Writing a business plan for eLearning in your organisation

Originally, this post was a link to a page on TrainingPlace.com, where I found an article on how to write a business plan for your organisation. In the past, I recommended it to people I've spoken to who don't really know where to start, or who find the industry a bit daunting!

Next, I put a link to it on a couple of discussion forums on LinkedIn and the response was fantastic! So I have transferred all the imparted wisdom to this blog post, along with references to the people who submitted their thoughts, (click on the names to see their LinkedIn profiles). Below are all of the resources grouped together, so that if you have this task in your intray, you can make use of it! Please share a link to this blog post too, if you know anyone else in this situation.

• Original link on TrainingPlace, (as well as a strategy plan, it has lots of resource references and suggested reading): http://www.trainingplace.com/building.htm

• You need to do needs analaysis for your requirements training in general. You need to sort this out before you can look as specific delivery types, most of the stuff you will need will fall out of this. You need to look at the audience, subject, materials etc. (Andrea Jones (Crowe))

• My experience is use bottom-line savings...ASTD has a lot of resources to help. Looking at benchmark data regarding spending per employee for platform training then look at the cost of e-learning modules. There are a lot of factors that support the use of e-learning when it comes to savings like travel, pay for faciitator, amount of times it needs to be offered to population to get those who need training trained etc... Also educating Senior Leadership to concepts of just-in-time learning or blended approach is very helpful. Never make any assumptions they know these "common" terms. Needs Analysis is critical to tell you the "what"....then most of the "how" can come from a blended approach via technology (e-learning and webex). Also included information on how e-learning minimized disruption to business because of 24/7 availability. Again, ASTD has a lot of information & research to support business case for Senior Leadership. (Caroline Bateman Sudhoff, SPHR)

• The points outlined in the trainingplace link are very comprehensive and are important components for a business plan. However, the ROI is the missing piece. As with everything organizationally, the financial decision-makers will be more likely to "invest" (and the operative word here is "invest") in a new initiative when they know what they'll get as a return on that investment. So, making a strong financial case for the investment in online learning is critical to gain support of the right people. Many business plans include a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). This type of analysis is helpful in providing a case by citing the strengths (or value) of the initiative, potential drawbacks (risk assessment), prevailing influences that will support the initiative's success and finally anything that gets in the way. Many companies invest in online learning without have the proper organizational alignment. Words of support are one thing; allocating the time for folks to use the program is another. (Julia Geisman)

• We created a full business plan with analysis preceding and marketing plan following. I would be willing to share these documents with you if you wish to contact me directly at rachel.hutchinson@hilti.com. We were able to do this with the help Skillsoft who have worked through this process with many companies. (Rachel Hutchinson)

• Not much different from writing any business plan. Consider these: 1. Have a good idea. 2. Have a realistic implementation method. 3. Include a realistic monetization strategy. 4. Show how you're going to protect against risk. 5. Use a good template. 6. Include all the stakeholders. 7. Write it concisely and well. 8. Include a "Wow" factor. (Tim Bosworth)

• "Analysis is worth a pound of cure". What is the working context of the target audience? (**Do employees spend their days operating heavy equipment, in construction, or in an office environment?) Accessibility to e-Learning needs to be considered. (** Is it more convenient for the employer to schedule group training on downtime days, weekends or holidays than to release employees on a staggered basis? In other words, is backfilling employees a problem? **Are employees geographically distributed or all in the same building? **What is is the employee population?) What post-learning outcomes are required? (** Will e-Learning alone enable the required performance? If not, some existing modalities may need to be retained. Is that practical within the organization? **Is the group that needs capability development very small, small, large or very large? Economy of scale should be considered.) What is the perspective of organizational leaders about learning? (**Is there unrealistic pressure to minimize employee time away from the job (i.e., the view that all employees can learn all that they need to know and do in 30 or 60 minutes)? ** Do business leaders see a direct cause-effect relationship between investment in employee capability development and business performance? ** Is quantity more important than quality? ** Does the organization have an influential, credible and knowledgeable training / learning leader? As Senior Sales Consultant, are you the person who should be developing the proposal?) In short, analysis is critical. Expectations need to be carefully managed. Julia's comment about ROI and SWOT is worth considering. (Blair Kettle)

• Ensure you can measure and evidence a robust RoI. Either including an LMS with strong testing dynamics or using a specialist assessment tool. A good quality application will give you micro analysis (info on individual employees) and macro analysis (identifying where learning is being retained by a learning group, and where it isn't - allowing you to re-focus resource to fill knowledge gaps). (Andrew Burns)

• There is a grievous error made by novas e-learning developers – The belief that all-things great and small can be converted to E-learning is false. Remember, training usually requires multiple senses, not just ears and eyes. Tactile is also a very important learning tool that may not be transferable to E-learning situations. Olfactory is also in this category. When asked to develop E-learning programs, I evaluate the learning outcome, the knowledge of participants, cultural differences (New York City v. Bozeman Montana) and ROI from the students and the corporation. In some cases, I have recommended hybrid courses. Rules and procedure training, most HR training, and some technical training is most appropriate. My “sales tool” is the argue the cost of development and presentation versus the cost of flying everyone to a single site, or the trainer to multiple sites. If a “moderator” is needed, it is easier to use someone at the facility. I also stress the need for immediate feedback, especially true with webinars. The use of VOIP and any form of instant messaging works great. An assistant (or two) to review questions and comments to forward to the presenter and may be able to answer some questions immediately is strongly suggested. I have used Twitter and VOIP in my last training and it worked very well. Do not make the training a “talking head” session, nor do you want to have PowerPoint slides that are too complicated to view. Interaction is the key to keep the session interesting and moving. In addition, you will have better feedback if you include participants directly into the conversation. One more thing – Like any training program, test it first locally before you go live. I have been teaching and training for over 30-years and make continuous corrections, additions and deletions to every program I maintain in my bag of training. Remember, the company is only interested in one thing – How can this new technology “Save Time, Save Money or Make Money”© Put the program in terms of dollars, pounds or euros and minutes, and you will have a better chance of succeeding. (David Rosman)

• The first assumption here is that you are proposing elearning as an alternative to ILT or some other form of learning that is already in use. Proving a ROI for elearning should include a cost comparison to the alternatives. In your business case you should also make reference to the "soft" benefits, i.e. learning would be accessible anytime and from anywhere. It's also helpful to your case to list pros and cons: what the company and learners will be able to realize in terms of advantages as well as what would happen if they don't pursue an elearning strategy. It's not all about the ROI. Some aspects of pursuing an elearning strategy are more about business continuance and competitiveness. For example, how does having elearning position you against competitors? This is extremely important if the elearning is targeted at your customer base. Does the company stand to lose customers, or would the business suffer in some other way, if you don't implement elearning? And don't forget to look ahead and factor in changes in the business environment in your business case. For example, if your company plans to expand domestically or overseas elearning allows you to reach a global audience without putting people on airplanes to get trained. Elearning also insures consistency of learning, and for your company that may be a critical factor. (Russ Borman)

The best LinkedIn Groups for eLearning

I have recommended LinkedIn Groups to lots of people in the past, as a great way to learn, share best practice, advertise jobs, find jobs, read news and most importantly, network. But if you type "elearning", "e learning" and "e-Learning" into the Groups search box, you get 483* results. So about 5 or 6 months ago, I joined about 25 of the best-looking ones, signed up to all their newsletters, and started using the groups. Over time, I left those groups which were full of companies just using them for advertising, (this happens a lot), those which were full of useless posts and those which were otherwise inappropriate to my work as a professional in the eLearning world. Here are, in my opinion, the best ones, which survived my rigorous test!

Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group
For training professionals including project managers, instructional designers, developers, learning environment engineers, learning officers and classroom trainers

Training&Development
For people in the training & development profession, including technical training, leadership development, organisational development & instructional design

Training Professionals
To facilitate communication by exchanging ideas and tips amongst Trainers

(E-)learning network
For professionals working in the (e)learning industry

Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals' Group
To network with instructional designers and e-learning professionals

E-learning Network
To share knowledge about: elearning, mlearning, training, learning management system, lms, scorm, competence, competency, gap-analysis, competency matrix, m-learning, ilearning, Microsoft Learning Gateway

Technology Integration in Education
For educators & professionals to network together in order to discuss ways in which technology can be seamlessly integrated into the education of students

E-Learning Companies
Companies & individuals involved in E-Learning

Zero-budget tips for how to incentivise your staff to do their eLearning

I’ve heard a lot of people say they have spent loads of money making visually engaging, interactive eLearning content, but employees simply don’t work through it unless they are forced to. Waste of money!

The most common problem is that the learners’ busy working environments are distracting and inappropriate for e-learning. Meeting rooms are unavailable or impractical and their use can often not cope with the onset of a raft of eLearning users. It’s not possible to offer promotion-based incentives if your business can’t work like that, and financial incentives might be completely impossible to get signed off.

So what are your other options? Here are a few ideas I came up with, which I have suggested to my customers in the past, and which I thought I would share!

- mp4 players
Learners are given the content to do on their iPhones, iPods, mp4 players, or other similar hand-help media player devices. The benefit of this method is that they will be happy to do the exercises in their own time (on the train, at home, etc), but the issue is that these devices do not provide interactive functions.

- Playstation Portables
In the same way, learners can be issued with PSPs, (PlayStation Portables). If they already have a PSP, this will save money for the company. The content can then be published to the PSPs in Flash format, allowing interaction and SCORM compliance for learner assessment, and eliminating this issue with the mp4 players in the previous point.

- Incentives
The work that currently distracts learners from completing their eLearning modules is either incentivised, or its timely completion is demanded by pressurised deadlines. Your eLearning may not carry any incentive or reward to complete it; hence it may not be seen as important, necessary or ‘recognised’ by their line managers. You could set up a framework into which eLearning activities are built, and give it a catchy title (such as “The Academy”, “[Company Name] Uni”). This could be built and hosted on a simple Learning Management System. Upon completion of a module (lesson) or a collection of modules (course), the learner can be issued with a certificate, a diploma, a number of ‘points’, a new “Learning Level”, or another form of recognition, maybe based on your industry, (e.g. if you are in the film industry, “Runner”, “Grip”, “Assistant Director” or “Director”). Upon achievement of a new level, the learner will be rewarded. Rewards could include recognition and a trophy at the company’s annual / bi-annual general meetings, qualification to go on a special evening event, (dinner, tickets to a theatre production of their choice, a night on the tiles etc.) or a slotted position on a board that is visible to all in the office, (similar to the speed rankings board on Top Gear! Examples could be “The Learning Leaders board”, “The Path to Enlightenment”, “The Film Studio”, (following on from the film studio idea), etc).

- Participative content specific to your company
To produce good eLearning content, more than just technical expertise is required. To develop content that will actually be used, it is going to be necessary to engage a team to author it whose experience also covers expertise in business consulting, didactical design and programming, but also especially high-level and established expertise in project management.


Feel free to use these ideas internally with your companies. Does anyone have any others to contribute?

Lecturnity Webinar Qs & As

This blog post keeps growing: every time we do a Lecturnity webinar, we put the Q&As from it at the top of this post.

If you would like to seek further answers to any of these questions or would like to comment, please either e-mail me (tom.holliday(at)im-c.co.uk) or add a comment to this post.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q. Will Lecturnity SCORM content be able to talk to the SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) Learning Management System?
A. Yes! SLK is a SCORM 2004 certified e-learning delivery and tracking application, so Lecturnity content will be able to output to it. (P.S. Lecturnity uses SCORM v.1.3).

Q. Do you have any technically-biased case studies that show how other customers have used Lecturnity?
A. We don't have any in-depth technical case studies, but there are three nevertheless relevant ones on our website: click on the names for more information on: Trox-Technik, Stuttgart University and The Royal Navy.

Q. There is no text wrapping or hard return option when writing a long question: it therefore gets cut off the edge of the presentation when you're viewing the published version. Is there any way of wrapping the text and stopping this from happening?
A. It is possible to wrap the question text if you use at the position where you want to add a new line.

Q. Can you import a video file straight off a DVD, or does it have to be in a stand-alone video file when you import it?
A. It is not possible to import video straight off a DVD. Normally you have to convert it into a stand-alone video file (which is also called "DVD rip"). It is recommended to create an AVI file with a dedicated codec, e.g. the DivX codec.

Q. Regarding the 'Lecturnity Player', you say this was free. Can it be used on an internal server for multiple users and if so is there a maximum number?
A. No, you need one Lecturnity player for each PC, but it's free and very quick to download (click here).

Q. What about Thin Client networks, I assume this is suitable for thin client servers?
A. Yes, you can run anything through a thin client network that you can run on a PC, so Lecturnity would also work.

Q. Regarding the assessment in Lecturnity, and it being SCORM compliant, can this be used and recorded in a Moodle platform without having to duplicate the assessment?
A. Yes it works with all versions of Moodle without the need to duplicate. But when you say "recording it in the Moodle platform"... you can only record the presentation in Lecturnity and then have it saved & used through the Moodle system.

Q. Are there people who could help us transfer our training program to use on Lecturnity? It's an instructor led course using PPT. Do you then do all the work (editing, etc.) or would we still need to find someone to do that. We would be producing for resale, so the quality needs to be high. We also have an old CD-based self-insturctional course that we might want to redo in a more modern format.
A. Yes we can record your live presentations for you using Lecturnity, or you can install Lecturnity on your laptop and, using a webcam and a microphone, you can actually record your own presentation as you're recording it, like I did with mine in the webinar. It's very easy. We can also do the editing. The amount of work we'd do would simply be built in to the cost. We also make bespoke hand-designed content for our clients, which is very high quality. We hold regular webinars on this as well. More information can be found by clicking here. The CD-based course would probably need to be redeveloped.

Q. Can the answers from the assessment be imported into the Moodle course so that individual student's scores etc can be tracked?
A. The answers themselves (free text etc.) can't be imported, but the learner's score can be. This is set in the Publishing Profiles, which I didn't show on the webinar demo. But yes, it is trackable.

Q. I am having problems finding the 'terms and conditions' section for the product, can you provide a hyperlink? For example is this a one off licence fee for the product?
A. Please click here. Yes it is a one-off licence fee. It's £99 until 21st August 2009 (introductory offer), then it will go back to £149.

Q. Does the new version of Lecturnity package up the multiple files into more manageable numbers?
A. This is not a feature of Lecturnity v4.0. The thinking was that we wish to retain as much flexibility as possible when authoring and re-jigging Lecturnity presentations, although I agree that the individual picture files are numerous and can look messy! However, once you get used to using it, it's easy to set up folder structures that you'll find easy to use.

Q. What language is Lecturnity written in?
A. Lecturnity is written in C++, Java, JavaScript, VBA, (D)HTML and Flex.

Q. WebCT is SCORM 1.2, but Lecturnity content is SCORM 1.3. What functions will not integrate with WebCT?
A. There are none. SCORM 1.3 is just faster, so there is nothing that you can do on Lecturnity that will not work on a SCORM 1.2 LMS such as WebCT.

Q. Where does it store the files?
A. You can specify the exact destination where it is saved.

Q. Is there any plan to make an English only version of the software packages?
A. It is already in English, although the original version was made in German (we are a German company). If there are elements in the demo that are still in German, these will be rectified by our development team. Please let me know if this doesn't answer your question.

Q. Is it always recording the PPT file or do you need to press screen grab for that as well?
A. No, it always records the PPT file.
UPDATED ANSWER (04.08.09) - the new version of Lecturnity (released today!) offers the choice to start with PowerPoint OR to start with a blank presentation. The old version (v 3.0) required at lease a blank PowerPoint slide to be imported before you could start, even if you only wanted to use Lecturnity for screen recording.

Q. Is the output flash file SCORM? If so 1.2 or 2004?
A. Yes, I apologise: I didn't mention that several publoishable formats (including FLASH) are SCORM compliant. It is version 1.3

Q. Can you publish to multiple formats?
A. Yes:

     • Web/Blog/Podcast (MPEG-4)                  

     • Flash (SWF, FLV)

     • RealMedia

     • WindowsMedia

     • LECTURNITY Player

     • Direct export to SLIDESTAR.de

     • CDs/DVDs with no installation required

     • Podcast with iTunes connectivity

Q. Can it be integrated with existing online grading tools?
A. Yes. Please see the question on SCORM, (above)

Q. Can it export to .flv?
A. UPDATED ANSWER: yes, screengrabbing can be exported to .flv, but this is in certain cases combined with an .swf file, (the audio)