Tips For Evaluating Your Learning Technology

When evaluating your learning technology and how it fits into your corporate strategy there are a number of factors and elements to consider. Let’s start by talking about the end user. The learner. What’s the core benefit and experience of the learning experience for him or her? That’s the question we should be asking.

For many learners, it could be a number of things including professional development that helps them execute on their current objectives. More importantly a key benefit and outcome is helping the learner to have a goal for their future. Helping them chart out where them need to be down the road and how to get there.

But a key component is the experience of the learning environment and what matches with the learner’s expectations. And for most learner’s in today’s fast paced workplace, this requires a consumer grade environment. That’s what they deserve and that’s what they should expect.

So we’ve talked about a lot of things you can get. But you should also be mindful of what you should avoid.

We hear too often organizations that have pursued a particular learning technology or strategy, and they get halfway through the implementation or contract and they lament how confining the current experience is.

If learning is a strategic asset – if it’s going to be helpful or a competitive differentiator in the marketplace – you need an environment that can be flexible with you. That flexibility may extend to a number of different areas.

Some common areas to consider include that:

• The implementation needs to be on site, which is common for a lot of government entities.
• You need to integrate with a number of different technologies within the organization.
• You have customizations that are necessary to the software so that you can fine tune and fully execute on where you need to be.

These are some of the things you should be mindful of as you are evaluating learning technology for your organization. To learn more in depth on what you should look for in your learning management system, click here to read this white paper on the "7 Steps in Selecting an LMS".