112 Lessons Learned in Implementing an LMS
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM Tuesday, March 26
Salon 10
Choosing your organization’s first learning management system is a daunting task. What features should you be looking for? What questions should you be asking? How much is too much to spend? And what happens after you make the decision? In many ways, implementing the LMS you’ve chosen can be even more daunting than making the initial selection.
This interactive session will explore some of the questions you should be asking and the features you should be looking for in an off-the-shelf LMS solution. Participants and facilitators alike will discuss some of the lessons learned in the selection process. From there you’ll discover what happens next during the implementation process: What stakeholders or departments need to be involved? What does the process look like? Where are the common pitfalls, and how can you avoid them?
In this session, you will learn:
- Questions to ask your potential LMS provider
- About common features to look for in your potential LMS provider
- About the implementation process, including other stakeholder involvement and timeline
- About common implementation issues and how to avoid them
Audience:
Managers and senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Technology discussed in this session:
Off-the-shelf LMS solutions
Vicky Hale
Chief Learning Officer
GAAP Dynamics
Vicky Hale is a director of eLearning at GAAP Dynamics. With a degree in accounting (and a minor in visual arts) from the University of Richmond, her path to the learning community has been nontraditional. Vicky began her career as an auditor at PwC and still holds an active CPA license. A desire for teaching and the need for a more creative outlet led her to GAAP Dynamics, where she spearheaded the company's eLearning initiative. She is passionate about instructing, accounting, eLearning, and marketing, and looking for ways to combine them all!
LaTarshia Wooten
Learning Experience Designer
LaTarshia Wooten is a learning experience designer with a background in communication and education media. She is passionate about helping others learn and understands the importance of reaching them on different platforms. She believes that learning should be fun, interactive, and provides value to the learner.
STP104 Overcoming the Challenge of Introducing an LMS to a Resistant Audience
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, March 26
Expo Hall: Tools & Platform Stage
Introducing a technology system like an LMS to internal or external audiences is always challenging. You will deal with resistance around the time commitment, reluctance to learn a new system, or just plain aversion to change. Perhaps most significantly, you may also need to influence the learning culture at an organization or among an external audience group. You can hit roadblocks at every turn: from communicating about the new system to designing new best practices and standards; from creating new processes and accountability systems to getting buy-in and building champions. How can you keep yourself on track to a successful LMS implementation and adoption?
This session will take you through all parts of an LMS implementation: vendor research and choice, design and build of the system, and rollout and adoption of the system. It will illuminate the variety of roadblocks that can arise. You will then review the tools and approaches available to LMS owners and administrators to overcome these roadblocks. You will have a chance to share your unique context and challenges, and work together to create solutions and approaches. You will learn how to focus on defining the learning culture at an organization or with an external audience group, and how to influence and shift that culture to guide success with your LMS.
In this session, you will learn:
- About roadblocks to anticipate when implementing your LMS
- How to address audience roadblocks to LMS implementation
- How to define a learning culture at an organization or external audience
- How to influence an organization’s or external audience’s learning culture
- How to market your new LMS to your audience
Audience:
Managers, senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.), and LMS admins and owners
Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems, internal wikis, and Google Suite tools
Emily Hicks-Rotella
Director, Learning Systems
New Leaders
Emily Hicks-Rotella is a director of learning systems at New Leaders, where she manages the technologies that facilitate professional development provided by her organization. She previously worked for five years at Teach For America and another five at Random House. Emily also runs her own consulting business helping nonprofit organizations learn and use technology.
SMM105 Is a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) Right For You?
2:00 PM - 2:45 PM Tuesday, March 26
Expo Hall: Management & Measurement Stage
Modern learning & development (L&D) organizations make it a priority to improve employees’ skills and enhance knowledge—not yearly or monthly, but continuously. These successful organizations have moved away from disconnected, rigid courses and instead enabled flexible, multi-purpose, agile learning content. By ensuring that their learning content is rich, dynamic, and personalized, they provide their teams with the tools to drive their own learning. As a result, the value of every content asset is maximized and production is streamlined. But many organizations struggle to find a way to enable this dynamic learning. Oftentimes learning content is stored in silos, making it difficult to find and reuse. Reviewing and updating courses is time-consuming, creating derivative courses is problematic, and version control is a nightmare. Distributing learning content in multiple formats (SCORM, PDF, ePub, HTML, XML, etc.) requires painstaking rework. Sound familiar?
Adopting a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) can help resolve these challenges by removing content silos; enriching your content assets to make them more discoverable and reusable; streamlining the course development, editing, and review processes; ensuring courses meet quality standards; and enabling team members to easily publish learning content across multiple channels.
Join us to learn how the right Learning Content Management System can benefit your organization and your employees.
In this session, you will learn:
- What a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) is
- The difference between an LMS and an LCMS
- How an LCMS can help you to better store, enrich, discover, assemble, reuse, analyze, and disseminate your learning content
- What an LCMS does and how it works
- If an LCMS is right for your organization
Technologies addressed:
Ixxus Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
Target audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, managers, and senior leaders
Stephen Casbeer
Principal Consultant
Ixxus
Stephen Casbeer, a principal consultant at Ixxus, is a senior technology and business transformation specialist who has extensive experience with content operations, content management and delivery systems, and a wide range of editorial and production technologies. He has led global organizations and advised executives on adapting to and benefiting from rapid change in the information industry, encompassing issues of business and technology strategy, process re-engineering, and organizational design.
Robert Gaggin
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Information & Content Solutions
Ixxus
Robert Gaggin is a senior product marketing manager at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). He is responsible for go-to-market strategy and execution, and marketing programs in support of the information & content services business unit. He contributes to the development, management, and marketing of CCC’s licensing and content management services for the learning market, including higher education, K-12, and corporate learning and development. Robert previously held marketing and editorial positions at Pearson, Cengage, and CISION.
312 The Quest for a New LMS
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Tuesday, March 26
Salon 15
A company’s learning management system contract was coming to an end. After thoroughly reviewing its effectiveness, the L&D organization concluded it was no longer meeting their needs and decided to replace it in order to improve the end-user and administrative experiences, offer better mobile capabilities, enhance reporting and data visualization, and better integrate with internal systems. Ultimately, they also wanted to accomplish this without increasing spending.
In this session, you will explore their LMS journey, uncover the pain points that indicate it may be time to replace your LMS, and discover strategies for creating a business case to solicit buy-in and support from key stakeholders. You will learn best practices to uncover a system that will best fit your company and explore the process of narrowing down the selection of platforms by not only creating a list of requirements, but also identifying use cases for each requirement, and ultimately making a final selection.
In this session, you will learn:
- The signs that can tell you it may be time to switch LMSs
- How to build a business case to get buy-in
- Best practices when shopping for an LMS
- How to narrow down your selection and choose a platform that fits your company’s needs
- About technologies available in different platforms
- About integration possibilities
Audience:
Designers, managers, and senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Technology discussed in this session:
Absorb LMS, Adobe Captivate Prime, Docebo, Totara, Saba, Open Sesame, Lynda, and Harvard Manage Mentor
Margharita Nehme
Learning Experience Specialist
Evident Learning
Margharita Nehme is a Certified Professional in Talent and Development (CPTD) and an accomplished learning design and technology specialist. She holds a Master's of Educational Technology and has over 15 years of experience in providing results-driven and impactful learning programs. Her expertise includes the creation, execution, and evaluation of training programs, message design, and 2D animation, as well as the evaluation, selection, and implementation of enterprise learning ecosystems.
512 Extending Your Reach: Taking Your Training Content Beyond Your LMS
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM Wednesday, March 27
Salon 1
Training departments often are asked to serve more than just internal employees when it comes to product training efforts—from channel partner training to customer education. Creating, sharing, and maintaining valuable and accurate product training is critical, but managing this can quickly become more time-consuming and labor-intensive than you realize when you’re working with multiple LMSs and people that use other training systems. Sharing training across learning platforms can get complicated quickly. Is your content compatible with each LMS? Can the systems communicate? Is there a single source of truth for reporting?
Whether managing multiple LMSs supporting internal and external learners or across internal platforms, you’ll need a strategy for handling the various system behaviors and learner experiences you’ll encounter. This session will discuss the technical considerations for distributing training across multiple systems, including learner access, content delivery, course version control, and reporting. From this session, you will gain insight into implementing an extended enterprise content delivery plan to effectively expand the reach of your training content and measure results. Plus, you’ll find out how to navigate the various technical hurdles you’ll encounter along the way.
In this session, you will learn:
- What an extended enterprise model supports, and the potential value it can bring to your organization
- What questions to raise internally for defining potential audiences and defining the desired experience for non-employees
- About available options and tools that support an extended enterprise, cross-platform content distribution model
- About technical considerations and solutions to support a distributed content training model
- How to support content version control across platforms
- How to centrally manage training content across platforms
Audience:
Managers and senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Tammy Rutherford
Managing Director
Rustici Software
Tammy Rutherford is the managing director at Rustici Software, which helps eLearning companies work well together. Since joining Rustici Software in 2011, Tammy has advised hundreds of government agencies, eLearning vendors, content publishers, and organizations on strategies and software solutions for implementing and leveraging eLearning standards in their products and ecosystems. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, she has spent the past 25 years in various account management and marketing roles within the Nashville, Tennessee, business community.
SMM203 Sell and Distribute Your eLearning Content Anywhere
12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Wednesday, March 27
Expo Hall: Management & Measurement Stage
You've created your online SCORM or xAPI training program, and you want to sell it far and wide. You need to track student usage and be sure that customers are only using as many seats as you've sold them. How will you distribute it to many LMSs and keep it up to date? How will you ensure you’re getting paid enough, and what should you do if you’re not?
We’ll walk you through the challenges involved in loading and establishing the initial distribution, using Training Vault as a centralized content distribution platform to a variety of LMSs. We will discuss how to organize, separate, and license the amount of content to be used. We’ll take you through the risks and wins you can achieve with SCORM- and xAPI-based distribution, and how to gather learners' experience data to meet compliance criteria. You’ll construct a licensing management model and usage expectations from a technical and a client perspective, with Training Vault ensuring you are charging appropriately for your work.
In this session, you will learn:
- To centrally store and manage SCORM and xAPI content, one copy for everyone
- Ways to simplify sharing large content libraries with various providers
- To brand and customize content for various consumers
- How to license content packages across many platforms, including blocking and non-blocking techniques, as well as sales model approaches
- Auditing solutions for certification of learners
- Upgrade techniques that can be automatically distributed to some or all learners
Technologies that will be discussed:
Training Vault, learning management systems (various), content management systems (various), WordPress, Sharepoint
Target audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, and senior leaders
George Vilches
Principal Software Engineer
Rustici Software
George Vilches is president of JCA Solutions, an eLearning standards software expert consultancy. As a tech leader, his focus is on software platforms to provide the best integrations for content distribution and eLearning standard conformance. He oversees custom integration projects for SMB and enterprise companies looking to up their eLearning standards game. George teaches classes on SCORM and xAPI challenges, and integrating these technologies within myriad environments, and contributes to various xAPI and SCORM working groups.
612 The Top 10 Learning Systems for 2019
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Wednesday, March 27
Salon 5
With over 1,300 learning systems around the world, it is no longer easy to find the right one. As a result, buyers look at various resources for information but may be unaware that the right system for them exists. This session identifies the 10 best learning systems around the world, based on 19 criteria. Find out who ranks high for next-generation learning, learning engagement platforms, and skill-based learning.
In this session, you’ll learn about the top 10 learning systems around the world, including breakdowns by functionality, capabilities, next-gen tier rank, vertical ranking, type of system (e.g., LEP, sales enablement, LMS, learning platform, knowledge reinforcement, skills-based), target audience, and road map. You will receive a criteria template to use at your own organization, including details on how to use it, and gain insight into trends for the rest of 2019.
In this session, you will learn:
- Which systems rank in the top tier out of more than 1,300 around the world
- What each vendor offers: pros, cons, and independent analysis
- How to create your own criteria list based on a template
- How to establish a baseline of systems based on verticals
- Differences between the newest segments in the learning system space
- About the nuances of each system
Audience:
Managers and senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Technology discussed in this session:
Learning systems including LMSs, sales enablement, learning engagement platforms, learning platforms, training management/operations platforms, knowledge reinforcement tools, and employee engagement platforms
Craig Weiss
CEO
The Craig Weiss Group
Craig Weiss is the CEO and lead analyst for the Craig Weiss Group. He has been recognized by his peers as the most influential person in the world for learning systems and one of the most influential in the world for the eLearning industry. His blog is read in 174 countries, territories, and colonial territories. Craig speaks at conferences and companies around the world.
SMM205 Transform Your Employee Experience with Just-in-Time Learning
2:00 PM - 2:45 PM Wednesday, March 27
Expo Hall: Management & Measurement Stage
The average employee today relies on dozens of applications every day to do their job, each of which is constantly evolving. To complicate things, any change in process often span across multiple workflows or tools. The problem? There is no easy way for training teams to communicate these changes required for adoption. Documentation is often located in an LMS or manual, external to the systems in question, and is outdated almost instantly. It's also hard for the user to access in their moment of need, resulting in errors and frustration. In this session, we’ll explore the many corporate training trends that have come and gone over the years, and the one that’s here to stay: just-in-time learning.
Tasked with the responsibility of fixing our low Salesforce adoption and developing a training program for new hires that would keep up with our ever-changing processes, I knew something had to change. You’ll learn how implementing a just-in-time learning solution, which delivers bite-sized information at the point of friction when and where employees are likely to make mistakes, will transform your employee experience. Rewards include faster onboarding, higher software adoption, and easier change enablement.
In this session, you will learn:
- Why just-in-time learning matters
- How your customer experience starts with your employee experience
- How to drive adoption of Salesforce or other applications with just-in-time learning
- How to design documentation for just-in-time learning
- How to automatically create documentation from your CRM fields and objects
- How to centralize your system training to reduce content creation by up to 60%
Technologies discussed:
Salesforce and Spekit
Target audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced managers and senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Melanie Fellay
CEO & Co-Founder
Spekit
Melanie Fellay is the CEO and co-founder of Spekit. Spekit was born out of the first-hand pain that Melanie and her co-founder Zari felt trying to drive tool adoption and enabling employees using outdated and ineffective solutions that couldn't keep up with today's pace of growth and change. Melanie is a BizOps and Enablement enthusiast with expertise driving Salesforce transformations and architecting employee-centric learning solutions. She graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a degree in accounting & finance.
712 You Have Selected an LMS. Now What?
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Wednesday, March 27
Salon 1
Once we selected a new LMS, there were still a lot of questions to answer as we went about implementing it. How long does the average implementation take? Did we budget enough for cost? Who needs to be involved? How do we handle historical data and content metadata? Who is held accountable for meeting milestones and for ensuring a successful launch? All these and more were questions we had to think through to ensure a successful implementation. We had one shot at this and couldn't afford to fail.
In this session, you’ll get strategies for how to navigate through the intricate endeavor of switching from one learning management system to another, and learn from our experiences with our own LMS implementation. You’ll find out about some of the most common challenges you can expect, explore best practices to avoid implementation pitfalls, and find out ways to ensure a seamless implementation.
In this session, you will learn:
- About the different phases of an LMS implementation
- Who needs to be involved, and at what stage in the process
- How to avoid implementation pitfalls
- How to identify red flags
Audience:
Designers, managers, senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Technology discussed:
Adobe Prime, Single-Sign-On, ADP HRIS, Skillsoft content library
Margharita Nehme
Learning Experience Specialist
Evident Learning
Margharita Nehme is a Certified Professional in Talent and Development (CPTD) and an accomplished learning design and technology specialist. She holds a Master's of Educational Technology and has over 15 years of experience in providing results-driven and impactful learning programs. Her expertise includes the creation, execution, and evaluation of training programs, message design, and 2D animation, as well as the evaluation, selection, and implementation of enterprise learning ecosystems.