This is the second in a series of interviews I am conducting with representatives of companies that participated in the Tagoras Association Learning Management Systems report. The purpose of the series is to give associations interested in implementing a LMS the opportunity to hear from a variety of possible providers.

It’s worth noting that these are not “sales pitch” type interviews. I give each company the chance to talk about its strengths, but I also ask for perspectives on substantive questions that should be of interest to just about any organization serious about e-learning.

In this interview I talk with Tom Grobicki, CEO and co-founder of Avilar. In addition to learning more Avilar’s capabilities, you’ll learn about two aspects of working with associations that Tom has found surprising and hear his thoughts on where e-learning is headed.  Tom’s insights are well worth the 12 minutes or so it takes to listen.

You can download the audio clip or use the player below to play it right here on the site.

Enjoy the interview and stay tuned for others. (And if you want to be sure to know as soon as they become available, I encourage you to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.)

Jeff

• Purchase the Association Learning Management Systems report
• Purchase the individual Avilar WebMentor profile

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In the most recent issue of the Association E-learning Newsletter I introduced a new section called Industry News. While I don’t usually post newsletter content here, I thought this was worth highlighting. In my opinion, there is not enough shared awareness of e-learning activity across the sector, so I think it is valuable to collect and distribute news like this.

Below is what was included in the Industry News section. This time around, it featured news only from vendors in the sector, but I hope in the future to include announcements of new e-learning initiatives launched by associations. (Please contact me if you have any.) Naturally, if you find this of interest, I hope you will consider subscribing to the newsletter. You will automatically receive the most recent issue when you do.

——————————————
5. Industry News
——————————————

Avilar (http://www.avilar.com)  has introduced a new “Rapid Skills Inventory” service. A company representative says, “This could be beneficial to associations who need to know what skills their leaders and/or members posses and to what degree. No software to
install or learn, no long-term commitments to sign, just the skills =data needed when it’s needed most.” Find out more at at
http://www.avilar.com/solutions/skills_inventory.html

***

Blackboard (http://www.blackboard.com) has formed a partnership with the Imagine American Foundation, an associated foundation of the Career College Association, to bring online education opportunities to military veterans. Read the press release.

***

CommPartners (http://www.commpartners.com) has introduced Virtual Board Room, a new service that enables meetings “to be held any time, from any location, with convenient online access for all your members.” According to the company, “VBR provides all the requirements of meeting processes that range from simple to formal, following Robert’s Rules of Order and accommodating Parliamentary procedure.” Learn more at www.commpartners.com/virtualboardroom. Watch a 6-minute demonstration at:  http://commpart.vo.llnwd.net/o28/CP/VBR_Tour/player.html.

***

Digitec Interactive (http://www.digitecinteractive.com/) reports that the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and
Epidemiology (APIC) has selected its Knowledge Direct® Learning Management System to provide infection control courses online for their more than 12,000 members. The Digitec platform will integrate with APIC’s association management systems, iMIS.

***

GeoLearning (www.geolearning.com) is offering no-cost access to three courses designed to help associations and their members prepare for the threat of a flu pandemic, such as the H1N1 flu and other situations requiring emergency preparation and business continuity planning. Flu Preparation Courses Include: Pandemic Flu Awareness, Disaster/Emergency Management, and Business Continuity Program. For more information visit www.geolearning.com/h1n1 or launch these no-cost courses today at www.geolearning.com/beprepared.

***

Omnipress (http://www.omnipress.com/) has launched Engage365 (http://engage365.org/) which the company describes as “a
time-savin’, game-changin’, peer-engagin’, FREE community dedicated to helping its members learn all they need to know about using social media for events.”

***
Peach New Media (http://www.peachnewmedia.com) CEO Dave Will provides some quick tips for producing better Webinars in the latest edition of Entrepreneur Magazine

***

Meanwhile, back on the Tagoras blog, I have started a series of interviews with representatives of the companies that participated
in the Association Learning Management Systems report. The first one, with Jon Aleckson from Web CourseWorks, is now available. Look for more soon.

JTC

P.S. – If you’d like to receive regular updates from the Tagoras blog, be sure to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

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This is the first of a series of interviews I plan to conduct with representatives of companies that participated in the Tagoras Association Learning Management Systems report. The purpose of the series is give associations interested in implementing a LMS the opportunity to familiarize themselves more fully with a variety of possible providers.

In this first interview I talk with Jon Aleckson, CEO of Web CourseWorks, provider of the CourseStage LMS. I ask Jon about what he feels are some of Web CourseWorks’ strengths in working with associations and what pitfalls he typically sees organizations encounter when implementing learning technologies. Also, because CourseStage is a derivative of the open source Moodle platform, Jon discusses some of the ways in which organizations might benefit from using an open source system.

You can download the audio clip or use the player below to play it right here on the site. It runs about 10 minutes.

Enjoy the interview and stay tuned for others. Also, you might want to check out earlier interview with Jon from the floor of the ASAE Annual Meeting:

• Games and Learning
• Moodle LMS

Jeff

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On Tuesday, November 24 at 2:00 eastern I’ll be delivering a free 1-hour Webinar for LearnSomething’s “Coffee Talk” series titled “Association E-learning: State of the Sector.” Here’s the description from LearnSomething:

How are associations creating, pricing, selling, and delivering e-learning? How do social media tools like blogs, wikis, and Twitter fit into the picture? What trends are coming over the horizon? Join association e-learning expert Jeff Cobb as discusses these questions and also answers your questions about e-learning. Participants will also receive a code for a significant discount on the two most recent research reports issued by Cobb’s firm, Tagoras – Association E-learning: State of the Sector and Association Learning Management Systems.

Here’s the information for joining the Webinar. Contact Mark Lambertson at LearnSomething (mlambertson_at_learnsomething.com) for more information.

• Webinar Link
• Dial-in info: 1 (888) 325-3989, code: 252053

FIRST-TIME USERS
To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703

TROUBLESHOOTING
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

1. Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/learnsomething/join

2. Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: 7C9C5T
Entry Code: D<j*/=8$Z
Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/learnsomething

If you still cannot enter the meeting, contact support:

http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidLiveMeeting?p1=12&p2=en_US&p3=LMInfo&p4=

support

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ASTD ran an article not too long ago in which the time to develop an hour of training in 2009 was compared to the time to develop the same type of training in 2003. Since I often get asked about how long it takes to develop various types of educational content, I thought the article was well worth mentioning here. You might find it a useful tool as you are determining the resources and corresponding costs associated with creating new educational products.

You can get full details on the ASTD site, but one element of the the article I’d like to highlight is the major leap in self-paced, on demand e-learning that has been made since 2003. The following chart, extracted from the ASTD article, provides data for “E-learning Developed with a Template” -

-
There are at least two equally important perspectives on this data:

The first is that an option that really wasn’t even available 6 years ago (look at all those “NAs”) now puts relatively sophisticated, on-demand e-learning within the grasp of organizations that might never have been able to afford it. Tools like Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, and Camtasia Studio, among others, make it possible to develop nice looking, interactive, and trackable on-demand learning starting from the most ubiquitous of all training technologies – PowerPoint. Organizations that are still relying solely on recorded Webinars to leverage PowerPoint for on-demand training are missing an opportunity – and likely boring their learners to death.

But that leads to the second perspective: creating decent e-learning takes time. Even though the tools have gotten quite affordable and easy to use, simply taking the time to slap some audio on top of PowerPoint and generate a Flash file rarely results in a compelling or effective online learning experience. Good e-learning demands good design, and that takes time – more time than most organizations are accustomed to putting into simply recording and archiving a Webinar presentation. If you are trying to create a product that will sell and have some shelf life, however, this is time well spent.

It is clear that many small businesses and entrepreneurs are catching on to the power of the templated, “rapid” e-learning model as a way to educate and engage customers. As our Association E-learning: State of the Sector report makes clear, non-Webinar on-demand content also has a significant foothold in the association market and many of the learning management systems in our recent Association Learning Management Systems report provide good tools for converting PowerPoint content and/or supporting content created in tools like Articulate.

If you haven’t tuned into the rapid, templated approach to e-learning yet, I’d urge you to find out more. One good starting point is The Rapid E-learning Blog and Tom Kuhlman’s excellent free eBook The Insiders Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-learning Pro

Update, May 2010: A post on how long it takes to develop e-learning content using Adobe Captivate – a tool that I have found is increasingly popular with associations. Via Christy Tucker’s blog.

JTC

P.S. – If you’d like to receive regular updates from the Tagoras blog, be sure to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

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Here’s my take on the second set of questions from a recent Webinar I did for WBT Systems on the “5 Keys to E-learning Success for Associations and Professional Bodies.” If you have additional input or a different perspective on any of these questions, I welcome your comments here.

Although online learning can save members time and money as they don’t have to travel to events, there is still a lot of push back on potentially increasing membership fees to pay for an online system. Do you have any thoughts on this?

I’m making the assumption, from the way the question is phrased, that the “push back” is coming from members.

The “save on travel” argument doesn’t have as much power as you would think it might because members view those travel expenditures as discretionary. They could choose not to attend an event or save in various ways on travel, whereas a hike in fees feels like something that’s being forced upon them.

If you have determined that an increase in overall fees really is the best approach (as opposed, for example, to simple charging adequately for the e-learning offerings themselves), you will generally need to articulate clear additional value that members will receive for the price increase, and not just potential cost savings. This value may not be just or even mostly in the e-learning offerings. Or, it may be in parts of the e-learning offering that go beyond just the educational content. For example, the ability for members to much more easily manage their continuing education credits

On a closely related note, it is important for organizations to have an overall strategy with respect to fees and pricing. Too often increases happen on an ad hoc basis when new initiatives like e-learning come up. I’ll save more in-depth thoughts about pricing strategy for a separate post, but one of the strongest arguments for consistently raising fees and prices over time – even by a very small amount annually – is that doing so ensures the organization is able to invest appropriately in new services for members without creating an upheaval an ill will in the process.

How do you become a sales org if you are not traditionally one?

This sort of transition is definitely not something that happens overnight. It’s a long term cultural shift that will involve not only changing the attitudes and behaviors of current staff but also examining hiring decisions as you go forward. You will want to bring people on board who already have an appreciation for the role that sales plays.

In the shorter term, two very important steps are (a) to make sure that leadership is fully on board and is willing to talk often and openly about the importance of sales, and (b) to articulate a vision of “sales” with which people can identify. With respect to the second point, it is important for everyone in an organization to understand that “sales” is fundamentally about an exchange of value. Your organization has something of value, and people are willing to give something of value – in most cases, money – for it.

Too often people identify “sales” with the high pressure tactics of stereoptypical used care salesmen or telemarketers, but these are much more the exception than the norm. If you really stop to think about it, chances are the best sales people you have encountered in your life were people who helped you learn what you needed to know to make the right purchase decision. That is all that a “sales organization” and its staff should be doing. Doesn’t sound so bad, eh?

Do you have any examples of successful marketing campaigns to maximize sales and can a LMS play a role in this?

I’m hesitant to cite specific examples without having obtained permission, so I’ll speak somewhat generically about this one. In general, I’ve found that organizations that use their existing educational events – seminars, conferences, etc. – to highlight and promote their online offerings tend to be successful. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the people who are attending these events are already “sold” on the idea of education from your organization and are often your best evangelists.

Some organizations, I know, will worry that promoting e-learning at place-based events may damage future attendance at these events, but I have yet to find a single data point that confirms this. My belief is that the opposite is true. (No firm data on that either, but I’m working on it!)

Outside of promotion at place-based events, successful organizations recognize that e-learning has to be promoted consistently and at regular intervals over time. Write about it in your print and e-mail newsletters, blog about it, provide good testimonials and case studies on your Web site (video can be particularly effective for these). Make it clear that it is an essential part of your overall value to members.

And don’t bury it. Particularly in your e-mail marketing. I know that management of the e-mail list is a struggle within many organizations, the main worry being that members will get bombarded with too much e-mail. But if you don’t send out targeted e-mails dedicated specifically to your e-learning offerings, you almost certainly won’t get the kind of enrollments you want.

Finally, an LMS can definitely help with effective marketing. For example, an increasing number of LMS offer RSS feeds that enable you to update learners when new things are added to the catalog. Some may also offer good options for e-mailing learners with relevant communications. From the angle of pricing – an important part of marketing – many LMSes allow for bundling of products or various discounting models. These are just a few examples. As a rule, I think it is a very valuable exercise to consider your four “Ps” of marketing – product, price, placement, and promotion – and consider how any LMS you are considering supports each.

Is it common to offer discounted rates to graduate/undergraduate students? Is there a method of verification to control this enrollment (i.e., not allow EVERYONE to enroll as a student to get the cheaper rate)?

I don’t have specific data on student discounts, but I have found it to be a common practice. Whether it is actually handled by the LMS, by your AMS, or by a separate e-commerce system will be a point you want to consider as you plan for implementing e-learning technologies.

***

That’s it for the questions from the WBT Systems Webinar, but stay tuned for future Q&A posts. To make sure you see them as they are posted, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Tagoblog by RSS or by e-mail.

JTC

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Earlier this week I delivered a session on “The 5 Keys to E-learning Success for Associations and Professional Bodies” for a Webinar sponsored by WBT Systems. (I encourage you to check out their free Webinar series.) A number of questions came up during the Webinar. I was able to answer some during the time we had, but I thought I’d take some time here to provide additional input and also to address some questions I did not have the chance to respond to online.

This is the first installment of an ongoing series that will cover not only questions from the WBT Systems Webinar, but also from other sessions I deliver in the future. Here is the first set of questions:

If an association is taking first steps into online learning, is it better to just start with a few e-learning courses, or would a blended approach be better – where maybe you offer a small online module in advance of a classroom session?

I’ll start with the classic consultant answer on this: it depends. Among the things it depends on are the characteristics and expectations of your prospective audience (and you will need to do some upfront footwork to be sure you really understand these), the learning objectives, and the overall strategic goals for e-learning.

If you are going to go for a blended approach initially, what value is that going to produce for you and your members? If there is clear value, then great, but if you are doing it based on the assumption that your members will resist e-learning, that you don’t have sufficient resources to produce a “few courses,” or both, then I would spend some time questioning those assumptions. Members are generally more receptive these days than organizations tend to think they are. I find consistently when doing market assessments for associations that more than half of members are already participating in online learning from sources other than the association. And producing reasonably good course content is not the challenge, in terms of either time or money, that it used to be. If you feel certain that you want to build out a significant online-only set of offerings, my bias is to test those waters sooner rather than later.

In answering this question during the Webinar, I also addressed the issue of “critical mass.” I’ve seen many organizations launch successful e-learning programs with a single, wisely-selected offering. I think this is often a great approach, but for continued success, most organizations benefit from moving towards a critical mass of offerings as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, e-learning tends to be perceived both internally and externally as a “one-off,” rather than as a strategic part of the organizations overall value to members. Keep in mind that you do not necessarily have to build all of the course in your catalog. It is possible to license relevant content in more generic areas – for example, Microsoft Office, or Time Management Skills – from a variety of content course vendors.

How well does e-learning work for very technical content? Do you have any experience of how e-learning works with engineers?

My view here is that the viability of e-learning should be determined not so much by the content per se as by the learning outcomes associated with the content. In general, there is no reason that effective e-learning experiences cannot be designed for highly technical content. Even for content that requires detailed demonstration and practice. The question is more likely to be “Is e-learning really the best way to achieve the desired learning objectives?” Determining what the “best” approach is requires you to take into account factors like the costs of the various options (e.g., e-learning vs. classroom-based), the time each option requires for achieving the learning objectives, what other objectives you want to achieve (e.g., networking), etc.

I don’t have specific experience with engineers, but similar to content, there is no reason to think that an appropriately designed e-learning experience cannot work for a specific target audience. The critical factor is that the needs and characteristics of the audience are kept firmly in mind when designing the experience. (I welcome comments from anyone who does have specific experience with engineers.)

Related to this question, I also recommend an excellent recent post on Midcourse Corrections in which Jeff Hurt outlines some of the studies that have suggested that online instruction is often better than face-to-face instruction.

What do you think about producing elearning to replace existing offerings vs. expand product line?

This is another one of those “it depends” questions. Why would you replace the existing offerings? Has demand for them waned? If so, you would want to be certain of the reasons for the decline and be sure that an e-learning option will not suffer a similar fate. If demand has not waned, are the existing offerings covering costs? Are there ways to bring costs in to line?

In general, there will always be a portion of your audience that prefers classroom-based offerings. As long as demand is sufficient and costs can be covered, I’m usually not a fan of total replacement. On the other hand, by offering an online variation, you give the existing audience a new option that may occasionally work better for them, and you open up the offering to an entirely new audience.

E-learning as an approach to expanding a product line (and, I’d add, diversifying risk in your education portfolio) can be valuable for most organizations. When taking this approach, I recommend a strong focus on differentiating the e-learning offerings from your place-based offerings. Among other benefits, differentiation can help a great deal when it comes to wrestling with issues of pricing. I’ll address this question in more detail in my next installment, but in general, if your e-learning offerings simply seem like a Web-based version of your classroom offerings, you will immediately be confronted with the issue of members thinking they should cost less. (I have found through numerous surveys that, rightly or wrongly, this is an almost universal viewpoint.)

***

That’s it for installment one. Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I’ll tackle some tough questions related to pricing, sales, and marketing.

JTC

P.S. – If you’d like to receive regular updates from the Tagoras blog, be sure to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

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Last week we published our latest report related to association e-learning: Association Learning Management Systems. The report fills what we have always seen as a knowledge gap for membership organizations: while there are good reports out there on LMS options in the corporate and academic sectors, these tend to provide little or no insight into key issues faced by associations when selecting an LMS like management of continuing education and certification, complex commerce models, and integration with popular association management systems. Our new report – which weighs in at more than 400 pages – addresses all of these issues and more in great detail.

You can find out more about the report on the Association LMS report page, but since it may not be immediately obvious on that page, I’d like to highlight here that there is an overview document that is downloadable free of charge. This contains a table of contents that that tells you all about what is covered in the report and which systems are included, but more importantly, is contains a free 10-page association sector overview that I think readers of this blog will find valuable regardless of whether they have any interest in purchasing the report. Just click the link below to download it.

• Association Learning Management System Report Overview

I hope you enjoy the overview, and I invite you to submit any questions or observations it prompts here in the comments. If you are thinking or wondering about it, chances are someone else is too. So, please share your thoughts.

I’ll be continuing to post nuggets of knowledge from the report over the coming weeks. Before signing off on this post, I thought it it might also be useful to point out brief interviews we did with the participating vendors that were present at the American Society of Association Executives annual meeting this year:

• Moodle LMS – Comments from Jon Aleckson (Web Courseworks)
• LMS Interest Increases – Comments from Brendan Noud (WBT Systems)
• LMS-AMS Integration – Comments from Mark Lambertson (LearnSomething | Isoph)
• Mobile Learning – Comments from Russ Magnuson (ResultsDirect)
• Social Learning – Comments from Pascal Kaplan (iCohere)

Enjoy,

JTC

P.S. – If you’d like to receive regular updates from the Tagoras blog, be sure to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

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On Wednesday, November 4 at 10:30 ET, I’ll be the co-presenter in a Webinar on the five guiding principles of success for association e-learning. The Webinar, sponsored by WBT Systems, is free of charge. You can find out more and register on the E-Learning Webinar for Associations and Professional Bodies page on the WBT Systems Web site.

I hope to “see” you on the 4th!

JTC

P.S. – If you’d like to receive regular updates from the Tagoras blog, be sure to subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

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Some of these are already available, some are on the way, but certification expert Mickie Rops lays out five great certification resources in a recent post on her Beyond Certification blog.

While driving e-learning sales is not a reason for creating a certification program (and, generally speaking, you need to be careful to keep a wall between training and certification), our experience and research have consistently shown that the existence of a related, valued certification is one of the biggest drivers of demand for online learning. So, it pays to at least keep on top of what’s going in the world of certification. Be sure to check out Mickie’s post.

JTC

P.S. – If you are interested in certification, you may also want to check out this brief podcast interview with Rick Phillips from Castle Worldwide.

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