Workflow Learning in LMS

In an enterprise environment, employees training and development tasks usually administered by HR dept. This type of learning is recognized as Workflow Learning. It (Workflow Learning) describes how the learners receive the learning from their employers and then to be applied on the job activity.

 If this type of customers serve the main attention to your LMS, then, some of the LMS design concern you should be aware of:

• Design of Learning Content: It is important to ensure the content being described in a way making people easily to understand about the required skills. The learners are required to immediately apply the knowledge to the performance support. The learning content should cover the most common scenarios / use cases which would be involved with any specific type of work. (for example, hole drilling, cement mixing)
• Learning Session: In most of the work-related trainings, employees are attending courses during day time. 1-day or 2-day are very common practices. In that type of scenario, team playing or attendees collaboration can be practiced and received benefits as a result of such activity. However, in e-Learning environment, most of the learners are acting alone, more like one to one (virtual) session. As such, collaboration activity is not easy achieved. (self-discipline or self motivation are more likely to be the success factors.)
• Duration of the e-Learning: Each session is suggested to be able conducted within 1.5 hours. Audience tend to lost focus longer than that. In most cases, the senior managers would request the learners to attend the e-learning course, after working hour. As such, ensuring the network connectivity / Virtual Private Network (VPN) access is also important. Additional LMS System Administration workforce, during off hours, are also recommended. 

In some of the instructor-led technical training the writer has been conducting, it usually consists of the sessions on rich subject of domain theory, HW/SW GUI operations and management, Hands-On practices and emulations. For the first two items, it is easy to convert the materials into e-Learning formats. However, to activate the spirit of learning by doing, it tends to be very challenging, as

• It is difficult to make the judgement in understanding, when Hands-On practice is not being involved.
• To ensure all of the settings are correctly input is also a laborious job, as computing devices are tend to be more dynamic, comparing to the static motion of a learner in a certain specific time-period encounting a topic.

For example, if the course objective is to ensure students are able to install a software WLAN controller, for example, D-Link Nuclias Connect (DNC) in various OS environments, such as Windows, Ubuntu Linux, Oracle VM VirtualBox, or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learning content can be designed and developed in a step-by-step video/audio, where some of the key commands are explained and exercised. However, any learner may have different OS release environment or environment parameter settings (in their personal testing facility), where improper use of commands causing process flow not able to continue, then, frustration from target audience is pretty much expected. Some company may claim to utilize emulator as a solution, that probably can clean some of the situations, but not all of the possible scenarios.