Lokal Archive - imc Learning

A request for proposal or RfP is a document put together by the client and sent to potential learning management system providers in order to start the conversation about suitability and generating a quote.

A good RfP will contain information about the organisation and its elearning goals, the number of people (sometimes including external partners and supply chain as well as employees) to be trained, existing technology infrastructure to be integrated into, and any other LMS needs and constraints.

LMS providers who feel they can meet these criteria can then send a proposal, and the client can form a shortlist of providers to progress conversations with, and from whom to make a final choice.

One of the key benefits of an LMS request for proposal is that it ensures a level of objectivity in the procurement process. By starting with a checklist of essential, then nice to have features, the client can be more assured of suitability in a learning platform, rather than being overly swayed by slick sales presentations.

Before talking to a vendor, you can define your essential LMS requirements, before going on to list those that would be a bonus but that you may be willing to forego depending on price or strengths in your must-have criteria.

It’s really important to identify which criteria are truly essential to making an LMS work for your organisation, regardless of bells and whistles in nice to have areas. These LMS priorities will help to ensure the project does not fail.

Does your project have a strict timescale and / or budget? If you have hard limits to work within, by making these clear within your RfP you can avoid any time-wasting discussions if a vendor simply can not meet them. It also prevents time and budget creep once a project is underway.

Because the RfP is an up-front piece of work that can be sent to multiple vendors (and there really are hundreds to choose from), you will usually save time overall because you are not having to repeat yourself in initial email and telephone conversations. You can also avoid conversations with and presentations from companies that can not meet your needs.

This should be a brief (one page should suffice) intro to your project and touch on what you are looking for and why.

What is your current training solution and what is it you’re looking to add / change / improve?

It should include the name and contact information for your project lead so that the vendor can ask any follow-up questions.

It should also include a deadline for the project so that vendors who can not work to your timescale can quickly self-eliminate. Include your timeline for receiving proposals and making a final decision on your vendor.

While you don’t need to go into detail on your company history, its founders etc (by all means link to this background info online), helpful information will include your company’s industry, regulatory environment, number of employees to be trained now and down the line, and geography - especially important if there’s likely to be a multilingual component.

If you are relatively new to LMS features or you are replacing a very outdated system, you may be fuzzy on potential functionalities within the ideal platform, especially when it comes to terminology.

Feel free to talk here about what you need to achieve with the learning platform if you’re not sure how to define the feature that would make it happen.

Common needs / features you might want to think about and place varying levels of importance on include:

Creation of job roles and competencies defined in each position
Enrolment process on courses, including any combination of self-enrolment, automated enrolment by role or manual enrolment governed by managers
Multi-tenancy - ie creation of tailored, and even branded, learning environments for different teams, including employee types, external partners and even customers
Assessments and certificates - including quizzes, required competency levels and any legal / regulatory compliance needs
Reporting tools for administrators and departments such as HR and Legal
Mobile access - especially important if you have employees on the go who need to access training materials via a tablet or smartphone.

It’s rare that large organisations will want a learning platform that operates in isolation these days. LMS integrations with existing HR software such as Workday or SAP, a CRM like Salesforce, and other tools managing employee data can save a great deal of time spent on learner admin.

It can also improve overall business performance by increasing knowledge sharing across your organisation. Define your existing people software where integration could make life easier.

You may want to ask the vendor to tick important features that are available in a pre-populated spreadsheet such as this example. You can assign importance levels to each checkbox before or after sending to the vendor.

Define what you would like to receive back from the vendor. Any experienced LMS provider will have existing templates that they work with and which are often pre-populated to an extent, but you can still request information in a format that suits you.

You may want to request an initial one-page summary of their solution that encapsulates what they can deliver and when, and to what budget. This will make it easier to discuss proposals with your peers and other stakeholders without having to go into the fine detail.

As an LMS buyer, very important information to receive from the vendor includes:

Their company and background

How long have they been in business? You don’t want to be a guinea pig or deal with an inexperienced team
How large is their team of LMS developers? While you don’t necessarily need to work with the largest companies and all the overhead costs that come with that, you don’t want the risk of single points of failure that come with working with a small business
Who are their customers? Do they have experience in your sector and with your company size? If so, this will fast forward their understanding of your needs.

The platform

Have they ticked all the essential requirements? Don’t let ticking lots of boxes across the must-haves and nice-to-haves cloud your judgement here. A high overall ‘score’ is meaningless if one or to absolute musts are not met - this system just won’t work for you.
What is the position on data security? Does it meet any specific needs for your industry?
Technical environment - can it work with your IT set-up?

Budget

Is the system scalable without additional costs per learner or is it priced per learner? The latter benefits smaller organisations but can become painful for larger ones…
Is there a separate implementation cost?
How does ongoing support work and how is it priced?
Are there update / renewal fees and when are they payable?
Is user training included or charged separately?

Implementation plan

Do you start with a limited cohort of learners for user testing?
What are the various implementation stages and timescales for each?
What involvement is required from the LMS buyer and at what stages?

Buying an LMS can be a complicated process - especially when you need to factor in your possible future training needs in addition to your immediate requirements.

By putting together a detailed LMS RfP, you can help to ensure that your procurement will be objective and evidence-based, helping you to avoid costly mistakes and disappointment.

Separate genuine must-haves from nice-to-have features, and you can ensure you meet the needs of all your stakeholders, and that any additional features simply make the new platform more enjoyable and more useful for your business as a whole.

Feel free to download this editable checklist to get started with selecting the LMS features that match your needs and wishes.

As imc Learning has decades of experience delivering on the training needs of some of the world’s best-known brands, if you’d like to have a conversation about your own elearning project, feel free to contact us for an informal chat.

Digital training solutions continue to gain ground. With the objective of placing learners at the core and inspiring them with real learning experiences, decisions have long been based on factors other than just time and cost.

Yet, to design individual learning paths, you don’t necessarily need custom training content. We spoke to two learning experts, who explain the differences between custom and off-the-shelf training content, and describe what content is best suited for a custom or an off-the-shelf training course design.

Custom training content – specifically and exclusively designed to meet a company’s e-learning requirements – is generally created from scratch. Its starting point is a specific need or task, for which a special solution is designed, and an entirely new training course is created.

These solutions are a great choice for companies seeking to cover specialised topics, such as training for their own production areas – where it can be safely assumed that no standardised solution suitable for their needs exists.

Meanwhile, off-the-shelf training content describes training courses or learning content created independently from any specific customer enquiry which can be used by different companies in a generic form. Thus, this content addresses tasks of a general nature rather than a specific issue or need.

Typical topics almost every company needs to deal with would include information security and data protection. These can be perfectly covered with off-the-shelf training courses, as they reflect regulations and laws applicable to all, rather than company-specific issues.

A clear preference for off-the-shelf training content also exists for compliance trainings, given that the fundamental principles are based on the applicable laws. However, if a company wants to convey their corporate policy in their training course, things get trickier. Stephan Härle, Instructional Designer at imc explains: “Off-the-shelf trainings provide information of a general nature: You must be careful with gifts and may have to contact your Compliance department. Meanwhile, custom training content can offer more detail: In our company, gifts worth X or more must be approved by our Compliance department. It is impossible to include this in off-the-shelf training content because guidelines differ in every organisation.”

“First of all, we get together with the customer and carry out a major needs assessment,” Stephan Härle says. “If the right conclusions are drawn at this stage, the training can be designed to fit the target group perfectly. But we can only do that with a custom training. Defining the target group very precisely enables us to find the right approach, make the training exciting for a greater number of learners, and increase the completion rate. Custom really means customised for a specific requirement and tailored to the learners’ needs.”

“It’s like buying an outfit,” Philipp Schossau continues: “If you were to attend a gala dinner, it would be rather difficult to find a suitable mass-produced smoking that fits perfectly. However, if I’m only going out for a nice dinner, without it being a special occasion, then I can buy and wear off-the-shelf outfits that I enjoy wearing.”

Stephan Härle: “We want off-the-shelf content to break free from its poor image. While many reasons speak for custom content, off-the-shelf content need not be an uncomfortable compromise. On the contrary, it can be a perfectly suitable and useful solution that is also enjoyable.”

Naturally, resource investments are significantly lower, given that no further input is needed for the content design. Moreover, ready-made training content is available much faster than a custom solution that needs to be designed first. Of course, costs can play a role in this decision, too. Off-the-shelf content is usually cheaper.

There are two major problems for an organisation when this is the case:

When the emphasis is on just getting through the material and gaining the Pass, the learner may not have been mentally engaged in a way that will ensure retention and truly impact their behaviour long-term, helping to manage personal and business risk.

It sets a scene for training in general to be boring and ‘unimportant’ to the individual, so when a learner has access to learning that can boost their performance and benefit the whole company, they lack the enthusiasm to jump in and engage.

To avoid creating a culture of disinterest when it comes to learning, here we look at how to make compliance training engaging through the use of effective elearning content and a learning platform that makes it easy and enjoyable to access.

Make it Relevant to the Learner’s Role

Information instantly becomes more boring when you feel that it will never relate to your life. While some training content will be relevant to the entire workforce, try to minimise the use of generic content throughout, where it has limited relevance to certain roles.

The use of branching scenarios means that you can deliver globally relevant training at the outset, but which then forks down role-specific paths. For example certain modules may be signposted for frontline workers, while managers / supervisors can be taken down a different path.

The greater appreciation of context will mean that the learner sees relevance within their day to day role.

Make it Accessible

If you want compliance training to not only get completed, but absorbed and really assimilated into working practice, then it’s important to enable learners to access it in a manner, at a time and in a place that suits them.

Unless the training needs to be consumed at a desk on day 1, then mobile-friendly elearning enables anytime, anywhere learning. Might your learners want or need to access the materials on the go? A good learning platform will make it easy for learners to access training anywhere, and for HR or L&D teams to track progress across individuals and groups.

Make it Brief

Bite-size learning or microlearning enables them to access training in chunks that allow for consolidation between sessions.

Numerous studies over the last century, notably Miller’s Law that originated back in the 1950s, have shown that a small number of items (5 to 9) can be held in your short term memory before new information starts to crowd those items out.

Deliver training in small chunks that enable consolidation into long term memory between sessions, and create a level of testing and repetition to really help training stick.

Make it Multimedia

Everyone consumes, absorbs and retains information differently. Some people are drawn to reading text, while others struggle - regardless of proficiency in their work. Some find that they enjoy or learn faster with the audio and visual combination of videos while for some it’s annoying or they are unable to have the sound on at their desk.

Where possible, provide options within an elearning course so that every type of learner is catered for.

Make it Fun - Gamify

Even those who display zero signs of competitiveness enjoy games, or at least rewards, now and again. Either games-based learning or the introduction of game-playing elements within a traditional system (gamification) is shown to improve learning outcomes. In fact, gamification has been shown to enhance motivation and improve psychological and behavioural outcomes in multiple arenas.

Some modern LMS solutions make it easy for you to create gamification elements within the platform, such as badges or other awards for achievements and learning milestones. You can even create a level of competition between individuals or departments to further increase motivation.

Terms such as LMS, NGLE and LXP are confusing for corporate buyers. The definitions aren’t clear and it’s hard to differentiate between the different types of technologies. That’s why in the February 2020 Learning Systems 9-Grid™, Fosway took the bold decision to reclassify Learning Systems as Suites and Specialists with the aim of more clearly and accurately defining the market. Organisations have always had a learning ecosystem of platforms and tools but the acceleration to digital-first ways of working and hybrid working require the ecosystem to be optimised to deliver impact and value.

This blog will explain the reasons why:

The new classification is more reflective of the current learning systems market
The ecosystem concept of combining suites and specialists is the way forward
The connectivity of the ecosystem and circulation of data is more important than ever before

Market perception is that the LMS represents traditional ‘tick-box’ compliance and ‘click-next’ content. A new label (LXP) encouraged the market to look to a fresh new future. However, over recent years the lines between the two types of system have blurred and those vendors who thought that formal learning and LMS functionality could be ignored were mistaken. This is true, particularly in the mid-market, where buyers can neither afford nor justify the purchase of more than one learning system. As the market now both accepts and adjusts to the Fosway classification of Suites and Specialists, some vendors have re-evaluated their target positioning and where they fit in the corporate ecosystem. Some specialists have prioritised innovation over backfilling core learning management functionality, often preferring to partner with other Suites instead. Suites have added LXP capability, whatever they perceive that to be.

Learning technology has always been an ecosystem with many components, including the Learning Systems (LS), sources of HR data, virtual classrooms, authoring tools, learning content and other resources. Seamless integration has often been an issue, many corporates choosing not to tackle the problem, leaving them as separate, stand-alone technologies and making a single source of truth for data an unreachable goal. This is no longer a viable option even for learning at the mid-market level. However, even more integrations are required as an organisation gets larger, more complex and their core LS does not deliver the depth of functionality in specific areas. So, platforms with specialisms such as training resource management, curation, extended enterprise or programmatic learning might be added to the learning ecosystem.

However, the ecosystem is expanding beyond learning, connecting with the HR System(s) for the learner’s profile has always been a priority but now the lines are also blurring between communication, learning, performance and talent. It’s all about the data flow and the term we use to describe the ability to do this well is ‘Ecosystem-ness’. Vendors will rightly say that APIs solve this problem, but building integrations require integrators, i.e. developers and other experienced people to build and maintain them. In a complex company, that is expensive and non-trivial. In smaller companies it is impossible as they lack the resources and budgets to develop their own integrations. The more that Ecosystem-ness is of the out-of-the-box, the better off all buyers will be.

The ecosystem provides the opportunity to deliver a new level of learning impact. Take this scenario for example: an employee is recruited because of their existing skills which are noted, their learning through the onboarding process takes care of the gaps and time-to-value in the new role is measured. Successful performance is demonstrated and rewarded during the delivery of internal or external projects. Awareness of new opportunities for further development and upskilling are at the learner’s fingertips along with collaborative assignments or individual coaching. The manager has access to their team’s progress to ensure intervention is possible when necessary. The organisation can recognise the skills gaps across the whole organisation and initiate reskilling for competitive advantage and growth. Learning is at the centre of this and at every stage!

But none of this is possible in an effective efficient way without all the various HR, talent and learning system suites and specialists being integrated to ensure the data flows unimpeded. Which is why the ability for a vendor to demonstrate ecosystem-ness is crucial.

And if all this can take place behind the scenes, mostly hidden from view and the employee has access to everything wherever they are working on a day-to-day basis then we’ve cracked it!

Find out more about the Fosway 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems and read the full report here and you can contact Fiona via @fionaleteney or @fosway on Twitter and LinkedIn.

imc Express is an easy-to-use authoring tool that takes the hassle out of content creation. Learning teams can easily import text from Microsoft Word, add multimedia content, drag-and-drop images and build interactive learning activities to build engaging learning experiences. To support the most inclusive Commonwealth Games ever, video content is automatically subtitled, ensuring it’s accessible to the entire workforce.

On top of this, imc Express offers a range of pre-made and customisable design templates, along with didactic templates to help authors convey their content in a didactically meaningful way. Content is adaptive and responsive for all devices, ensuring it’s suitable for the Commonwealth Games’ large, diverse audience who may be accessing training from desktop computers, tablets or smartphones.

The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games team has two imc Express ‘super users’ with the overall responsibility for managing the eLearning content creation process. These super users will set up the templates and send them out to each functional area in line with demand for new learning content.

The templated approach will empower more people to create learning content without needing extensive development or design experience, while also being able to create engaging and interactive eLearning content instead of a plain PDF.

This custom eLearning content will supplement the in-person training which takes place within the Commonwealth Games venues in Birmingham, ensuring volunteers can make the most of their face-to-face time. The modules created in imc Express will help volunteers know what to expect before their in-person training, giving them a useful overview of their roles and the tasks they can expect to perform.

Over 50 courses were created, in-house, in no time. Many static documents and plain text resources were transformed into engaging, interactive eLearning. This was made significantly easier by the fact that with imc Express, a single plain text input can be converted into multiple outputs, such as SCORM, web content or ebooks. This content was then imported directly from imc Express into the Learning Magagement System (LMS), reducing manual content upload.

Providing this content as soon as volunteers have their roles, ensures that they can start to prepare for the games immediately without having to wait for their face-to-face training. They will have access to photos, videos, maps and more created with imc Express by leaders in their functional area, ensuring they can turn up for their face-to-face sessions with a foundation of knowledge.

This primarily self-created approach will also allow the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games team to accommodate inevitable last-minute requests for learning content, as they can all be quickly created in-house using templates and the imc Express tool’s artificial intelligence to pull together accessible, attractive and engaging learning resources for thousands of volunteers, contractors and paid employees.

The project kickoff took place in November 2021, with the initial go-live planned for late February 2022 - a very tight timeframe for such a large-scale, complex LMS project, so efficient working practices were a must.

An inclusive learning platform

A key consideration for this project was that the Birmingham 2022 games will be the most inclusive Commonwealth Games to date, with more medals for women and a bigger para-sport programme than ever before. Birmingham is also a very diverse city in the UK’s West Midlands. This need for inclusion had to be reflected in the choice of learning platform. The LMS needed to be simple, accessible and suitable for use by a wide range of learners.

Building an LMS within time limitations

Additionally, it was vital that this programme remained within the planned scope. With such limited time, it was not an option to stray outside the initial plans, so the Commonwealth Games organising committee and imc agreed very early on that this LMS needed a very clear focus with no room for scope creep.

With so many volunteers and contractors involved in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, it was essential that the programme ran efficiently and didn’t take up more time than was absolutely necessary. The last thing the Commonwealth Games organising committee wanted was to ask a volunteer working four shifts to participate in a full week of training, so a smart design was extremely important.

All employees, contractors and volunteers involved with the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games must attend four-hour face-to-face orientation sessions to help them familiarise themselves with the venues and procedures specific to each location. Therefore, a blended learning programme was quickly established as the best approach, with the LMS providing additional bitesize training and support while protecting limited face-to-face time.

Integration with a workforce management system

The Learning Management System (LMS), B-Bright, takes user data from workforce management system Rosterfy, the volunteer portal. For the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, this takes place through a simple data transfer service, but with more time to prepare for future games, these systems will be integrated. This is one of the advantages of a multi-games contract – lessons learned from this version can be directly implemented in future versions, instead of starting from scratch each time.

There are thousands of people involved in the Commonwealth Games, all of whom have different learning needs and roles to prepare for, across 43 functional areas and 279 different volunteer roles. The data transferred from Rosterfy to the LMS flags the type of user and automatically gives them access to the relevant training within the course catalogue.

This data also tells the LMS which functional area the learner works in, so they are also automatically enrolled into role-appropriate courses. This removes a huge amount of manual work for the organising committee, and ensures that the user management process is streamlined and efficient,

An agile approach

This solution has been designed with future games in mind right from the start of the process. While the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games requires a quick, on-brief solution, there will be much more time to automate more elements of the platform for future games. Owing to this agile approach, the larger scope of more complex learner journeys and close integration with other systems can be iteratively rolled out over time. Getting started with what is required now with built-in flexibility means that the solution will be ready to adapt to what is needed in the future.

By leveraging the latest learning technology, your organisation can stay compliant while saving valuable time and money, as well as engaging employees with the training process.

A modern ‘learning suite’ will comprise capabilities as both a learning management system (LMS) and a learning experience platform (LXP). When it comes to mandatory training to stay compliant with legal or industry regulations, the former is most relevant.

So below we look at 5 key capabilities you need in a good LMS for compliance training. We then offer 5 quick tips for making compliance training engaging, as well as effective.

The imc Learning Suite enables you to define target groups for training courses and book them automatically. Progress is continuously documented from the time of booking, and learners can be reminded by automatic messages to complete these courses within the required period.

An automated refresher training mechanism ensures that the course is repeated regularly, so that the employee always meets all compliance requirements. All status changes are stored throughout the entire process, ensuring that all compliance-relevant activities can be tracked and monitored across the board.

By using personal profile data, new employees can also be automatically trained according to requirements during the onboarding process. The imc Learning Suite also supports maintenance through necessary repeat training and recertification.

All compliance-relevant activities are supported by the system, from the nomination of target groups to the tracking of course progress and the so-called “chasing“, right through to the reporting of training measures.

Keep the above info block but remove ‘the’ to read just ‘Reduce susceptibility to errors’.

The training assignment process describes the formation of target groups for defined compliance requirements and the selection of training measures that must be carried out to meet the requirements.

The imc Learning Suite provides support by defining and selecting target groups via inclusion and exclusion rules. Assignment criteria can for example be courses, user attributes, course types, learning paths, skills, group assignments or job profiles. Target groups can be generated automatically via batch jobs that can be configured as desired or after a manual start.

The learner tracking process describes the continuous monitoring of the learning progress of training measures. So you can be sure that you meet the compliance requirements. The imc Learning Suite makes the current status of training measures traceable at any time and facilitates progress control via reports, automatic notifications, and the course progress display.

The current status of the training activities can be graphically displayed in the imc Learning Suite on a reporting dashboard. The reports can be configured individually and offer filter options so that those responsible are always informed about the status and possible need for action. On request, the reports can also be sent to the compliance officers on a regular basis or triggered by predefined events.

For training measures that must be carried out due to legal or internal company compliance requirements, there is often a fixed timeframe for successful completion. If such deadlines are not met, this can lead to the employees not being able to perform tasks due to a lack of professional qualifications or not being entitled to perform them due to legal requirements.

To support the successful completion of such training measures, employees are not only informed about the status of their mandatory measures, but are explicitly requested to complete them within the defined period. In the compliance environment, the term “chasing“ has become established for this task. Compliance officers can not only easily create compliance training courses in the Learning Suite user interface, they can also assign validated content to users of predefined target groups.

With just a few clicks, graphically appealing and meaningful reports on compliance status can be activated. In addition to the monitoring and chasing options available via the user interface, the notification module of the imc Learning Suite can be used to define the time intervals at which the distribution groups are to be informed by email about the compliance status of employees.

The recertification workflow controls the fulfilment of compliance requirements for the respective target groups on the basis of a dynamically calculated due date. It also triggers recertification processes either manually or automatically at the optimum time.

The efficient design of the recertification process creates a high level of up-to-date information, relieves those responsible for compliance, and reduces sources of error.

!! See an error in this sentence on the original PDF!!

The Commonwealth Games bring nations together in a colourful celebration of sport, human performance and culture. Birmingham 2022 will see around 4,500 athletes from 72 nations and territories compete in 19 sports and eight para-sports. Much like the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games takes place every four years, moving cities for each event. As the biggest event ever to be held in the West Midlands, Birmingham 2022 is expected to attract more than one million spectators to the city and have a global TV audience of 1.5 billion.

With each event comes a mammoth training requirement. With a workforce of over 50,000 volunteers, paid employees and contractors to rapidly upskill, Birmingham 2022 needed a learning management system (LMS) to streamline the training process for their diverse team.

To find a new LMS, Birmingham 2022 went through a public procurement process to find the right vendor. Birmingham 2022 has pledged to be the most sustainable yet, so sought a solution that could be reused across a multi-games contract, by Birmingham 2022 and future committees.

For Birmingham 2022, it was vital to ensure efficiency and value for money, so it was crucial that they chose the right LMS from the very beginning. The Commonwealth Games Federation’s vision was for better knowledge transfer between organising committees, with systems and contracts carrying over from one Game to the next to reuse as much as possible.

Birmingham 2022 knew that they wanted a truly blended learning programme, comprising eLearning, digital resources and live face-to-face training sessions. The addition of the online element was relatively new, and driven in part by the challenges posed by COVID-19. This would be in contrast with the very simple LMS used by the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, which was essentially used for ‘click next’ learning with no tracking or reporting.

The shift in focus to blended learning would enable Birmingham 2022’s training team to ensure that valuable time wasn’t taken out of face-to-face sessions to deliver soft skills training. This meant that workforce would receive their venue-specific training in person, while accessing role-specific and customer service-focused training online for more efficient learning.

An important part of this project would be the huge learner audience, of 35,000 contractors, 14,000 volunteers and 2,000 paid employees. Additionally, this would be a very diverse audience, comprising different ages and levels of technical ability, meaning the LMS needed to be extremely accessible and user friendly.

With so many volunteers and contractors, Birmingham 2022 needed to ensure that their event scheduling platform, Rosterfy, would communicate with their LMS. This ability to transfer data from Rosterfy to the LMS would save Birmingham 2022 a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on manual data entry.

Finally, the LMS would need to support multiple different user groups over the course of the contract, along with different branding and content, so the chosen LMS needed multitenancy functionality.

LivePerson’s Consumer Preferences for Conversational Commerce survey found two-thirds of consumers would like to message with brands. Again, this reflects a preference for consumers to do business with companies that answer questions immediately.

Australian consumers are among the highest levels of chatbot users worldwide. Consumers particularly in younger age brackets, are interested in the convenience and ease that chatbot interaction can offer, but they can still be sceptical of bots and prefer human interaction.

However, when developed effectively, chatbots are extremely valuable and can offer a very unique way to forge a connection and develop valuable insights

Chatbot learning has evolved because we are now in an age where education has become more accessible than ever. We are constantly in pursuit of better, faster, and deeper ways to learn.

Adult learners are busy and rarely a priority to make time to learn, but utilising chatbot can change this tendency with spikes in productivity because of personable and knowledgeable training assistance.

Additionally, it can offer a welcome change to employees, with interactive training elements to engage them with high knowledge retention and put them in control of their own learning journeys.

Some of the advantages of incorporating chatbot learning include:

Real-time analytics dashboards, these measure the most commonly asked questions, track active and engaged learners versus learners who are not engaged, view the interactions that happen during off-hours, and evaluate learners’ skill development.
They will encourage employees to be more productive and better placed to learn at their own pace when they need support.
They can push out personalised information to learners.
They can review and access all learner created questions and responses.
They reduce the workload of trainers.

An example of a conversational learning chatbot approach developed by imc Australia was deployed in the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA). The chatbot complemented the Compost Facility Management Training by teaching learners some of the basics of the main concepts in the e-learning program, such as Odour, Pasteurisation, Contamination and the Composting Process. It was also operating as a driver to motivate participants to want to learn more by going on to complete the Compost Facility Management course.

imc Australia used engaging design (Chatbot framework) and a conversational learning approach to teach participants about technical concepts involved in composting, using an informal and fun approach to gain their interest and inspire them to complete further study on the subject. You can register on the EPA’s learning management system here.

Moreover, imc created a chatbot that uses more informal language and uses GIFs as well as emojis to make it a more interactive experience for learners.

We have implemented GIFs within our chatbot learning because they can make learning more vivid and entertaining.

Here are some of the benefits of using GIFs in e-learning:

They visually represent ideas and information in a few seconds
They are easier to follow than a series of still images
They usually run in a loop and are also perceived out of the corner of the eye
They are much easier to create than higher-end video content
They can play automatically on almost any system
They trigger emotions. The stronger the emotion, the better the memory

Enabling the success of your external partner network is a crucial ingredient for your business success - it’s your job to support them in every way you can. Therefore, training plays a pivotal role in this. If your organisation trains its network of partners, you empower the people outside of your organisation to contribute to your business goals. Ultimately, it results in more trained resources, more efficient collaborative processes, and turns your partners into advocates who can become your most ardent supporters and sources of new business.

Utilising your external network can be valuable in helping your organisation to achieve its goals in a variety of ways:

Investing in your external networks will improve their knowledge and skills. In return, they can use their improved skills to contribute better, quicker, cheaper, and more effective outcomes for your business.
If they are up-to-date with your developments and plans for the future, your external networks will align more closely with your organisational goals.
By training and certifying your external networks they will be more compliant and follow your processes and guidelines and meet your quality, security and safety standards.
Empowering and supporting your external audiences by training them will improve their skills and sense of engagement with your organisation.

Compiling an LMS RfP requirements document

Are you looking to compile an LMS RfP requirements document to help choose the best training solution for your organisation’s needs?

What is an RfP for Learning Management Systems?

Benefits of an LMS Request for Proposal

LMS RfP Components

Project Overview

LMS Requirements

Users

LMS Features

LMS Integrations

Vendor Expectations

Summary

How much does an LMS cost?

Headless LMS – definitely not brainless

“Off-the-shelf training content is no longer an uncomfortable compromise”

When is a custom training course money well spent? And when does an off-the-shelf training course make sense?

Custom vs. off-the-shelf training content – the differences

How unique is custom training content?

We raise the bar for off-the-shelf training content

INFO

Cyber Crime Time

The questions companies should be asking themselves, when deciding whether off-the-shelf content could meet their needs:

The Netflix Factor in Self-Directed Learning

The Power of Emotionally Intelligent Brand Training

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Compliance Training Doesn't Have to be Boring - How to Make it Engaging

Mandatory compliance training has a bad reputation - it’s seen as boring and often nothing more than a tick-box exercise to sit through in a lecture or click next through in static elearning. Such training is often delivered as part of an employee onboarding process.

Make it Relevant to the Learner’s Role

Make it Accessible

Make it Brief

Make it Visually Appealing

Make it Multimedia

Make it Fun - Gamify

Here at imc, we created, elearning content on the subject of cyber security, which we made available for free to individual users in the form of a game:

In Summary

The Role of Compliance in Digital Learning Transformation

Don’t call it compliance!

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Fosway Group: "Focus On Your Learning Ecosystem"

Fiona Leteney

This blog will explain the reasons why:

LMS & LXP labels no longer reflect the current learning systems market

The ecosystem concept of combining suites and specialists is the way forward

To deliver value & impact requires ecosystem connectivity and circulation of data

How to create the perfect learning experience

What do you need for the ideal learning ecosystem?

Commonwealth Games case study: imc Express e-learning content

Welcome to the third in our series exploring imc’s project with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. In this post, we will explore how the Commonwealth Games used the imc Express authoring tool to create their own eLearning content in-house.

Why did the Commonwealth Games choose imc Express?

Creating content with imc Express

Why Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games needs custom content

How the Commonwealth Games is using custom eLearning content

A future-proof LMS for 2022 Commonwealth Games

A holistic learning management experience for Australia’s national rugby league

Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games case study: The solution

Welcome to the second in our series of posts exploring imc’s project with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. In this post, we will look at imc’s solution, including how the design tied into the Commonwealth Games organising committee’s unique requirements.

Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games project kickoff

Designing the programme

Managing users

A future-proof solution

Part 1: An LMS for the 2022 Commonwealth Games

A podium spot with eLearning

How to Implement Compliance Training Online

Here we look at how to implement compliance training online using a learning suite to automate repetitive tasks, track learner progress and ensure that refresher courses and recertifications are completed successfully.

Automate Compliance Training

Assign Training

Learner Tracking

Chasing

Refresher Training & Recertification

5 Tips for Engaging Compliance Training

Know your target group

Focus on performance and outcome instead of mere information transfer

Focus on behaviour change

Use authentic content with consequences

The format is crucial

The Role of Compliance in Digital Learning Transformation

Don’t call it compliance!

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Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games case study: The challenge

Welcome to the first in our new series of posts exploring imc’s project with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. In this post, we will reveal the challenge faced by Birmingham 2022 Games, and what they needed from their new learning management system.