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You’ve put quite a bit of time and effort into the planning of the corporate university and you may have already spent some of your budget money. The next best practice to consider is the structure of the corporate university, which includes policies, procedures, and standards. Let’s examine some common elements of a university structure.

First of all, a key point to keep in mind is that a corporate university is not like a regular university. Regardless of the name, your corporate university is still based on creating value and not just delivering academics. If your planning process gets too complicated, step back and look at the university entity with this key point in mind. But in the meantime, you should definitely create a structure that includes policies, procedures, and standards.

What policies will the corporate university and its learners have to adhere to? For example, will you set a class size minimum for delivery? If not, you may find that instructors are engaged to teach classes for two people versus 12, which may not be cost effective. What about an honor system code for training, especially online training that may be reportable, such as compliance. It may seem silly to think this way, but some learners will “cut corners” if given the opportunity, so putting them on guard to begin with is a good way to start. On the other hand, does the corporate university plan to become a cost center and charge for training or no shows? If so, what are the rates for this going to be and how will you determine the rate for each course offering? Consider how far in advance a learner needs to cancel his or her course registration. If you’ve set class minimums, you may need to consider a timeline policy to avoid engaging instructors when there are too few learners. In relation to grades, is the university going to determine a passing score for courses, such as 80%, or will courses be offered on a pass-fail or attend-did not attend basis? And also keep in mind that any new hire offerings may need to fall not only under the university but also human resources if participants have to pass to keep their jobs. (more…)

Social media is a big part of our lives, and it is the future of learning and development. The Internet and social media allow people to blog, tweet, collaborate, post video and content, discuss, and even rate experiences. Training and development should be ready to embrace these things and use them constructively as part of the learning framework. In fact, you may start to see a newer term in relation to Learning Management Systems: SLMS, or Social Learning Management System.

Depending on your vendor, new media features may be part of your LMS. Or, you may choose to create applications internally and apply them as part of the LMS. Some organizations may even make the learning open source, that is, part of Facebook or Twitter. However you incorporate social media, you should first and foremost create a culture that supports social media. In other words, get buy-in on the use of social media from stakeholders and audiences. And if you use it, find a way to both monitor information and measure its effectiveness.  Let’s discuss some social media interactions that you can incorporate into your  Social Learning Management System. (more…)

A Learning Management System can be a valuable tool for not only your internal customers, but also your external customers. Consider with whom your organization does business. Do you have clients or customers who purchase your products or services, such as machines, software, or business processes? Do you have suppliers, vendors, or contractors who need to be aware of how your organization does business? What about partner organizations? Do you share business or process with other organizations? All of these questions can help you determine who your external customers are-and how you can employ your LMS to help them.

First, let’s look at one of the more obvious LMS features when it comes to external customers: training delivery. Suppose you have new process initiatives, new products, or upgrades to existing products, like software. You can use your LMS to link customers directly to your training via notifications. In fact, why not set up curricula or course “cores” for your clients? This could be an excellent sales tool: consider the impact when the sales team can say, “and here’s your customized training plan for our products”. If your courses and data are set up correctly, your customers can manage their training just like you do via your LMS. And remember that you can also schedule training that may not be delivered via the LMS, such as Webinars or classroom training, via your LMS. Some organizations look at their customers as simply another learner group within the organization’s existing family. Why not carry this into the training and development function using an LMS? (more…)

Your LMS can manage various aspects of your training life cycle as well as content. Consider how much manual management is involved with curriculum development and management, career-pathing, certifications, testing, and evaluation. With an LMS, once these items are in place you can allow the system to manage and track all of them. Let’s look at each of these functions a little more closely.

In relation to curricula, the LMS enables you to build curricula based on business unit, position, or other criteria, and then place each curriculum on the system. When someone is hired or moves into a position, he or she will get access to that curriculum. From there, each learner, and his or her manager, can work on completing courses and learning interventions that better prepare them for the job. Some organizations may even have multiple curricula for one person. For example, your organization may require every employee to go through “basic training” in your industry or company. Then, you may have a curriculum that goes with that person’s job or job group. Your LMS helps you manage all of these. (more…)

One of the most effective abilities of an LMS relates to your online learning content. Your LMS can help you not only to deliver and manage content, but also to develop it. And it typically does not matter what the source of the content is; most LMS vendors provide pathways for their own content, your internally developed content, and externally licensed content, as well.

First, content development can be an important part of your learning initiative. Suppose you’ve decided to develop your own eLearning content. Without a content authoring tool, provided by and LMS, you’ll have to develop courses in HTML or using another content authoring software, and then package the courses into SCORM-compliant formats. Although this may be a preferred way of doing things, an LCMS that provides content authoring can cut this process down in time and cost. With a content authoring tool, your edited content becomes course-ready as it’s being created in the system. In this way, it also becomes ready to deliver upon completion. In some organizations, both Instructional Designers and Subject Matter Experts have access to content authoring. However you do it, content development via and LCMS allows you to provide rapid deployment for just-in-time initiatives, plus the ability to customize and brand the content to your organization and its various audiences. (more…)

In today’s environment, your learning and development department must be many things to many people. Managing that environment may have become difficult, but Learning Management Systems are making all facets of training management more efficient-and easier. In this series, we are going to examine the Learning Management System as the foundation of your training initiative, so let’s look at the basics first.

You may have seen or heard terms relating to learning management, like LMS or LCMS, or content management. To begin with, an LMS is a Learning Management System, while and LCMS is a Learning Content Management System. Both provide virtually the same services with one major exception: content development. An LCMS usually has a content development “engine”, which allows you and your staff to develop eLearning content in the system and have it available for delivery fairly quickly. So what are the available features with Learning Management Systems? Keep in mind, we will discuss each of these features in detail in this series. (more…)