Learning & Development Emerging Technologies
Want to try out some new Learning & Development tools for free? Reply to this email to sign up for the Emerging Technologies 4 week series where we will show you how these tools can help you to enhance your learning experiences. Want to leverage disruptive technologies and social media to enable collaborative workspaces that stretch beyond your own organisation? Workplace by Facebook is a tool that works just like its social media big brother but is for business communities rather than purely social. It has apps (Workplace and Messenger) and is completely separate from Facebook so you can still keep work and play separate. Ever wanted the tools you use at work to be as good as the ones you use with friends? Now they can be! Synapsys uses the tool internally and with some clients too, now there’s a Community of Practice set up in Workplace that you can join for free and we can show you how to set up the full site for your organisation at a fraction of the cost of an intranet or other sharing site. See how to use this simple intuitive interface to build interactive experiences. Videos tend to be a passive experience. Great for entertainment. Not so great for learning. Why not make the video interactive? We can show you how with this easy to use affordable tool. Complete a survey using our evaluation tool and view the rich analysis that it provides to see the impact your programme is having, make smart decisions on how to improve effectiveness and communicate the success of your programmes. The Evaluator is a cloud based evaluation tool that measures the on-job impact of your learning interventions. The Evaluator draws on proven evaluation frameworks, and yet allows you to customise your evaluation to your own organisation’s context. Access Totara LMS to see how it could enable you to deliver learning effectively through individual learning plans which reflect your employees’ roles, training needs and objectives. Totara provides a functionally rich learning platform which can be implemented quickly and at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions. EdTech NZ As a founding member of EdTechNZ, we’re delighted that the Auckland launch event is announced for Tuesday 7th November with further launches happening in Wellington and Christchurch in the future. A strong panel will be leading a discussion on how technology is shaping the way we train. For further details click here Practical Augmented Reality comes to mobile phonesAugumented Reality (AR) became a mainstream reality almost overnight with 2016’s Pokemon Go mobile game. That fad seems to be well and truly over for all but a committed few, and the costs at the time put it out of reach for more practical applications. Now Apple and Google have both recently released free kits for their respective mobile devices to allow developers to build mobile apps featuring Augmented Reality (overlaying digital elements on live video from the phone). While it’s early days, and the kits are currently only available for the latest operating systems (iOS11 and Android 7), Augmented Reality shows a lot of potential for quick development of on the job training aids. It lends itself naturally to process, product and troubleshooting applications; being able to point a phone or tablet at an object or location and instantly see related information, or an animation or video, could eventually do away with the need to have printed material on hand, or even electronic manuals or guides. There are some interesting examples being created, and with Google planning on enabling support for more Android devices soon, Augmented Reality is one emerging technology worth keeping an eye on. For videos of Apple’s ARKit in action check out this link and to see Google’s ARCore being used go here Totara 10 New Release Highlights Version 10 of Totara Learn came out recently with several improvements to existing features. There are too many to mention them all here but these are some highlights. Self-assessment 360 feedback Great addition to the link between performance and learning in the appraisal functionality. Building on pre-existing anonymous feedback, the feature now includes the option to include the person’s self-assessment when you set up the survey. Other ‘performance’ feature improvements include the use of placeholders in appraisal messages (no more retyping the same thing over and over) and an increased ability to report on staff proficiency status against competency frameworks. Course Design Some good stuff here, particularly in being able to pin posts and lock discussions in Forum activities. There is also the option of creating ‘User Tours’ of courses or pages. These tours include instruction bubbles attached to navigation or functions. This is a quick and easy way of introducing new users to the system or bringing everyone up to speed on a new site element you’re using. Getting users onto the system In the past, if you wanted to control users moving through your learning system you needed to either register them yourself or let them self-register but then control what they saw. Totara have added a self-registration with ‘approval’ option here so that you add the step of approving the new learner before they’re added. For self-registration sites this can significantly cut down the random users you get. There are lots of other improvements in this release so head to Totara Documentation for the full list. |