This is a post made to the yahoo group elearningleaders. I started the post and seemed to have generated some discussion. My original note is below and the ensuing conversation follows. ENJOY!
I have been a long time "listener" of the group, but this is my first
post.
Our company is a e-Learning content developer and integrator
exclusively for the legal industry. We went to the ASTD Conference
in New Orleans yesterday just to see what was going on. From someone
who is in the industry, I was extremely disappointed in what I saw
from the national e-Learning leaders.
If I had one more firm come up to me and tell me that they were a
blended learning solution featuring an LMS that no one else could
touch for $50K, I would have thrown up my beignets :-). We have long
taken the posture in our business that the LMS functionality is not
really more than just a reporting tool and that within the next two
years, LMSs will be religated to obscurity in relation to what really
matters in e-Learning . . . CONTENT! Is it that I don't get it or
is the industry off its rocker. It seems like to get firms to adopt
e-Learning that the national providers are making firms make huge
technology decisions and investments in the least important thing
(the LMS) before they can deliver the most important thing (the
content). Big firms could develop pilot implementation with any
hosted solution so that the firm had literally no technology risk
associated with e-Learning.
We are working with a company that has actually developed a freeware
LMS that will be released in July. It is not sexy, but it runs on
linux and is free and has most of the functionality that any firm
would use.
I would like some constructive criticism and/or validation of my
points here.
Thanks.
Alan
Alan Lange
VP Business Development
Way2Smart
alange@way2smart.com
601-981-1644 (v)
I'll dive into this very lively discussion... [with brackets]
--- In elearningleaders@y..., Clark Quinn
wrote:
> Alan,
>
> > If I had one more firm come up to me and tell me that they were a
> > blended learning solution featuring an LMS that no one else could
> > touch for $50K, I would have thrown up my beignets :-). We have
long
> > taken the posture in our business that the LMS functionality is
not
> > really more than just a reporting tool and that within the next
two
> > years, LMSs will be religated to obscurity in relation to what
really
> > matters in e-Learning . . . CONTENT!
[ The end to end solution in e-learning is still not understood. The
term blended learning is, well, lame. Worse than that, it has been
appended as noted here to the same solution offerings we had before
the term became trendy. Learning is learning, it has always been
blended, that fact has been so obvious that no one bothered to
mention it before in the context of e-learning. We should not pride
ourselves in the fact that it took the industry 3 or 4 years to
acknowledge the obvious reality that learning has and does encompass
a range of tools, environments and approaches. The e behind all of
that equates to technology]
> And when I worked for an LMS provider, we would say that anyone can
(and
> everyone does) write content, but it's how you track and manage it
in ways
> that makes sense to the learner and their managers that's important.
> Content is content, whether from a small house, a big house, or
internal.
[ yes and no - content is content, but not everyone writes it (and
more should be, reason why not we've made too hard and expensive).
Biggie here - not everyone needs to track all content and simply
knowing that x student flipped through 3 modules doesn't tell you
anything about whether they've learned it. That requires assessment
and guess what, a lot of folks don't even need that. The assumption
that all content need be passed through the most complex route is
wrong and limits success - nothing in the world sadder than a very
expensive e-learning solution deployed with a handful of 20 or 30
minute course which have little substance to them (not much more
content than powerpoints). ]
> The point is, content providers want to commoditize the L(C)MS, and
the
> L(C)MS vendors wants to commoditize content. It's about owning the
> relationship with the customer, really.
> Which *should* prevail? Heck, I don't know. Both should be
commodity's,
> and it's the service relationship that's king, from the customer's
point of
> view, I reckon...
[ the commodity should be end to end solutions with mulitple
(univeral services) content options ]
> > Is it that I don't get it or
> > is the industry off its rocker. It seems like to get firms to
adopt
> > e-Learning that the national providers are making firms make huge
> > technology decisions and investments in the least important thing
> > (the LMS) before they can deliver the most important thing (the
> > content). Big firms could develop pilot implementation with any
> > hosted solution so that the firm had literally no technology risk
> > associated with e-Learning.
[as noted in another post, the LMS emerged as a funded requirement
through trainign departments, not based on any analysis of what an e-
learning solution should or could be. ]
> Let me take the other side, just for argumentation sake.
Increasingly,
> we're getting tools so firms can create their own content. The
content
> firms will have to either get narrow margins to compete with inhouse
> development, or specialize in a narrow market of expertise. In
either case,
> they're not the major issue for the customer, who wants an end-to-
end
> solution (or so say the analysts).
[wrong view of content - there will always be a market for structured
educational content versus informal, internal etc. The advent of non-
fiction books, how to magazines didn't put educational content print
publishers out of business did it ? ]
As David Baucus has been saying, the
> real issue is who has the capability to integrate into a
comprehensive IT
> solution? I wouldn't bet on the content firms. Of course, I don't
expect
> the IT firms to really understand learning nor interfaces, so the
solutions
> from the vendors tend to fail on the user experience side.
[ The real issue is not the ability to integrate, that is the
byproduct of current reality in our market. The real issue is that a
framework for industry has yet to emerge, one that accurately
responds to a market need. We can keep slapping things together that
weren't really designed to work together but we sure as heck hope
that isn't the to be picture... ]
> In thinking about it (for the first time, really), I'd say that a
services
> firm (of which I'm not one) that has some IT folks, some learning
folks,
> some interface folks, and some business folks, would be the best
partner for
> a firm. (I've got a smattering of all, but mostly the learning and
> interface; anyone want to partner to build such a firm? :-)
[tough market for that... I think most clients are still waiting for
us to paint a good picture of how we're getting from a to z and
holding off on investments until they get an intelligent answer, I
can't say that I blame them ]
> > We are working with a company that has actually developed a
freeware
> > LMS that will be released in July. It is not sexy, but it runs on
> > linux and is free and has most of the functionality that any firm
> > would use.
>
> There's another available from some firm in Finland that is open
source and
> incorporates EML. I think you can find it from the EML site
(eml.open.ne)
>
> > I would like some constructive criticism and/or validation of my
> > points here.
>
> Hope this qualifies. All the best, -- Clark
[freeware implies more glueware integration - we need and industry
vision, right now ]
>
> --
> Clark Quinn, Ph.D.
> OtterSurf Laboratories
> "Better Learning Through Technology"
> clark@o...
> 925-200-0881
> http://www.ottersurf.com
