Learning Landscapes on the Move

(initially published: eLearning-Journal 7/2020)
by Annette Bouzo, M. A.

Changes of enterprise's environment and organizational culture affects Corporate Learning and in consequence the design of corporate landscapes. Individual combinations of LMSs (Learning Management Systems), learning experience functionalities (often referred to as LXPs), virtual classroom software, digital content and external learning platforms must continually adjusted.

The key to success is the continuous monitoring and evaluation of changing demands and appropriate backing of learners and other stakeholders. You might want to employ methods such as Model-based User Requirements Analysis and Lean UX. This influences the selection and collaboration of and with service and development partners.

Our environment keeps changing, more or less noticeable at times, but continually. This affects the organizational and learning culture of corporations. Organization must monitor and evaluate these continually in order to react, that is adapt to changes appropriately (=learning).

Enterprises develop, when staff is learning within and outside of the enterprise and contribute their learnings, their acquired knowledge and new skills to the organizations. An organization is operating efficiently, when the potential of it's staff is employed. Co-workers developing their skills and knowledge can provided targeted impulses for the development or the organization and thus contribute to the future existence persistence of the company. Naturally, this requires also a certain degree of perceptibility of the respective corporation.

Many companies are aware that they depend to some degree of the increasing competency of their staff, as skilled employees are able to make decisions. They organize and design their area of responsibility and evaluate their (educational) requirements. If corporations support them, they shorten their decision processes and are therefore faster to react to occurrences. This results in a better service and product quality. Supporting exchange of experience within internal interest groups such as Communities of Practise and other high quality knowledge management formats can raise this effect to a higher level.

To optimize this catalyst process the organizational / learning culture has to grant a certain degree of freedom to the employees but also requires an investment in the learning infrastructure which is continually to be adjusted to the requirements of different stakeholder groups.

Prerequisite is that the corporation is prepared to support these developments, specifically design appropriate new blended learning concepts and digital knowledge management and establishing a suitable learning culture. This includes the individual support of individual staff members, also concerning their digital and learning skills.

It has been widely proofed that the relevance of a real learning culture (compared to a conventional teaching-culture) is by far the superior concept concerning the application of new skills and knowledge.

If ihe IT department is involved in the development of the learning landscape and acts service oriented in consideration of learners and communication with stakeholders ( learners, personnel development, instructors, managers ...) and equipped with adequate resources  for development, data maintenance and management of a high degree or systems integration, than IT can contribute highly added value resulting in competitive advantages.

.A professional, digital learning landscape is a very individual combination from central, structure and process supporting components (Learning Management System, resource and course administration), a surface for visualization (learning platform, learning experience features), target group optimized learning portals for secure access to personal and assigned data, software for communication and collaboration (enterprise social network, webinars, virtual classrooms) and current, appropriate learning content.

A digital learning landscape must be adjusted to the learners' requirements within the respective organization. It is a question of creating a holistic IT system, with an LMS as a core application to continually monitor and support individual and organizational learning processes.

Professional learning success and successful application of new skills focuses a particular business model, an industrial sector and the competitive situation of a particular organization. Successful application of knowledge refers directly to the type of learning scenario. That is the combination of learning formats, time and location of learning, the intrapersonal preferences of the learner, especially the learning skills. In order to support appropriate and current content in the right format, the LMS must be very flexible and be administered  and configurable independent from the vendor. 

Staff should also seek and find knowledge outside of their information as well as increase and enhance their skills in networks. At least such is the idea of Learning Organizations. There is hardly an enterprise which forbids it's staff to research on the internet, especially on platforms such as Youtube, Slide-Share etc.. More and more companies enhance their own learning platform with content from external learning platforms such as Good Habitz, Coursera and LinkedIn Learning. Integrated by interfaces these platforms contribute to the training portfolio by volume and variety.  Many a content, which is available free of charge offers basic knowledge on introduction level. Very often these serve as mere teasers to sell more specialized course content on a higher level. However those course are not always frequently updated, thus there is a chance that content is outdated. A thorough evaluation requires the analysis of a professional in the respective field. Thus, learners should be encouraged to enhance also their learning competencies, such as critical thinking and media skills. 

The way how corporate learning develops influences the mentioned issues. New learning formats, integration of external application and current andragogic approaches are not in conflict with digital learning platforms. In any case the individual learner's process is the central focus.

Modern Learning Management System such as TCmanager^® integrate both aspects:  it provides individuals or target groups with relevant learning content and offers the biggest possible freedom - according to the respective corporation's requirements. The design of new blended learning concepts is not limited to certain learning formats. Therefore the integration of virtual classrooms, the organization of communities of practise and knowledge management tools is down to the creativity of the staff development, LnD or academy, whoever is in charge. Whilst an LMS with learning experience features support the organization by sharing, publishing, and secure access of content, integrated software tools for webinars and collaboration advance and apply the content, driven by the contributions of the learners. The use of such flexible systems provide also the possibility to grant rights for publishing self-organized events , WOL-circles, communities of practise etc. .

The layout of a learning platforms can be designed according to requirements. Design might vary by target group, depending if it addresses staff, customers or service partners. The differentiation might be based on different URLs, via single-sign-on definitions. The learning platform can be integrated seamlessly in the intranet. so the learner does not actually realize, that content is routed in another system. At the end the learner will not see this as important, as long as he/she finds the relevant information he/she is looking fpr. A learning experience platform may be integrated as a consolidating design layer.

A broad search functionality, crawling various system to provide requested information, may it be a course event, a form for travel expenses or corporate marketing information, might be seen as helpful. If the volume of information on the other hand is extremely large, it might make more sense to separate learning content from corporate information and specific professional application.

To style everything according to a corporate style guide is convenient and allows for faster orientation. However you might not want to underestimate your users. They are well advanced in finding information and using various applications for shopping, communication and entertainment.

Whilst technical system requirements might well be a decision criterion for the employment of a LMS, the hoped for added value for the business site will only be generated if the learning landscape is suitable for the use of it's primary users (learners, managers, instructors, administrators...), They should feel confident to work efficiently with the application. Thus the responsible decision makers have to be aware of the requirements and expectations of the different user groups and their respective priorities e. g. :

Trainings administrators / LnD staff

Their focus is to plan, organize and execute structured training, but possibly also grant individual learner support and see to the curation of content. For them the surface of the learning platform is not exactly relevant. They focus the logic of processes, technical transition of organizational particularities of certain course events and participants. They assign rooms and equipment, define qualification profiles, see to invoicing, certification and reporting issues. Thus their main requirement is a versatile LMS, which grants as well flexibility as reliable automated workflow support. It is important that they are able to configure the LMS themselves to some extend and are in large parts independent from their IT and the LMS vendor. A good usability of the LMS core features is relevant to them.

Depending on their task profile, the same aspects will be relevant for instructors, evten though to a more limited extend.

Primary model-based usage context analysis (delta analysis) is employed. These consider existing knowledge concerning tasks, user and resources of the system landscape's users. The method focuses gaps, vagueness, discrepancies and the deduction of question concerning new user requirements. Particular cultural developments are based on subtle developments, which are not easily defined. Often data is collected by feedback and evaluation questionnaires, concerning the learning experiences and the training center, knowledge tests to determine status and by employing learning analytics. This information is valuable, but are still a collection of subjective impressions. For a productive and goal-oriented improvement of content, learning formats and learning infrastructure, data must be verified and objectified. Ways must be found how stakeholder can articulate and consolidate their requirements. This requires skills, knowledge and methods. Continuous reflection is also relevant when identifying requirements.

Lean UX unites the various approaches, such as agile development, design thinking and lean startup. It integrates method of improvement of usability and user experience with agile development and achieves relatively quick and precise results, also under economic considerations.

Precisely defined, agile development packages are processed in fast test cycles. The results are directly integrated in the next iteration. The Design Thinking approach enables the project team to take the user's perspective and keep an eye on his/her problem context.

The Lean Startup philosophy sees the individual tasks as hypothesis, which are to be verified by experiments. The fact that not all hypothesis can be verified and some experiments fail contribute to a positive failure culture.

The unbiased and professional discussion with the world of users is essential to avoid the immunization trap. An immunization trap is the tendency of to define requirements based on the current system and from the requirements perspective, resulting in blindness for possibly better solutions.

Standardized software packages "out of the box" are popular when it comes to show fast results. Even if the standard solution seams to be currently the perfect solution it is only a snapshot and might not be adequate for future demands. This requires a priorization according to the added value of the usage features. The requirements delivering the highest value for the different user groups have priority.  Achievements will be evaluated according to the usage quality and measured with usability tests. To develop a digital learning landscape suited to the enterprise's particular characteristics, the incremental implementation of structures, processes and content might be a superior way.

To generate higher acceptance rates for the at the end never ending development of the learning system, a transparent communication of priorities, interim goals and progress is recommended. Continuous improvement and implementation requires time and resources. This means that responsible project teams must be granted the freedom to experiment, to test adjustments and for iterative development.

Innovative development works best with continuous dialogues in small and flexible teams, which are taking proactive responsibilities for their project. Development and progress but also the cooperation should be reflected on and discussed on a regular basis. The service partner should be selected accordingly not only by their references, experience and high service orientation. As development is a longer process you might want to select a partner who is also striving for a long-term and close cooperation on eye level with sustainable conditions.

• Organizations and the requirements of their user groups develop continually. Within a holistic and growing organizational culture the development of the digital learning landscape illustrates the status and scope of learning culture within the organization.
• A learning platform support the structured acquisition of knowledge by mostly by formal learning formats. The LMS protects sensitive content, relevant in competition from unauthorized access and is therefore a central part of the learning landscape. It is not the solution to all challenges, especially the learning skills of staff.
• A consistent integration of LMS, learning platform, learning experience features (LXP), virtual classrooms and enterprise social networks illustrate the broad variety of individual learning in LnD.
• User Requirement Engineering supports the design of the future learning landscape. Data concerning the requirements of different user groups should be collected professionally. Questionnaires and interviews are mainly subjective. User requirements must be evaluated, consolidated and priorized for development. Lean UX integrates agile perspectives of development methods, design thinking and lean startup.
• Iterative development and short implementation cycles ensure, that requirements of different user groups are met with.
• Basis prerequisites are flexible and adjustable software solutions and sustainable concepts of licensing and development cost.
• A learning organization is an development partner on eye level. A trusting and long-term oriented cooperation between the partners is not only based on sensible agreements, but also on shared sustainable values and an agile mindset.

As a certified eLearning manager (CELM) and UX expert (CPUX) she evaluates the usage parameters and quality of digital learning systems under consideration of learners and learning professionals. Her master thesis at the university Koblenz-Landau, faculty for educational science, focused the conditions for agile learning scenarios in corporations.