It seemed the LMS was under fire recently from many corners and questions were being raised about its very future – Jane Hart recently posted what is the future of the lms reviewing the useful of an LMS, followed up by a similar post by Harold Jarche suggesting the LMS is no longer the centre of the universe.
Clark Quinn brought in a little balance by highlighting what the LMS could be used for and to what extent in his post – a case for the LMS.
Reading these posts and the comments on these posts made me think if the LMS is looking at its own end or does it still add enough value to a company’s training/learning function. What possible future does it hold for itself? Will the LMS survive and if so what will help it survive and sustain and grow? And there are those questions which keep coming back – if the LMS is no longer needed why is its market heating up more than ever before? What is it about the LMS that keeps making it less valuable and less needed, yet paradoxically, more used and more bought?
To start with, lets figure out why a company needs to buy an LMS and can it do without one? Some kind of training need – either short term or long term, ad hoc or regular, triggers this. This training need could be either for new hires, up-skilling for preparing the next generation of leaders or simply for moving up the corporate ladder for managing higher responsibilities, transition-skilling in case of a situation like the one we’ve had in the last two years, where due to recession companies went through a number of transition scenarios trying to do more with less and training would definitely be required to ready the people for the same, it could even be a M&A activity leading to a training need, plain old compliance training needs, or just regular training for the job in hand.
The key is to recognize that in almost all of these cases the responsibility to ‘provide’ the training lies with the organization and this responsibility inherently includes a ‘formal’ element in the entire process. If the companies were to leave this to a collaborative environment it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that it would be counter-productive and also may pose risks to business. A capable LMS with the ability to offer the right tools to manage courses (which may come from various vendors), manage users and the trainings and their reports would fit here and be productive. If the LMS offers a myriad of features like eLearning as well as classroom training management, content authoring, exhaustive reporting, typical course management it adds a significant value in terms of savings in time, cost and also in bringing in some amount of predictability in the process which is required by companies.
The concerns raised against the LMS being something out of 90’s or being outdated and no longer required in today’s learning environment cannot be universally applied to the varied situations and systems out there. The strongest premise behind these concerns is that informal learning doesn’t need management and hence doesn’t need LMS -completely true. But facilitation of informal learning needs tools and the right infrastructure to ‘manage’ that. In a world where companies do either informal learning only or formal learning only it is appropriate to choose separate tools for each purpose and possibly an LMS is not required for only informal learning facilitation. However, there was no way companies, for a long time, choose either of the methods only. In that context it makes perfect sense for the LMS systems to up the ante and extend themselves to become more of a learning portal / system. The idea is not to reduce importance of managed and formal learning but to be able to offer the right environment for people to share, collaborate and learn in addition to the training which the companies would still like to be responsible for.
I believe LMS systems, in general, recognize that needs are constantly evolving – now to embrace social networking, social learning tools and approach that from within the LMS framework. However these are early days and as with systems that evolve, it will be some time yet for LMS systems to reach the balance where they are known more for ‘learning’ and less for ‘management’. It depends not only on the LMS vendors and providers but a whole lot more onus is on the overall approach to learning adopted by the companies. Even with a number of collaboration tools around and being used by some companies it is still the LMS that gets the primary attention when companies need to add more electronic media for learning delivery.
As LMS systems continue to grow and offer the right set of tools both for formal and informal learning there is no doubt that the LMS would continue to remain the centre of the learning. Only when all learning is informal is there a case for the LMS to be dead. Such a situation is ideal but doesn’t seem plausible in the context of workplace learning. Until such a time, the LMS lives on and continues to thrive. LMS providers need to move along with the times, and let the LMS evolve into a more active system from being a passive one.
So the LMS will definitely survive. As with any successful organism it needs to continue to evolve and adapt itself as the learning ecosystem changes. It’s not going to be easy to replace the LMS with ’something else’.
May 11th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Amit makes excellent posts. Now that the economy is picking up, talented staff are going to start moving. The business intelligence from a well-managed LMS will become more valuable to companies that need to know who is qualified to take over and who needs further training. The LMS will continue to evolve and is better than ever, in my opinion.
May 30th, 2010 at 2:43 am
The LMS will have a similar future as the ERP. It will fade away.
http://blog.thingamy.com/sigs_blog/2010/05/sapphire-now-huge-surprise-good-stuff-and-a-couple-of-important-issues.html
As complexity increases, barely repeatable processes (BRP) will dominate. BRP are only a subset of ERP. All types of system vendors should rethink their architecture once BRP is handled. The LMS can only handle a small subset of organizational learning needs and that learning must be integrated with work flow, not vice versa.
May 30th, 2010 at 7:29 am
here here Harold … here here
June 17th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
So, I’ll ask the question: what about mandatory training? Federal, state, local, certification based training. Here is where the LMS shines. You can’t simply embed a mandatory course into an HR portal and ‘hope’ that an employee finds it and takes it. Maybe I’ve missed the point – informal learning is great, but I think formal learning (and mandatory learning) still have places in the corporate structure.
June 17th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: Compliance is the last refuge a e-learning scoundrel.
July 1st, 2010 at 12:35 am
So, I appreciate that we don’t want to be in a compliance world… but for many companies and industries, that is our reality.
How would you track/enforce compliance without an LMS? Or do you plan to change the legal realities we deal with daily?
July 1st, 2010 at 1:09 am
We are supposed to be the learning professionals, and I for one, will continue to work against the notion of compliance training for its own sake. It’s a cop-out as a professional to say that we can’t change a flawed system and to accept it. Compliance tracking can be done with a simple database. As Charles Jennings (ex-CLO) puts it: “Compliance training is primarily about recording activity and gathering data that can be provided to regulatory or professional bodies or kept for a rainy day.”
November 4th, 2010 at 3:03 am
Maybe I’m missing something, but the comments of Jarche strike me as very naive and the comments of Linda Hower Bates very accurate. Corporations (especially industrial-focused ones) will always require formal compliance training on safety and health issues. I don’t see anything negative about the idea of compliance training. Sure, it’s not always implemented in an engaging or effective way, but this is the fault of the people who design the training or implement it, not the fault of the concept of compliance training.
November 4th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I am not so naive to think that someone who sells LMS for a living has a neutral viewpoint.
November 13th, 2010 at 3:20 am
Wow – a little touchy? I just don’t understand your viewpoint. Is there a different, negative definition of ‘compliance training’ that I am unaware of? I am not promoting anything - I am a writer of training content and as such am interested in this topic. I don’t believe that makes me “biased”. (But thanks for Googling me, I guess.) Ad hominem attacks, like accusing people of bias, are used by people who can’t defend their position. That’s okay – I’m willing to let it drop if you are.
November 13th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Oh, I just realized you must have followed the link I provided. Didn’t realize there was one. But everything I said still stands.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:05 am
Here are some comments from my business partner, Charles Jennings, who spent millions as CLO of a multi-national corporation, on training:
“If the LMS is being used to help meet compliance requirements this issue doesn’t arise … an LMS is a powerful and useful tool to support the processes required by many compliance authorities. The prime objective of compliance training is to keep the CEO and Chairman out of court and prison, and to avoid the firm paying heavy fines. Putting employees through a process and accrediting them is the mechanism usually used to achieve this. Don’t confuse it with learning. It’s principally about demonstrating process and short-term memory. It’s an out-dated view of learning but we’re stuck with it as regulating authorities are unlikely to change their modus operandi real soon.”
Compliance training is a scam, as I wrote in “compliance of an industry”, already linked: http://www.jarche.com/2010/05/compliance-of-an-industry/
November 13th, 2010 at 5:23 am
I did not notice the Jennings link. I just read it.
I think our disagreement comes from the nature of the kind of training we’re talking about. You mention in that article that only when there is “a genuine lack of skills and knowledge” is compliance training actually required. In manufacturing and industrial endeavors, there is much lack of genuine skills and knowledge. New workers constantly need real training on procedures and safety to keep them safe. Existing workers need refresher training. While protecting the company from litigation is part of the reason it makes sense from a corporate perspective, the core reason these regulations on compliance training are in place is to protect workers.
Maybe in the industries you’ve served “compliance training” has come to be equated with mostly useless, meaningless endeavors, but for many industries it is a very important part of accomplishing effective safety awareness.
Maybe you can understand that from this perspective, talk of compliance training being unnecessary seems a bit strange. There will always be safety requirements (OSHA, MSHA, etc.) that have to be met. Barring some drastic change in human nature, these regulations will continue to be needed to protect workers from being taken advantage of.
Of course there is a lot of bad compliance training out there, but that is the fault of the people who create such training and the companies that decide to implement that training. It is not the fault of the concept known as “compliance training”.
I don’t care about defending the LMS. I’m sure there are many effective ways for companies to educate their workers. But I just see how you can get around the fact that compliance training (of some form or another) will always be required and necessary. Pardon me if I’m still not understanding something basic about your arguments.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:34 am
If there is a genuine lack of skills & knowledge, then long-term behavioural change is needed. The LMS plays no role in this. It is not needed.
However, quite often, it is not a lack of skills & knowledge that needs to be addressed but the removal of other performance barriers. Training should be the last option for performance improvement.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:43 am
Jarche, maybe you could point me to an article where you talk about some ways compliance training can be replaced. Maybe I’m missing some basic points of yours. Also, I’m interested in how you propose teaching necessary skills/knowledge with “long-term behavioural change”. What if someone needs to know how to not get killed on a scaffold or how to use a fire extinguisher? How specifically would such lack of skills be better handled by “long term behavioural change”?
As far as I’m concerned, this argument has never been about the LMS. It’s been about the concept of “compliance training”. But since you mention it: when you say that the LMS “is not needed”, this may be true. But there are a lot of things that are not technically needed but that nonetheless make things easier. The wheel is technically “not needed”, but it sure makes transportation a lot easier. (Not saying an LMS is like a wheel, but you get the point.)
We might not be communicating well. I have no doubt there are plenty of things that are not handled best by compliance training. But would you not admit that there are plenty of reasons for having government requirements concerning training? Especially with regards to physical safety? If you believe there is some other regulatory option that would protect workers, I’d like to hear it or be directed to articles that address such options. Thanks!
November 13th, 2010 at 6:03 am
Most training cam be replaced:
http://www.jarche.com/2007/06/workplace-performance-analysis-job-aid/
November 13th, 2010 at 6:13 am
I looked through that link and your analysis process document. The gist I got from it was that companies should approach their training and performance management intelligently and efficiently. I have no doubt there are strategies to doing this.
But I have yet to read an actual strategy to “replace” training or regulatory compliance requiments. There may be ways to make training more efficient and to make the training more long-term effective with rewards, etc. But I don’t think you can get around the fact that skills have to be taught at some point or another, and these skills (especially when they are safety-related) should be taught fairly quickly, not on a long-term basis.
Thanks for the discussion, but I have yet to see any ideas that would change my current thoughts on the topic.