Welcome to the Synapsys Updater May/June where we are looking at knowledge management, introducing our new Client Relations Manager and sharing insights from the last Learning Technology Group meeting. We are presenting at NZATD Conference 2018 Karen Gillie and Nigel Young from Synapsys will both be presenting at NZATD in Auckland next week. They are leading two sessions: Using Disruptive Technologies to Impact Learning Using Evaluation Tools to Measure Business Impact Meet our new Client Relations Manager Clare Savage With over nine years’ experience in the education sector Clare’s passion is working alongside customers to support the delivery of a successful and sustainable learning programmes. Clare has extensive experience in working with small and large New Zealand businesses across varying sectors all with individual needs from learning and development, workplace training and training needs analysis. Clare is motivated by people and has a natural ability to establish, build and maintain relationships. Clare’s role at Synapsys as Client Relations Manager is to manage an existing portfolio of clients as well as to build new business partnerships. If you are at NZATD in Auckland next week pop in to our booth to meet Clare in person! Article Digest
Chief Executive CommentWe have the technology, do we know what to do with it? Remember the Knowledge Management wave that moved through in the early '90s? Large repositories of live shared process documents that gave everyone a shared view of how things were done…. Whatever happened? LMS's came along, instructional content was easier to digest and maybe more effective… Perhaps it’s time in the L&D space has come again in the guise of performance support. We’re seeing many more organisations focused on bridging the gap between structured learning experiences and access to live, current knowledge. There are a bunch of drivers for this. Number one is the pace of internal change and the seeming impossibility of training in what best practice is. The cost of large-scale learning resource production is another, so are strategies such as 70/20/10 that focus on learning in work. Bridging the gap isn’t easy though. Learning Technologies at Synapsys At Synapsys we're always on the look out for effective partnerships and learning technologies that offer great solutions for our clients. Whilst we're proud to be a Totara Learn Platinum Partner and see Totara as our flagship LMS, we're also aware that different organisations have different requirements. Recently we've started working with TalentLMS to offer a feature-rich SaaS learning system which provides a great user experience at a competitively price. We're also looking at offering a great social learning platform too that should provide great opportunities for lots of our clients. We've continued to progress work with Lambda (a Totara partner based out of Canada) to further develop and use Zoola to provide enhanced dashboarding for both LMS data and xAPI data to capture both formal and informal learning in one graphical dashboard. You can contact Nigel around of these technologies on 027 509 5335 or via email at nigel.young@synapsys.co.nz Notes from the Learning Technology Group The Learning Technology Interest Group (LTIG) in Christchurch is a collaborative group in the region made up of people and organisations with a strong interest in leveraging technology to improve learning in their organisations. Synapsys plays a pivotal role in the group, by organising the events and communications of the group and encouraging members to present, share and contribute at events. It was great to see a good cross-representation of organisations with a mutual interest in learning technologies for the LTIG event last Tuesday hosted by Rachael at Auldhouse. The session was split into two main parts with Simon from Public Trust leading an interesting session on their journey with learning systems centred around Totara Learn LMS. The session resonated with many other organisations with similar challenges and provided a great start to some interesting discussions. The second session was a debate around the use of AR/VR in training and whether it was reserved for high-end or difficult environment training or had a wider application into general learning and development and more mainstream training. We didn’t solve the question, but we did raise some interesting discussion points around the falling costs of the technology and the way it can be accessed more easily for workers with low IT skills than most eLearning. With no defining outcome to the debate it was suggested by members that we make AR/VR a topic for follow up at the next LTIG, an excellent idea and we’ll have something ‘hands-on’ at the next event! Written by: Nigel Young |