Advancing Digital is a project financed by the EU’s European Social Fund, which has an objective of levelling up business growth and opportunities across the economic region by investing in jobs and skills.

Both employers and ambitious employees alike are welcome to apply for a range of free digital skills and business courses in areas that include:

• Data Analytics
• Databases (beginner and intermediate courses)
• Project Management
• IT Service Management
• Web Analytics
• Business Security
• Applied AI for Business
• Web Marketing
• and more…

Employers can also request bespoke course packages in popular business software products, such as:

• Microsoft Excel
• Azure Basics and Data Visualisation
• PowerBI
• Python programming
• MS Office 365

Advancing Digital courses for modern business are run by a talented team led by Dr Chris Roast of Sheffield Hallam University.

The team comprises expertise across diverse areas of technology and business, such as:

• Project management
• Web & app development
• 5G and network security
• C#, C++ and Javascript programming
• Cloud-based solutions and data management
• Computing and software engineering
• Web application penetration testing and IT security awareness

So – well-placed to guide companies and employees in all things digital!

As an EU-funded project, Advancing Digital will only run until the end of 2023, so if you are interested in improving your skills with this free learning (or those of your employees), it’s important to register your interest and start one of their short courses as soon as possible.

Employers in South Yorkshire: Register your interest as an employer

Employees living or working in South Yorkshire: Register interest as an employee

 
Any questions? Email the Advancing Digital team at Sheffield Hallam University via:
advancingdigital@shu.ac.uk
 

Learn more about the project on the Advancing Digital website.

The post Free Digital Skills Courses in South Yorkshire appeared first on Learning Light.

The most popular of these training courses is the CIWM / WAMITAB Level 4 qualification, which is often referred to as the CoTC – Certificate of Technical Competence. Every waste management or recycling facility must have an accredited professional working on site for at least 20% of the time.

This must be someone who has the required training, knowledge and skill to govern safe working procedures.

WAMITAB is now integrated into the CIWM – Chartered Institution of Wastes Management – so any qualifications completed or in progress are equally recognised by all bodies.

CIWM WAMITAB qualifications demonstrate that you have the level of knowledge and skills required for ensuring that a waste site fully complies with the Environmental Permitting Regulations (2007).

CIWM / WAMITAB Approved Centre

Learning Light is an approved CIWM / WAMITAB Centre providing Statutory and Non-Statutory (Voluntary) qualifications that are listed on the Quality Curriculum Framework (QCF).

We offer accredited training that is evidenced by the learner with traditional paperwork, but we are also able to deliver the WAMITAB / CIWM qualification online if you prefer. An on-site assessor visit is required at the start and final assessment, plus any additional points in the process where support is required.

This can make WAMITAB training much more convenient for the learner and much less disruptive for the employer.

As well as making training and assessments as convenient as possible alongside your work, we ensure that WAMITAB and CIWM courses with Learning Light are competitively priced.

Site Owners / Managers

If you do not hold a CoTC, you or a designated person will be required to demonstrate competence based on the Risk Tier for your facility.

High risk

Typical businesses are full-service waste transfer stations, including those that deal with hazardous waste, such as asbestos.
You will be required to achieve a 12 Unit QCF qualification.
£2987 including learner registration, training and assessment.

Medium risk

Typical companies are non-hazardous waste transfer stations, such as car breakers.
You will be required to achieve a 6 Unit QCF qualification.
£1793 including learner registration, training and assessment.

Low risk

Such as scrap dealers and rock or metal recovery companies.
You will be required to achieve a 4 Unit QCF qualification.
£1395 including learner registration, training and assessment.

All prices are exclusive of VAT.

Please note – assessors will be travelling from Sheffield and travel time is charged at £35 per hour and £0.45 per mile. Travel and mileage is not subject to VAT.
We make every effort to ensure that travel time is kept to a minimum. 

For more information, Contact Us at Learning Light for a no-obligations discussion about your needs.

We have provided CIWM / WAMITAB training and qualifications in most regions of the UK:

• Scotland
• Northern Ireland
• East of England, including Cambridgeshire and Norfolk
• Midlands – including Birmingham, Shropshire and Staffordshire in the West Midlands, and Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands
• Yorkshire (North, South, East, West) – including Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, and Sheffield in South Yorkshire
• North East – including Tyne & Wear, Northumberland and County Durham
• North West – including Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire and Liverpool / Merseyside
• South East – including London, Essex and Hampshire.

Please email info@learninglight.com for more information or call us on: 0114 307 2358 to check on the right course for your role and facility.

Learning Light is CIWM & WAMITAB approved centre number 139/88.

Can We Help You?

Get in touch for an initial, no-obligation chat about your waste management training needs.

Just Need the Continuing Competence / CoTC Refresher?

The WAMITAB Continuing Competence – also known as the CoTC Refresher course – is conducted directly through the WAMITAB website and is bookable online here.

The post CIWM WAMITAB Qualifications: COTC, OCC & Level 1 to 4 appeared first on Learning Light.

The other three of those are:

• Micro-Learning (not quite so new I know, but certainly becoming more effective)
• Binge Learning or ‘cinematic style learning’ (snappier name suggestions welcomed) – a little like binge watching the high quality productions on Netflix and in some ways the antithesis of micro-learning
• and the fourth genre of the big four being Curated Learning.

There is solid evidence that these genres all work – the trick is knowing which genre to apply to which learning requirement.

So, what does Immersive Learning mean?

Immersive learning is pretty flexible and fuzzy term in some ways, but will contain elements such as scenarios, 360-degree images and video content, simulations and contextually-relevant games.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are becoming more common, along with Mixed Reality arriving sooner than perhaps realised. The overarching term for all 3 is known as Extended Reality or XR.

Learnovate, the research team at Trinity College in Dublin, conducted research into the features, benefits and accessibility of types of immersive learning mentioned above, creating this table on their attributes:

The principle point of immersive learning is a very high degree of relevance to the learner, in order to deliver engagement, as well as effectiveness.

Leading Immersive Learning Companies

So here is our list of some of the world’ top Immersive Learning providers to consider if you are looking at this type of training. These companies have real capabilities in Immersive Learning development and delivery, and are certainly worth a look.

All have different areas of expertise and we present them in no particular order, so do browse all of them to see which company could be a good fit for your needs.

Learning Simulation Platform (LSP) – ETU

Empower The User Limited (ETU) is a multi-award winning immersive learning and simulation based training company.

They have created an innovative immersive learning development environment that enables clients to develop custom simulations to cater for virtually any training need, including the likes of:

• Leadership Behavior
• Compliance & Risk Management
• B2B Sales & Customer Service
• Employee Onboarding
• Digital Transformation
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)

Here’s a 2-minute intro to the company:

ETU have an impressive client base of some of the world’s best known brands, across dynamic and challenging sectors such as business consulting, finance, technology and more. They have also published this comprehensive guide to immersive learning for corporate training needs. It offers a definition of the concept and suggests appropiate types of immersive learning for different training.

Learn more about this exciting immersive learning and simulation company on the ETU website.

Immersive eLearning Content from Blend

By adding interactivity to your training so that learners get a more immersive experience by learning through doing, rather than just passively consuming content, you can dramatically improve learning outcomes.

It is with this in mind that Brendan Cox and Tom Payani created Blend Interactive Content.

These experts in elearning content development, uses tools such as AR training solutions to deliver a truly immersive learning experience.

Drawing on 15 years of Education and Design experience working for major brands like the BBC, these UK elearning developers now work 100% remotely to provide interactive elearning experiences to clients across the globe.

You can get a feel for Brendan’s approach in this article he wrote for our website on custom content vs off the shelf elearning and deciding how to choose the best solution for your training needs.

As a small, boutique elearning studio, Blend is able to offer high-end elearning design, without the usual high-end cost of working with a large elearning agency.

Learn more about Blend Interactive Content on their website.

Applio

Applio has built out a model or approach to allow for the rapid development and deployment of games with its Games Based Learning platform. This is a pretty slick approach to getting into games and immersive learning environments and Applio deserves some real credit for this approach to making gaming and immersive learning so accessible.
www.applio.net

Day One

This is an interesting company that specialises in really effective simulations. They have a fantastic skillset in simulating software and in-house systems.

For example, call centre system simulations allow agents to train using mock customer engagements, with colleagues playing the roles of customers. Day One have delivered call centre training using simulation to some of the UK’s leading call centre operators, with a client base that includes the likes of Lloyds, Co-operative Bank and TSB.

In the field of healthcare, they have helped global companies such as Linde and Roche in onboarding staff with new hardware, and with new in-house CRM software.

Day One have created simulation training and immersive learning experiences that have demonstrated measurable reductions in time to competency and trainee attrition, while increasing learner confidence with new systems.

This is one of the most innovative and effective immersive learning solution providers we know.
www.dayonetech.com

elearning Studios

A long established elearning developer, but in the last 4 years they have become true experts in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The quality of the learning environments, whether using Google Carboard or Samsung’s Galaxy Gears, or indeed Oculus Rift is quite breath-taking. In utilising the xAPI protocol to an LRS to report the learner’s behaviours this company can support training at a micro level where changing a behaviour can save lives, this is premium compliance par excellence and just so so immersive.
www.e-learningstudios.com

Growth Engineering

This company has long been a market leader with its very excellent Gamified LMS, but that is not all. Growth Engineering has pioneered modern and engaging UI and UX and has built Genie an authoring tool that will create game based learning experiences with templates and workflows to allow for the creation of rapid game based learning solutions. This should be part of the toolkit of any Immersive Learning orientated project.
www.growthengineering.co.uk

Immerse

A fully focused VR developer delivering high quality projects to major corporates who have grasped what this style of learning can do. They also have a VR orientated platform that allows for the distribution of VR experiences and interactions, including multi user VR sessions.

This is an exceptionally high quality company, delivering exceptionally high quality learning experiences in VR for simulation training experiences.
immerse.io

Preloaded

Part of the market leading Learning Technologies Group, Preloaded has real pedigree in both Games – games with purpose as they put it – and VR. With a fabulous library of case studies illustrating the challenges to be addressed and the solutions developed illustrate some real capability. If you are looking for ideas and examples –
take a look.
preloaded.com

Cue Interactive

Led by some of the leading visionaries in games and learning, Cue Interactive have produced some hugely significant simulations and games for clients that must be incredibly demanding as to the outcomes – think aircraft maintenance for example…
cueinteractive.co.uk

Totem

The UK pioneers of what we called Serious Games. Indeed, Helen Routledge has done more than anyone else in our industry to evidence the effect games can have on learning and the evidence she presents is compelling. You can buy her book here. Totem have built some superb games for clients over several years delivering compelling game play with powerful learning results. True experts at their craft.
www.totemlearning.com

Virtual College

This company has been quietly developing considerable development capacity to be a full service Immersive learning developer. Simulations of using and maintaining complex hardware systems I have been shown illustrate real immersive learning design capabilities.
www.virtual-college.co.uk

Can We Help You?

Interested in discussing how to implement this kind of training within your organisation or how to choose the best provider to meet your needs? Contact us here at Learning Light.

The post Top Immersive Learning Providers appeared first on Learning Light.

Regularly updated, here we offer a 2023 list of what we believe are the top LMS solutions for specialist training companies.

We have based our analysis on Cost of Ownership, Features and Functionalities, Development Pathway, and Future Proofing of your purchase.

There are reportedly over 1000 LMS on the market and we have selected just a few, but these are products we would seriously advise you as a training company or in-house training department to put on your shortlist. We have used and deployed many of these learning management systems on our own projects, as well as projects for our clients.

Elsewhere on our site, we provide shortlists and reviews addressing LMS options for large organisations, mid-sized companies and SMEs. We also signpost top elearning solutions for various industry sectors and countries across the globe.

If you wish for us to give you a view on the best LMS for your organisation, please get in touch.

Let’s get into the list – all great solutions, so not in any particular order:

Svelte LMS from Walkgrove
Svelte is the slender and elegant learning management system that’s easy to use and cost effective. In our Svelte LMS review we said “multitenancy and multilingual – no problem”.

Ideal for both niche and large training providers who need to reach a disparate, even global, workforce – Svelte features include:

• Easy enrolment of learners, with pre-registration, bulk uploads or self-enrolment, along with single sign-on (SSO) capabilities
• Configurable training reminders and email alerts
• Learner profile and course groups to create learning pathways
• Powerful and configurable reports and certifications.

Favourite feature: a series of neat configuration options for multiple languages, managed integrated multi-tenancy, e-commerce, personalisation and learner profiling. 

Walkgrove Limited
7 Maisies Way
Alfreton
Derbyshire
DE55 2DS
UK
Telephone: +44 (0)1773 864640
Learn more at: https://www.walkgrove.co.uk/svelte/

 
TalentLMS
This company is one of the world’s leading cloud LMS providers, offering an easy to use, modular learning platform.

TalentLMS is a suite of tools that enable you to build your own elearning courses based on existing multimedia content, and make them available on a learning management system that’s customized to your branding and needs, as well as based on your own domain if desired.

Everything is mobile friendly by default, and supports both SCORM and Tin Can / xAPI standards. While the TalentLMS solutions are designed with simplicity in mind, they are powerful and robus enough to be trusted by many of the world’s best known companies, including LG, DeLonghi, Rosetta Stone, Merck, Harper Collins Publishers and many more.

TalentLMS
Epignosis LLC
315 Montgomery Street, 9th Floor
San Francisco, California
CA 94104
USA
(+1) 646 797 2799
www.talentlms.com

You may also be interested in David’s TalentLMS review – he found it to be a remarkably easy to use SME to corporate LMS solution

Thought Industries
This learning platform is all about delivering training for customers and clients – and it does this job extremely well!

Calling itself a Customer Learning Platform, Thought Industries is an excellent choice for training companies (or any organisation delivering training to their clients, franchises or channel partners), with strong emphasis on monetisation.

This platform is designed to deliver high-definition content, and core areas of strength are its flexibility, delivery of learning at the point of need, certificate management, reporting, and the marketing and sales of your elearning.

APIs and Webhooks enable Thought Industries to integrate seamlessly with CRM, HRS and a range of other systems.

33 Broad Street
4th Floor
Boston, MA 02109
USA
Tel: 1-866-206-4011
www.thoughtindustries.com

Moodle
What can we say about Moodle – the world’s most well-known and used learning platform? Moodle is a phenomenon. It’s an open source LMS, which can mean a low or even zero cost of ownership other than hosting and maintenance – and this makes for a compelling offer. We have seen examples of great Moodle instances from experts, but some truly awful Moodle instances when a DIY job has been done. To get a great instance, you will need expert in-house skills or a solid Moodle Partner.

There are many certified services providers to choose from, so we recommend choosing one that can offer an impressive body of case studies and useful information on elearning and LMS for your particular sector and / or type of training need.

Moodle can offer great value and great functionality and is on many a list of the best LMS solutions overall – for business training as well as education. And rightly so. Many leading brands now use Moodle for their elearning.

The best way to ensure a smooth and robust implementation of a new platform is to work with a Moodle Partner to make sense of the huge numbers of blocks and keep up with the regular upgrades and the community’s ever changing developments.

Pricing is dependent upon the project, but Open Source can be very cost effective, and if you ever want to leave your provider, you can keep your LMS as-is, and bring in another developer to support your platform and continue in its ongoing maintenance and development.

Favourite feature… freedom from vendor lock-in as it’s an open source platform, plus the passionate community of developers worldwide, who drive continuous improvement in this LMS. 

Learn more about Moodle, the world’s most popular LMS, at moodle.org

Enable by Virtual College
One of the most evolved LMS on the market in the UK. Virtual College has led the UK market aligning and configuring their LMS for the needs of Training Providers and Further Education, including Apprenticeships.

Within the Enable LMS, reporting is rock solid and competencies and e-portfolios are highly evolved, driven by Enable’s excellent assessment functionality. Enable is a good solution for blended learning delivery. Virtual College have a large library of content and strong content development skills. Virtual College offer first line learner support. This means any learners “having issues” are fully supported, and we see this as a crucial  factor in delivering any new e-learning programme. This is learner support, not technical support! No obligation demos are available.

Virtual College have introduced VOOCs (Vocational Open On-line Courses exclusively trademarked by Virtual College) which are looking like a very innovative and exciting development pathway and another good reason to consider Virtual College.

Pricing is very competitive and both support and development are excellent.

Here you can see our review of Enable.

Favourite feature – first line learner support and the VOOC concept is just great.

Virtual College Limited
Marsel House
Stephensons Way
Ilkley
West Yorkshire
LS29 8DD
United Kingdom

Phone: + 44 01943 885093
www.virtual-college.co.uk/lms

imc Learning
This is an excellent, well-rounded learning management system with applications for pretty much any type of training.

In our imc LMS review, we summed it up as a “Complete Learning Suite for Online & On The Job Training”.

It includes a very handy Predictive Search feature, a dedicated module for On The Job Training which is designed to be as mobile-friendly as possible, gamification, digital signatures, content recommendations, social learning, advanced LMS reporting & analytics… The list goes on!

Feature-packed, yet without being overwhelming.

Headquartered in Germany, imc Learning have offices worldwide, including the UK, USA, Netherlands, Austria, Singapore and Australia.

imc Learning Headquarters:
imc information multimedia
communication AG
Scheer Tower
Uni-Campus Nord
66123 Saarbrücken
Tel. +49 681 94 76 0
https://www.im-c.com

Docebo
This is a comprehensive LMS with lots of up to date features covering most of what you will need in any training organisation or department. Features include classroom alignment, lots of integration options and APIs. Docebo also has a content market place, which is useful. There is a 14 day free trial.

Pricing is transparent and pay as you go offers good value, future development pathways look good as well.

Favourite feature – easily integrates with other systems

Docebo Spa
Via Toledo 156
80134
Napoli (NA)
Italy

Italy Phone: +39 039 2323286
UK Phone: +44 121 288 1122
www.docebo.com

iSpring Learn
Established for over 17 years, iSpring have over 49,000 clients across the globe, including 148 companies from the Fortune 500. They have developed their impressive LMS – iSpring Learn – to empower teams, with particular focus on the areas of Employee Onboarding, Product Training and Staff Assessments.

Here you can read our review of the iSpring Learn LMS.

Favourite feature… the integrated authoring tool, which allows allows L&D professionals to start simply but then quickly to become sophisticated elearning aficionados.

iSpring Solutions
815 N. Royal St. Suite 202
Alexandria, VA 22314
United States

Tel: +1 800 640 0868
Email: sales@ispringsolutions.com
www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-learn

aNewSpring
This is that rare LMS that is 100% aligned to training organisations and consequently is the Dutch market leader. aNewSpring provides one of the most comprehensive learning management systems on the market, supporting mobile delivery and integrated social learning. It has its own content creation and importing environment, and many more features, including adaptive learning pathways. Links well for trainers developing blended learning programmes. This product can be ready to go in a very short time. Memo Trainer is a nice addition as it keeps learners engaged and on-track.

Pricing is very competitive and transparent indeed as it has no set up costs and fully future proof. The product support looks excellent as well. There is free demo to let you create courses straight away.

Favourite feature….you can be up and running creating courses before you pay a penny and we love Memo Trainer!

A New Spring BV
Westblaak 180
3012 KN Rotterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (10) 2447460
Email: info@anewspring.com
www.anewspring.com

Kallidus
Kallidus is the blue chip LMS in that mid-corporate training space and offers top of the range learner management and reporting features. Kallidus links well to blended learning and offers resources management, while ROI calculation is also provided. Kallidus’s learning administration functionality is excellent. Kallidus as a company has good content development capability as well. Demo’s are available and Kallidus has a great reputation for listening to its customers.

Kallidus has a defined development pathway, moving into SaaS and mobile, as well as talent management.

Pricing is offered with a great deal of flexibility provided in licencing and SaaS options.

Favourite feature….Kallidus App for iOS and Android is very neat

Kallidus Limited
Westgate House
Phoenix Way
Cirencester
Gloucestershire
GL7 1RY
UK

Phone: +44 1285 883900
http://www.kallidus.com/Products/Kallidus-LMS-Learning-Management/

Nimble LMS
The Nimble LMS from Nimble Elearning is a skills orientated learning management system that is engaging and effective to use. With a strong focus on the learner, this “lite and elegant” solution includes a very good authoring tool: Nimble Author.  Nimble Author comes with templates and royalty free images to accelerate content development. Nimble Elearning offer a number of off the shelf courses as well.

Nimble Elearning are certainly innovative and appear to have a well thought through approach to learning. We are confident this will translate into continued product development.

Pricing: For value for money at the let’s get going end of the market – this is a good solution.

Favourite feature… Nimble Author is free and supports collaborative content development.

Nimble Elearning
Nimble House
Bond’s Mill Estate
Stonehouse
GL10 3RF
UK

Phone: +44 (0)1453 823029
Email: info@nimble-elearning.com
www.nimble-elearning.com

LearnUpon
LearnUpon offers a simple and effective e-learning platform designed mainly as an LMS for training companies. It can handle SCORM and other content. It is probably the best LMS we know for simply uploading content and managing content. It is particularly strong at e-commerce, marketing and promotion, and as such is ideal for commercial training providers.

The development of LearnUpon to date has been impressive and the company has a robust development pathway, as well as market leading uptime and product support.

Pricing is very transparent and offers good value on a pay as you go model, with no contractual tie-ins.

Favourite feature – ability to clone customer portals in minutes

33 Lower Leeson Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Phone +353 (0)1 485 3367
Email: hello@learnupon.com
www.learnupon.com

Litmos
The friendly LMS as it brands itself, Litmos was the pioneer of the pay as you go LMS. Litmos offers a nice development environment to import or build courses, nothing fancy, but functional and easy (friendly) to use. Litmos is a long way down the Tin Can route and the platform can operate as an LRS (Learning Record Store) in recording Tin Can statements that are linked to the LMS.

Litmos is part of Callidus Cloud – a much larger organisation so future development will be we would assume, assured.

Pricing is clear and transparent and ideal for small and medium sized organisations.

Favourite feature…..LRS functionality….that’s future proofing

6200 Stoneridge Mall Road
Suite 500
Pleasanton, CA 94588
USA

USA: +1 (925) 251 2220
UK: +44 (0) 207 849 6870
www.litmos.com/contact/

Day One Technologies
New addition to the list – and an interesting option for training providers seeking bespoke development of a white label learning platform for their clients. Day One have created training solutions for some of the biggest companies in the UK and Europe, with clients including the likes of Lloyds Business Banking, TSB and ghd.

If you’re a training company that wants to introduce an LMS that completely fits your own branding or that of your clients, then Day One’s white label elearning solutions could be ideal for creating an engaging, bespoke experience that fits in seamlessly with your existing offerings.

Unit 55, Batley Business and Technology Centre
Grange Road
Batley
West Yorkshire
WF17 6ER
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1924 510 524
www.dayonetech.com/solutions/lms

A good LMS is important for helping organisations to deliver the latest content to their learners 24/7, and is one of the top HR and training tools used by leading companies to manage and develop their staff. We hope this list of the best LMS for training providers will prove useful if you are choosing one.

Can We Help You?

If you need advice on choosing the right LMS please get in touch with us here at Learning Light.

The post Best LMS for Training Providers appeared first on Learning Light.

Government organisation projects are often higher profile and under greater scrutiny than that of internal corporate training. Therefore, these elearning companies have demonstrated the ability to work with great attention to detail, discretion and accountability.

Day One Technologies

Based in West Yorkshire, UK, Day One Technologies have provided bespoke elearning solutions for over 20 years.

While they have a strong background in corporate elearning work for high-profile businesses, much of their recent work has been for government organisations, which include:

• Scottish Government and NHS Scotland
• British Army and Royal Navy
• King’s College Hospital
• Metropolitan Police – (read about the Met Police elearning project)

Day One are proven in making training engaging, accessible and highly successful for small groups through to large teams spread across multiple locations, with projects include multilingual elearning content and translation work.

Day One Technologies Ltd, Unit 55, Batley Business and Technology Centre, Grange Road, Batley, West Yorkshire WF17 6ER, UK.
Tel: +44 (0)1924 510 524

Learn more on the public sector elearning section of their website.

Walkgrove

Established in 1994, Walkgrove is a leading UK elearning solutions company, with an extremely impressive client base across almost every sector – especially with government bodies. They provide training needs analysis, bespoke elearning content, learning management systems (LMS) / learning experience platforms (LXP) and a range of off-the-shelf online courses on compliance topics and performance management.

Notable public sector clients include:

• The Environment Agency
• Ofcom (the UK communications regulator)
• Foreign & Commonwealth Office
• NHS (the UK National Health Service)
• Transport for London
• The Audit Commission
• Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)
• Various local councils
• and many more…

The quality of their work is recognised through numerous industry award wins.

Walkgrove Ltd, 7 Maisies Way, South Normanton, Alfreton, Derbyshire DE55 2DS, UK.
Telephone: +44 (0)1773 864 640
Website: www.walkgrove.co.uk/government/

eThink (now OpenLMS)

US company eThink Education are learning management system specialists, offering services that include platform development, implementation, hosting, and client support – all based on the open-source Moodle and Totara LMS solutions.

eThink is a high-quality, consultative elearning provider, and one of the world’s leading Moodle Partners. Their government LMS clients include:

• The City of San Antonio
• Cochise College, Arizona
• New Jersey Department of Education

eThink is also an official elearning vendor listed in the UK Government’s G-Cloud Digital Marketplace.

Managed by experienced elearning experts, eThink’s LMS solutions provide dynamic and customizable platforms to meet complex institutional and organizational needs, which makes the company well-placed to support government training projects.

Call – US: +1 (877) 938-5328 / UK: +44 203 608 9366

Update: eThink is now part of OpenLMS – learn more about their government LMS solutions on their website.

The post Government eLearning: Top Providers & Example Public Sector Clients appeared first on Learning Light.

Funded by Sport England, the multimedia training content guides learners in the use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and in how to perform CPR.

The material was developed in association with Resuscitation Council UK, St John Ambulance and Joe Humphries Memorial Trust.

This successful project had helped over 30,000 within just 3 months of its launch and is likely to save many lives over the months and years to come.

It won the prestigious Digital Learning and eLearning Award at the Learning Excellence Awards 2022, which were held at the National Conference Centre in Solihull.

UK Coaching and Sport England wanted to deliver a free course to all of their sports coaches and the general public so that if they found themselves in a situation where someone has a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), they are well prepared to save a life.

The client wanted a course that was media rich, engaging and thought-provoking, and that would leave an impact on the learner so that they remember what to do in an SCA emergency.

No doubt this important elearning course will save a great many lives.

How to get in touch with Day One Technologies:

Address
Unit 55, Batley Business and Technology Centre
Grange Road, Batley
West Yorkshire
WF17 6ER
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1924 510524

Learn more about the project on the Day One website here:
www.dayonetech.com/case-studies/sudden-cardiac-arrest

The post Award-Winning Sudden Cardiac Arrest Training Created by Day One appeared first on Learning Light.

For an industry whose primary role is to help people understand things, the eLearning industry is ironically non-transparent.

There’s a lot of jargon and sales talk thrown around, so the goal of this article is to cut through the noise and help you make an informed decision.

But before we start laying everything out, let’s take a step back…

Only pack the essentials

Make time to behave like a kid/therapist

You’re probably wondering ‘what?!?’  Let me explain… Both kids and therapists want to know the truth of things – challenging your reasons for something, digging deeper until you have to face a fundamental (and occasionally painful) truth underneath. How do they do this? – They simply ask  WHY. And they don’t stop until they hit bedrock (or you send them to bed).

It can be hard work but the reality is that it ends up being much better to build from that essential solid foundation, if you take the time to reach it.

The exact same thing should be applied to choosing a training solution – Challenge what you think you want and do a quick check to find out what you actually need. It will always pay off in the long run and avoid you making assumptions as well as wasting budget.

The key is drilling down to the essential business need underneath, because if training doesn’t satisfy a business need, then it is fundamentally useless.

Like Alanis Morrisette famously sang – “It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” – except it’s not ironic… it’s just a waste of resources.

So ask yourself:

1. What is the essential business need behind this training? If you don’t know the business need behind the training, find the person who does and ask them. For example – your company has merged with another company and all the new staff and customers need to be onboarded as quickly as possible into the existing company to minimise resource costs.

2. What are the minimum essential actions you need your learners to do to meet this need identified in question 1? For example – the essential thing is your new staff need to be able to transition new customers onto the main database to keep money flowing in.

3. What is the minimum essential knowledge that your learners need to carry out these actions from Question 2? For example – Your staff needs to know how to transfer account details and set up new direct debits.

Now it’s your turn, give it a try.

1 – Take a piece of paper or a whiteboard and, starting at the top, write your business need.

2 – Then write the various essential actions required underneath it in columns.The easiest way to identify them is to ask yourself:

‘What is critical to do, and in what order, or we can’t meet the business need?’

3 – Finally list the essential knowledge for each action in order. Ask yourself:

 ‘What is critical to know, otherwise we can’t perform this action?’

Armed with this map you should now have a clear idea of what essential knowledge your learners need in service of your business need.

This also makes it much easier to talk to a content provider when you are scoping out a project as you’ll already have done a lot of the work when it comes to setting your goal.

Good – Fast – Cheap

Below is a very popular venn diagram that sums up the fundamental relationship between three key attributes which apply to any project. It’s referenced universally across every industry and it’s designed to illustrate that you can only ever have two of the three attributes:

• Good and Fast but at a higher cost.

OR

• Fast and Cheap but with a compromise on quality.

OR

• Cheap and Good but with a longer delivery time.

The common argument is that the sweet spot in the centre with all three is unachievable, so as a customer you should –  “Just stop asking for it because it doesn’t exist!”

But this is a simplification used to end an argument. ‘Good’ is completely subjective and in this case very non specific. We need to dig deeper like a kid/therapist again… What is ‘good’?

Good means it satisfies a business need. Surely?

In which case it’s not so black and white any more. As long as you have defined your business goal, you can explore the greys of ‘good enough’ and get a healthy balance.

Don’t be perfect. Be good enough. The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule

The basic idea is 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.

So in theory if you can ensure that you focus your 20% of resources correctly, you can get your 80% of results you need. You reach your ‘good enough’ and you can be much more cost-effective instead of using 80% more resources stretching to reach that last 20% to ‘perfect’.

In this context, if you have defined your business needs you can weigh up what your 80% is. What is ‘good enough’ to fulfil the business needs? Staying cost-effective is all about focusing on your ‘good enough’.

For example:

You could provide onboarding for your new team members with VR – they get to explore the office and meet the team and interact with them. Sounds great! But If you can get them onboarded to a ‘good enough’ level with just a 2D interactive office map showing important locations, coupled with a personalised bio of each team member, then why waste those extra resources.

The same goes for the content itself as much as the delivery method. If you can onboard them to a ‘good enough’ level with only 20% of the content, do it. They can always pick up the rest once they are up and running.

The 80/20 rule can be applied to everything and is all about asking, ‘is this critical?’ If not, lose it.

Now we are looking at everything with an ‘is this critical?’ eye, we can dive into the different types of training:

Off the shelf content

Premade eLearning that is cheaper and faster to deliver. The compromise is there are limits to the level of customisation of the content. The trick is making sure it is ‘good enough’ and that all your learning goals are met.

Advantages

• Is generally cheaper as it’s already built
• Readily available content for faster delivery – pick and mix modules.

Disadvantages

• Limited customisation of content both in regards to content and style/branding.

Custom content

If you can’t find off the shelf content that meets your needs then bespoke content can give you greater levels of customisation. The compromise is that delivery duration and costs can be greater as you are paying with time for the added control. The trick is making sure it is ‘good enough’ and that all your learning needs are met in the most cost effective way possible.

Advantages

• Simpler to edit and update
• Can be aligned exactly with your learning needs
• Can be aligned exactly with your Business culture

Disadvantages

• Takes more time to produce so is generally more expensive
• Takes more time to produce so takes longer to deliver

Let the message dictate the medium

As a rule of thumb, the best way to get the most impact from your training is to choose the medium that most effectively and efficiently trains your learners on what to do. For example, if you want learners to be able to use a piece of desktop software, present them with an interactive interface to practise navigation rather than writing lengthy copy about it.

On the flip side, if all it takes is a well designed infographic to meet your learning goal then use it. The focus should always be on the best value medium for delivering learning in service of the business need. Which leads us to…

Blend the best of both worlds

Custom or off the shelf content aren’t mutually exclusive though. Courses can cover a wide range of topics so mixing mediums can be a great option to give you greater flexibility and the best value for money.

You can save resources when off the shelf is good enough for some topics and spend resources when other topics require greater levels of control with custom content.

Advantages

• Optimised use of resources is better value for money.
• Greater control to edit and update where it matters.
• Can be aligned exactly with your learning needs where it matters.
• Can be aligned exactly with your business culture where it matters.

Disadvantages

• You need to have defined your business needs beforehand or it won’t be effective.

So with the right strategy, a blended approach can hit that sweet spot in the middle and give you the best value for your budget.

Other things to consider

Scenario-based learning is practising

If most corporate training is designed to enable a person to perform on a given task or in specific situations, it raises the question, ‘if you can’t think of a scenario in which you can use it, should it even be taught?’ As humans, we learn from a very early age by practising and mimicking.

The parts of our brains that are stimulated by carrying out a task are also stimulated by watching and mimicking the very same task. This is why the best way to learn is to get as close to the real scenario as possible. It’s a natural and very effective way to learn. So when considering your training ask yourself, ‘what would I use this for?’ If you can’t think of anything, maybe lose it.

Engagement is the result of a good user experience.

Engagement is a buzzword thrown around like a silver bullet, but in reality, it is a byproduct of a good user experience. It doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles you put on something – if it doesn’t teach them what they need, or wastes their time, or is awkward to use, learners will disengage and look elsewhere.

Just think how many people go look things up on YouTube or Google. It’s because there is no barrier to access what they need.

It should be treated as a product and always focus on the critical path – if you keep adding blades to razors like Wilkinson Sword and Gillette do, sooner or later users will realise they don’t need it, while someone else will come along with no nonsense Dollar Shave Club.

Accountability through data

eLearning should be measured just like every other aspect of business. Look at Netflix – it makes every decision based on its metrics, embracing the scientific method.

Teaching is often seen as an art so the idea of measuring it is somehow cold and inhuman. But the reality is data is the only way you can add accountability, eliminate assumptions and prove results.

Science and art aren’t mutually exclusive – use both If you want your content and business to evolve. Holding your eLearning accountable for the results it promises is key, just like in any other area of business.

And it’s done by adding SMART goals at the start, data tracking throughout, and reviewing stages upon completion. This helps you not only measure success but evolve in an informed way going forward. At the end of the day, what would it cost you if your eLearning achieved nothing?

Review projects at both ends – choose what is worth measuring at the start and then benchmark it. This way, you can refer back to it at various milestones after the solution is up and running and get a good sense of the overall success of the piece. If it hasn’t been measured it’s easy to make assumptions.

Good design is reductive

Don’t feel all content has to be the same level of complexity either. Don’t be scared to ask, ‘can this piece be simplified and still be effective?’

For example, with onboarding, once learners are familiar with the bigger picture and company culture, sometimes all it takes is an easy-to-find screenshot to solve their issue when the time comes.

At the end of the day, time is everyone’s most valuable resource, make the most of it.

If you’re looking at the pros and cons of custom content vs off the shelf elearning courses, we hope you found this article useful!

Written & Designed by Brendan Cox

Co-Founder of Blend Interactive Content

Visit Blend here at https://Blend.training

Connect via Brendan Cox’s Linkedin profile here.

The post Custom Content vs Off the Shelf eLearning Courses appeared first on Learning Light.

Following on from our article on How to Choose Healthcare Learning Management Systems, we present our recommendations, but in no strict order of preference. Established, large, full solutions are shown first, then more niche offerings for smaller organisations or tactical deployments, and finally two LMS with a strong position in Knowledge Management.

Totara Learn LMS

Totara is a well-established platform for helping large and complex organisations with their learning requirements. It has now evolved into a complete, integrated talent experience platform, comprising the Totara Learn LMS, plus the Engage learning experience platform and Perform performance management system.

Totara is widely used across many industries, but is especially popular within the healthcare sector. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, 44 new clients chose Totara in 2020 alone to help with their learning and performance management needs.

The benefits of the Totara Learn LMS for healthcare training include:

• Strong compliance management features, including nudges and alerts for both learners and administrators, to help everyone become and stay compliant
• Multitenancy – creating customised learning experiences for different groups
• Powerful data gathering and reporting to meet medical competency and compliance requirements without the need to switch between multiple systems
• Extended enterprise – for delivering training experiences to 3rd parties outside your core organisation.

Totara is used by healthcare organisations large and small, including various UK NHS hospital trusts, private medical companies in the US, the National Ambulance Service of the UAE, and many more worldwide.

Learn more about the Totara Learn LMS or see more detail about the powerful and flexible healthcare elearning solutions from Totara on their website.

Enable from Virtual College

Virtual College have been in the LMS business for over 20 years and have developed unrivalled expertise and as such has one of the most evolved LMS solutions we know. Their continued investment into the platform is impressive and it meets our metrics.

In addition, Virtual College have a dedicated team devoted to healthcare and have rolled out several exciting e-learning content and LMS projects. This is a full feature LMS and auditing and reporting is very strong, competence management functionality is also very good and Enable LMS is very robust to support scaling.

EthosCE LMS from DLC Solutions

DLC Solutions produces the EthosCE LMS. This is a US based company, producing a very content orientated LMS with authoring capability built in and some learning content management functionality. The Mobile Smartphone Application for Live Meeting Attendance Tracking is an interesting feature and CCGs holding CPD events would find this feature of considerable benefit.

EthosCE is a purpose-built learning management system for medical associations, health systems, academic medical centers, and medical education providers.

The EthosCE LMS platform appears to be very popular within the Pharmaceutical industry, and with Medical Training providers utilising its e-commerce solution to charge for training.

Day One

Based near Leeds in West Yorkshire, UK, Day One Technologies create elearning solutions that are bespoke to the needs and specific environment of each client. In developing LMS, they use a unique modular approach that gives clients a system that is easy to use with all the features they need, without the bloat of anything superfluous.

Despite getting a stripped down, simple LMS, the platform always has additional modules available for future enhancement, making it a fully future-proof learning management system.

For over 20 years, Day One have provided leading elearning solutions to high profile clients, and they are now working on some important and innovative projects for the likes of NHS Scotland, Mind (the leading UK mental health charity), Datix, HCA, Scottish Government, and the Royal College of Physicians. Click here to learn more about their healthcare elearning solutions or call them on +44 (0)1924 510 524.

There is also a useful post on eLearning for Telemedicine Training over on their blog. This will become an increasingly important topic as many healthcare providers have been moving to remote patient consultations due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kallidus

The Kallidus LMS has great pedigree and track record and is well evolved and configurable for use in healthcare. Kallidus is a well – developed LMS that provides the full feature set we looked for in our review.

Kallidus offers a full learning and talent suite that is one of the most comprehensive in the market offering a full e-learning and training solution. Kallidus Learn LMS is well developed and is particularly effective in scheduling learning and is successfully deployed in several NHS bodies.

Docebo

Less well known in the UK, but this is an LMS that merits serious consideration. Docebo is a very good LMS and it is leading in extended enterprise functionality which we see as an increasingly important requirement in healthcare.

Docebo are certainly innovators in the LMS market with a continued commitment to launching new features with a very strong focus on integration and apps. The Docebo LMS is fully mobile compatible and is one of the leaders in mlearning and Apps.

iSpring

Established for over 17 years, iSpring is a leading LMS provider with an excellent record of delivering elearning solutions for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

Their impressive client list includes Pfizer, Allergan, Cardinal Health, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson. Read more about their work with these clients and others on the iSpring website.

Read our review of iSpring Suite Max, which provides a complete solution for elearning content development.

Enterprise Study

A very impressive and full feature set LMS well represented already in NHS healthcare with its ability to integrate third party training provision and powerful workflow and audit capability this is another LMS that offers the required features and more.

Integration is very well developed allowing Enterprise Study LMS to integrate with existing workflows and manage multi departmental budgets reflecting the company’s expertise in training management and workflow design and business modelling skills.

Lighter touch solutions for smaller organisations or more streamlined tactical learning projects in larger organisations.

For more mid-sized organisations we would add some other LMS recommendations for lighter or more tactical solutions (that also could be used by larger organisations for tactical training interventions). These deliver more training focused solutions or more innovative solutions where challenges and requirements are more nuanced, such as learner engagement, course building and content curation and knowledge management, to name but a few challenges faced by healthcare organisations.

aNewSpring

aNewSpring is the Training department’s LMS! A feature rich LMS focused on training delivery, learner engagement and the creation of training materials in a quick and efficient way. This is designed to be a blended learning platform, and it offers a neat way for both curating and creating elearning courses. The curation function is very impressive and allows disparate learning resources to catalogued and used in multiple courses.

The aNewsSpring powerful in built LCMS (Learning content management function) allows for the use of individual learning assets across multiple courses and of course their withdrawal and updating.

The content creation allows for building materials and testing materials for differing sizes of screens, and it has some neat tricks to ensure learners remain engaged…memo trainer is neat little tool that provides reminder quizzes to mobile devices to re-inforce learning, based on a sophisticated settable adaptive learning algorithm.

In addition we would highlight up LMS solutions more focused towards knowledge management

KOKM

Kokm is a relatively new player in the LMS market and it offers an original take on the genre. Rather than being only a classic Learning Management System, the Kokm package includes an intranet, an extranet, a resource library and an LMS. There is a lot of interesting technology and experience behind this platform.

This means that Kokm provides a holistic solution for the healthcare organisation that wants to procure, update, or replace its intranet, extranet and resource library. However, this could also pose a challenge if an organisation is happy with its current non-LMS systems.

Kokm also offers an interesting take on scalability. One of Kokm’s strengths is that it benefits from learners contributing to the system with their learning experiences, pictures, videos and other multimedia resources. If you think the learners in your organisation will contribute to and share their learning, then Kokm offers a really interesting opportunity.

The final vendor to note is Tribal in our review of the market:

Tribal

This company has delivered one of the largest elearning-led deployments into the NHS (The Southwest Strategic Health Authority was the original customer), with a huge amount of learning resources made available as part of this project and have partnered with eXact a leading LCMS vendor that already plays a role in the NHS ESR infrastructure.

Tribal Group have considerable expertise in LMS, though we have not reviewed this product we are aware of their considerable skills in bespoke platform development and information systems.

Can We Help You?

Interested in our expert advice on choosing the best learning management system for your healthcare organisation?

Please Contact Us at Learning Light for an informal discussion about your requirements.

The post The Best LMS for Healthcare appeared first on Learning Light.

Read their full press release on this news below:

Virtual College support the UK Civil Service, as part of EY’s supplier community

Digital training provider Virtual College has been awarded a prestigious contract – a place in EY’s bespoke training supplier community, which is supporting the UK Civil Service deliver its strategic goals.

The UK Civil Service is going through the next chapter in Civil Service reform, ‘Shaping Our Future Together’. An important element of this Civil Service reform programme is focused on Great People, part of which recognises the need for higher quality training and creating better skills, knowledge and networking opportunities.

A vehicle for enabling this work is a refreshed central learning framework (RM6145: Learning and Development) that went live on 30 October 2020 between the Civil Service and their training partners EY and KPMG. To help support this need, EY is working with the Civil Service to provide bespoke training interventions, access to high quality coaching provision and a range of subject matter experts. Meanwhile, KPMG is providing cross Civil Service curriculum and off-the-shelf training.

There are 18 suppliers within EY’s collaborative community, which includes training providers, business schools, universities, professional bodies and other learning specialists. Virtual College is delighted to be one of the small number of digital suppliers chosen. Through exceptional learning, this community will work together to ensure 400,000+ Civil Servants have the right skills, knowledge and expertise.

Virtual College’s 25 years in designing and delivering, highly impactful and immersive digital learning solutions will be utilised by EY to deliver targeted learning interventions to meet specific bespoke business requirements. They will also offer Subject Matter Expertise and digital coaching provision.

“We are delighted to be working with EY and the wider community – an incredibly talented group of training specialists who are renowned for providing exceptional learning interventions that deliver confident and capable learners” comments Hannah Brindle, MD at Virtual College.

“This award is testament to our learner centric design philosophy, the great customers we collaborate and work with and the gifted, hardworking and enthusiastic team we have here at Virtual College. We are truly honoured to be a part of this important reform programme.”

Learn more about Virtual College at www.virtual-college.co.uk

The post Virtual College to Support Public Sector Learning as an EY Bespoke Training Supplier appeared first on Learning Light.

DeltaNet – Preventing the Spread of Infection

To help businesses prepare for the threat of Coronavirus, DeltaNet are making this course available free of charge.

DeltaNet continually invest significantly in products and solutions to reflect the latest in modern trends and styles.

The company uses advanced instructional techniques such as interactive video and gamification to create highly engaging and enjoyable learning experiences that set the benchmark in the industry.

Loughborough
LE11 3GE
Tel: +44 (0)1509 611 019
https://www.delta-net.com/infectious-diseases

ej4 – Free Learning & Advice Videos

ej4, one of the leading providers of video-based elearning, have made a range of free guidance videos (18 at the time of writing) available via this YouTube channel. One example is shown below:

They cover important topics such Coronavirus Precautions and Prevention, Travel Safety, and Hand Washing. For the broader topic of Pandemic Planning, there is useful learning content on managing Internal and External Communication, Office Illness and Business Continuity.

Founded in 2004, ej4 are a multi-award winning video learning company who have worked with some of the world’s leading brands. They create content that is enjoyable and easy to use, as well as highly effective.

VeryViz – Signposting Top Coronavirus Data Visualizations

With there being so much raw data on the spread of coronavirus around the world, and often complex and conflicting advice and opinion on how to deal with it, it can be hard to decide which media and people to listen to. This blog post from VeryViz seeks to distill some of the best coronavirus data learning resources in the way of visualizations such as charts, maps and graphs from credible sources.

These useful learning resources will be regularly updated as new information and visualizations emerge.

VeryViz is a website focused on helping organisations to make better use of data and to reduce misuse of data on spreadsheets, which frequently leads to costly errors.

Virtual College – Infection Prevention and Control

Learn about the most effective method you can use to help stop the spread of infections and viruses in the workplace with our free infection prevention and control course.

Virtual College is a technology-focused team headquartered in West Yorkshire UK. It is a leading provider of low-cost online training courses, and provides LMS and bespoke elearning solutions.

Stephensons Way
Ilkley
LS29 8DD
Tel: 01943 889480
https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/courses/health-and-safety/introduction-to-infection-prevention

OpenSesame – Coronavirus Preparedness and Remote Working

As businesses, their employees and the wider general public are grappling with the impact of Coronavirus, OpenSesame have curated and made available a list of elearning courses that will be available free of charge until 15th May 2020.

Based in Portland, Oregan in the US, OpenSesame was established in 2011 and help organisations to align elearning courses from top publishers to employee learning and competency needs.

1629 SW Salmon Street
Portland, OR 97205
USA
Tel: +1 (503) 808-1268
http://go.opensesame.com/free-offer

If you are a business leader or manager looking to manage the threat of Coronavirus to your staff, then these free online learning courses are well worth a look.

The post Free Coronavirus / Covid-19 eLearning Courses & Training Resources appeared first on Learning Light.