Making Integrated e-Learning Work

If you're considering building an Intelligent Portal, you'll want to keep the following LDS integrated e-learning best practices in mind:

• Repurpose existing assets. Most Fortune 500 corporations have a wealth of training and learning assets that exist in multiple systems (online and offline) that can be repurposed to take full advantage of the portal features and user interface.
• Consider process alignment issues early. The key to integrated e-learning is envisioning the process as operating in an online environment. The synthesis of process, business, and user analysis in the early stage of the project provides the basic requirements from which the portal is built
• Partner with training or change management teams. Whether the portal is directly owned by the training organization or not, most trainers and change management staff have a wealth of knowledge regarding the process users, their profiles, traditional training issues and the organization-specific challenges that impact change initiatives. This can be immeasurably helpful when envisioning the online user needs for e-learning.
• Validate the user experience. When a prototype is in front of a real user, and the exercise is modeling their processes in a simulated or "near-real" environment, requirements or issues will surface. Often, users don't consider the things they do offline (e.g., the informal networks they use for assistance). In addition to validation, the learning elements have to be right: are they too invasive, too passive, too much to read, take too much time, etc.? We need to know these things to adapt our designs to the various user segments we are supporting.
• Start small, iterate quickly. At its best, incorporating e-learning into a portal is no different than developing a good user interface design.

Learn more about some of the features one can expect with an LDS portal solution.