Learning and Skills Group Webinar

- Lessons in Choosing Your Ideal Learning Systems Platform and Partner

Whether its choosing an LMS or an e-learning authoring platform, organisations often spend many months researching the market and trying to select the right vendor partners. 

But even the best RFP process or functional requirements document is only part of the story, and organisations often still choose products that they struggle to implement or end up replacing within a short period of time. 

Based on Elearnity's corporate research, David Wilson discussed some of the key reasons why companies sometimes choose the wrong solutions or partners, and how to avoid repeating their mistakes.

• What to look for in your potential vendors and how different are they anyway?
• How useful is a Magic Quadrant?
• Best of breed versus best fit and value for me
• The key factors influencing successful outcomes
• What are the bad scenarios, leading to bad choices?

If you missed the LSG webinar you can have a look at David's slide deck and get a sense of how to enrich your selection process and decision making.

 delivr.com/1dotz

For further reading You can also download our selection and procurement ViewPoint "Functionality Is not Enough", which will also give you additional insights into how to make successful selections.

http://www.elearnity.com/EKCLoad.htm?load=ByKey/DWIN8DEF32

Get a Free Summary Perspective

Yesterday we put our first Summary Perspectives reports up onto our website. So, you can now download them for FREE!   No cost.

But, why would you want an Elearnity Perspective anyway? What are they?  Why have we published them?


Well, we know how time consuming and expensive vendor research can be - we do it all the time, reviewing solutions from the key players in the learning technology market to get an unbiased insight into the solutions they provide. Elearnity’s Vendor Perspectives are the only in-depth, independent analysis of learning technologies and innovation for organisations based in the UK and EMEA. 
These reports are invaluable whether you are:

•  Assessing your options into new approaches
•  Re-evaluating an existing solution
• Keeping track of new suppliers and product, or
• Simply re-affirming choices you’ve already made

We independently find out everything you need to know. 

So now when you’re evaluating learning technology solutions, you’ve got a short-cut to expert insights, analysis and inside information that will help you make the right decisions.  

If you would like to explore our Perspectives you can look at them at www.elearnity.com/perspectives.html.

Vendor Perspectives 2012

We're pleased to announce that Elearnity is publishing its first series of Vendor Perspectives. These new reports provide the only in-depth, independent analysis of learning technology vendors with a UK/European focus.

We've been analysing and advising on learning technology solutions on the front line for over 15 years, helping organisations such as Boots UK, Lloyds Banking Group and Vodafone choose the right vendor partners and achieve real results. Recognising the diverse and often complex nature of the learning technology market, the team has created Elearnity’s Vendor Perspectives to help organisations take a short-cut to understanding the realities of different vendor solutions.

Learning Technology is a specialist market, with a wide range of vendors offering competing solutions. Telling the difference between vendors is difficult. Whether you’re brand new to the market, or already have experience, it is still difficult to get an independent expert view of which vendors you should consider, and how good they really are at delivering in a complex environment. We’ve been helping corporate clients do this for years, but wanted to make this knowledge more accessible to a wider audience and help organisations to find the best solutions faster.

So what is Vendor Perspectives? 

Vendor Perspectives review solutions from key players in the learning technology market to provide an unbiased insight into the solutions they provide. The reports capture the experiences of Elearnity’s corporate research network, as well as analysis from our independent vendor briefings.  This is shared using ‘5-star’ ratings and analyst commentary of 30+ different factors covering: Market Presence and Scalability, Ease of Delivery, Enterprise Flexibility, Solution Capability, Corporate and User Experience, and Cost.

Uniquely, the Vendor Perspectives are created with a UK/European not US focus. Most research that is available is dominated by input from the United States. Within the UK and Europe, this information often has limited relevance and value; it is often quite superficial, and doesn’t focus on the specific challenges faced by multi-national companies, or the local capabilities of the vendors in Europe. That’s exactly what Elearnity’s Vendor Perspectives do.

To quote one of our corporate clients, Gary Bellamy, Head of Learning Technologies at Lloyds Banking Group, ”I have worked with Elearnity for a number of years because we simply couldn’t find the same in-depth knowledge of the learning technologies market anywhere else. The team has much real-world experience of seeing how solutions work in action which I have found invaluable when separating fact from fiction in the market. Anyone involved in implementing learning or technology solutions should use the Vendor Perspectives to get an independent and instant insight into the solutions that exist in the market today.”

We’re hoping that downloading the reports will save organisations the time and expense of carrying out research themselves, and assist in the decision making process by providing real-world insights and a level of detail you won’t find anywhere else (even if we do say so ourselves!). 

The first set of reports will cover core areas, with more to follow:

•          Learning Management Systems (LMS)
•          E-learning authoring systems
•          Bespoke e-learning contentOur Summary Perspectives will be available from 1^st February. So watch this space for updates and be the first to have a look at the very latest learning technology analysis and insight. 

Also see our website for more information.

Mobile Learning - All Talk?

What is the reality of mobile learning in corporate learning organisations?

At the start of 2011, it was widely thought that this would be the year when mobile learning, or m-learning, would reach a tipping point and become part of mainstream learning solutions.

So, surrounded by all the hype, what actually is the reality at the end of the year?

What is its role in the learning mix?

What are the key opportunities and challenges in the adoption of mobile learning technologies?

In this Insights Report we explore the realities of mobile learning in EMEA corporates; the trends, challenges and opportunities.

To download and read our free report, simply follow the link below.

http://www.elearnity.com/EKCLoad.htm?load=ByKey/DWIN8PJEHL

Providence looks to chalk up Blackboard for $1.64 Billion

It is thought provoking that an e-learning company would be worth $1.64 Billion, in cash. But that's exactly what Providence Equity Partnership have valued Blackboard for, in their recent acquisition offer.

Blackboard have historically been the dominant player in the educational VLE market, although over the past year they have been losing a significant proportion of their market share to open source alternatives such as Moodle and Sakai.

So, what does this mean for EMEA based corporates?

Is this shift in ownership going to create some ripples, this side of the pond?

In the short term, not really. Blackboard isn't a name that has really been that visible in the EMEA enterprise sector. Their academic model, hasn't attracted much interest outside of the academic world in Europe.

But, looking further out, this could be a turning point for Blackboard, and could mean the start of a a sea change in the LMS market.

With the Learning Management System market-place moving increasingly towards a more holistic, talent and performance story, corporate talent networks, and collaborative work-based learning approaches; Blackboard's VLE functionality could become much more attractive, if Blackboard moves some of its focus from managing semester based education programmes to supporting the corporate learning context.

Augmented Reality and Learning

Augmented Reality seems to have hit the headlines. And if you aren't sure what that is, the ever popular Rory Cellan-Jones, has just produced an article for the BBC website explaining everything.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13558137

If you consider this technology through the eyes of Corporate Learning the potential impacts for Employee Performance Support (EPS) and Just In Time learning are massive; even truly mind boggling; especially in a technical environment and product rich environment where the learners could even be the customer.

But, who in the e-learning world is ready to address this opportunity?

With all the fixation on mobile content being about taking more traditionally focussed push and pull traditional materials to the learner, and collaboration this is obviously an opportunity for someone to exploit.

But, to some extent for developers of this Learning Content, it also means thinking about how you manage learning content very differently from how you do today. It will mean meta-tagging, data warehousing a rich set of assets... and I can't see most e-learning developers both internally for externally being nimble enough to be thinking less about layout on the screen and nice story based interactions and more about creating a rich, contextual learning ecosystem that is triggered at point of contact.

Augmented Reality could really revolutionise the way everyone one learns... and shift the reality of everyone in L&D... particularly those who have a product or physical context, but it means rethinking what the training departments is about and how it fundamentally operates...

Goodbye Articulate......

Hello... ????? well.. who knows...

Our Learning Technologies 2011 Videos

It's just over a month ago that we presented at the Learning Technologies Conference 2011.

In many ways it seemed like a distant memory; well that was up until Stephen Clee drew our attention to the conference videos that are now available online, and all the memories came flooding back - supported by the relevant slide deck..

Naturally, to anyone other than a complete egotist, the prospect of watching yourself back on video is about as comfortable a feeling as a queuing up for a triple root canal at your dentist.

Thankfully for the spectator tho, the videos are perfectly painless and pleasantly informative.

The Elearnity Presentations are in the links I've attached below, but the entire conference line up is available for your delectation.

The Changing Learning Technologies Landscape - David Wilson

The Key Steps to Selecting Suppliers and Systems - David Perring

The full 2011 Conference Video Archive

It's not quite Oscar material, but it's entertaining all the same.

Enjoy.

David