Corporate - Press Releases
Next generation Learning Management System debuts
IBM has announced the availability of the IBM Lotus Learning Management System, a flexible, standards-based portfolio of e-learning components that is comprehensive and nimble enough to serve the e-learning management needs of a small department or a global enterprise.
Andrew Sadler, IBM Director of e-Learning, describes its breadth this way, "Lotus Learning Management System can assess the corporate IQ of an organization as measured against its business needs. It can make such an assessment because you can integrate the core management technology with other corporate systems -- such as a customer satisfaction system to see whether trained employees are actually meeting the needs of customers."
At the other end of the spectrum, the system can track and deliver self-empowered learning to individuals or help a line manager assess a specific employee's skill level or help an administrator use classrooms and instructors wisely.
The comprehensive Lotus Learning Management System is among Lotus' first products to be based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3 as the standard delivery platform to give present and future customers the benefit of an open platform to leverage for all their e-learning needs.
The Lotus Learning Management System is made up of four elements:
- Authoring tool
- Learning management system
- Content delivery server
- Offline learning client
A broad range of capabilities
The standards-based portfolio of e-learning modules is IBM's response to customer demand for a centralized training environment. Sadler says, "You can manage a blend of traditional classroom and e-learning resources, alter and deliver content to a student, track certification progress, schedule and enroll courses and auto-generate reports on individual learning progress or the progress of a training initiative across the whole organization."
The bottom line is that, with the Lotus Learning Management System, you can manage the entire learning process, plus all forms of learning -- a comprehensive system with great flexibility.
How to make a potentially enormous system nimble
At the root of the Lotus Learning Management System's flexibility is the ability to configure the system instead of customize it.
Sadler makes a strong distinction between customizing and configuring. He says, "Our competitors customize learning management by setting up rigidly defined roles. For example, all students are defined around a student role and all managers around a manager's role. But individual departments and individual managers don't always fit those roles. Anytime you start with that kind of customization, you are building cost downstream because every time the system gets updated the customization has to be updated."
Sadler describes the flexibility of the Lotus Learning Management System this way. "It can be configured, which means that with a flick of a switch you can change parameters. You aren't writing code when you change definitions."
An example of flexibility
This flexibility has profound implications. "This ability to configure means that we can have multiple front ends to a single back-end system." To illustrate the power of this flexibility, Sadler describes how a large health care company, for example, might use the Lotus Learning Management System.
It is common practice for large health care organizations to acquire hospitals on an ongoing basis. Some organizations may own a large number of hospitals (50 to 100 is not uncommon), each operating largely as its own entity with its own set of business rules and look and feel. At some point the corporation will recognize an enterprise-wide need to assess its training. Here's where the Lotus Learning Management System would deliver real value. It would allow the company to build multiple, individualized front ends tailored to the business needs of these different hospitals, all linking to a single back-end system. " The back-end system allows the health care organization to roll up all the various programs and track and assess them." Sadler adds, "It gives the organization a holistic view so that they can manage their resources centrally."
And, Sadler says, "For the competition to create the same system, they would have to create multiple implementations."
What a difference an architecture makes
Another quality that makes Lotus Learning Management System distinctive in the marketplace is the way it easily scales from small to departmental to large, enterprise-wide needs. "If you start with departmental size, many of our competitors will require you to implement the whole system again each time you add a new department. And if you want to do the whole company, you have to do yet another implementation."
The ease with which you can scale the Lotus Learning Management System comes from its architecture. Lotus separates the learning management part of the system from the content delivery system. Sadler explains, "If you look at the traffic on the system, most of it involves the student -- the learning content, for example. What goes back to the central database for management is small in comparison. If the two capabilities remain in the same system, the student part just gets bigger and bigger as you add more departments. We separate the student part from the central database and simply add an extra content delivery server as one is needed. The two elements can be scaled independently so as to preserve the investment in the existing system as it grows larger."
Standards empower integration
All of the versatility of the Lotus Learning Management System is based on standards. First there are the IBM software standards. Sadler explains, "IBM has established approved and proven technologies inside the software group so that as we build new products we at Lotus, for example, can concentrate our efforts on collaborative technologies and leave the transaction elements to WebSphere and the database issues to DB2. So the Lotus Learning Management System is built on WebSphere and DB2."
"It is also built on J2EE standards. In fact the Lotus Learning Management System is among the first Lotus products to be fully built on J2EE. We've built the system using Web services interfaces, which means that companies can embed e-learning right into the e-workplace. With portal-style availability, employees can self-serve their own learning needs. The connectivity also makes it possible for the Lotus Learning Management System to connect to a company's general ledger system and automatically charge for training. And it can also integrate with other people's training systems so that you can manage the entire training process for the enterprise."
Training to meet regulatory standards
Standards are driving organizations to learning management software. In an age of government and industry regulation, the Lotus Learning Management System can be invaluable in measuring an organization's compliance. Sadler says, "There's increasing pressure on organizations to effectively certify what people have learned -- and demonstrate that they've learned it. The need goes back for many years with the United States' Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) requirements and certification such as those required by United States federal regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) -- a complex and comprehensive set of patient privacy and confidentiality regulations.
Other countries -- such as Australia, with it new banking regulations -- are also facing this pressure. With the Lotus Learning Management System you have all the tracking and certification tools alongside the content for an integrated approach to ensuring that employees effectively meet the compliance guidelines."
Sadler ends by saying, "Lotus Learning Management System was built to serve immediate needs, but it is also meant to grow with an organization and serve it every step of the way as it meets its global learning goals."
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