A corporate university must have some sort of unified delivery system for scheduling, online courses, classroom course schedules and descriptions, tracking, and instructor and facilities scheduling. It would be difficult to plan so heavily for the roll out of the corporate university only to find out that there is no way to deliver. So the next best practice is to purchase or build a Learning Management System (LMS).

Choosing an LMS is an important step for any Learning and Development organization. In fact, some organizations may already have a functioning LMS when they make the transition from training department to corporate university. But if you do not have an LMS, the setup phase of your corporate university is the time to buy, build, or “freeware” a system. You definitely don’t want to have to backtrack in order to catch up on scheduling, curriculum paths, and course tracking after the university is up and running.

The first step is to determine how you’ll use the LMS. Do your courses reside mainly online, in the classroom, or a mix of both? Do you want learners to have direct access to registration, curriculum plans, and career paths? Are you managing multiple locations, facilities, and instructors? Do you plan to include technology, such as blogs or social media, in the roll out of the corporate university? Will you want to include a content management system? All of these decisions will have an impact on what kind of LMS you choose.

Next, locate LMS vendors who share your vision and can provide the features you need. Take the time to price them out, contact their clients, and look over their company information before making a decision to bring them in. Once you’re ready, be sure to bring any potential LMS vendor in to your location to provide a live demo of their system and its features. Create a review committee to take part in the demos, review technical specifications, documentation, and contracts before you make any decisions. In fact, your review committee can be part of your corporate university stakeholders and sponsors group.

One of the issues you may face is the question of funds. But just because there is no money to purchase an LMS does not mean that there is no solution. There are LMSs that are offered as “freeware”, such as Moodle. Take the time to research and review free LMS systems, because they do work and can be used to meet basic needs with no customizations. On the other hand, if you have an IT department that is involved in the roll out of  the corporate university, ask them to spec out an in-house LMS. This may be a very effective way to get what you need in an LMS without having to pay for a vendor.

Once you’ve decided on an LMS, test it thoroughly well in advance of the corporate university rollout. Be certain that any data that has been entered or imported is correct before putting the LMS online for your learners. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is rolling out the corporate university with a badly functioning LMS.

Another consideration for the LMS is to use every feature you’ve ordered or had developed. For example, if you bought a content management system that allows for design of online courses, have your design team start developing online courses, quick reference guides, or even short online interventions that are designed to fit inside a classroom course. Avoid wasting money by wasting features.

Finally, as you develop your corporate university structure, you’ll want to make decisions about how the LMS will be administered. Some organizations choose to have an administrator, while others may hand the administration of the LMS to various people in various departments. The point with this step is to make these decisions early, knowing that you may need to have some flexibility as you move forward. Remember that some type of Learning Management System is a foundation of your corporate university, so spend some time on the various aspects of this important best practice.

Next, we will look at the inclusion of technology in the corporate university.

Copyright 2010 Your Training Edge. All Rights Reserved.

Bryant Nielson – Strategic Alliance & Acquisitions Director at Financial Training Solutions a division of CapitalWave Inc – offers 20+ years of training and talent management for executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Bryant is a trainer, business & leadership coach, and strategic planner for many sales organizations. Bryant’s 27 year business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering. Subscribe to his personal blog at: http://www.BryantNielson.com

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.

Next, determine course standards. What is the desired length for online and classroom courses? For example, online courses can be limited to 45 minutes or less and classroom courses can be limited to 3 hours. If this doesn’t work, will you want to have course material broken up into those types of “digestable” chunks? Or will course lengths depend solely on the content, the audience, and the specific delivery method?

Another consideration related to the corporate university structure is the standards that surround materials. You may have already worked with your marketing department to come up with color and design standards, but your instructional design team will need more specific standards. For example, you may want to choose different standards for different types of courses, such as technology versus customer service. Or you may want to set standards for Power Point presentations, such as graphics, fonts, and lengths. Consider online training as well: what types of graphics can be used in an online course? For example, will you use a 3-point callout box or a 2-point callout box? What grammar standards will be used throughout any training piece? This part of a corporate university structure may seem picky, but you want every piece of training to reflect a certain look and feel as well as the same standards. At this point, it may be a good idea to note that this task can be offloaded to the people who will be doing most of the course development.

Finally, what is the process for requesting training? Will you employ a standard front-end analysis and development timeline, or will you make decisions on a case-by-case basis? What process will you use to prioritize training needs? For example, each training manager may be responsible for accepting and prioritizing new training requests, or you may choose one person to handle the request and distribute it to the appropriate area for development and delivery.

Once you’ve decided on a structure, which, by the way, can be changed as the university changes, you’ll need to move on to a Learning Management System.

Copyright 2010 Your Training Edge. All Rights Reserved.

Bryant Nielson – Strategic Alliance & Acquisitions Director at Financial Training Solutions a division of CapitalWave Inc – offers 20+ years of training and talent management for executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Bryant is a trainer, business & leadership coach, and strategic planner for many sales organizations. Bryant’s 27 year business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering. Subscribe to his personal blog at: http://www.BryantNielson.com

Building out a corporate university may be one of the most daunting tasks a Learning and Development department faces. Creating the university is more than creating a training department – it involves the entire organization, its future, and even its perceptions of training and development. There are several best practices that you can follow in order to set up your corporate university effectively. This doesn’t mean that you have to follow each best practice, but use and modify them based on your organization and its needs. The first best practice is consistent and constant assessment and analysis.

One of the first assessments you’ll want to make is the need for a corporate university. Some Learning and Development departments are simply instructed to build a university, and if that’s the case you won’t need to assess this step. But if not, the idea to keep in mind is that you don’t want to create a corporate university for its own sake. Determine if the organization has various departments that need curriculum paths and courses just for those areas. In addition, you’ll want to discover if cross-training and succession planning are part of the organization’s future. Even more importantly, is the organization looking for new ways to retain employees, especially by enticing them to become “mobile” within the organization’s structure? If your organization fits this description, you may be a prime target for a corporate university.

Once you’ve made the decision, begin to analyze training needs in each area. This “first blush” needs assessment doesn’t have to dig too deep, but it needs to at least give you a picture of what training in the corporate university will look like. For example, go to the department stakeholders and determine what their vision is – are they looking for curriculum paths, leadership, operations, management, or a combination of all of these? Go to the “shared” departments like HR to find out what they see as training needs that stretch across the organization. Finally, go to the executive team to get their impressions.

Once you have the go ahead for the build-out, as well as an idea of the corporate university vision from your stakeholders, begin a full-on needs assessment in the areas you’ll be serving. There are many ways to assess needs, from finding out what’s going on that shouldn’t be going on and vice versa to doing job analysis. Plus, you may need to consult with HR to determine if a competency based build out is necessary for succession planning and performance evaluation.

At the same time, you may want to start assessing the organization’s readiness and perceptions when it comes to a corporate university. Create surveys that “feel out” your audiences based on the changes that will come with the corporate university. Surveys can prepare the population for the change that’s coming, the change that means, “this isn’t your father’s training department”. As you survey, you’ll have an idea of how to obtain buy-in from stakeholders and market the university.

As part of the university’s operations plan, you should constantly assess training, as well. You can start small, taking level one and two evaluations for courses and instructors. But plan to move on to higher levels of assessment in order to deliver more efficiently and to report ROI going forward. For example, as courses are better developed, begin surveying learners and their managers at 45 or 60 days after the training in order to determine if they are truly hitting the application stage.

However you decide to do it, the key to the assessment and analysis best practice is to start before you build your corporate university and to keep it consistent even after the build out is complete. Sometimes the inclination is to back off on analysis and assessment when things are going well, so resist that temptation at all points during the build out and beyond.

In my next post, we will discuss obtaining buy-in through effective marketing to all levels of the organization.

Copyright 2010 Your Training Edge. All Rights Reserved.

Bryant Nielson – Strategic Alliance & Acquisitions Director at Financial Training Solutions a division of CapitalWave Inc – offers 20+ years of training and talent management for executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Bryant is a trainer, business & leadership coach, and strategic planner for many sales organizations. Bryant’s 27 year business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering. Subscribe to his personal blog at: http://www.BryantNielson.com