Tertiary Education New Zealand » business

Using Moodle For Business

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:48:47 +0000

From business case to Mature Product: A step-by-step guide to using Moodle in your business. A presentation prepared for Midwest Moodle Moot by Penny Mondani.

http://pennymondani.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Using-Moodle-for-Business-by-Penny-Mondani.pdf

Source: http://pennymondani.com/tag/elearning-for-small-business/

Enterprise Mobile Learning and Development A Guide for CLOs and Training Managers

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 09:25:22 +0000

The ability to reach people when it is convenient for them, with powerful learning content or support tools that are relevant to what they are doing, is a compelling story for industry thought leaders to tell. And so they have been telling it for many years, with interesting cutting-edge examples and compelling presentations. But it is only recently, with the explosion of the latest generation of smartphones, and a tipping point of success stories to reflect upon, that mobile learning has truly come of age.

Now is the time to understand what mobile learning can provide to your organization, and to do so you need to understand the basics: the “Who, Where, When, What, Why, and How” of mobile learning.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Definition and Scope
Who benefits from mobile learning?
Where is mobile learning valuable?
Why mobile learning and support?
When is mobile learning a sensible approach?
What kinds of content are appropriate for mobile learning?
How can you get started with mobile learning?
A Case Study of Real Mobile Learning Results

http://www.trainingindustry.com/media/3579534/element%20k%20enterprise%20mobile%20learning%20and%20development.pdf

Training on Trial: How Workplace Learning Must Reinvent Itself to Remain Relevant

Wed, 19 May 2010 02:58:41 +0000

While upbeat lingo abounds about ‘complementing strategic objectives’ and ‘driving productivity’, the fact is that most training does not make a significant enough impact on business results, and when it does, training professionals fail to make a convincing case about the value added to the bottom line.

The vaunted ‘business partnership model’ has yet to be realized – and in tough economic times, when the training budget is often the first to be cut, training is on trial for its very existence.

Using a courtroom trial as a metaphor, “Training on Trial” seeks to get to the truth about why training fails and puts the business partnership model to work for real. Readers on both sides of the ‘courtroom’ will learn how to stop viewing training as a cost center, and bridge the gulf between what learning functions deliver and what business units need to execute their strategies.

A thought-provoking read for trainers and business unit leaders alike, “Training on Trial” provides a new application of the Kirkpatrick Four – Level Evaluation Model and a multitude of tips and techniques that allow lessons learned to be put into action now.

BUY NOW:

Training on Trial: How Workplace Learning Must Reinvent Itself to Remain Relevant

5A Framework converting elearning courses into business results

Tue, 04 May 2010 03:28:29 +0000

EXTRACT:

We have interviewed hundreds of participants in learning programs, both online and event-based. Essentially, the question we asked was, “Were you able to apply what you learned in a way that helped you achieve a business outcome or goal?” Perhaps not surprisingly, a large percentage of these employees answered “No.”

However, when we delved deeper to understand what was preventing these learners from attaining and applying this new knowledge to achieve goals, we were surprised to discover that it was not a failure of the technology or the learning program itself. In most cases, learners point to factors outside of the learning program or event as being the most critical barriers to success.

The organizational factors that prevent employees from converting e-Learning into business achievement can be boiled down to five key principles. We call these principles the 5As, and together they make up the 5As Framework:

1) Aligning e-Learning initiatives (the content and purpose of the program, etc.) with individual and organizational goals;

2) Anticipating learning and success from participation in the e-Learning;

3) Forming a learning Alliance of learner with supervisor/boss;

4) Applying learning to achieving business goals; and

5) Being Accountable for business results.

The full article can be found here: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/357/getting-business-results-from-e-learning and is recommended reading!

Transform with elearning: What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:27:57 +0000

Elearning can have a transformational impact on small business, not-for-profit and other fragmented groups sharing common interests, challenges or opportunities.

Leaders who champion these approaches, and buy-in from participants, is key – but once people are on-board a widespread and consistent improvement in performance can occur in a rapid and substantial fashion.

Social networking and related services have taken elearning beyond self-contained training that offered little more than traditional distance learning. It now offers an important level of interaction that brings real people together.

The opportunity for interaction between participants promotes collaboration. This can lead to superior, and often creative, solutions which can benefit every member. Small business, for example, will only get so far working with local competitors, but can interact freely with similar businesses in other parts of the country. Innovative product or service ideas, marketing approaches, and sources of suppliers can all be freely discussed when businesses are not in direct competition.

The benefits are not solely commercial. I am constantly amazed at how much ‘cash-strapped’ government agenices and not-for-profit groups will spend to get members to centralised training, or to bring training opportunities to geographically spread groups. The travel, accommodation and venue costs alone are often substantial, and the reach limited as a result.

Take a typical sporting organisation for example. They might have national, regional, club and school based administration nationwide from the largest centres to the smallest rural communities. They probably share common issues – perhaps they all seek greater levels of grant funding.

One well designed elearning programme in which the participants learn how to submit winning funding applications would address this need. It would involve many members and be delivered simultaneously nationwide, with valuable collaboration between participants sharing experiences and looking for solutions. This would immediately lift performance across the board, and impact nationwide through many members. An initiative like this could generate thousands of dollars of additional revenue and great benefits as a result.

Complement that with programmes in strategic planning, financial practise, volunteer management, and recruitment and suddenly you have strengthened and advanced the capability of your organisation in a very practical way – further and faster than you ever thought possible.

Put simply, this is about flexibility of time and place. This phrase is often used from the learner’s perspective, but it also applies to the delivery of training. Being able to provide training to a disjointed group spread over thousands of kilometres on a flexible schedule enables you to capture more people, more quickly, and more effectively.

What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better? Tell us and we will show you how elearning can make it happen!

Read: eLearning Outsourcing: Why Consider It?

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:51:34 +0000

From the “Upside Learning Solutions” blog, a good summary of outsourcing benefits – some focus on outsourcing to India, but many of the key points apply equally to contracting providers closer to home.

“There are many benefits that eLearning outsourcing offers and we feel in this business environment it is important that your firm considers outsourcing as an option – especially if it has never done so. This post deals with the benefits of eLearning outsourcing.”

Read: eLearning Outsourcing: Why Consider It?

Download: Using e-Learning to build workforce capability: A review of activities

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:33:37 +0000

This report was commissioned by the Ministry and undertaken by the Waikato Institute of Technology in collaboration with the Industry Training Federation. The report’s main objectives were to:

Identify how e-Learning is employed in work-based and work-placed learning both internationally and nationally.
Describe the impact of e-Learning on building workforce capability globally and nationally.
Assess the demand from employers, providers and learners for e-Learning in improving individual and organisational capability.
Demonstrate how, and in what ways, e-Learning can aid particular industry sectors in building workforce capability.
Examine reasons why e-Learning is not being used in particular industry sectors to support work-based and work-placed learning.
Recommend further activities that could be taken to promote and embed the effective use of e-Learning in work-based and work-placed e-Learning.

Download the full report: Using e-Learning to build workforce capability: A review of activities (.pdf 1.2MB)

Author: John Clayton, Richard Elliott, Sarah-Jane Saravani, Nicholas Huntington, Nicholas Greene
Date Published: October 2008
Released on Education Counts: 16 November 2009

DIY – Use e-learning courses to address your skill shortages

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:00:16 +0000

Once again we hear the familiar cry of industry lamenting the “skill shortage” that seems to be a constant burden for many New Zealand employers. TVNZ Business reported on Monday:

A recruitment specialist says skills shortages in the job market are expected to again come to the fore next year.

Recruitment company Hays has issued a report on its expectations for 2010.

Managing director Jason Walker says as New Zealand emerges from the economic downturn, the challenge for talent will again rear its head.

He says financial and commercial analysts, and technical IT specialists will be in particular demand.

Walker says employers are looking for experienced workers who have a background in the New Zealand marketplace.

He says many employers are sensing a new optimism in the market and are planning for recruitment in 2010.

(http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/skills-shortages-expected-in-2010-3319505)

Now, more than ever, industry has an opportunity to develop the people they already have in a way that is cost effective, and highly customised. But e-learning also provides an ideal means of addressing specific skill shortages when you do not already have potential candidates on hand

Many skill shortages, both short and long term, are notoriously difficult to address. One of the often cited reasons for this is a lack of interest from potential candidates. This is often not the problem in of itself. Instead it creates a problem for traditional education and training models which require a certain ‘critical mass’ before programmes are sustainable under existing funding mechanisms.

If an industry requires candidates for training and there are a dozen scattered throughout the country, this is not going to be sufficient for any conventional ‘face-to-face’ delivery to be financially viable – a key consideration for ALL education organisations including not-for-profits.

Using an e-learning model for delivery, however, enables those 12 people to be brought together and learn together in a way that is equally effective – even while continuing to gain experience – the other great shortage employers often seek.

Employers who are serious about taking charge of their own future, and proactively addressing the barriers which are preventing profitability and growth without waiting for others to act, should be grabbing e-learning with both hands.

Using e-Learning to build workforce capability: A review of activities

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:18:56 +0000

Recommended reading, this webpage from the Ministry of Education (New Zealand) summarises key issues and findings from the full report (also available for download). The content is succinct and includes some excellent graphics clearly depicting the process of elearning industry, elearning as it occurs in large companies, and in small or medium businesses, and a model for examining elearning effectiveness.

This is an excellent summary of key e-learning issues in the New Zealand workplace, but many of these factors have wider relevance. It also glances towards the future and identifies the following future trends:

Blended: Despite the growing focus in industry on e-learning, traditional approaches continue to remain important. A blended approach, incorporating e-learning with traditional formats, has already been identified by some as the way to proceed. It is envisaged that this will be a significant approach in the future.

Collaborative: To achieve cost reduction and to increase the quality of elearning resources developed, many organisations will increasingly collaborate with the producers whose goods they sell and with other organisations in the same sector.

In-House: Increasingly, the benefits of tracking the training undertaken by employees, ensuring all employees are conversant with company policies and compliant with appropriate legislative requirements, is being recognised. This will be monitored by e-administration tools managed by inhouse staff.

Mobile: Mobile technologies (such as phones, PDAs and cameras) are readily available and enable information to be accessed remotely and for data transfer from those “on-site” back to the central office and conversely for the central office to provide advice or training to those “on-site”. A number of firms indicated in this study that the use of mobile technologies was a key component of future e-learning offering

This page summarises one of the most current and useful current reviews of e-learning in the New Zealand workplace: Using e-Learning to build workforce capability: A review of activities

E-Learning and small business – lessons from the UK and Europe

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:45:55 +0000

“When planning for a year, plant corn.

When planning for a decade, plant trees.

When planning for life, train and educate people.” Chinese proverb: Guanzi (c. 645BC)

When planning for e-life, empower trainers and learners to engage in e-life.

The small business community in the UK and Europe is a growth sector and collectively the largest employer. European governments and the European Commission have been keen to develop a range of programmes to support this community as many small businesses are vulnerable to market pressures, ‘red tape’ and often suffer from lack of resources and effective business infrastructure. As engine of the European economy their skill assets and continuous up-skilling will be key to economic competitiveness and prosperity, particularly in the context of the knowledge economy. To training and learning providers the small business community represents a potentially huge market, yet one which is difficult to tap into. As a community of dispersed learners VLEs or elearning generally could provide important tools to help engage these potential learners.

Concepts and methodologies of elearning will have to take into account the needs of the small business environment and its learners in order to achieve a wider learning application. A learner driven pedagogy rather than a product driven one could be experienced as the real challenge as it may confront equal opportunities and the democratisation of learning environments, be it blended learning approaches or others.

A) When talking about learning it will be useful to describe learning and elearning to provide a better basis for analysis. What forms of learning takes place involving small businesses?

B) Before assessing how small businesses can be engaged in elearning one has to assess how they can be engaged in learning. What are the conditions under which small businesses engage in learning?

C) When talking about learning in small businesses it is appropriate to describe the wider context as this should inform the business decisions of those wishing to provide learning products and services to small businesses. What is the political and economic context?

Small businesses can be defined as having between 1 and 50 employees and are financially independent, that is it is not owned by a larger company.

Many small businesses engage in formal learning activities because of legal requirements, links to supply chains, new products, machinery or processes, customer demand, standards. Most of them don’t include learning in their business planning, should the latter exist. However, all small businesses engage in some kind of informal ad hoc learning activities and if a learning provider wishes to engage with small businesses than he needs to address one or both scenarios.

From research assessing the possibilities of engaging small business in HE learning environments (Uwe Derksen, Leonardo project Euromanager report, 2001) we know

· the majority of small business managers perform a ‘hands on’ role (93%);

· their primary learning methods are informal, experiential and/or through peer groups (88%);

· academic/professional qualifications are not valued highly (68%) as their relevance is a primary issue;

· issues such as limited time and resources, and short-termism within small businesses contribute to the lack of overall formal planning, including staff develop planning, and the poor take-up of training;

· identified barriers to learning include lack of perceived benefits and lack of appropriate training solutions targeted at small businesses;

· management training is a recognised need within small businesses as a means to improve effectiveness (65%) and/or to expand the business (66%), in particular into European markets (58%);

· access to the internet has increased rapidly (76%);

· cultural issues and preconceptions inhibit the relationship between small businesses and HEIs.

During our work with small businesses we also noticed through a process of formative evaluation that many small business managers and employees required

· extensive pedagogical support and guidance (learning how to learn, particularly independently);

· a learner’s and business needs assessment;

· support in basic and key skills; especially report writing (expressing ideas and concepts) and ICT skills (using the internet as resource and working and communicating in an virtual environment);

· the use of peer groups and “fellow champions” to facilitate learning, translate academic learning concept and provide additional transfer of experiential business knowledge and information.

· a “long” acclimatisation period into an academic learning environment;

· “gate-keepers” to build up trust and mutual understanding between the learner and the training provider;

· in the beginning applicable and relevant knowledge that can be used in the business almost instantly;

· the provision of additional access to resources useful to the business (e.g. unlimited access to the internet at the campus and learning centres) and information provided by guest speakers (real or virtual);

· regular face-to-face meetings;

· the use of peer-group language and cultural values;

· a blend between online and “traditional” learning and formal and informal learning, work based and college-based;

· personal tutors;

· learning content and methodologies that were structured around the business and less around subject areas (i.e. the business is the practical extension of the learner, this is particularly the case with owner managers)

· a flexible learner centred curriculum;

· negotiated learning: the solutions to problems are explored in partnership with the tutor/lecturer and peer group members;

· a learning situation that was a local social experience and process;

· general business support as added value;

· a demonstration of tangible benefits;

· to be valued for their aims and ideas: (the business often being the extension of their personality and life);

· to build capacity to learn and learn to learn, this would include the capacity of the business itself as the development of the learner effects the relationship with his or her colleagues in the business testing their own expertise and knowledge.

Some of these findings have been borne out by other research: “Professor Ian Draffan, Head of e-Learning Services at UfI, highlighted the importance of developing a sense of community amongst online learners. To achieve the UfI ideal of flexible, ‘roll-on, roll-off’ access for learners and to add value to the learning experience, creating tutor groups in stable learning communities are key to retaining learners by active tutoring”.

And “if the benefits of technology are to be realised in terms of improved learner motivation, achievement and retention, as well as widening access to non-traditional learners, then effective learner support strategies must be at centre stage. Research shows that the quality of support for learners is key to their recruitment, retention and achievement, particularly for those non-traditional learners who may lack motivation and experience of learning.

To underpin online provision in the ‘roll-on, roll-off’ model envisaged by the University for Industry, learner support is even more important: to overcome isolation, provide personal feedback, help with technical problems, and permit the social interactions so important to effective adult learning” (Marchmont Observatory, December 2000).

If one accepts that many small businesses don’t have a formal learning culture than it is understandable that the introduction to a learning environment can be an initial daunting experience. Building self-confidence and empowering the learner are key to creating an appropriate learning environment.

In terms of the elearning and small businesses the challenge is the ability to support an environment of “blended learning “ where “blended” means the support for formal and informal learning, to facilitate the exchange of practical information and knowledge, peer group and negotiated learning, on- and off-line learning, empowerment to contribute to ones own learning environment and to challenge existing provisions. The tendency was to move away from consumer-orientated and supply-led learning environment towards a democratically orientated and need-based learning environment.

Interestingly the questions that need to be answered by businesses when engaging in learning and elearning: Which competencies do our staff need in order to ensure continued success in the market place?, What kind of knowledge do we require for such success?, How can the internet be utilised to access relevant learning content?, How do and can we need to organise work based learning?, Which partners and programmes are available? and Which media competencies do our staff require? (see Web Based Training in Kleinen und Mittleren Unternehmen, 2001), also need to be addressed by the learning providers themselves.

“Give a man a fish and you can feed her for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and teach her how to fish, and you can feed her until the fishing rod breaks. Teach a man to fish, and then how to make a fishing rod from locally available materials, then she will eat for as long as there are fish to be caught. Organise the man and her neighbours into a common property resource management scheme and they will be able to fish at sustainable levels. Support them in organising themselves, and they will be able to decide if they wish to earn their livelihood by fishing, or by some other means”

could translate into

“Give a man some learning content and she will learn for a day. Give a man the source of learning content and teach her how to work with it together with some learning provisions and she will be able to benefit from it as long as it remains relevant. Teach a man how to access learning content and learning provisions generally, then how to find appropriate resources relevant to her need, and she will benefit as long as the resources are available. Organise the man and her neighbours into a managed learning network and they will be able to learn at sustainable levels. Support them in organising themselves, and they will be able to decide which learning environment and which learning content is most appropriate”.

SOURCE: http://www.solt.info/forum_posts.asp?TID=6