Why do we need a LMS?

What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?

LMS is a software application, that creates, delivers and manages eLearning content. The most key factors in LMS purchase decision are functionality, price and support. Top of desired features are Live/Video Conference, ITM, Mobile learning, Gamification. The most used are Assessment/Testing Tools and Blended Learning, but the lack of certain features remains the biggest dissatisfaction. However, setting up an LMS is just one step, which includes involvement to establishing connection with the company requirements. So, it is important to choose the right LMS for your needs.

What is a good LMS?

A good LMS platform should be capable of managing a large amount of data easily for many users. It needs to possess a friendly interface for users and administrators or the so-called Application Program Interface (API). The platform should have specified reports, which are formed from the requirements of the company. Considerations must be the portability and scalability of the system. Another aspect with immense importance is the administration of the LMS. This includes the management of complex recourses, trainers, training inventories, rooms, planning of training sessions, tracking feedback, and notifications to end users.

What is the future face of LMS?

The LMS will become more individualized – to schools and to teachers. There will be personal applications, that can be plugged together in kind of self-personalizing environment. Popular use today has the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard, which is created by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. LTI links content and resources to LMS's. Its purpose is to connect the LMS with external service tools in a standard way across learning systems.

Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE) 

NGDLE envisions what is the next thing that is not an LMS that can help manage digital learning.

There are five different dimensions of NGDLE:

1. Interoperability and integration - allows the parts to be connected and to share data.

2. Personalization - learning environments and activities can be tailored to individual users.

3. Analytics, advising and learning assessment - so that course level learning analytics as well as planning advising systems that have focused on student success can be part of this environment.

4. Collaboration - imply several types of interaction - student to student, student to faculty, faculty to faculty.

5. Accessibility and universal design - so that everybody can access education.

Referring to these dimensions of NGDLE to build individual components (bricks), the options for customization and personalization are infinite. This is the same as Lego analogy and as institutions, students, trainers, the NGDLE will prompt us to take the role of individual creators.

Therefore, NGDLE can be implemented like a Lego. The experts are stating that the possible future of LMS will be the implementing of NGDLE.

Where do we live?

We are living in a world with endless information. This information elevates the capabilities of our companies. Learning Management Systems are the modern way to continue the path of gaining the knowledge in a very efficient and remarkable manner, which is developing the look of our existence in the technology world.

Author: Kamen Zhelev

Ways to Ensure That Everyone Develops Their Skills Gradually Within Your Company

It is important to hire operation specialists according to the needs of your company to ensure business processes are well handled. New hires take time to adapt to their new workspace and expectations. As a hiring manager, or team lead, you will have to monitor their performance and results while the employees are acclimating themselves to their daily workload. This adjustment period, depending upon the complexity of the job, can vary from one month to six or even nine months and beyond.

Once the employee has settled in with their daily workload and expectations, making sure the employee can perform and execute their daily activities in accordance with the project timeline is next necessary step. But what happens when your employees are not constantly being challenged enough, their critical thinking abilities decrease, and the monotony of repetitive tasks prevail? How do you keep the interest of your employees in their current position?  How do you keep the investment you have made in their development? The answer always lies in the learning process.

Provide your employees with tools and encouragement to learn new skills. This will not only continue to push your employees to grow and develop, but it will increase the scope and capability of your entire team. Let them see that they are part of something bigger than what is needed to be accomplished today. Allow them to see that what they need to accomplish today is part of a bigger picture, not just to check off a box on a project plan, but how it impacts the end result. Employees need to be encouraged to not only think outside the box, but learn outside of it too.

With courses based on digital marketing, sales, personal finance, and other courses based on specific job profiles - you, as a manager, can strengthen the company loyalty enormously. All you need to do is select a course and assign it. From there, you may think of creating a mentoring program for your young employees, so they learn from the experience and sound advice of various professionals within your organization. Employee training programs are another direct investment in your company and serve as a proof that you value your people and want them to grow. They will get the notion that this is not just another six-month job improve resume, but a work-based university of personal and professional development.

Today you have the chance to break the work-for-salary mentality and give your employees a meaningful experience while doing their job. All it takes is to start paying attention to what their learning needs are and help them grow. You start doing that by providing them with knowledge via the right tool – a Learning Distribution System.

Ayris - the 2017 in review and what's to come in 2018

It was a grand year for Ayris! Our application matured with another amazing year of development and enhancements across several areas. In 2017, we improved many of Ayris’ components thanks to suggestions and “wishes” from our clients. Below we will highlight some of these components:

• Company branding – Now with your first login, you can transform Ayris to look as your own custom made tool. Incorporate your company logo, background color, and menu colors right from your company branding Ayris page. Changes are implemented immediately and can be constantly updated by your team to keep up with ever changing corporate branding.

• Enhanced programs functionalities – Create a learning program that Ayris will automatically assign throughout the lifecycle of the campaign. Create 30, 60 or 90-day events for your onboarding process of your new hires! Customize the timeline to fit your needs by adding multiple events in a smooth and easy way that allows you to attach and customize notifications, courses, and reports to each event on the go!

• Additional content storage for your learning materials – Load any type of document into Ayris and easily share the downloadable link with colleagues. You can even take it a step further and add these documents as reportable courses to assign to your end users! Ayris Content Storage allows you to build folder structure and set privacy settings on documents you load. Keep all of your content and source files in one program.

• Import course completions – Whether you want to quickly add completion of a course or you wish to upload mass completions to transfer learning history from a previous LMS – this simplified process is possible in just a few easy steps with Ayris.

• An improved tool – We also improved the functionalities of our video player, the reporting features, and many more features to improve the quality of the program.

As we enter into 2018, we are already excited about what is to come! 2018 will see a complete restructure of the reporting within Ayris, and we are looking for your input to make it elite!

Our current clients have been amazing with this approach, and we couldn’t thank you enough for your input! As you can see from above, we are not shy with enhancing our tool to improve our clients’ process.

What types of reports would you love your learning tool to have?

Help us help you!

Five ways to expand your course reach and grow your learning audience with Ayris

Many learning organizations own and offer valuable content but often fail to present it in an attractive way.  As a result, organizations are unable to reach a wider audience and achieve the goals they are trying to reach. What are the tricks to increase your course engagement? Based upon the OutCons team’s years of experience, here are some suggestions below:

1. Browse trending headlines to select topics

Keep up to date with the most recent developments in your industry and always try to be one step ahead of your audience and the rest of the eLearning industry. People want to learn about what is new in their business niche. For instance, if they want to start trading Bitcoins, provide them with all of the relevant information about it – what they should know before they start, what to watch for, how to mitigate their risks, etc. You can always improve your existing course list. Just try to be in line with the ongoing trends and tailor it to your audience.

2. Customize your content by interest groups

While you are adding value to your course materials, why not study your selected audience a little closer too. Group your contacts by interest and create different groups for each one of your topics. Look for branches within your learning organization, areas of professional development, or self-improvement topics. This way you can differentiate your types of audience and create custom content grouping. Pick the suitable courses for each group so you can satisfy personalized learning needs. In cases where the content is required, make sure you make it as short and as effective as possible to it peaks and holds the interest of the required group.

3. Create original content and ensure it is visually appealing

Make your content attractive and visually pleasing. This is probably the most important thing in online education today. According to The Telegraph, people have shorter attention spans (because of massive usage of the smartphone), which only lasts for eight seconds. Yes, if you don’t catch the attention of your audience within this timeframe, you probably won’t catch it at all. Be creative and entertaining, improve and upgrade your learning materials constantly.

4. Work your groups

Managing your learning group is a process, not a one-time, set-up case. You need to be active and engaged with all participants. Start an industry related community and post information, start chats, update statuses about the nature of your learning content and create a community of learning.

5. Ask industry influencers for quotes

Quote people who have taken your courses in the past, especially if they are recognized as leaders in your industry or organization. You can get creative and use tools like Canva to improve the visual representation of the quote itself. Individuals like to be associated with famous and influential people, so if you know someone appropriate, don’t forget to contact that person for a quote.

Always keep in mind that you are not promoting just a course. You are promoting your services, your company and your brand. Make sure that you present your courses well and get closer to and work with your audience groups. Do not get in a passive mode. If you do your homework and create courses of interest to your audience, your audience will grow.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Mass Upload of Course Completions is Now Available on Ayris

Good news for everyone working with course completions! Batch course completion is now available on Ayris and this means two things for all of our users - smooth course completion process and peace of mind. If you have used another learning management solution in the past or you currently need to upload course completions for existing courses, our neat new feature will help you bring all of those learning history records on Ayris in no time.

You can access this feature on the "Learning" tab and then navigate to the "Manage Course Completions" menu. From there you will be able to select the courses for which you wish to submit course completions, for as many users as you like.

The other great add-on to this menu and probably the most important feature for learning managers is the mass upload of course completions from file. The "Import from CSV" button is created to help you upload learning completions quickly and easy. Once you press the button, a pop-up window opens allowing you to download a template which shows how course completions must be entered to successfully import them on Ayris. On the same window, you can also find brief instructions to support your successful submission of course completions on Ayris. Enjoy!

Provide Online Education as a Sport Exercise with Ayris

The way each one of us see things in life is different. Also the way we all do things in life is different as well and thank God, because every day this creates awesome achievements made by great personalities. We often want to learn more about how these people accomplish these things in order to apply it to our own work. We quickly start to use their technique but soon find out that we come up with mixed results and we struggle to reach our desired goal. The template we chose to follow is somehow not right. So how do great athletes do this? How can their techniques be applied to online learning to enhance learners’ education?

Athletes most often surround themselves with the best equipment they can afford. Educational organizations tend to do the same in order to create great online learning content.  However, if the equipment, or learning solution can only get you so far. At some point it is on the learning organization to properly utilize the new solution. Even the best baseball bat there is and the most expensive football shoes can’t make someone a great baseball or football player. The same it is with learning – even the best LMS or the best tool for creating online courses out there doesn’t ensure improved skills and qualities in employees once it is completed. It will however provide the users, or athletes the means to reach their goals.

Athletes and learners must absorb the specific exercises and the assigned learning content until it is second nature for them. Work ethics and consistency creates the difference in education the same way it does it with sports.  The greatest athletes are magically gifted with talent, but what sets them apart is their willingness to perfect their craft. Whether it be studying film, physical drills to improve their given talent, the best are always improving. If you’re an athlete that is going into a slump, you are going to step back and make some adjustments. That starts with re-evaluating your approach, define possible causes of the issues, try not to repeat it and do the process again and again. How is that related to online education? Great athletes and great employees are bred, their qualities are constantly improving day after day to reach perfection. They simply have to follow their methodology consistently.

Therefore we have to distribute learning content as a sports exercise. Every fitness instructor will tell you “You can’t stay in shape if you do not maintain your body every day”. It is one thing to reach a fit body, the hard part is to maintain it.  The same it is with the mind – you must keep it in shape in order to provide you with added value. As the great Dale Carnegie says “Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind”.

Ayris, the learning distribution system that we created focuses on this – providing the fastest and easiest way for both teachers (learning professionals, content creators) and learners (students, employees) to exchange knowledge. Providing the environment and facilitating the process between the two parties by providing the supply (learning content from the learning professionals) and the demand (from the students and employees) is existential to improve both. It helps companies in their desire to reach their staff easily and distribute the learning content they need on every day basis to become better employees inside and outside of the office. It does the same for all occupations and professions, it can be used by students, yoga groups, sports coaches, teachers, learning managers and many more to distribute their learning content among their peers. The sky is the limit when it comes to different purposes that Ayris can be used for. Simply create great learning content, let Ayris distribute it, and make sure it is used as a sport exercise for the mind – you will be surprised by the results.

Sharing Knowledge And Building A Corporate Learning Culture With Ayris

We have come to an age where we share everything. It's been part of the human nature for centuries. We help others in order to create a more sustainable environment but a term like "sharing economy" has never been more important in any point in time than now. Sharing knowledge has pioneered the sharing economy, followed by sharing transportation, houses, or home improvement tools. We now have numerous free courses and platforms providing free education, but when we come to closed environments like working groups or companies, we face another challenge - we need to dig deep into our pockets and allocate budgets for having a trusted LMS (Learning Management System).

The question here is how do we retain our employees via improvements and continuous development, in order to strengthen our productivity and reduce unnecessary costs. We can make people go and watch a video on an external platform like YouTube, but how do we track their attendance, views, or actual accomplishments of the assigned job? How do we track progress, how do we extract surveys and follow up on tasks associated with the learning content? How do we offer access to such a service so that it is affordable to every individual or legal entity? Those are the questions that the developers from OutCons asked themselves when they created Ayris.

With Ayris you are in possession of your own content and you are provided with the means to create, distribute and track it as you wish. Every company has such content, this content can range from an internal procedure document or price sheet, to online articles and videos. However, for items that don't go into your LMS, yet you share with employees, it is hard to track and report on actual consumption of the content and knowledge. The worst case scenario is an internal procedures breach which we all try to avoid. To better track all of this, you need to create the necessary learning material which is especially easy with an external link or a storage link (for content uploaded on the platform), and assign it to your target audience. You can associate different types of follow ups on this material like tasks, surveys, and exams to test how well the assigned content has been comprehended by your colleagues, peers, and associates, as well as get detailed reports on this. Going through those steps consistently will enable you to get a comprehensive view of how people are developing and help them succeed and navigate employees in doing so. 

Ayris is perfect for content creators to gain more information on the views on their learning content. We do not ask you to sign contractual obligations to publish materials with us and you are the content owner of everything you create or already own. Ayris is the means for you to distribute. You can even assign a direct link to your own LMS course. Ayris is the right tool serving the purpose of delivering content to the doorstep of your targeted audience. Simple as it should be, no boundaries, no complicated integrations, just easy learning accessible for everyone.