, by Deloitte. The image included with the article pretty well describes my professional focus for the past twenty years.

The bottom three boxes cover almost all my work. Here are some examples.

1. Individuals: The personal knowledge mastery framework I have developed over more than a decade helps individuals take control of their professional development.
2. Organizations: The social learning workshop is for those supporting organizational learning and I have developed a suite of models as guidance for the future of work, or what I call the network era.
3. Public Policy: I have given forward-looking advice (PDF) to Canada’s Department of Justice, spoken on governance & the networked city with the London Voluntary Service Council (video), and have an upcoming session with the Finnish Prime Minister’s Office on the transformation of work.

So, in a nutshell, I work with individuals, organizations, and public policy influencers to develop practical ways to adapt to the technological, demographic, and societal changes facing us today. You could call it adapting to life in perpetual beta.

Perpetual Beta Book Series

• Read more about Goodbye Totara LMS 9, hello Totara Learn 10

Evolve 3.8; bringing you @mentions, Hinting and plenty more.

The team at Appitierre have been working hard to bring you Evolve 3.8 and I’d like to let you know about all the updates, improvements and just plain cool stuff that’s in this update.

Don’t have time to read? Check out the video.

Annotations

It’s now possible to mention team mates. How? Easy use @username and you’ll see a list of matching team mates. They’ll get an update using desktop notifications, email and inside Evolve so there’s no risk of delaying those changes you need.

New Hint component

Add hints to your pages and display these as buttons. Display your hint buttons in configurable rows and reveal one hint after another. Really useful for helping learners on a course.

Box menu improvements

It’s possible to set the number of items per row (2,3,4). Items in the box menu match height in their rows.

Course Reviewers get email alerts

When added to a review Reviewers receive and email and a desktop notification if they’re logged in.

Scroll Progress Extension

Display horizontal bar that fills as users scroll down pages. This can be styled, have it’s height set on large and medium desktops.

Asset improvements

It’s now possible to set the default sort order for Assets in user settings.

Hero images have an additional graphic option

Add a ‘floating’ graphic to your hero images and position it precisely anywhere inside the hero image.

Position navigation logo left, right or center.

Additional updates

• Achievements: Now has the options to reset the course if the learner runs out of lives.
• Achievements: New theme option to hide the info bar on page/menu headers
• Favicon: The evolve favicon now changes when a new message is received.
• Video Stream Component: Added Interface Language Option to youtube player
• Course Importing: New UI that displays import progress
• Narrative Component: Option to have the text above slides
• Feedback: Can now add global feedback images
• Accessibility: Skip to content added
• Branching Component: The item editor now automatically increases to allow more room for organising items

“What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?” In 1959 Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” to describe one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. It is performed… Continue Reading →

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At last month’s Future Trends Forum hosted by Bryan Alexander, I received several questions around the intersection of K-12 and higher education markets for learning platforms. A condensed version of my answer is that the mainline LMS vendors are seeing increased overlap (Canvas, D2L Brightspace, Blackboard, Moodle, and Schoology in particular), but that there was little overlap when it comes to the teacher-oriented Big Classrooms (Google and Facebook).

Three years ago when the buzz over Google Classroom was at its peak, I wrote several posts looking at the platform, ultimately concluding in the post titled “Why Google Classroom won’t affect institutional LMS market … yet”:

None of this argues that Google Classroom is an inferior tool – it is just not designed to replace the full-featured LMS. Remember that Google is a technology-vision company that is comfortable putting out new tools before they understand how the tools will be used. Google is also comfortable playing the long game, getting more and more instructors and faculty using, giving feedback, and pushing forward the new toolset. This process will take some time to play out – at least 2 or 3 years in my opinion before a full institutional LMS may be available. If Google like the direction Classroom usage is going.

Subsequently, Google has addressed some of the gaps in the product, including a programming interface that could allow deeper integration with student record systems used at higher ed institutions.

We’re now 3 years down the road from the initial analysis – has Google Classroom started to be adopted as a full institutional LMS?

Our partners at LISTedTECH have performed an initial analysis on this question. We do not yet have full data coverage in the same fashion as our LMS market analysis, but this early view should give some insight into higher ed adoption of the platform.

For this initial view, we are looking at institutional adoption. Where a school supports Google Classroom as their primary or secondary system. There are plenty of other cases where individual faculty choose to use the platform in an unsupported manner.

Notes from initial view:

• A lot of the interest seems to come from developing countries where the education budgets are quite low. Malawi, Papau New Guinea, etc.
• For the United Kingdom, the number is artificially high as 5 of the institutions are all part of Warwickshire College Group (a collection of Further Education colleges). Nevertheless, the UK has the higher number (so far) of institutional adoptions.
• The usage of Google Classroom as a secondary system makes sense – an alternative platform that doesn’t have all the features and integrations typically needed for primary system usage – but there are cases now of primary usage.
• In the US, the most notable adoption is the California University of Management and Sciences, a Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP)–certified institution in Anaheim. They support both Moodle and Google Classroom for primary LMS usage.
• While we don’t have comprehensive coverage yet, it appears that there are some isolated cases of Google Classroom institutional adoption in higher education. The platform is still not a true LMS competitor, but we’ll keep watching.

The post Google Classroom: Isolated adoptions for higher education institutions appeared first on e-Literate.

Mergers and acquisitions are playing an increasing role in business strategy, as 56 percent of CEOs expect their companies to pursue an acquisition over the next 12 months, according to EY’s Global Capital Confidence Barometer.

If anything underscores the executive-level interest in M&A, it’s this: While political landscapes are shifting around the world, “we may be witnessing a new kind of M&A market, where these geopolitical concerns might not derail deals, unlike in previous cycles,” EY said, adding: “More than ever, companies that hold back from inorganic growth strategies could struggle to remain relevant in a fast-moving environment.”

M&As can provide the ideal opportunity to overhaul broken, ineffective or antiquated processes. Yet despite their strategic importance, few things make workers more nervous than acquisitions, since newly joined companies often look for opportunities to cut costs or spin off certain subsidiaries. Plus, at least two workforces must be integrated as the organizations restructure and reassign roles.

This nervousness isn’t unfounded, as countless statistics can be widely cited about the disappointing success rates of M&As, and experts have struggled to pinpoint the root of the problem. One thing is clear: The HR team plays an important role throughout an M&A. “Human talent and leadership are at the very crux of what makes some M&As successful and others not,” Dennis C. Carey and Dayton Ogden write in The Human Side of M&A: How CEOs Leverage the Most Important Asset in Deal Making.

While Learning & Development may not be the end-all and be-all of a successful M&A, it can play a vital role. Effective L&D can help foster confidence in new leadership, assuage employees’ fears about the future, ease transitions among teams and help discordant workforces find synergies.

Why Knowledge Sharing is Critical in Acquisition

The seemingly at-odds trends mentioned above — that M&As are highly intriguing to executives even though they frequently fail to meet anticipated goals — makes it worth considering where the key areas of failure occur. In a 2016 webcast, J. Keith Dunbar, founder of Potentious, a boutique M&A consulting firm, explains that these root causes tend to fall into three buckets: strategy/valuation, people and due diligence/integration.

The last two buckets — people and due diligence/deal integration — are where L&D can play a vital role.

Mergers or acquisitions bring pain points related to cultural dissonance in the workplace (a large part of the “people” failure bucket). For one thing, if the deal creates a significantly larger organization, it’s sure to face scaling processes and growing pain. Culture clashes, confusion over roles and power struggles may also arise, especially when the merging organizations are significantly different in size, involve international offices or combine an established corporation with a startup. Amid the tensions that usually form during the M&A process, employee morale can be tenuous.

Such uncertainty can make the M&A process a trying time for employee retention, according to Deloitte. Turnover rates can skyrocket. Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr offers one such example: Barely two years after the deal, one source with knowledge of the company’s internal turmoil told Business Insider that close to half of Tumblr’s sales team had quit. The exodus, which included the Tumblr sales team’s Global Head of Brand Partnerships Lee Brown (now the CRO at Buzzfeed), occurred after Yahoo decided to combine the two sales teams.

For the “integration” part of the M&A process, common sense dictates that an updated system be put in place to share knowledge. Updating L&D around a common strategy not only helps employees thrive in their new roles, it also showcases leadership’s commitment to employees’ well-being.

An L&D environment customized to address the new organization’s challenges allows individuals to pool their skills and core competencies. These assets become knowledge powerhouses for the entire company. Fostering collaborative environments also encourages new colleagues to bond through shared learning.

Using L&D to Retain Top Talent

A strategic L&D game plan can help companies retain their most valuable employees, subject matter experts and leaders in their field. An L&D ecosystem that encourages employees to act as thought leaders — while sharing their own arsenal of knowledge and learning resources — nurtures both relationship-building and leadership development among and across teams.

Furthermore, Dunbar explained, effective L&D programs can detect potential problems in an M&A’s early stages: They can be used as “early warning systems” to determine areas of potential discord — a poor skills-fit for an employee moved to a new team, for example.

An organization that emerges from an M&A contains a hodgepodge of skills, talents and opinions — and will demand its own unique L&D formula. What a newly merged company’s L&D overhaul will look like depends upon internal dynamics, the deal’s goals and what the current learning processes look like.

Here’s where a decentralized L&D approach can play a key role: A mixture of e-learning, experiential tactics, quality content and collaborative social learning taps into shared values and helps lay the foundation for a smooth transition.

It’s a mistake to let L&D strategy become stuck in the bottleneck of priorities that forms during a merger or acquisition. By spreading the concept of L&D organically, companies can eliminate some of the uncertainty that may drive a wedge between employees, their new colleagues and their new management team — and improve the chances of an M&A’s success.

Continue reading "What does the 6th annual Learning in the Workplace Survey say about the state – as well as the future – of L&D?"

This week Zoho launched Zoho One, an offering that provides customers with access to all of the Zoho business and productivity applications for a single price of $1/person/day. If you're unfamiliar with Zoho, you should really take a look at their extensive product portfolio which includes:

• Personal Productivity: Word processing, spreadsheets, slides and note-taking
• Communication and Collaboration: Email, chat, web-conferencing, social networking, group messaging, file-sharing and project tracking
• Business processes: Sales/CRM, marketing, customer support, finance/invoicing, human resources and a custom application (low-code) developer tool

While perhaps not as well know as its Microsoft and Google competitors, Zoho does have an impressive 3rd party ecosystem of extensions available via the Zoho Marketplace. 

Customers Take Note

While individual applications in the Zoho One portfolio may not offer as many features as their counterparts from Microsoft Office 365/Dynamics, Google GSuite, Salesforce, Workday, and others, Constellation Research believes Zoho One's complete platform solution provides a very attractive option for many businesses. As outlined in the research report Why Your Organization Should Buy a Collaboration Platform Instead of a Best-of-Breed Solution, having a single platform provides advantages in integration, administration, security and several other areas.

Gallup survey results  reinforce a key point of my recent story about the distracting acoustical problems of open offices: In the workplace, privacy matters.

Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace (full report is  here) finds that while an estimated 70 percent of U.S. offices use open floor plans to encourage collaboration, “people still want a personal space at work,” according to Annamarie Mann, who is Gallup’s employee engagement and well-being practice manager.

Her  sensible recommendations are summarized on Gallup’s site in an article titled “How to Make an Open Office Floor Plan Work.”

Mann’s suggestions include:

• “Allow every employee to have a home base, even in a flexible, collaborative office.”
• “Provide a variety of types of spaces—big group tables, booths, comfy chairs, soundproof areas, large and small meeting rooms— that allow employees the freedom to choose how they work best.”
•  “Start a conversation about how your organization understands collaboration in relation to productivity.”

Analyzing the responses to Gallup’s surveys, Mann finds a link between office environment and employee engagement. The research found “employees who have a personal work space are 1.4 times more likely to be engaged at work” than other workers, Mann notes. (Gallup found only 52 percent of responding workers have a work space with a door they can close.)

And “employees who have the ability to move to different areas at work are 1.3 times more likely to be engaged than other employees,” she writes. (Gallup found 74 percent of respondents said they have that freedom.)

The first group of degree apprentices in the UK have graduated today, with seven out of the 11 gaining first class honours.

The Aston University learners were awarded bachelors of science degrees in digital and technology solutions, following three years of combined study and work with the global consulting, technology and outsourcing company Capgemini.

The other four all achieved second-class degrees.

Professor Ian Nabney, executive dean of the university’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, said: “Degree apprenticeships are a valuable option to applicants whose learning style is less suited to a traditional on-campus study route.

“The difference in delivery allows them to apply their learning in the workplace rather than the classroom. This offers those with the right skills and aptitudes a challenging but rewarding route to graduate-level jobs, while their academic achievement is recognised as being at the same high level as a traditionally earned degree.”

the skills and apprenticeships minister Anne Milton offered her own words of congratulation for the graduates’ graft.

“I am delighted,” she said. “The hard work and commitment involved is truly admirable and highlights the opportunities apprenticeships can bring.

“I hope this will encourage more people to consider a degree apprenticeship.”

Also recognised today at the ceremony was Sue Husband, director of the National Apprenticeship Service, who collected an honorary doctorate in science.

“I am absolutely delighted to attend the graduation of the first cohort of degree apprentices in the country, for what is a momentous occasion,” she said.

“Degree apprenticeships are a significant step forward, providing the opportunity to develop and nurture talented individuals, and are a key part of our apprenticeships reform programme.”

This good news will be welcomed by many involved with degree apprenticeships, which have endured a difficult time of late.

FE Week reported in June that many higher education leaders are issuing dire warnings about their very future.

The FE sector reacted in horror after the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced in April that it would pause the procurement process for providers delivering apprenticeships to smaller non-levy-paying employers, and would extend existing contracts instead.

It then emerged that many universities had been ruled out of delivering new degree-level apprenticeships to small employers from September, as they cannot be funded through the extended contracts.

It’s a situation that will risk the future growth of degree apprenticeships, according to Nicola Dandridge, the chief executive of Universities UK, the representative body for higher education leaders.

“Employers want degree apprentices to address key skills needs and to drive growth,” she said, adding that “any region that has many non-levy-paying employers, such as the south-west, will see very few degree apprenticeships supported from this procurement, regardless of employer demand or local enterprise partnership strategy”.

The problem arose because non-levy allocations for providers’ existing contracts were worked out on the basis of their previous delivery, a situation which will apply for the eight months between May to December this year.

As most degree apprenticeships are new programmes starting in September, they cannot be funded by existing contracts.

The pause has therefore meant that these new degree apprenticeships can only be funded through levy-paying large employers until December at least.

Five HE institutions – many of them modern universities, those that won their status after 1992 – and 20 FE colleges received funding through phase one of the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s degree apprenticeship development fund.

The cash, which totalled £4.5 million across 18 projects, was awarded in November with the specific aim of developing “new provision to support up to 5,200 new degree apprenticeships” from this autumn.

But Alan Palmer, head of policy and research at Million Plus, which represents modern universities, said the procurement pause puts  this commitment “at risk”.

Main image caption: James Gee, one of the Gapgemini degree apprentices