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Tin Can API 1.0: Good News, Good Lesson

Celisa Steele — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:00:12 +0000

This past Friday version 1.0 of the Tin Can API was released, as promised. As I noted in the previous blog post “What the Experience API Is—and Why You Should Care,” I didn’t expect the learning landscape to change overnight, and it didn’t. But the release of version 1.0 is an important marker on the way to a new vision for technology-enabled learning.

Mike Rustici, president of Rustici Software (the developers of the API), summed up the nature of the new vision in his quote for the press release around the release of version 1.0

We spent the past decade surrounded by e-learning geeks. We think we’ll spend the next decade surrounded by K-12, teachers, hackers, universities, government, education technology, MOOCs, games, and an array of real-world use cases we can’t even imagine yet. These are especially exciting times for anyone who ever heard the acronyms SCORM or AICC.

Mike Rustici’s comments struck me as an apt complement to what Jeff describes as the “other 50 years” in his book Leading the Learning Revolution.

Education has traditionally meant K-12 and higher ed—and reasonably accurately so for many years. But we’re living longer, switching jobs and careers more, and struggling to keep up with the increasingly fast pace of change. We can’t afford to assume that education is something that we ever finish. We have to be thinking about how we keep learning (and providing learning) for the other 50 years of life that, statistically speaking, we have coming to us after we finish our formal education.

Tin Can’s inclusive nature looks to be a good fit for the future, where technology-enabled learning isn’t just for “e-learning geeks” but for anyone serious about learning.

Good Product Development and Launch Basics

As I was following the release of version 1.0 of the Tin Can API, I found myself thinking Rustici Software did a nice job with the basic tenets of good product development and launch—tenets that apply as well to learning products as they do to software.

Listen to your market.This one is less about what Rustici Software did around last Friday’s launch, and more about the important groundwork they laid before diving into development—they convened a lot of meetings with various stakeholders and gathered input about what the new API should do. This is classic listening to your market and arguably the most important thing you can do before building a product.
Embrace a beta mentality.Rustici Software didn’t wait until they had version 1.0 of the API ready to release something—they released lower versions earlier. This let them gather feedback to finetune and add to the API.
Deliver what you promise.Rustici Software said version 1.0 would come out on April 26, and it did. It may seem a small thing, but launching on time sends the message you’re attentive and trustworthy. Those are traits I like in those I choose to work with and learn from.
Tie the product to other offerings, free and paid.Not only did the company roll out version 1.0 on time, but Rustici Software also made sure their other products were version 1.0-ready, including paid products like SCORM Cloud and free offerings like a free sandbox and Javascript open source library. Something I see overlooked too often when an organization releases a new learning offering is making the connections for potential learners about how the new offering relates to other products and making it easy for those potential learners to somehow get a little taste of the latest and greatest.

So kudos to Rustici Software for bringing us version 1.0 of the Tin Can API and for providing an example of a good product development and launch practices.

Celisa

P.S. Next Thursday, we’re offering a free Webinar (thanks to the sponsorship of Meridian Knowledge Solutions) on Selecting a Learning Management System: Picking the Right Technology for Your Association’s Vision. I hope you’ll join us!

Selecting a Learning Management System: Picking the Right Technology for Your Association’s Vision (Free Webinar)

Celisa Steele — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:00:20 +0000

Choosing a learning management system can be daunting—not only when it comes to evaluating features and functions, but also when the new LMS will play a strategic role in your association’s future. Your technology decision can mean the difference between a big success and a big mistake.

We’ll address that important LMS decision process on Thursday, May 9, from 1 to 2 pm Eastern. We’re grateful to Meridian Knowledge Solutions for sponsoring this Webinars so that we can provide it at no charge. You can reserve your spot now at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/612885654.

Over the course of our years tracking LMS technology and working with clients through the selection processes, Jeff and I have learned a great deal, and we’ll draw on that experience for the Webinar. In our work, we’ve seen what amounts to a lot of good news for the organizations and learners using them.

Lower-cost models

We’ve seen LMSes get better and faster while pricing has fallen. We’ve seen companies emerge that offer low-cost models that make LMSes a possibility for small organizations, and we’ve also seen growth in all-you-can-eat models; LMSes typically charge a per-user license fee, but quite a few companies now offer an unlimited model—the license fee remains the same regardless of how many users are in the LMS.

More hosted solutions

We’ve seen a move toward hosted solutions. Most associations don’t want to maintain LMS servers in their own facility with their own staff resources—that’s something they want from their LMS partner. And, of course, of late, we hear more and more about LMS vendors moving to the cloud. (Note that we offering “Clearing Up the Cloud: What Is It—and How It Impacts Your Learning,” another free Webinar sponsored by Meridian, on June 13. Stay tuned for more details about that closer to the date.)

Better integration and interoperability

Integration and interoperability have improved. Standards like SCORM are well established and let organizations feel confident they can develop content that will play as it should even if they switch LMSes down the line. Web services and APIs allow associations to hook together key systems and give end-users an apparently seamless experience with what may really be a hodgepodge of systems working in the background.

Support for richer experiences

LMSes support richer experiences now—social tools like discussion boards or Twitter feeds can augment learning, and LMSes tend to support a wider range of formats now—online and off, real-time Webinars, self-paced e-learning, classroom and conference place-based events, etc.

Improvements in reporting

With reporting, we’ve seen ad-hoc reporting options grow—so now associations don’t have to rely on canned reports but can develop their own reports and apply filters to get the information they want. We’ve also seen growth in the use of dashboards and visual reporting to provide snapshots of key data. And reporting will only continue to improve with all the buzz (deserved, in my opinion) around “big data.”

More association focus

There are a lot of LMSes out there—hundreds and hundreds. When we started, only a handful were built with associations in mind, with a focus on things like member versus non-member pricing, support for credit and certification, AMS integration, and e-commerce. But the number of LMSes focused on associations and with features and functionality that really respond to association needs has grown over the years. We put out our first Association Learning Management Systems report in 2009, and it covered 12 LMSes. The latest 2013 version covers 20 systems. Meridian’s system, Meridian Global LMS, has been in all three editions of the report.

All six of these developments make LMSes more attractive to associations that don’t have one yet, and these changes have driven some to switch vendors or at least ponder a move. Whatever your situation, we’ll help you think through the steps and issues in this Webinar.

What the Webinar Will Cover, Plus a Call for Your Input

Jeff, Jason Marceau (Meridian’s COO), and I will share processes and insights for making the crucial LMS decision. I’ll present a time-tested 7-step process for selecting a learning management system. Jason will share real-life examples of associations that dramatically increased their revenue by expanding the reach of their educational content using an LMS. Jeff will act as virtual MC, fielding questions and comments, so come prepared to participate (or just listen, if you prefer).

While we’ll take questions during the session, we encourage you to send Jeff questions you would like to have answered during the Webinar. Send them any time between now and May 9. Jeff, Jason, and I have all spent many years building, implementing, and/or running selection processes for LMSes, so this is a great opportunity to tap into that experience.

You’ll leave the session with a clear understanding of how to lead your organization in choosing the right LMS technology, and we’ll follow up with some goodies, like a checklist of key issues and questions to consider when running a successful selection process.

The Webinar Details

Title: Selecting a Learning Management System: Picking the Right Technology for Your Association’s Vision
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2013
Time: 1 to 2 pm Eastern
Reserve your Webinar seat now at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/612885654

Press release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10689891.htm

P.S.

The May 9 LMS selection Webinar is the first in a series of three Webinars sponsors by Meridian Knowledge Solutions. The next two will also run from 1 to 2 pm Eastern:

Clearing Up the Cloud: What Is It—and How It Impacts Your Learning (June 13)
How Mobile Impacts Your Organization’s Learning and Marketing of Learning (July 18)

So save the dates.

Celisa

What the Experience API Is—and Why You Should Care

Celisa Steele — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:10:10 +0000

You probably know it better as Tin Can, the popular name that’s stuck and been embraced by Rustici Software (the developers of the API), although Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) prefers calling it the Experience API, or even xAPI.

No matter what we call it, though, it’s the first step in a comprehensive vision for the future of technology-enabled learning.

Part of the Training and Learning Architecture (TLA)

Established in 1997 by President Clinton and overseen by the Department of Defense (DoD), ADL developed the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), the most widely recognized set of standards for e-learning which have been broadly adopted, even outside of the government.

The primary appeal of SCORM is that it assures some degree of interoperability—SCORM content can be delivered using any SCORM-conformant learning management system (LMS) using the same version of SCORM.

But SCORM is 15 years old at this point. How we live and learn has changed. Google and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn didn’t exist when SCORM was born, not to mention game-changers specific to online education, like Coursera, edX, and Udacity.

Source: http://www.adlnet.gov/introducing-the-training-and-learning-architecture-tla

The Training and Learning Architecture (TLA) is ADL’s answer to what the next generation of SCORM looks like. TLA focuses on four interrelated areas:

Experience tracking
Learning profiles
Content brokering
Competency infrastructure

In a Training magazine article, Dr. Kristy Murray, director of the ADL Initiative, and Aaron E. Silvers, community manager for ADL explain the four areas of the TLA:

Learner Profiles will be powered by technologies that describe information about a learner: their preferences, competencies, and experiences.

Content Brokering will focus on technologies that describe, discover, and deliver content.

Competency Infrastructure will provide authoritative, machine-readable definitions of learning objectives, competencies, tasks, standards, and conditions.

Experience Tracking is the part that currently is being developed: the Experience API. Its design addresses the limitations people find with e-learning technologies currently used in organizations that are focused only on tracking the learner through a specific course, rather than through diverse learning experiences.

The Shortcomings of SCORM

As Murray and Silvers suggest in their description of experience tracking, Tin Can is meant to address what have become major shortcomings of SCORM.

SCORM doesn’t track informal or self-directed learning, and we know that an estimated 90 percent of learning is either self-managed or informal.
Because SCORM uses JavaScript in a Web browser to talk to an LMS, it can’t launch and track native mobile apps and has required a steady Internet connection (versus working when access to network infrastructure is intermittent).
SCORM focuses on the individual learner in isolation and doesn’t accommodate team-based exercises, collaboration, and instructor intervention.
SCORM looks at scores (usually a single score) and completions in courses, but doesn’t provide a good way to capture multiple scores (pre- and post-test, say) or detailed test data or to assess learners after the course is complete (but the learning presumably, hopefully, continues).

There are other limitations of the current incarnation of SCORM, but this list alone declares the need for Tin Can.

The Tin Can API is built around simple subject-verb-object statements that will allow a learning record store (LRS) to collect data about a wide variety of real-world learning activities. So, yes, the API will support familiar-to-SCORM statements like “Celisa completed the Intro to Tin Can course,” but also “Celisa asked the Leading Learning group members on LinkedIn what they’re doing about Tin Can,” or “Celisa wrote a blog post on Tin Can.”

With SCORM, an LMS is limited to delivering and tracking content it knows about. As Rustici Software points out, that SCORM limitation goes away with Tin Can: “With Tin Can, the latest Khan Academy video can become a trackable learning event as soon as it is released.”

Another key innovation of Tin Can is that it decouples “the content and the asserter of a learning experience.” Rustici Software explains:

In SCORM, the “thing reporting a result about a learning experience” always had to be the experience itself. You had a SCO [shareable content object] that was both a piece of educational content and a communicator of data about the learning experience. Content had to be smart. Content had to be intentionally converted to enable SCORM functionality. Tin Can removes the requirement that the communicator of data be the educational experience itself.

(By the way, Rustici Software’s “Layers of the Tin Can Onion” is an accessible overview of what Tin Can makes possible, and I recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about the API.)

What It Means for You

This post is timely—version 1.0 of Tin Can is due out April 26.

That doesn’t mean that SCORM is dead as of next Friday—ADL emphasizes Tin Can is not a replacement for SCORM, but the evolution of SCORM. Plus, while some organizations have implemented early versions of the API, it will take years for broad adoption among technology developers (LMS and content authoring companies).

But, clearly, Tin Can touches on many critical issues that organizations in the business of lifelong learning grapple with today—informal and self-directed learning, social learning, mobile access.

What’s more, Tin Can provides the possibility of “personal data lockers” that pull information from all the relevant LRSes and aggregate it so learners, rather than a siloed LMS maintained by an organization, have access to their learning records. Given late baby boomers averaged 11.3 job changes between the ages 18 and 46, personal data lockers look really appealing, and figuring out how your association or organization interacts with these lockers will be an important question to sort out.

So keep an eye on the Tin Can API. Ask your current learning technology partners about their plans for Tin Can, and, if you’re looking to add any new learning technology, raise Tin Can in your conversations with those vendors. I’m not arguing these companies need to have a development timeline in place yet—but you want to know they’re staying abreast and have a plan for evolving their technology to help you deal with your critical issues.

What’s Coming Down the Pike for Learning

Celisa Steele — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:00:03 +0000

Given all the change and upheaval online and off, the future of learning may seem fuzzy. But talking with folks who live and breathe learning every day can provide some clarity.

In the 20 interviews we did with representatives—mostly CEOs and other senior employees—of the learning management system companies profiled in the 2013 edition of Association Learning Management Systems report, we asked what’s coming down the pike for learning. Ten subjects bubbled up.

Ten Things to Watch for in the Future of Learning

Ten things were cited by the 20 interviewees as something coming down the pike for learning. And, yes, the numbers add up to more than 20, as few interviewees limited themselves to a single subject in response to the question.

The groupings are mine, and the responses could arguably have been sliced and diced differently, but I still think this analysis still helps focus on areas of likely growth.

The impact of mobile technologies and habits on learning tied with the ability to truly personalize learning for the top spot.

Big data, gamification and badges, and increasing integration of systems for a more seamless, less-siloed user experience come in at the bottom of the list, with only one mention each—but even these are clearly areas to watch.

Back near the top, tying for second place, we see social learning and a focus on performance and quality improvement (and whatever other name you might give to making sure education is really engendering positive change in the learners’ behavior).

Coming in third is multimedia, especially video. With the making of video as well as bandwidth and storage so easy and affordable, interviewees see multimedia playing an increasingly prominent role in learning.

With a couple of mentions each, just-in-time learning and return on investment fill out the ten subjects. Both of these may sound somewhat old hat, but the interviewees make the point that technology has finally evolved to the point where it can truly support just-in-time learning, and ROI has only gotten more important with the current economy.

How do these ten areas match with what you’re watching on the learning front?

The Interviewees

I want to thank all the interviewees (listed alphabetically by company name) for taking time to talk with Jeff or me.

Celisa

Association LMSes: An Interview with Brian Giuffrida of InReach

Celisa Steele — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:00:58 +0000

Spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere (by the calendar, if not completely in the weather) and brought with it the last of the 20 interviews with the LMS companies featured in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report.

In this ten-minute audio-only video, I talk with Brian Giuffrida, president of InReach.

Along with telling me about InReach and what it he sees coming down the pike for learning (it’s tied to social), Brian talks about the InReach Sharing Network, which allows InReach customers to designate, on a program-by-program basis, the education offerings they would like to share with other associations using the InReach platform. Brian sees the network as a potential benefit for organizations of all sizes.

Smaller organizations, who might not otherwise be able to enter the continuing education space, can find content that’s been contributed by peer organizations in their industry. In addition, they can find interindustry content. If I’m a bar association…servicing an attorney network, I might be interested in the way an accountant looks at a particular regulation change. I might have practice managers that would like to understand practice management issues. Maybe I have established attorneys that want to understand financial planning issues. I might be able to find that full array of content shared out by other professional associations who are developing content for professionals to the same standard that I am….

Similarly, if I’m a large organization that has the ability to develop a lot of content, I now have a way to distribute that and create a greater return on my development efforts. That content now has the opportunity to leverage the loyal membership of peer organizations in my industry or associations in other industries. I can use that as a point of distribution to get my content shared in those catalogs and resold to that end user group.

The larger organization sees augmentation to their market, the smaller organization sees augmentation to their content offering, and everybody shares in the proceeds when that content gets resold.

Take the appeal of a one-stop shop, add the challenge of being everything to everyone, and you’ve got a pretty hairy problem. A learning ecology like the one Brian describes might be an answer.

Celisa

P.S. Remember you can find free resources for selecting a learning management system and links to all the LMS company interviews on our Association LMS Resources page.

Association LMSes: An Interview with Dan Belhassen of SmarterU.com

Celisa Steele — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:00:17 +0000

This week brings us to the penultimate interview in our series with LMS companies featured in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report.

In this just-under-six-minute Skype video, I interview Dan Belhassen, president of SmarterU.com.

Dan first answers the usual questions about what his company does and what differentiates it. I next ask Dan about SmarterU’s focus on smaller associations on the one hand and its strong multilingual support in the other hand; in responding, Dan points out that often even small organizations are thinking—or need to be thinking—international.

To wrap things up, I ask Dan what’s coming down the pike for learning. He sees personalization writ large:

The current big wave that’s being promoted right now is social learning. But I think the next big wave after that is going to be personalized learning. We’ve got some ideas for the space that I can’t really talk about now, but learning has got to become much more personalized than it is right now. The challenge with that is one of cost…. [Y]ou should have a very personalized learning experience, based on your previous experiences, based on your role, based on a number of different factors. The question is how do you do that in a cost-effective way so that you can get that personalized experience, but now we can mass produce the personalized experience—personalize it for 10,000 different learners at the same time. I think that is going to be a very interesting space where, as associations along with other industries move from doing Webinars, which is typically the first type of online learning to a learning management system, integrating that into some social aspects, personalized learning is going to be the next step.

Personalized learning is near and dear to my heart, and, if you haven’t already, I recommend Sir Ken Robinson’s 2010 TEDTalk (mentioned by Jeff in his “10 Must-Watch Videos for the Serious Lifelong Educator” post). Robinson was in the vanguard of the current wave of educational reformers who argue that we must move away from an industrial, manufacturing, linear-based model of education to one that allows for the much more personalized approach to learning that technology, in combination with great teaching, can now provide.

Celisa

P.S. You can find free resources for selecting a learning management system and links to all the LMS company interviews on our Association LMS Resources page.

Association LMSes: An Interview with Jeff Walter of Latitude Learning

Celisa Steele — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:21:42 +0000

This week brings us to the next to next to last interview (two more to go) in our series with LMS companies featured in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report.

In this nine-minute Skype video, Jeff Cobb interviews Jeff Walter, CEO of Latitude Learning.

Jeff Walter answers our three usual questions (what does the company do, what differentiates it, and what’s coming down the pike for learning) and talks about Latitude’s Forever Free LMS offering.

The Forever Free LMS allows an organization to have up to 100 active users at a time (and users can be deactivated to free up room for new folks).

One of the associations using the free 100 license is a trade association down in the Philippines, and they’ve actually set up three or four free 100-user LMSes…. Some of our highest utilizers are in the free program. If what you’re looking for is the basic LMS for e-learning and classroom-based instruction linking out to a third-party Webinar, then the standard configuration will work for you. We then have add-ons for additional functionality. Our integrated Webinar system, e-commerce, certifications, and curriculums are add-ons.

We see real potential in free offerings, like Latitude’s, for associations that are willing to put the time into thoroughly vetting a system before making a selection and even for pilot testing. There’s nothing like rolling up your sleeves for understanding the possibilities—and limitations—of a system.

Celisa

P.S. You can find a link to all the interviews as well as other free resources for selecting a learning management system on our Association LMS Resources page.

Association LMSes: An Interview with Paul Terry of Blackboard

Celisa Steele — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:00:16 +0000

This week, as we’re nearing the end of our series (three more to go) on the LMS providers profiled in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report, we feature an interview with Blackboard.

In this six-and-half-minute audio-only interview, I talk with Paul Terry, general manager for Blackboard ProEd.

Paul speaks to four topics:

Who is Blackboard, and what does the company do?
What differentiates Blackboard from other LMS companies working in the association space?
Blackboard serves a range of markets—from the K-12 market to the higher ed market, from corporations to government. What similarities does Blackboard see across all of those markets in terms of the needs and expectations of an LMS? What makes Blackboard unique for associations?
What’s coming down the pike for learning in the next couple of years?

Answering that final question, Paul highlights social learning as something he expects to see only more of in the coming years—and something he believes associations need to harness.

Associations…need to capture the peer-to-peer engagement experience. The more an association can capture and build upon that, the more value add it will provide its members. According to some statistics, the peer-to-peer dialog and learning accounts for close to 70 percent of learning today. There definitely are systems, including Blackboard, which I believe are doing a much better job capturing that type of learning. It will allow us to expand the entire learning environment.

The growing prevalence and power of social learning earned it a place in Jeff’s year-end “12 Trends Disrupting the Market for Lifelong Learning” post on this blog. While social learning is arguably as old as learning itself, it has gotten a makeover from the boom in social media and come to feel at home online as well as off. As Paul points out, associations increasingly have to think about how they can facilitate social learning—and that may even mean educating their members and customers on how to leverage social learning effectively.

Celisa

Association LMSes: An Interview with Paul Meyer of Starfield Talent Management Solutions

Celisa Steele — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:00:57 +0000

Starfield Talent Management Solutions is one of the association LMS vendors featured in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report and the focus of this week’s interview.

In this six-and-half-minute Skype video, Jeff interviews Paul Meyer, president of Starfield Talent Management Solutions.

Paul answers four main questions:

Who is Starfield Talent Management Solutions, and what does the company do?
What differentiates Starfield from other LMS companies working in the association space?
How does Starfield define talent management, and what is the role of talent management in education for external audiences?
What’s coming down the pike for learning in the next couple of years?

In answering the third question, Paul points out that Starfield offers an integrated suite of tools for managing and overseeing the full career lifecycle, from on-boarding through succession planning. While Starfield works in other markets where talent management is a natural fit with internal employee development, Paul believes something like what Starfield offers could change what’s possible for associations that don’t have big HR departments, by tying a full range of features and functionalities together via a single interface.

Given most are guardians of a trade or a profession, associations do seem to have a calling to focus on talent management in a way that broadens the insular focus of corporations.

Celisa

P.S. – You can find a link to all of the interviews as well as other free resources for selecting a learning management system on our Association LMS Resources Page.

Association LMSes: An Interview with Lisa Bordeaux of BlueVolt

Celisa Steele — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:00:30 +0000

Individuals involved with trade associations may be particularly interested in this interview with Lisa Bordeaux of BlueVolt, one of the LMS providers featured in the 2013 Association Learning Management Systems report.

In this video captured via Skype, I talk with Lisa Bordeaux, director of sales and business development at BlueVolt, which offers the BlueVolt LMS.

Lisa speaks to four topics:

Who is BlueVolt, and what does the company do?
What differentiates BlueVolt from other LMS companies working in the association space?
What are the unique opportunities for trade associations as they use a learning management system to deliver education and training?
What’s coming down the pike for learning in the next couple of years?

Looking at the near future of learning, Lisa sees a broadening of the types of learning that are trackable and an increase in bite-size education. She says:

We see the opportunity for better integration of face-to-face activities, including on the job training using tools such as Tin Can. We’re in the process of integrating that into our platform. The leveraging and sharing of information is changing. It’s going to become smaller, and it’s going to be more objective-driven. That changes the nature of the way we serve the content and enable people to find it.

Whether Tin Can lives up to its promise, I do believe accommodating—and tracking—a wide range of learning, from a variety of sources, in a variety of formats is a grail worth pursuing.

Celisa