DEATH OF LMS
Obituary in the queue…
(Year 2007 report by www.elearningguild.com)

www.elearningguild.com is premier organization that provides research report on various facets of e-learning. In their latest report on LMS they have clearly cited reasons as to why LMS approach will die.

The extracts clearly indicate that power is NOT in content distribution (which LMS does) BUT in CONTEXUALIZATION of content.


Page 136: Chapter Title: LMS Survival Guide: Evolve or Die
Section title: Say Goodbye to LMS

Relevant Extract:
The problem, as I unconvincingly kept describing to him, was that the potential buyers in corporations are in silos. There were very few – if any – companies in the marketplace organizationally positioned to take advantage of “a holistic solution.”
Corporations are actively working toward integrating these silos in a unified, talent management vision. And the vendors recognize it; consolidation toward an integrated talent management technology suite (ITM) has already started.

However it eventually happens, everyone should be prepared to say goodbye to the term “learning management system,” though. It’s almost comical how many LMS companies have so quickly changed their company description in the last six months to get rid of “LMS.” Take a moment and read the “About Us” section of the leading LMS – whoops, I mean ITM – players in the industry.

How many can realistically claim that they are the “only” fully integrated suite?

Page 143: Chapter Title: What an LMS Can’t Do for an Organization
Section title: Analysis of the business outcomes impacted by training

• What are the business outcomes we want our training programs to support?
• How aligned are these training programs with supporting the job roles and processes needed to achieve these business outcomes?
• How will the organization support these business outcomes, in both the informal and formal learning domains?
• Do the training programs support the total learning process a learner experiences when attempting to achieve these business outcomes?

According to Dr. Conrad Gottfredson, there are five “Moments of Learning Need” which should be addressed throughout the learning process. This table outlines them:

• When Learning for the First Time
• When Wanting to Learn More
• When Trying to Remember
• When Things Change
• When Something Goes Wrong
  

The first two are areas that formal training has been addressing for years. When someone learns something for the first time they have little to no background in the topic they are about to learn. They are often highly dependent learners and find classroom instruction quite effective in meeting their needs, although e-Learning has also started to find an application here as well. When a learner moves into the second area of wanting to learn more they are still attempting to learn new information, but they now have a base of understanding to work from. They still tend to prefer classroom instruction if they can find it, but again, e-Learning has done a fine job here.

Your training programs may not be being addressing the final three areas as effectively as you may think, or would like. Trying to remember is not a learning moment as we’ve traditionally viewed it. It’s a time when a learner simply needs some form of support, which specifically targets the process or task being attempted or applied.

One defining difference here from formal instruction is immediacy and context.

Many traditional programs don’t address these areas as well as they should. The design of many of these programs, including e-Learning, attempts to train, not support. They are often difficult to navigate, and take learners out of the business context and problem they are trying to solve. Similar moments of need occur when things change, or when things go wrong. They fall on the support side of learning, and not on the training side. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t some training involved or needed, it simply points to a different level of access and relevance when it comes to how we need to access and design the content.

In all three of these cases an organization should consider a support framework which effectively addresses these very different forms of support.

Will the LMS solution you have implemented support all five areas? Many contain the information needed for the first two, which are often associated with formal instruction, but do they engage the learner at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way to meet the needs of the final three?

The important thing here is to not confuse the availability of learning content with its effectiveness,
both in its design and contextual application. For years we confused access with effectiveness.

The five needs outlined above show that the same learning content may need different accessing or designing to be effective in all five. Just because some content is effective when we first learn something doesn’t mean that it will be as effective when things change, or when a learner is attempting to apply what they’ve learned to their specific outcomes.

secondary, and tertiary education but also of adults for “life-long learning” should be included.