Finally! Help Selecting an LMS Has Arrived!

Kudos and deep thanks to Jeff Cobb and his team at Tagoras for the significant effort they undertook in compiling, editing, and publishing their report, “Association Learning Management Systems.”

Eleven companies responded to an extensive list of questions about their systems, resulting in a report of 400+ pages that include tables, profiles, and product reviews, as well as a valuable list of questions you can use or modify as you investigate your LMS options.

How much for such a valuable report?!? With apologies to Tagoras, I’ll be frank: it’s CHEAP!! Okay, I’ll be polite: it’s VERY INEXPENSIVE.

At just $199, this report will save you bookoo bucks in equivalent time spent trying to gather the information. Do the math: let’s say you earn $20/hour. Let’s round up the report cost to $200. Now I dare you to try to get this sort of information on your own in just 10 hours.

Can’t be done. Can’t. Be. Done.

So stop reading and go buy the report. Or take a look at the overview.

Oh, did I mention the importance of having sorted out what you’ll need from an LMS, based on your elearning strategy?

Tack another $25 onto your investment and get the aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning first. That way you’ll get the best value from the Association Learning Management Systems Report.

And we sure don’t want to waste money, do we?!?

LMS Selection Processes on Display

How have various universities selected the course management systems (CMS) or learning management systems (LMS) they are now using?

What processes did they follow? What criteria did they use?

How did they involve the eventual users in the evaluation process?

If your organization follows — or is considering — the university model for providing synchronous, instructor-led online educational events, you should take a look at Mark Smithers’ Learning and Educational Technology in Higher Education blog. He recently posted brief summaries and links to the original documentation. Sakai, Moodle, Blackboard Vista, Angel, and Desire2Learn are among the systems included.

You might also find it interesting to see that the minimum amount of time a university team spent on such a process was about nine months, with several taking a year or more.

Since his original post, several readers have submitted comments with links to additional online documentation. Read away!

Just keep in mind that these processes and outcomes might not be a match for your organization, as these are large universities, well-funded (they might disagree, but compared to a small non-profit budget, they are swimming in money), and have internal staffing to support the sorts of systems that small organizations probably couldn’t maintain.

Even so, it’s worth a look to see what they decided to evaluate and how they organized their review process.

So far, I haven’t found similar resources for associations, so if you’re willing to share your association’s process for selecting a CMS/LMS and your outcome, or if you know of a summary of such information — send the info along!

Helpful — Free — Resources for Finding LMS and LCMS Vendors

If you’re starting with decisions about your learning management system before working through a full strategic planning process, don’t expect to end up with a system that does what you need. Do expect that you could be wasting valuable time and much — probably all — of the money you spend on a system by moving forward too soon.

If you haven’t developed a strategy for your learning programs (including your elearning offerings), no resource — even if it’s free — will help you make the right decision.

So I offer this recommendation to those of you who:

• have already planned your elearning strategy
• know how it fits into  your overall education plan
• have a clear idea of the trail ahead of you regarding certification or licensure programs (no matter how far in the future they might be)
• understand the differences between an LMS and an LCMS and know which system is your best choice
• have decided whether you will be developing any elearning programs in-house (this includes tapping the talents of your volunteers) rather than hiring a vendor company for development
• know your technological environment for hosting (or not) these sorts of systems
• have identified most if not all of the features you’re seeking in an LMS or LCMS

Not you? Maybe you’ll benefit from working through the *alearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning* book first (click the Buy Now button or here for more information), so bookmark this post for later.

One of the most common questions I hear is, “Where do we send our RFP? Now that we know what we’re looking for, how do we find the companies that can provide it?”

Brandon Hall Research (www.brandon-hall.com) is making three valuable reports available free — I’d post them here, but they have asked that the reports not be duplicated, so you’ll need to download them from BH directly.

Before you do that, here’s what’s available (to save you some time):

Learning Technology Products 2009: Learning Management Systems includes descriptions of more than 100 LMSs. They’re ordered alphabetically by company name and include products from all over the world, so be prepared to filter the options in some way to make the listing more accessible (for example, perhaps you’d prefer to work only with a company based in the US). Descriptions include basic information about the company and the product so you can determine whether it might fit your key requirements.

Learning Technology Products 2009: Learning Content Management Systems provides basic data on each company and descriptions of the features of more than 40 LCMSs. Note that these are not rapid prototyping or rapid development products, but systems that enable complex development and deployment of large elearning curricula. Unless you’re in a large association or non-profit and plan an extensive online learning library which you will develop in-house, this is not likely a resource you’ll need.

Learning Technology Products 2009: Authoring Tools is the go-to resource if you’ve wondered if you have more choices than simply deciding between Articulate and Captivate (you do, many more, and often for lower cost).

A few caveats:

• No pricing is included; you’ll need to find that information out on your own.
• Some descriptions aren’t very complete; take a look at the Web sites provided for more information on products that strike your fancy.
• And some companies weighted their descriptions with not-so-subtle sales-speak: “develop highly engaging experiences” … “quickly develop”… “anyone can easily develop…” We learned a long time ago to be cautious of such claims, so read analytically, not subjectively — one person’s easy hike is another person’s Everest!

Click  here to access and download these helpful resources from Brandon Hall Research. 

aLearning Featured in “Managing eLearning” Podcast!

Curious about where associations are with elearning these days? Looking for a quick summary of the aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning book so you can decide how it can help your association or your client associations?

With many thanks to Jon Aleckson for bringing out the best of our conversation, I’m happy to provide this link to a podcast that covers these very topics and much more:

http://www.webcourseworks.com/blog/association-elearning-book-helpful-vendor-client-relationship

If you’re looking for ways to make sure your content and delivery modes are aligned, your membership is ready for elearning, the options you’re considering are affordable and do-able (does your staff have the skill sets?), and that you have all the information you need to make the best decisions for your association — this book will recover its cost many times over for you.

Just $25 for the download or  $35 (plus shipping) for the print version, you’ll have a manual that will take you step-by-step through each decision and action. If you follow the process outlined in the trail guide, you’ll have completed your elearning strategy, budget, and implementation plans by the time you reach the last page.

For a review, see a sumary of Bill Brandon’s review for the e-Learning Guild’s Learning Solutions e-Magazine.

What Makes Online Learning Effective?

Isn’t this the million-dollar question? No? A couple hundred thousand, maybe? (Okay.  Maybe the answer is only worth a few hundred dollars.)

Whatever the value, a variation of this question has generated a terrific discussion in the ASTD LinkedIn group. The original post from Donna Gilliland, President of MOSTraining, Inc. read:

“Online Live Training: what challenges do you face? Have you started delivering training live online training yet? If so, which of the following tools to you use?”

She listed:

• GoToWebinar
• WebEx
• Telspan
• Others? 

Then she asked, “What do you find to be your greatest challenge in training live online?”

Several people chimed in, all of whom seemed to be focused on two key areas:

• Presenters’ skills
• Tools/technology

What’s missing here?!?

CONTENT!!!

Yes, I’ll keep preaching this. Yes, my face is blue from repeating it over and over. And no, I’m not tired of repeating myself quite yet.

Why is content so important?

Because if your content doesn’t match the delivery mode, it doesn’t matter how interesting, entertaining, adept, practiced, experienced or knowledgable your instructor/facilitator/trainer is, the online event will fail. Completely.

If your content doesn’t match the delivery mode, it doesn’t matter how many polls, chat and breakout rooms you use, how pretty your slides are, or whether you use phone or VOIP, the online event will fail. Utterly.

So I’ll say it again: your content needs to be presented in a way that enables your learners to learn. Sounds obvious, but failing to do this is the primary reason most online events fail.

Webinars are a great example. They’re easy to conduct and attend, relatively inexpensive, and everyone seems to be offering them. Even when they should be doing something else (see When A Webinar Is a Bad Idea).

Only after you’re sure you have decided on the best delivery mode for the content you’re training should you be thinking about how you’ll handle the technical side of things, and choose the instructor.

Period. End of discussion.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some pink back into my face