From your experience what is the perception of the Learning Management System's among employers?

The big prices that corporations pay to deploy LMS's reflect that their main driver is regulation and compliance (i.e. to demonstrate in a valid way to scary government authorities that required training has been done). At least this is true in the life science environment, that I operate in.

The question about whether employees login or not is not really relevant to this situation; they have to login and do the relevant stuff required, as a condition of being certified to work. 

However, there is a whole load of stuff that can be done beyond that simple need, from within the LMS environment. L&D people realise that learning options that are not in the regulatory sphere, need to attract employees with interest and intrigue, not mandatory instructions. But most of the HR/L&D people I speak to are still irritated in some way or other; LMS functionality is continuously improving but in the end it is still ultimately built for manufacturers that need to follow rules, not learning wizards who want to be creative.

Interesting answer John.

I wonder what percentage of L&D courses are initiated where compliance is the main driver. If you had to guesstimate - what would it be?

So, what do "learning wizards who want to be creative use"?

My guesstimate covers mandatory eLearning, which includes compliance but also formal accreditation of skills. Percentage of courses initiated - i would say around 30%. But to note, if you look at the percentage of courses that are largely completed by learners - the latter would make up around 80%. These sorts of courses are nowhere near as dull as they all used to be, but they are necessarily more traditionally authored and deployed because of consistency.

L&D people who want to do something more creative can often find useful gamification, referencing and other related features in the LMS's, but frequently they are using workarounds here and there to get around aspects that the LMS can't manage. For example they might have to use Survey Monkey as their LMS survey tool is so basic. Collection of information out of Storyline, for example, is frequently limited to what result slides can generate - fine for many applications but not completely customisable. I do suspect that all this will change in the coming few years.

Thanks for your informative answer John.

One more quick question, is "gamification" a learning modality  in itself or is it just a way to describe a learning process which uses points and competition? For example, quiz questions can be a learning modality but they can be also gamified?

Peter

Going to address both questions here. I don't have a ton of experience in L&D, being a relative newbie (5 years), but I've worked extensively with LMSes, both internally and externally.

1. In my opinion, too many employers launch LMS implementation without really planning what they will use it for. This means the L&D team, and by extension the entire organization, use the system to basically track basic compliance for annual required training, rather than being utilized as a tool for professional development. Before buying an LMS, organizations should have competencies designed, and have curriculum created to enhance those competencies.

2. Gamification is whatever you make of it. A quiz can be gamification if you make it achievement based (like, instead of getting 85% on a quiz, scatter the questions and grant 'experience points' for each right answer, and make the user 'level up', etc). Gamification can also be used on a macro scale with badges or even internal certificates :)

Thanks Trevor. I would imagine not having a curriculum and then buying an LMS is putting the cart before the horse.

LMS and gamification remind me a lot of the Cloud circa 8 years ago.

I work in the IT solutions field and customers would contact me saying "I want to go to the Cloud" and my next question would be "why". And their response would be "um...I don't know" but " competitor XYZ are using Cloud" Then, I would ask them  (nicely) their definition of the Cloud...to which they would not have a robust answer either. So do you think "gamification" and "LMS" are  in this bracket of "we don't know what we want to achieve... but we need to use an LMS and gamification anyway"?

Employers Perspective: LMS are too expensive for the effort, can't customize it to get what is needed, analytics and reporting are of no value, hear too many problems of obtaining info between systems (HRIS, Talent, Performance, etc) and the LMS, it is an expensive Excel activity, why do we need to upgrade/replace the LMS again - who made that bad decision to begin with etc etc.

Problem Areas: IT understands systems but not L&D yet they drive many of the LMS decisions; ISD and L&D people are involved in LMS decisions/selections but don't really want to know and understand the technical issues. Many companies have multiple LMSs and the same course does not play on each LMS without much aggravation and fixes - managers get to hear the complaints and finger pointing begins.

Potential Futures: cloud LMS with added L&D services, integrated analytics, integrated performance metrics, above average manager dashboards so the manager can obtain what they need without asking anyone, easy add-on like xAPI services and a solid means to track all of the microlearning/adaptive learning that is here.

LMS's sound like great fun!

Yeah, I think people like Josh Bersin are predicting that LMS platforms will get integrated with platforms like Salesforce. This would not surprise me at all.