Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

KnowledgeBoosters: Fundamentals of a Learning Organization

By Russ Howard

Today’s topic from the KnowledgeBoosters* series provides tips for building a learning culture and describes how it can bring value to your organization.

Organizational learning

There are three distinct levels of learning in organizations, and to be successful and sustainable, learning needs to occur on all three levels.

1. Individual level –When a person acquires a skill, gains knowledge, or achieves a change in attitude or behavior.
2. Group level – The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies within a group.
3. Organizational level – The collective intellect and productive capability of all employees.

A key characteristic of a learning organization is a general positive attitude about learning that permeates throughout the organization, where leaders at all levels encourage and provide ongoing opportunities for continuous learning. When leaders consistently emphasize the importance of professional growth through learning, this positive attitude filters down throughout the organization, and over time, becomes integrated into its culture.

Perspectives 2012 Learning Session Topics and Keynote Announced

By Melynda Hilliard

Here is another Perspectives 2012 update from Melynda Hilliard, SkillSoft’s Events Marketing Manager. She will be sharing updates throughout the next month. Stay tuned for more exciting details!

See what we’ve got planned 

Preparations for the Perspectives 2012 event agenda, including the learning sessions and keynote, are well under way! We’ve carefully selected these topics so they align with this year’s theme – Motivate, Innovate…Learn: Driving Value Through Learning!

Keynote

We’re pleased to announce General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan, will give the keynote presentation: “Plywood Leadership: Lessons on Leadership from a Warrior, Statesman, and Scholar.”

Located in San Diego? Join our Studio Audience for the Leadership Development Channel Live Event with Dr. Sheena Iyengar on The Art of Choosing

By Molly Scholes

If you’re located in San Diego, or within driving distance, we’d love to include you in our studio audience on Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 8 a.m.  for the Leadership Development Channel Live Event with Dr. Sheena Iyengar on The Art of Choosing. A world-renowned expert on the subject of choice, Dr. Sheena Iyengar's research on how and why we choose, and what we need to do to choose better, has surprising and profound implications for our personal and professional lives. Dr. Iyengar is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and the Research Director at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business.

Dr. Iyengar’s insights are invaluable not only to businesses looking to improve strategy, leadership and customer relations, but to every individual trying to make positive and lasting changes to his or her life.  In her presentation Dr. Iyengar explores three main aspects of choice. Think of them as the 3 Cs: Choice Overload, Culture and Creativity.

Social Collaboration Adds a Critical Component to Leadership Programs for Quick, Engaging and Effective Learning

By Tim Hildreth

Collaboration is a key component of best-of-breed leadership development programs. SkillSoft today announced the availability of the inGenius^® social learning platform on SkillSoft Leadership Advantage, the company’s targeted leadership development solution. inGenius on SkillSoft Leadership Advantage allows leaders within an organization to collaborate on their development and corporate goals, while supporting ongoing informal learning, knowledge sharing and transfer, and the development of in-house subject matter experts. 

SkillSoft's inGenius social learning platform extends the value of trusted, expert information by providing opportunities for employees to contribute their knowledge and expertise in ways that build upon a company’s learning culture, strengthen ties and forge collaborative relationships among groups and individuals that might not otherwise interact. 

With the addition of inGenius, several new features have been added to the SkillSoft Leadership Advantage learning platform, including:

• MyProfile – Create and manage user profiles and identify areas of user interest and expertise.
• Recent Activity Dashboard – Follow the recent activity news feed to stay apprised of community activities happening on the inGenius platform.
• Commenting – Users can make comments and share knowledge assets and expertise with their colleagues leveraging the extensive and trusted SkillSoft library of on-demand learning assets
• Recommending – Make recommendations on learning assets to others and see what assets others find valuable.
• Searching for Co-content / People / Profiles – Find company experts via a search and browse capability that identifies colleagues with similar and related interests.
• Notifications – Notifies users within the inGenius community of activities with particular relevance to their interests or learning programs.
• Scoring - Accumulate points through activities performed– updating profile, making recommendations, making comments, and other members rating comments as helpful all contribute to an inGenius score that reflects a user’s community status.

Building on the strengths of other award-winning SkillSoft products, SkillSoft Leadership Advantage provides busy executives with resources that target essential leadership and management skills. The many topics covered include: leading change, strategic agility, business execution and business acumen.  With SkillSoft Leadership Advantage, leaders can take advantage of inherent, practical training to build a greater understanding of key competencies that are aligned with organizational goals and needed to better lead and develop employees.

For more information on inGenius on SkillSoft Leadership Advantage, please visit: http://www.skillsoft.com/elqNow/elqRedir.htm?ref=http://www.skillsoft.com/infocenter/brochures/documents/LeadershipAdvantage_Data.pdf

Leadership Skills Training Lesson: Your Product is Not What You Sell, It’s the Difference You Make

By Shawn Hunter

Your product is the impact you make, the change you affect, the experience your product delivers. Your product is the result, the causatum, the punch. Sell cars? No, you don’t sell a car, you sell utility or transport or identity or experience or speed perhaps. In pharma? – you don’t sell drugs, you sell health and well-being. Clothing retail? – your product isn’t jackets and boots, it’s warmth and style and durability and expression of taste.

It starts at the beginning – teachers and educators certainly aren’t selling, they are creating idea agents, young people interested and willing to learn, excited and touched by ideas they put into action. My wife, a high school science teacher, should justifiably be proud when she talks to a former student who was inspired to enter teaching, or go into microbiology, or well… go into any discipline related to science because they were touched in a meaningful way in her class in high school.

And if you are in the business I’m in – the learning business, you aren’t selling books, courses, classes or video learning, your product is behavioral change. Your product is impact – the difference those ideas make.

Creating Effective Learning Cultures

Studies show that making learning a priority can positively affect your organization in a number of ways. Employee engagement improves and there is higher retention and satisfaction. Business processes also become more efficient and streamlined, resulting in a higher ROI and long-term success.  Research from Bersin & Associates indicates that companies with learning cultures have higher financial returns over a 10-20 year period. To achieve these desired outcomes with learning, your organization needs to encourage continuous learning and create a supportive environment.

When learning is a part of your company culture and supported from the top down, employees can make learning a frequent part of their routine. According to a recent blog post by Ladan Nikravan, from Chief Learning Officer, “creating a culture focused on continuous education and skill building can help an organization adapt during unanticipated dilemmas.”

Do We Have That on Learning Zone?

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from one of our customers, Mary Jane Riccardi, Sr. Learning & Development Manager at Kleinfelder. Mary Jane will be a speaker at SkillSoft’s 2012 Annual Perspectives User Conference. Mary Jane has more than 30 years of experience in providing learning systems and programs. As Sr. Learning & Development Manager at Kleinfelder, Mary Jane creates and leads a systematic approach to learning and development initiatives at all levels of the organization.

By Mary Jane Riccardi, Sr. Learning & Development Manager, Kleinfelder

I’ll take Culture Change for 100 Alex… the answer is e-learning culture.

What do you get when you bring together an LMS, a business need, targeted e-learning courses, and over 1600 talented engineers, scientists, and architects?

I just returned from our 26^th Annual Professional Development and Technical Training Seminar. This incredible event brings together over 800 of the companies top talent for 1.5 days of technical and business presentations highlighting new technologies, systems, and projects. I can remember when my team and I would present at this event to help sell people on the idea of e-learning. But last week, what I kept hearing was, “Do we have that on Learning Zone?” Wow… what a difference a few years can make.

When we started this effort back in 2008, the idea of providing training online was completely foreign. I remember putting together a short 10-minute program for our CEO so he could experience the possibility. I did this using only PowerPoint, a free audio recording program, and a topic I found on the intranet. I had no other software, so needless to say it was pretty basic. Did it help? Yes, but the prevalent opinion at the time was that training needed to be done face-to-face.

New Business and Leadership-Focused Live Events

The schedule for SkillSoft’s next four live events is now available!  Leadership Development Channel, 50 Lessons and SkillSoft Leadership Advantage subscribers have the opportunity to view live presentations by recognized thought leaders and best-selling authors. These interactive presentations provide forward- thinking business and leadership recommendations to help you improve your leadership skills and encourage innovative ideas in your workplace.

This year’s live events schedule includes a presentation by General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan. General McChrystal will present from SkillSoft’s 2012 Annual Perspectives User Conference.  The full schedule includes:

SkillSoft in Asia Pacific

By Glenn Nott, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific

It is always a big deal when one of SkillSoft’s many talented experts comes to our shores and Sally Hovis, SkillSoft’s Vice-President of Learning Design, is no exception. Sally will be the international guest speaker at the Australian Instructional Design Conference to be held in Sydney on March 21.

When you get the opportunity to learn from one of the best, you really understand how SkillSoft has evolved into a premium provider in technology-enabled learning. You also get to appreciate the diverse and plentiful package of resources that SkillSoft offers, giving it the leading advantage in the e-learning world.

Titled Blended Learning: Critical Design Decision, Sally will cover major blended learning design decisions such as what blended model to use, content scope, individual learner or cohort group design and content assets and delivery options.

SkillSoft Customer Survey Finds Increasing Importance of Learning Solutions as a Strategic Business Tool

SkillSoft today announced the results of its sixth annual customer satisfaction survey, which was conducted in partnership with TNS, an independent research firm. SkillSoft’s 2011 Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, tapped into SkillSoft’s customer base, which includes more than three thousand companies and 10 million users across the globe, for feedback regarding customer service, product quality, ease of doing business, product preference and intent to repurchase.

The survey found that 96 percent of customers surveyed feel that SkillSoft’s solutions will remain as important or become more important to their business over the next 12 months.