standards
Stairway to e-learning heaven
Where could e-learning software specification TinCan take us? Fiona Leteney W
hat would life look like if we started using new e-learning standard the Experience API, also known as TinCan?
Consider the following three examples.
Case A Scenario: It’s 7am. Ann picks her iPad out of her bag on a crowded train, plugs in her headphones and then settles down to complete the compliance training that she downloaded from her company’s learning management system the day before. She knows that if her training status doesn’t show as ‘complete’ by the end of the month, she could lose her bonus. She gets to the office, connects to the LMS and her results are uploaded. TinCan possibilities: This is a quick win. If the LMS and the content are TinCan-compatible, then previous limitations of SCORM are overcome – browser access is no longer necessary, courseware can be completed offline and tracking is 100% reliable.
Case B Scenario: Bob has a degree. After completing a sales course at a previous company he was promoted to senior sales consultant. In his current company he is consistent in his sales each month. The company has introduced a new product range and he’s completed some product knowledge e-learning. He attends the company sale conference where he wins an award for highest sales by a newcomer.
His boss suggests some further development areas and encourages him to find a mentor, who suggests that he makes use of Twitter as well as LinkedIn and takes him to an external networking event where he makes some new connections. He finds and watches some sales techniques courses on YouTube. He reads The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell on his Kindle.
There has been a noticeable improvement in
Bob’s sales performance, so he looks back at his own ‘personal data locker’ to see what might have been the trigger. He reflects in a blog his own thoughts on his improved performance. He decides to share some of this activity on his talent profile on the company’s new TinCan-compliant system. He also indicates that he is mobile because he doesn’t have a house to sell – he’s been married for a couple of years and is hoping to buy a property when they have enough for a deposit – and so can move fairly quickly. The company’s talent process highlights Bob’s experience and performance as an individual with leadership potential and a development plan for him is put in place. TinCan possibilities: In the future, all Bob’s activities and experience could be tracked using TinCan in a Learning Record Store (LRS) because it is no longer necessary to launch the content or activity from the LMS; the learning statements (in the format ‘I did this’) can be sent to the LRS. New verbs could be made trackable – eg hired, promoted, sold, mentored, attended, viewed, blogged. Even ‘married’ and ‘rented’ could be included if we decide in future
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that personally we want to track this sort of information in our own personal data lockers, which are personal versions of LRS. We should then be able to choose where that data is shared – our company’s LRS or talent system, Linkedin or ‘my CV’. This will make the talent process less reliant on opinions, endorsements and tickboxes to indicate someone’s experience.
Case C Scenario: A company has been anonymously tracking thousands of employees’ career progressions for years in its Learning Record Store. With a sophisticated means of analysing the data at its disposal, the company knows that a particular type of employee – let’s call her Cath – with a particular suite of work experience will perform to an expected level if provided with specific interventions at certain points in her development. The company also knows that if certain interventions are not provided, then Cath is likely to leave the company after two years. The company’s recruitment process has enabled it to make more informed decisions because it can now compare the experience data that candidates bring from their previous organisation with the historical data the company has on existing employees with similar qualifications and experiences on their hire data. TinCan possibilities: It is going to take years to get to this level of sophistication of data gathering using TinCan. There are also many legal and data security ramifications still to work through. However, the big question that I believe TinCan will help us with is: ‘How do we know when learning has taken place?” Tracking an individual’s habits or behaviour through their experience and activities will go a long way to providing the answer.
Fiona Leteney is an e-learning implementation consultant @fionaleteney
e.learning age october 2013
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