I am privileged and always happy to review LMS and other learning technologies, but it is always a real pleasure to come across an individual like Malak Sedra, the founder of e-Sky, who brings such a different perspective to our industry.
Malak is an aerospace engineer, recently named as one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 40 in Aerospace and Aviation by Wings and Helicopter Magazine. He is adding value to the elearning sector by applying his mind to learning technologies.
Well, learning technologies are not rocket science, but e-Sky was set up in 2012 to get results – born from an experts’ frustration as to what happens to learning in organisations, and Malak’s very direct realisation that to get results from learning you need interaction among learners at every level.
“Learn – Interact – Engage – Grow” is their mantra.
e-Sky also gets micro-learning and has licensed in over 8000 courses from some of the most respected vendors in North America. VuBiz, ej4 and Vado are all on board. In my view, these companies produce some of the best micro learning I know.
ej4, with its high-quality, short-form, video-based learning materials, and Vado,with its unique and innovative 70 20 10 learning courses together with e-Sky.ca create a real backbone to this offer.
Focusing on the SMB / SME market, it makes sense to use cost effective content, but where the innovation comes is in the creation of the learning ‘microcosms’.
So, around these courses (and obviously any other learning materials you wish to create with the e-Sky wizard.) microcosms are created that are designed to meet the needs of the client’s learner with ultimate flexibility. With both a course creation wizard and a test wizard, it equips any SMB / SME to rapidly transform their in-house processes into interactive, traceable and effective learning materials.
Flexibility for the SMB / SME sector is in itself a breath of fresh air, and coupled with e-Sky’s service promise (they take calls and will talk to learners as well) e-Sky is doing very well, and interestingly acts for many clients as their outsourced L&D team.
So what do Course Microcosms look like… and exactly what is this flexible approach…?
Flexibility
The e-Sky flexible approach is one based around configuring the platform to meet the client’s needs at the outset – it may be a very stripped down solution at the commencement – then unlocking the features and adding them, in a lego brick way, to grow the learning maturity of the client.
Overall the client ends up with the choice of using an off the shelf template or fully customising the look & feel, and the user experience.
Indeed, the e-Sky team creates a learning maturity plan for the client, and therefore often acts as the outsourced L&D partner.
Flexibility is inherent in the learning microcosm, as wrapped around a course, or pathways of courses, comes the engagement – and this is the bit I just love.
The levels of engagement are multi-faceted layers and e-Sky have taken the best elements of social media and applied them to learning…… so here goes:
- Blogs and forums for reading, engaging and raising issues
- Groups based on the concept of LinkedIn groups for collaboration and community of practice
- A Wiki (my favourite as we have kind of forgotten these), which allows for courses and resources to be persistent, relevant and remain easily discoverable in the organisation in a live and well understood area
- A projects page for collaboration around courses aligned to an organisational mind set or need
- Video conferencing / web conferencing, message tools and chat.
- Social sharing is based on Facebook with the learner’s wall for postings and recognition
On top of that, e-Sky can act as the corporate intranet and produce mini-websites as well as offering powerful communication features.
The important point is e-Sky.ca will support you in configuring these social learning applications as appropriate to help you build out your ultra -engaging course microcosms.
The e-Sky wizard is useful for organisations to create learning materials or bookend (put the off the shelf content into context) other materials and is intuitive to use – creating courses, exams and quizzes as well as handling materials such as slides and videos from the wider internet. It also builds certificates.
Naturally, e-Sky is fully mobile enabled.
e-Sky offers a wide range of features, including ecommerce (making it ideal for associations, training providers and so Malak reports some high-powered consultancy practices in specialist areas).
Unsurprisingly multi-tenancy is supported and e-Sky is ideal for white label deployments as it can be easily branded in corporate colours etc…..
e-Sky is providing something quite unique and very interesting, it is taking the basis of the LMS and adding an LXP experience for the learner (it’s a good looking platform that scores highly on the UI and UX …helped by some good courses) and it is building on the social engagement level of learning to deliver results.
As well as a great platform, e-Sky pride themselves on providing excellent customer support, which is available via both telephone and an online ticketing system.
So an LMS? Well, yes. An LXP? Yes again, but e-Sky is more than the sum of its parts. It is about making an approach we, as learning and training professionals, all desire – offering a place learners can engage through interaction and by using a learning microcosm at will, and becoming your outsourced learning and development partner.
Learn more at e-sky.ca or get in touch via their support hotline – 1(855)MYESKY1.
David Patterson
Lead eLearning Consultant
About David
Our lead elearning consultant David Patterson is an expert in training technologies such as learning management systems, and in elearning best practices.
He has helped many public and private sector organisations across the UK, Europe and worldwide to create and deliver engaging, effective elearning.
David is joint author of several research papers including the highly acclaimed Learning Light reports on the UK elearning market.
