Building An Integrated Learning System

I've been fortunate enough to have started my instructional systems design career with an organization willing to experiment with learning systems even though past failures suggested otherwise. The organization's general disdain was palpable yet there were some decision makers that held on to the idea that online was the direction the organization needed to go. Issues such as the lack of online learning understanding and its capabilities resulted in frequent miscommunication with vendors and led to eventual launch failures. Thousands of dollars were invested only to produce little to no results.

Needless to say, there was a lot of waste. Not only in expenses but also in time and confidence in whether or not online learning was the direction the company wanted to go in. The task at hand was to rescue the project all together and figure out how regain the trust and excitement that was lost. If you are facing a similar situation or just at the beginning of your online learning system project, I hope the following will help you in some way to build a more robust and integrated system.

Replace Needs Assessments with Relationship Building

Needs gathering is a process of interviewing and then producing a list of requirements. That's pretty much all I was told when I took a masters level HRD course. I've learned however that this interviewing constitutes only 10% of the needs assessment and requirements gathering process. The other 90% is building relationships in order to determine what individuals and even entire organizations are looking for. Moving beyond jargon and delving into understanding what the organization went through and how they perceive online learning doesn't come from a survey. This level of insight comes from long conversations about past failures and visions of what the system will look like 2-3 years down the road. As an added benefit, stakeholders get excited when they can blue-sky with you. Go beyond the paper based surveys and superficial interviewing and really get to know what your stakeholders are looking for.

Think Marriage, Not Speed Dating

One can easily become overwhelmed with the amount of learning technology there is out there. As such, it's easy to get suckered into trying all of them as vendors pine over your budgeted dollars. After some time, I realized that this was the case at my organization and it resulted in a rift between the upper echelon as to whether or not online learning was a viable strategy due to poorly invested dollars. After all, the organization had existed prior to the cloud services, virtual classrooms, and distance learning, why start now? The goal is to determine what will work long term for your organization and this requires due diligence when researching service providers and those who sell online learning products. Think long term solution, not band aids.

Choosing the Right Vendors (Partners) To Help Build the System

I'm a big believer that vendors should be partners and they should be willing to act as one if they wish to do business with me. A good account manager can make or break a deal. It took over 8 months for me to be comfortable enough to choose our LMS service provider and this involved numerous emails, conference calls, and multiple contract revisions. At the end of the 9-12 month process a decision was made and the service providers that we've chosen now benefit from having long-term customers. To this day, I'm surprised when an account manager reaches out to me and asks if I need help building courses or offering upgrades to our system as a token of gratitude.

Find and Recruit Early Adopters

It's easy to spot an early adopter, they're the ones always asking questions and wanting to be more involved. These are the ones you want on your side since they will advocate the learning management system's benefits. Early adopters are great at training other as well. Often, as a system admins, we can get bogged down with other essential tasks and are unable to run training sessions. To remedy this, ask your early adopters to facilitate training sessions both in F2F (faculty to faculty) and student orientations.

Let Your Learners and Instructors Determine Addons

The final bit of advice, start with the absolute minimum and let the system grow organically. Giving learners and Instructors the ability to give feedback and then see them implemented encourages system ownership. Time and experience will flesh-out your virtual learning environment. It's fun watching learners and instructors get excited about online learning. I find the more I involve them in growth planning, the more enjoyable it is for me as well.

Note:This helps reduce upfront costs but be warned, plan accordingly and make sure you leave a room in your budget to manage unforeseen risks.

If you are in the midst of building your online learning system or if you've been tasked with saving a failing project, I hope these tips will help you out. With change comes obstacles and the work itself can be Sisyphean at times. Dig deeper to figure out what your organization really needs by building relationships, chose the right vendors, implement the minimum, and then let the system grow organically.