Past Editions
| Interviews |
| “Mobile, Social, Collaborative and Predictive learning are the keys to providing the more personal and rewarding learning experience” |
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(@americalearning) The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning, 2015: ‘The Race to Mobile First and Content Integration' report identified Saba as one of the corporate training leaders.
Interviewed by America Learning Media, Charles DeNault - Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Saba said: “Aragon Research reviewed 20 prominent learning management system (LMS) providers. They conducted an in-depth study of each vendor, their product, their strategy and their customers. They met with us and also interviewed at least 10 of our customers. Their analysts have been following the learning market for years, so they’ve been on top of trends for some time. In addition to mobile and content, they also called out video, social, predictive, and collaborative learning, and they also made the point that leading vendors were providing a Marketplace to simplify connecting the LMS to other systems as well as import off the shelf eLearning. Given their expertise, we were delighted that Saba Cloud Learning@Work matched so well to what they felt was important for learning department today and the near future”.
In the report, Saba was one of the companies with the highest score on 'Strategy', an area in which Aragon evaluates a product, its strategy, marketing, benchmarks and management team. Given these variables: What are the main keys to develop an effective strategy for successful corporate training processes?
Some experts say e-learning is moving towards social, mobile and informal learning, increasing the learning experience through wearables and other innovations, considering that the learning experience can occur anywhere, even on the street . What do you think about this? We agree wholeheartedly. The report does point out that social, mobile and collaboration technologies are changing the learning landscape. Let me illustrate with a couple examples. Guitar Center used Saba for years for eLearning, but the content of the training was controlled by a dozen or so folks in the learning department. By adding social learning, they now have tapped into the expertise of all 12,000 of their employees, so they can share what’s working from one of their stores to another. The learning system is no longer a place to go a few times a year to work through the eLearning, it’s now an every day destination. While Guitar Center is just getting started with mobile learning, another customer, Cisco Systems has had mobile access to learning materials up for a couple of years now. It’s hugely productive for not only their sales and service people but for their partners as well. Imagine you are on site and you realize the problem you’re trying to fix comes from a router you have not worked with in a while. At that moment, you can search on your phone and access the training and related job aides. Now you can solve the problem without having to return to your office. Cisco reports that partners that use their education connection site are at least twice as productive as those that don’t. With each update we enhance all aspects of our solution, and we’ve been looking ahead at the Apple Watch and other wearables. The watches will initially provide alerts of new courses or upcoming due dates, but soon will also allow for audio based learning. In short wearables will make on the go training more convenient and continuous, giving the learner even greater control over where and when they learn.
What role will play Mobile Learning and Social Learning in corporate training processes over the next months? The most recent numbers I’ve seen indicate that social and mobile learning are both happening, at least in pilots, at a majority of the organizations. Both make corporate learning more accessible, more interactive and more flexible. While many companies are not ready to jump into the deep end of the pool like Guitar Center, many are adding groups and discussions around classes to let students interact and discuss the material. Other companies are rebuilding their onboarding and change management processes with a social community at its center, and others, like Olympus Scientific are finding their sales training is greatly enhanced just by getting engineers in Japan in touch with their sales people in the US. Having an open forum was never possible before and they are asking questions and learning from each other as never before. Even compliance training benefits with a group which gives people one place to ask questions and find resources, so it’s not just about passing the test, but it’s more about embracing the spirit of the training. As for mobile, something like three quarters of the Facebook access is through mobile phones, so it’s a great pair with social communities. But more and more elearning is becoming mobile friendly and as I mentioned above with the Cisco example, mobile is the key component of just in time learning.
What are the keys to incorporate Mobile Learning and Social Learning in corporate training projects? Social learning is a great complement to any pretty much any existing learning program. Not only do the discussions and ability to share documents and experiences appeal to multiple learning styles, it also makes allows the learning to be continuously available. Mobile expands on this, allowing access from pretty much anywhere. Key to these projects is making sure the instructors are ready to use the new technology. The learning curve for the instructors isn’t steep, but recording a walk-through of the features available to them along with some thoughts on best practices will ensure they get a smooth start. One word of caution on the mobile learning side: Not all elearning will run well, so be sure to test out your content before giving your learners access. Mobile phones and tablets work great with informal content (PDFs, Word docs, presentations, and even recorded virtual classroom sessions), but you need to check compatibility for SCORM and other elearning formats. We’re seeing much of the older content being reworked for smoother access and in many cases, a redesign to fit on the smaller screens. If your courseware relies on Flash, that will need to be swapped out to run on most phones and tablets.
What is the importance of informal learning in an organization? What suggestions could you make to develop informal learning successful processes in a company? With today’s fast paced business climate, more focus on informal learning is critical. People have always learned from those around them. Today’s technologies allow us to expand that circle of experience pretty much globally. We’ve seen the number of successful informal initiatives increase greatly in the past two years. Here are some common themes that I’ve seen:
What data can be analyzed in a learning process and how can be leverage that information to increase students' knowledge and achieving continuous improvement of learning experiences? What is the impact of Learning Analytics in corporate training? Learning metrics have done a great job over the years in helping companies reduce their risk and manage their compliance training, and a big reason for its success is that all the data is readily available –it’s resident within the LMS. With Saba Cloud hosting the entire talent suite that means all talent and learning data, including informal, is readily available, so it’s quite easy to run reports to see the effect of learning on retention, engagement or performance. And as we connect learning to the business, we need to pull data from other systems – for example, the CRM to correlate sales training and social activity with better sales outcomes. Saba Marketplace helps facilitate those connections, so the data can be easily aggregated. Another aspect of learning analytics is what Aragon referred to as predictive learning. This is where the LMS determines what’s popular and useful and also learns about each learner’s needs and preferences. In Learning@Work, we refer to this as TIM, The Intelligent Mentor. TIM has been working day and night in Saba Cloud for almost 2 years, so his recommendations have gotten quite good, and are helping millions of users find formal and informal content as well as experts that are relevant to each learner, helping them do their job better and advance in their careers.
April 2015
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What are the main keys to develop an effective strategy for successful corporate training processes? What role will play Mobile and Social Learning over the next months? What is the importance of informal learning and Learning Analytics in an organization? Interview with Charles DeNault.
Charles DeNault: With all talent initiatives, learning included, we’ve seen a shift in the past few years to be much more closely aligned with the business, specifically how can the learning team help the company meet its goals. That means for most companies, the Learning and Human Resources teams need to work together to identify the skill sets the company needs, and then it’s largely incumbent on learning to fill those gaps by training their people. Where Saba comes in is in providing learning management system that helps the learning team not only be more efficient, by providing all the tools in one product, but more importantly, allowing L&D to provide a more engaging and immersive learning experience accelerating the learning process. Mobile, Social, Collaborative, and Predictive learning are the keys to providing the more personal and rewarding learning experience. 
