CHAPTER 12

The LMS’s Role in the Learning and Performance Ecosystem

Think about the last time you had to figure out how to do something new. For many people, it’s a weekly or daily occurrence. Now think about how many of those times you got it done by first taking a course. The answer is probably not often. So how did you manage to do it?

As shown in Figure 12-1, training is only one of the ways people learn how to do things. Taking courses can be an effective way to get to baseline proficiency, but you cannot expect to become an expert through training alone. People progress toward mastery in their education and personal and professional lives through practicing and gaining experience, using tools and resources, exploring information, observing and networking with others, consulting with experts, and other ways. Most of these are experiential, meaning that learning occurs in the context of getting things done in the real world.

Figure 12-1. Ways People Learn

Adapted from Foreman (2010) and Rosenberg and Foreman (2014).

In his book, Deep Learning Manual, Arthur J. Murray (2015) asserts that many typical courses lack context and practical application and therefore result in little more than surface learning. His premise is that people often learn more effectively through their own research, exploration, and discovery.

In academic settings, experiential learning is being driven, in part, by research in the effectiveness of evidence- and inquiry-based teaching practices. In their book, A New Culture of Learning, authors Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) explain how successful institutions of higher education are doing much more than transferring knowledge in the classroom. They are developing students experientially through immersive projects, mentoring, and internships with a focus on helping students learn how to use information and technology for continued self-development.

In a business setting, experiential learning may not involve teaching at all. In Beyond E-Learning, author Marc Rosenberg (2006) states that a company’s ultimate goal is to “make learning and work so indistinguishable from one another, so mutually beneficial, that learning becomes work and work becomes learning.”

The Role of L&D

What does all of this mean to the L&D professional? Despite a widespread name change from training to learning and development, many L&D departments have been unable to transcend their traditional role: that they exist to create and deliver courses. And this is not just how L&D is perceived by the rest of the organization; many L&D departments view themselves the same way. As long as L&D departments continue to limit their products and services to courses and teaching, their potential impact is diminished.

Here’s a story that may sound familiar to you, either in your own organization or in one you’ve heard about. I once worked with an L&D department that measured its own success based on how many people took its courses. It opened a world-class training facility. To attract students, it transformed its cafeteria into a restaurant with a waitstaff and offered free mobile devices to people who attended courses. Enrollments skyrocketed for a time, but when the economy slowed, the department’s funding was cut to almost nothing and its training center was shut down. L&D’s metrics proved it had delivered lots of courses to lots of employees, and data showed that people liked the courses and the pass rate was very high, so they were clearly satisfied and learning something. But the department could provide no evidence of its true value to the business. Don’t let this happen to your organization. The ideal position for the L&D function is to be viewed as an essential partner in helping the organization succeed. Training is important, for sure, but you will never generate real and sustainable value if all you do is training.

Think about your L&D department’s mission. Is it to deliver training? That is an activity rather than an outcome. Is it to ensure that people learn? That is an outcome, but it may influence you to operate more like a school than a business function. Consider all the L&D organizations that refer to themselves as a school or corporate university. If your department is focused on improving job performance, it’s probably doing a better job at supporting the business.

The goal of executive leadership—those who fund L&D—is to improve employee productivity as a significant contributor to the bottom line. Don’t be surprised if your sponsors react negatively to boasts about the large numbers of people taking your courses. After all, the productivity of someone taking a course is zero. Executive leadership does not care whether people take the courses, like the courses, pass the tests, or change behavior when back on the job. While those metrics can be helpful within L&D, they are meaningless in the larger business context. The metrics your funders care about are related to productivity and business results.

Today, L&D is at a crossroads. The old road leads to more of the same, in which L&D continues to operate as a training department. The new road leads to a reinvention of L&D, in which it broadens its solution set, becomes a strategic partner to its sponsors, and has a more direct and measurable impact on business success. An increasing number of L&D organizations are beginning to travel this new road by actively working to build new capabilities and offer a broader suite of products and services.

An emerging way to look at the broader L&D role is to consider an entire “ecosystem” of tools and approaches that support learning and performance. Your courses and the LMS that delivers them are still important, but they no longer take center stage. A learning and performance ecosystem allows you to conceive, create, and deliver a broader suite of L&D products.

What Is a Learning and Performance Ecosystem?

A learning and performance ecosystem puts people in the center and supports them with six primary components: talent management, performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking and collaboration, and structured learning. From these six components, you can create any number of dynamic learning and performance solutions. Figure 12-2 showcases the ecosystem and reveals many different combinations of solutions that can help people learn more, learn faster, and perform their jobs better. Several of these components enable you to embed experiential learning in the workflow.

The learning and performance ecosystem provides a framework for gaining synergy from all the learning tools and models at your disposal. Organizations adopting the ecosystem framework recognize that training is not the only way to improve performance. People also develop and become more productive through opportunities to advance, perform, research, consult, and share.

In Table 12-1, you can see the major differences between a focus solely on training and learning, and a broader focus on a learning and performance ecosystem. The training or learning function does not disappear; it’s just subsumed under the much bigger ecosystem paradigm.

Figure 12-2. Learning and Performance Ecosystem

Adapted from Foreman (2010) and Rosenberg and Foreman (2014).

More information can be found in a whitepaper I co-authored with Marc Rosenberg, Learning and Performance Ecosystems: Strategy, Technology, Impact, and Challenges (2014) and my research report, Learning and Performance Ecosystems: Current State and Challenges (2015).

Ecosystem Technologies and the LMS

Learning and performance ecosystems require L&D professionals to develop and apply a broader set of skills, processes, and technologies. Your broader role is not just to teach, but to create environments where people can learn on their own, and from one another. A large part of your job is to enable connectedness by introducing people to job-relevant tools, information, and other people.

So how does learning management fit into the learning and performance ecosystem? While an LMS is very good at managing the delivery of structured learning programs, it is not a very effective knowledge base or performance support system. The LMS is one important ingredient, but a learning and performance ecosystem must also incorporate other learning technologies that support social networking, knowledge bases, interaction with experts, performance support, and talent management.

Your IT and HR departments may have already deployed some of these technologies. As you design your learning and performance solutions, look beyond the LMS for opportunities to leverage the applications your IT and HR partners have already deployed. Scan the learning technologies marketplace for other products that can help you build a more advanced tool set. Much of the system selection, implementation, and operation guidance in this book can be applied to other technology projects as you continue to expand your learning technology tool set.

How do you measure learning that happens outside the LMS? Consider using xAPI to track learning activities that take place on all your different technology platforms. You can find out more about the xAPI in a research report I co-authored with ADL experts Peter Berking, Jason Haag, and Craig Wiggins, The Experience API: Liberating Learning Design (2014).

Preparing for Success With Your LMS Initiative

While the LMS may not be the central, most important technology supporting your learning and development strategy, it is still a critical component. LMS products have become very sophisticated over the years. They can support many divergent ways in which different organizations manage course delivery, and they will continue to expand and improve in the coming years.

Now that we’ve discussed how to select, implement, and operate an LMS, you are ready for your own LMS initiative. I have observed that the average life span of an LMS implementation is about five years. If that is true, your organization may go through the evaluation, selection, and implementation process twice every decade. In your career, you are likely to be involved directly, or at least peripherally, in an LMS implementation at least once or twice. You and your team must be ready for this large-scale project.

LMS projects can be daunting, and there will surely be challenges along the way. You may face pressure to acquire the technology despite unrealistic funding expectations, in the midst of organizational change, or in the absence of a clear learning strategy. You might encounter resistance and conflicting priorities from key stakeholders. Gaining the trust, support, and cooperation of your IT department may be challenging. At times, members of your LMS project team will have different viewpoints on how to proceed. You’ll be dealing with a marketplace and technologies that are constantly evolving.

You’ll need to be aware of not just the LMS, but also the quality of the content it houses. I have worked with organizations whose main problem is that no one can find anything in their LMS. So they get a new LMS and then migrate and reorganize the content to make it easier for people to find relevant courses easily and quickly. A big success, right? Not if the content is bad. Making content easier to find may just expose the fact that much of it is boring, inaccurate, out of date, or no longer relevant. So, it will be very important for you to inventory and curate your content and take the opportunity to retire and update it as appropriate, in tandem with your LMS initiative.

Key Takeaways

This chapter introduced the learning and performance ecosystem concept and described the LMS role within the broader ecosystem model. The key takeaways are:

• Training is not the only way people learn. We also learn through practicing and gaining experience, using tools and resources, completing self-directed study and research, observing and networking with others, and consulting with experts.
• Academic education programs are becoming increasingly experiential. Corporate L&D organizations are shifting from a focus on learning to a focus on job performance and productivity.
• Learning and performance ecosystem solutions can consist of any combination of performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking and collaboration, structured learning, and talent management.
• In the learning and performance ecosystem, our role is not just to teach, but to create environments where people can learn on their own and from one another.
• Learning and performance ecosystems allow us to measure the impact of our solutions using productivity metrics that are most relevant to our sponsors.
• The learning and performance ecosystem is supported by multiple learning technology platforms, some of which may have been deployed by IT and HR but can be used by L&D.
• While the LMS may not be the central, most important technology supporting the learning and performance ecosystem, it is still a critical component.
• Much of the LMS selection, implementation, and operation guidance in this book can be applied to other technology projects as you continue to expand your learning technology tool set.

This book has presented proven practices associated with successful LMS selection and implementation. It has addressed the key technological and operational concerns that you, your project team, and your organization will face during implementation. And it has provided guidance on establishing standards, processes, policies, and governance to continue to get the most from you LMS once it is operational. It’s a lot of work, but the benefits of a successful LMS project can be well worth the effort.

Finally, remember that every LMS project is different. Business conditions, technologies, culture, funding, leadership expectations, and time constraints combine to make each effort unique. So before you spend a dime on any product or technology, get all your stakeholders together to discuss what they want to accomplish and arrive at a shared vision. Then take that vision and make it happen.