I don’t have direct, hands-on experience with a huge number of Learning Management Systems but every single client we work with either has one in place or is in the process of acquiring one. And I’ve yet to hear a gushing recommendation about a single vendor or their system.

What I do have direct experience of is numerous complaints about value for money, lack of transparency from vendors during the sales process and slow responses to fixing problems or getting customisation completed.

Put less delicately, our clients frequently tell us that vendors tend to promise the earth, fail to deliver adequately on what they have promised, provide support in their own sweet time and charge an arm and a leg for the privilege.

I usually hear all this in the context of, ‘can you recommend a good LMS because ours is terrible?’ I've considered a whole host of LMS options over the years sometimes for use by Pacific Blue and sometimes just to keep abreast of the market.

But I’m never willing to ‘go there’ when a client asks for a specific recommendation because there are so many possible variables involved in how someone might use their LMS that it's impossible to say, 'use that one' without doing a deep dive into their current and potential future needs.

Where people have only a limited initial need, I have in the past, suggested starting with a basic, cheap option to see how that works. It's often the case that only when you actually start using a system like this are you able to clearly identify what you need and what you don't need. This approach (if feasible) is a great way to test the water.

But overall, I do marvel at the LMS market. It seems to me it’s hugely overcrowded with lots of look-alike products. 

Which suggests to me that this is a market ripe for disruption.

In recent years, there's a been a smoke and mirrors exercise within the industry, as some vendors have morphed to a magical new product called LRS. If the old LMS doesn't quite fit the bill, we've come up with a marvellous new variation which you'll just love. 

While the possibility of much more granular tracking of learning activity is, on the face of it, quite appealing, this doesn't seem to be something that is really setting L&D on fire - or at least, not the L&D folk I talk to.

So if there are any tech entrepreneurs out there, looking for a new opportunity, this could be it.

And if anyone does use a system that they would love to shout about from the rooftops, I'd love to hear from you.

This, I believe, is the elephant in the room for most people in a learning and development role. The one thing people will sometimes pay lip service to. But the one thing they never really want to think about beyond an end of course ‘happy sheet’.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the question of quantifying in some form, the impact and effectiveness of the training we design and deliver.

We have a real hard time getting clients to engage with this when we are talking to them about a potential development project. 

After delivering some in-house instructional design, we even encounter resistance to taking part in our own light-touch follow-up programme, which helps evaluate the usefulness of what we deliver. It takes very little time to participate. It is completely free of charge. It is almost always helpful for those who do take part. Yet almost no-one wants to.

A couple of thoughts. If you think evaluating impact tis only about, boiling success down to the last pound or penny of return on investment, I get why you might be very hesitant. There are loads of factors outside learning and development's direct control that can have an impact on the effectiveness of the training provided.

So you could end up on the awards podium (or in the dog-house) when you really don’t deserve to be, just because under a certain set of circumstances, the numbers came out good (or bad).

That is a bit like walking along the high wire with no safety net below. Understandably, not many people are up for that. 

But thinking about impact and effectiveness doesn’t have to be like that. The alternative starting point is that we are not in the business of instantly achieving a prized metric but we are there to support continuous improvement, over the longer term.

This, it seems to me, is a more honest approach and a more achievable one. It acknowledges from the start that a single ‘dose’ of training almost certainly won’t cure any performance problem or performance need.

And it recognises that a more consistent course of ‘treatment’ over a period of time is what likely will. It also recognises that not all ‘patients’ are equal and some might need a longer course of ‘treatment’ than others.

What I’m talking about is a well-designed approach to achieving impact, which starts with a training intervention, follows up after that with learners to see what’s working and what’s not, provides short, simple follow-up interventions, as required and gradually course adjusts to help achieve a good outcome both with current and future learners.

It doesn’t have the big bang impact of a large ROI number but it almost certainly guarantees visible performance improvements over time and will most definitely raise your profile and the respect for learning and development across the organisation.

In reality, it’s not hugely difficult to set up and build in this kind of approach at the beginning of a project. So it begs the question, what’s holding us back?

Want to start taking a holistic approach to looking at the impact and effectiveness of the learning you design and deliver within your organisation? Take a look at the programme we offer.

We've lived with a multitude of technologies for learning for decades now. 

Each new technology that comes along is hailed as the next 'big thing', full of promise. We mostly get sucked in to the hype. Enthusiasm is high. Vast amounts of money are spent on said new technology. Yet the early promise is rarely fulfilled.

Which begs the question, 'Why?' The problem, I believe, lies with us and not the technology.

We lose sight of the fact that a particular technology is never the complete answer to improving the quality of learning. It is (and always will be) just another means to deliver it.

But because technology adds a layer of complexity to the learning design process, we tend to get blinded by the mechanics of using the technology and focus too much on that.

An example  would be someone thinking, "If I get really good at using Storyline, I'll be able to create fantastic e-learning". Sad to say, being really good at using Storyline only results in being really good at using Storyline. That is to say, mastery of lots of features. The ability to use those features quickly and efficiently. The ability to troubleshoot and solve problems when the features don't work as expected.

All of these skills are fantastic to have and would be an asset in any learning and development team. But, unfortunately, mastery of the technology alone does not guarantee an effective piece of learning. 

As well as being really good at using the technology, you need to be smart about how you apply your learning design when using a particular technology.

And here's the conundrum. People who are really good at learning design are often not so hot (or interested in) the technology. Those who are really good with the technology tend not to be so talented with the learning design. Finding someone who is equally talented in both areas is rare. If you have such a person in your team, do whatever you can to hold on to them.

In the end, it'll be the smart application of your learning design that makes the difference between a run-of-the mill piece learning and a really impactful, effective one. So if you don't have a tech and design genius all rolled into one, you'll really need to find ways of getting closer collaboration and understanding between the design and the tech experts.

Want to see how you are faring with your e-learning technology and design? A great place to start is our Discover Your E-Learning Impact Scorecard. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and you'll get some personalised feedback almost instantly.

When it comes to deciding about their own learning, do learners always know best?

It pains me to say this, but there's quite a bit of research evidence to suggest that the honest answer would be 'quite a lot of the time, not'.

This gives us L&D folk quite the dilemma.

After all, we want the best for our learners. We don't want to appear like rigid authoritarians. Yet we also know that our suggestions or ideas can appear counter-intuitive to some learners and project sponsors.

How often have you been asked to provide a specific type of learning solution to a group of learners, only to discover that once you start digging, the requested solution is entirely unsuitable. And then meet significant resistance to changing the original request.

Often, the learners (or those requesting learning on their behalf) are trapped by their own limited experience of prior learning. If all they know, for example, is knowledge presentation e-learning and they are okay with this and haven't experienced any other type of e-learning, they will probably just request what's familiar and comfortable. Even though this might get poor outcomes or results.

If, as another example, they have been told that on-demand videos are the new big thing in learning and that they'll get massively better results from using this medium, they will probably come to you asking for a video solution, utterly convinced this is what will work for them.

All of this, I think, relates to problems with respect and perception. In many organisations, the learning and development function is viewed (rightly or wrongly) as not very effective. This means that people in the wider business don't especially value or respect the learning expertise that may be available.

They look elsewhere for advice, work up their own ideas which are then presented to learning and development as a fait accompli.

This can feel very frustrating and demoralising. After all, it's very unlikely that the very same people would pitch up in the marketing department, telling them how they wanted to see marketing campaigns and materials designed and executed.

The key, ultimately, is what should we do as learning and development folk to deal with this dilemma. First, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves. Are we as expert and professional as we could be? Are we sometimes stumbling along and just getting by? 

If you feel harassed and put upon, it's tempting to blame someone else: lack of resources, unrealistic timelines, a culture that is hostile to formal learning.

All of these factors could be true. But unless we are prepared to think about how to start shifting perceptions and how to keep constantly evolving our skills and expertise, this particular L&D dilemma will not be resolved.

Feeling frustrated and demoralised because your L&D expertise and skills are not valued or trusted? Check out our on-demand webinar on this topic: How to amplify learning impact: the journey from order-taker to trusted expert.

I can’t believe people are still doing this! Forgive the rant below but sometimes it’s good to let off a bit of steam!

I’m talking about some of the basic things people still do (but really shouldn't) when creating e-learning or putting together PowerPoint slides. Here's the first of my top three gripes:

Simultaneous text and audio on an e-learning screen.

Why is this problematic for learners? They’ll be able to read the text faster than the ‘voice’ can read it out loud, so it’s incredibly frustrating for learners. Do they read the text on screen and try to ignore the audio? Or do they sit and listen to the audio and avert their eyes from the screen!

If you want to use a voice, then make whatever is on the screen different but complementary to the audio. By the way, you see this technique on the TV news and documentaries pretty much everyday of the week.

If accessibility provision requires the need for both audio and text versions of the same content, then use subtitles and make sure the audio and/or subtitles can be turned on or off to suit individual requirements.

My second gripe. Walls of words or an endless list of bullet points on PowerPoint slides, which the presenter then proceeds to read out loud. This is really the face-to-face version of the e-learning problem just outlined above.

Use graphics with short labels, to outline the points you want to talk about on each slide. Or a simple flow diagram if you are explaining a process or procedure.

My third and final gripe. Too much of everything on a screen or slide.

Most people crowd their PowerPoint slides or e-learning screens with too much stuff! Even if you are following the suggestions outlined above, most of the time you really want to pare down what you are introducing on any given slide/screen.

If you are creating e-learning that looks like a set of glorified PowerPoint slides, our instructional design training could help break you out of that cycle.

If you’ve been involved in L&D for any length of time, you’ll almost certainly have had one of those conversations with a new convert to e-learning.

Given how long the medium has been knocking around now, it always surprises me that there are candidates still available to be newly converted. But there are.

Their fresh-faced enthusiasm is usually because they’ve been sold on a couple of benefits: speed of development and anytime, any device delivery. On the first of those two points, authoring tool vendors tend to be shockers when in marketing mode. they have to sell their wares, so you can see why they focus on speed as a benefit of buying their product.

But really, this is so untrue. If you are creating anything in an e-learning authoring tool that is going to be useful or worthwhile, it will always take you a significant chunk of time.

If the fresh-face converts have bean-counter tendencies, they my also be licking their lips at the prospect of saving vast amounts of money by going down the e-learning path. Forgive me for sitting in the corner, laughing cynically whenever I hear that one. 

The old saying, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is”, springs to mind here.

So much for the expectation. What about the reality?

It’s definitely possible (and desirable) to be smart about your e-learning design and development approaches and processes. But as just noted above, the development side is never as fast and easy as the technology providers would have you believe.

As for the anytime, any device mantra, the “build it and they will come” principle rarely applies.

If you are pushing out boring, knowledge-heavy, ‘PowerPoint on steroids’ type courses, then it's quite likely that only compulsion will drive learner uptake. As John Medina rightly points out in his book ‘Brain Rules’, our brains don’t pay much attention to 'boring'.

If you would like to escape the grind of churning out boring e-learning, then start by taking stock of your current situation with our Discover Your E-Learning Impact Scorecard. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and you'll get personalised feedback almost instantly.

It's a while ago now since most bank transfers (finally) started happening via the faster payments system. We've all got used to the benefit of having money arrive quickly and efficiently into our accounts.

At the time, the banks were boasting about this great leap forward. However, I had a wry smile on my face. That's because when I worked in Sweden for a couple of years at the start of my working life, instant transfers (and instant cheque clearing) was the norm.

At the time I was amazed. Not only by the advanced technology, but by the fact that a supposedly advanced economy like Britain had no such system. Whenever I mentioned this amazing Swedish system to anyone back in Britain they used to furrow their brows and give me a strange look. I'm sure most people thought I was making it up.

You have quite likely had the experience of going abroad on business or for a holiday and coming across a system, process product, gadget or some way of doing things that is so simple and appealing that you can't understand why the whole world doesn't adopt it.

And yet the whole world doesn't. Or if it does it takes forever to catch up - many years in the case of instant bank transfers.

It always leaves me wondering why. Numerous factors surely come into play: ignorance, apathy, vested interests, aversion to change or the risk involved with change. These reasons are not why I'm writing this today.

To me, the important point is this. There is almost always a better way of doing things than the accepted conventional wisdom. This is true in most aspects of life - including the world of learning and development. 

Sometimes it's something as simple as taking a step back and tweaking things a bit. Other times it's seeking out the ignored genius idea that most of the world genuinely doesn't know about but when finally discovered and implemented makes a phenomenal impact.

In the world of learning and development, how much of what we do could be done better? How much of our thinking is still based on outdated theories of learning and knowledge acquisition? How often do we really seek out a radical alternative when the old ways of thinking are clearly no longer working?

Not often enough, I fear. It's all too easy to keep on keeping on and too often the sheer burden of managing the day job stops us from taking a vital step back and finding time to seek out the alternative approaches. But make that time, we really should.

In part 1, I wrote about Rob Brinkerhoff's work in looking at approach to learning design that places focus on two key areas that are often overlooked or not given sufficient attention. First, performance support. Second, the idea of continuously improving the learning and support on offer, based on the evidence of its current success or failure. This second area is often referred to as 'kaizen'.

As I mentioned in the previous post, 'kaizen' was developed by Japanese manufacturers to gradually increase the quality of products. So, is there any reason why 'kaizen' shouldn't be applicable to L&D? In theory, not.

In practice, though, there are still barriers to overcome. And those barriers are usually not erected by L&D but come as part of an organisation's wider culture that has likely built up over a number of years. Here are some of the most common cultural traits that work against the adoption of 'kaizen'.

First, if your organisation sees failure as a pure negative and can only entertain the idea of 100% right first time, every time, then that culture will almost certainly struggle with 'kaizen'. With this mindset, people are driven by fear of being punished or berated when things go wrong. Notice the absence of 'if' in that last sentence because something always goes wrong at some point.

Second, living in fear of failure is going to establish another barrier to implementing 'kaizen': not admitting to shortcomings in the first place, And frankly, if you know you are going to get a 'kicking' for any mistake you make, why would you own up to one. Far easier to bury the mistake or shift the blame elsewhere. But if no-one can admit to shortcomings or failure, will struggle to adopt a continuous improvement mindset.

Third, if failure is completely unacceptable and punishment for failure must be meted out, then it's likely that 'more training' might be one of the punishments. In this mindset, training is a pill to be swallowed to 'cure' the failure. Everyone must take the pill. The pill must be perfect. And if the pill fails to cure, then it must be the fault of the pill makers (i.e. L&D).

Finally, it's also likely that a 'no room for failure' culture will focus on presentation of knowledge rather than successful application of knowledge. If something isn't being done properly, drum the knowledge into heads a bit longer and a bit harder. Again, when that doesn't work, blame L&D.

This can all feel a bit depressing. But just like 'kaizen' itself, the introduction of 'kaizen' frequently needs to be a gradual, evolutionary process. Start small with a project sponsor who is open to doing things a bit differently. Assess the results and learn from those results. Build on the success and refine and revise what didn't work.

Before you know it, you'll be a master of 'kaizen' and the developer of much more successful learning.

Don't forget that if you are interested in finding out more about this alternative approach to designing and delivering learning, you can take a look at our on-demand webinar How to Amplify Learning Impact - it's about making the journey from learning and development order-taker to valued and trusted expert.

You may not have heard of Rob Brinkerhoff but you really should have. ( You can google him, naturally). His main focus is on moving away from solving workplace performance issues through a single 'hit' of training.

Brinkerhoff is interesting because he's both a practitioner and a researcher. His focus has primarily been about looking at how best to follow up with and support learners after training to improve overall learning outcomes.

You may not be surprised to hear that placing less emphasis on a single event and more on following up and supporting learners after an event sees massive improvements in workplace performance and application of learning.

You'll notice there are two parts to this. First, having actual support in place (more on this is a minute). Second, doing some follow-up with a sample of learners to see how they are getting on, what's working and what's not. The important point being that the intelligence gathered from this follow-up is used to evolve the learning event and the support so it's more effective still for the next group of learners.

It's a sort of 'kaizen' for learning and development. In case you are not familiar with 'kaizen', it's a concept that started life in Japanese manufacturing as a method to continuously improve the quality of a product.

In a learning and development context, this approach feels problematic. Will you get people not involved with training to give of their time and expertise willingly? Possibly not, or only up to a point.

So, while you might not get non-L&D people to coach and mentor their colleagues repeatedly, there are some relatively simple things that they might be willing to once.

• You might persuade them to record a video talking about their expertise. You can edit and package this up into bite-sized nuggets of learning.
• You might get people to write a short blog post or contribute to a wiki that you can direct learners to at a pre-determined point after their training. 
• You might get people to record a brief webinar where they walk learners through a worked example of a complex task or skill-based scenario.

Perhaps you can begin to see the picture.

It's about being a bit smart and savvy in the ways you provide that follow-on learner support, using technology to help create the kind of success scenario Rob Brinkenhoff's research highlights.

Interested in finding out more about this alternative approach to designing and delivering learning? Take a look at our on-demand webinar How to Amplify Learning Impact - it's about making the journey from learning and development order-taker to valued and trusted expert.

Early on in an instructional design training course or programme, one of the topics on the agenda might be different methods for and approaches to instructional design.

There are numerous approaches and design methods or theories that you could consider. But in our constantly evolving understanding of how people learn and what might work best to help them learn, three of the more significant approaches to have emerged are: behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism.  I'm not going to go into an explanation of each of them here.

The thing that I want to highlight is commonality and overlap. Although these theories are frequently presented as very distinct, with little common ground between them, the more you look in detail at each of them, the more you realise there is a good deal of overlap between them. 

For starters, they all share a common purpose: finding ways to engage learners and, thus, help them learn more effectively.

They share many other characteristics, too.  All three approaches accept that practice is critical to successful learning. They may have different views on what that practice should look like but the importance of practice is central to all of them.

None of them would argue with giving learners positive reinforcement or rewards for correct answers (although cognitivists and constructivists would argue this alone is not enough). 

Both cognitivists and constructivists believe context makes a massive impact on the effectiveness of learning. Both believe the way an individual models or constructs his/her understanding of something is unique. The list could go on.

So instead of thinking about a particular theory as the 'best' or only way to apply instructional design, perhaps it would be better to strive for a success-based approach to instructional design which incorporates elements of all these theories.

This way, rather than obsessing about the effectiveness of a specific theory or approach, you can put the needs and success of your learner at the heart of what you do and apply a variety of methods from all of the theories as and when they are appropriate to the specific needs of your learners.

Creating learning is all about achieving successful outcomes for your learners. A pragmatic,  pick and mix approach to applying instructional design approaches will almost certainly lead to a better result for your learners than dogmatically applying a single one.