For a while now, I’ve been pondering the answer to the question – Why are LMS vendors so unhelpful? I don’t think anyone in our industry disputes that idea – pretty much everyone across the board agrees that customer service is a problem for LMS vendors.
Just the other day, we were talking to a LMS administrator for a large defense contractor because we provided him our compliance training course files to install on his LMS. When I asked for his candid assessment regarding his relationship with his LMS vendor, he replied, “Let’s just say this. I put in a support ticket and I never get a call back.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this refrain.
After giving it a lot of thought – here’s my answer to this question. Most of the LMS vendors are structured as a traditional technology company, meaning they produce a technical application that solves a general business problem. Similarly, the organizational design of their workforce follows the traditional technology workforce, e.g., for customer service they have customers submit a support ticket and they’ll troubleshoot an issue on their own system. Here’s the problem – most HR technical systems are self-contained touch a limited amount of people. Your payroll and HR systems of record affect a small team of database administrators. In contrast, the LMS affects every person in the company and a variety of third parties as well. You may have 20 different desktop and browser configurations that will impact how the e Learning Management System serves up courses. You may have 50+ third party content vendors, webinar providers and trainers that need to interact successfully with the Learning Management System. The LMS is a much more complicated endeavor because so many different types of people use it every week. And, is a learner’s desktop or browser configuration a problem with the LMS? If a LMS administrator isn’t technical and tries to copy and paste the manifest file into the LMS instead of uploading the course files into the system – is that a LMS problem? Of course not. It’s a specific customer business issue, not a system issue. So, what happens? Customer service is not responsive since it’s not “their” issue. Read more...
It’s 2010; everyone knows that e-mails create permanent records which can be used against employers, right? Wrong. Sharing inappropriate jokes, discussing sensitive topics and using personal e-mail accounts at work are a continual problem in the workplace when it comes to e-mail use – and can be an employer’s worst nightmare. You can avoid litigation by making sure that everyone understands what’s allowed, what isn’t and the consequences for violating your company’s policy.
Tips on avoiding litigation
* Don’t share inappropriate jokes. This must be old news to everyone at this point, right? Unfortunately not. Recent studies show that nearly 97% of all employees now have access to the Internet and that most employees spend between five and ten hours per week using their personal e-mail accounts – which often result in the sharing of “jokes” that are simply too good not to share. What’s one joke, right? The sad truth is that many employees continue to believe that doing so is harmless or that the information will disappear forever by simply hitting the delete button. Yikes!
* Avoid sensitive topics. When discussing sensitive topics such as accusations of workplace discrimination, it’s smart to avoid those discussions via e-mail as they can, and likely will, be used against you. Imagine e-mailing your boss and admitting that someone dropped the ball when investigating a sexual harassment matter – or even worse – let it continue because someone was too busy to look into it? Legal experts say that’s it often better to meet in person for those conversations. Harassment training can go a long way in preventing this from happening.
* Understand privacy issues with personal e-mail accounts. Most employees use e-mail as their primary source of workplace correspondence. Some continue to believe that using their personal e-mail accounts on Yahoo!, G-mail or messaging through Twitter and Facebook while at work are private. Not necessarily so. According to a report on National Public Radio (NPR), that data is likely saved to your company’s hard drive – often creating a permanent record. So, an employee using their Yahoo! account to tell a friend about the workplace harassment they’ve witnessed can come back to haunt you. Read more...
Since all commercially viable Learning Management Systems basically offer the same core capabilities … namely the ability to enroll learners (in-mass or based on criteria), launch SCORM-compliant learning content, track and report on learner progress, track costs and ROI, and manage all of the communications and coordination surrounding training efforts a logical assertion is that the cost of the LMS offering is a key differentiator. However, the current price compression trend continues in the market, with ‘per learner’ pricing now generally falling in the $20-$60 range where the upper range formerly extended to $100 or more. Consequently, two other key considerations are offered here to guide informed decisions relative to the LMS selection/purchasing process:
SPEED or time-to-deliver results there is a broad range of startup cycle times between and among the dozens of good LMS platforms on the market. As analyst Bersin & Associates stated in their latest annual study of the eLearning market”.
The larger Learning Management System providers’ own marketing collateral states the typical SaaS-LMS implementation takes 4-6 weeks to go live.” Given the almost paradoxical need for businesses to be highly responsive during highly unpredictable business cycles, and that one area of responsiveness is the ability to train quickly on new skills, procedures and/or best practices, it would seem that 4-6 weeks to get an LMS up and running could be problematic. The good news is that there are a handful of LMS providers that have streamlined their offerings to allow for a full implementation – including administrator training and regulatory compliance training – to occur in one week or less – and these providers should therefore be given major consideration. Read more...
When it comes to finding the right voice talent for your television promo, it is just as important to have a well written script as it is to have a great voice talent to deliver your message. Keep in mind that the voice talent does not need to be an expert on what they are reading, they only need to use the correct inflection and emphasis throughout the script. As long as the script is well written, a professional voice talent will be able to sound knowledgeable and believable during the promo.
Instead of rushing out to find an expert in your industry to read your script, instead think about the message you are trying to portray with the promo. Is the promo trying to convey a light hearted message, perhaps about a new television comedy coming to your network? Make sure that the voice talent you select can read your script in a tone that matches your marketing goals. While experience is a key issue, direction of a voice over talent is also very important. Inflection and tone of a delivered promo piece is paramount. Obviously the delivery of a serious issue such as creating noise around a political special interest group will be considerably different from a new movie promo.
Whatever the purpose and intention of your radio or television promo, a good pairing between script, voice talent, and direction is essential. Even if you do not have a specific voiceover talent in mind, your script should be written in such a way that only a small handful of deliveries will mesh with the message. From there, it will simply be a matter of listening to demos to find out if any voice talents interested in your job are able to convey the message in the tone your company needs. If the demo recordings sitting on your desk do not hold your interest, it might be time to take your search online. Credible voice talents will have sample demos available for your production team to preview, until you find the voice talent that fits your promo’s script. Read more...
With the popularity of Flash quiz, more features and functions are added to quiz maker. Time limit is one important property of quiz settings. It enables users to set time for the entire test and also for the individual question, so that the test gets a strict time limitation and a good guarantee of the fairness in the process of taking a quiz.
Users can set time limit for the whole test; thus all the participants must finish the quiz in due time. If it is out of time, quiz takers can’t answer the question any more. Compared with this function, the time limit for each question seems to make the quiz more efficient in time control. People are also able to set different time limit for each question. Users can adopt this function in several situations like the following ones.
1. Avoid cheating.
Once the quiz publisher adds proper time limit to each question, the participants will get no extra time to cheat through searching internet or books for answers. Quiz participants would probably just get enough time to take the quiz by themselves, so the fairness can be comparatively well guaranteed.
2. Make strict time-limit questions.
Some tests require the strict time limit in parts of the questions such as the part called “Fast Reading” in language test. Thus it is necessary to set the time limit for each question in the quiz. Also because of the powerful time control, time limit can add more fun to quiz game. To save testing time, it is also necessary to set different time limit for the questions according to the level of difficulty.
There are various uses of the quiz with time limit for each question. To make this function well served, users need to pay attention to some details:
1. Set proper time limit.
Never set the time too short or too long. If it is too short, the quiz takers may not get enough time to answer the question and feel nervous; if too long, the setting of time limit for each question is meaningless at last. Before making the time limit, users are supposed to set the clear purpose of the quiz, evaluate the questions, and also know more about the basic feature of target participants.
2. Offer time limitation instruction clearly to participants.
The quiz with time limit for each question has the strict constraint on time. If the participants overlook or don’t know that, they may not finish the quiz in time, and it can result in a failure in test. Users can use the function called “blank page” to add the time limitation instruction for the quiz.
Quiz makers are easy to find in the market. There are online Webs and also the standalone software can help you to create quizzes, but few can support the time limit for each question well. The following quiz maker software are worth trying: QuizCreator and articulate QuizMaker.
