Take part in the public’s first glimpse of Bravais [brav-ey]; Xyleme’s new cloud learning solution that allows you to quickly deliver personalized learning applications.

This is a rare opportunity to attend a live webinar with Xyleme’s President & CEO, Mark Hellinger. He will be your guide as you explore everything Bravais.

Along your journey you will find out how Bravais can revolutionize the way your learners access and interact with your learning content by:

* Delivering learning anywhere, anytime, on any device
* Allowing content to be accessed within your learners favorite media channels like, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+
* Liberating content from your learning management systems to create personalized learning experiences
* Tracking how users consume and interact with your learning content
* And more!

Reserve your spot now – before it’s too late!
 Tuesday February 7, 2012 @ 11:30 MST

What is Bravais?
Bravais is your cloud of learning content upon which you can quickly build personalized learning applications, connecting your students, employees and customers to the content they need, using the apps they prefer, on the devices they choose. Read more…

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Results of the Meet Bravais Webinar

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our webinar today. It was a great success and we wanted to share some of our favorite moments with you!

The results are in!

Mark stressed the importance of changing current content strategies because learner expectations are shifting to more mobile, social and informal models. He recommended moving away from having the LMS as the center of content delivery, and instead, putting material onto a content platform like the cloud. He polled the audience on how many people are still using an LMS-based delivery system and only 18% were not.

After the first poll, it was clear that not many people had adopted a cloud based model yet. After explaining the benefits of Bravais and the importance of getting content anytime, anywhere and on any device, Mark polled the audience on their greatest challenges moving to a cloud-based delivery model.

Our favorite mentions on Twitter:

Mark’s top quotes from the webinar:

“It’s time to rethink our content strategies. The future is moving to content being on a content platform like the cloud and then having the ability to receive feedback on the content.”

“The key is delivering content anywhere, anytime, and in any format.”

“One size does not fit all in learning. There needs to be personalized learning experiences.”

“For feedback to be effective, it needs to be more than ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it.’”

The market is clearly excited about this breakthrough solution. If you missed the webinar and would like to see Bravais in action, please join our monthly webcast or watch the on-demand version on our website. If you would like someone from Xyleme to reach out to you to talk more about it, please email sales@xyleme.com!

Technorati Tags: Bravais, cloud learning, mobile learning, webinar, Xyleme

Sarah Danzl L&D, Learning Content Management, mobile learning, News Bravais, cloud learning, mobile learning, webinar, Xyleme

Today, the expectations of learners are much different than they were only a few years ago. Much of what is currently rolled up monolithic, one-size-fits-all courses must give way to small but relevant content updated and delivered continuously to learners based on their individual profiles or needs. In other words, learning needs to go Agile.

In a recent blog post by Bersin & Associates, Josh Bersin provides a great description of how Agile applies to training:

“Agile is also built on the understanding that people learn in small chunks – so while it may in fact take a year or two to build a highly complex website, no person needs to try to understand the entire engineering program in advance. […] Daily work becomes a part of a bigger project in a continuous, dynamic process.”

What does this mean for us?

So how do Training Vendors help training organizations go agile: they adopt Agile Development. Agile Development is an approach where vendors deliver very fast, iterative product development through close collaboration with its user base (i.e. training organizations). According to McKinsey & Company:

“This agility can deliver new systems and capabilities in a matter of weeks or months instead of years. A frequent iteration cycle also keeps IT developers and business users in sync on requirements and priorities. […] Since this approach is most effective when business needs are shifting, it is gaining favor among many IT departments.”

Indeed, according to a survey of global executives by McKinsey, over 70% of respondents have deployed or piloted Agile Development within their organizations in order to be more responsive to changing business conditions.

In 2011, recognizing the rapid change in the training industry and our clients’ need to quickly adapt to the needs of their learners, Xyleme fully embraced and adopted enterprise-wide, the Agile Development Model. This post is the first in a series, written by Greg Schottland, Vice President of Operations for Xyleme, that presents the business value of using Agile, why it has proven a key competitive advantage to companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many others. Part one of this series provides a simple overview of what Agile is. You’ll begin to see the value just discussing the basics in this post.

Agile is simple:
• Build in small increments.
• Focus your team on one well defined goal.
• Keep the team small.
• Coordinate daily
• Get everything (and everyone) else out of the way.

And the result:
• A working product in weeks, not months.
• Customers that get what they are waiting for quickly.
• Developers that build what the customer wanted and nothing else.

Sounds simple, and it is. While there are volumes written about the details of effectively practicing Agile, this post will focuses on what Agile looks like “on the ground” in daily practice.

Taken from Josh Bersin’s blog

It all starts with an idea.

Somebody wants software to do something. Say we get this great idea to be able to create and store documents on the web (a la GoogleDocs). Rather than designing an entire web based document application, we start small. What is the most important problem to solve? This is simple to define. What do users have to be able to easily do at the most basic level? For our application, this would be the ability to create a simple document using a plain web browser over an average internet connection. You may be thinking, that is pretty basic, shouldn’t we at least include other basics like spell checking, text styles, maybe import/export? I mean who wants a document processor that doesn’t support bolding and italics…I mean really!

This little example is chock full of important lessons that Agile helps address. We might be inclined to design a more complete first version. The logic being it is easier to design everything in from the start. And, in some cases it is. But, more often than not, without getting key usability, architecture or market acceptance issues implemented and down cold, much of our “complete design” ends up being wasted, as key assumptions run into challenges. Years of effort and millions of dollars down the drain.

Let’s look at our example in this respect. We have put a stake in the sand and said that the one thing that has to work is the ability to create basic text document on any browser over an average internet connection. If this doesn’t work, no one will care how slick our spell checker is, nor how easy it is to bold some text. If response is slow, same problem. But, if we have version 1 prove that we can connect 1,000 users to our system, and things are snappy responsive and basic documents can be created, isn’t that a relief? Now we can build on top of this base.

So, turns out our too small initial release may be just about right. What we do at this stage is write up our requirements for this initial release in a set of short, concise documents called User Stories. They include two major pieces of information: 1) a clear statement of some small functionality and 2) detailed description of how to test this functionality. That’s it. No massive requirements document. One of our User Stories might be that users can connect to create and save a blank document. The test would detail step by step instructions of the URL, the buttons pressed, dialogs that appear, etc.

Ease of Development.

As you can see, with well written User Stories, development is a whole lot easier. We code to the test; back our design into the tests. As a development manager, or customer, I can sleep at night. Developers aren’t done until our tests work. I don’t have to watch over it.

So, our initial planning will consist of creating a small set of User Stories which define our first release. We’ll call each such small release a “Sprint.” Each Sprint will be scheduled to last several weeks. No magic number here, can be 2, 3, 4 weeks, but probably should be less than 8 weeks. You’ll go back and forth trading off initial features against time and end up with a Sprint 1 of say 4 weeks (just an example we chose, no magic number).

You’re almost ready to start coding. The one remaining task is to take each User Story assign them to developers and have the responsible developer estimate what tasks they’ll have to do to implement the User Story, and estimate their best guess of how long it will take to complete that task. But…one twist. These tasks have to be small enough that they take between 4 -16 hours to complete. This level of detail is often unnatural. But, it has magic built into it. By forcing yourself to break down work to this level, invariably important overlooked details emerge, providing for much more accurate estimates. Now, admittedly, you are relying on the best guess skills of your developers, which will vary by developer, by task and sometimes by whether they have just had their morning coffee and are feeling optimistic or not. But, it provides a starting point, and over time you’ll find your developers get better at this, and you get better at coaching your under or over-estimators.

Ready. Set. Code!

You are ready to start coding armed with User Stories and a detailed task list for each developer. You may feel like you’re traveling light, and you are. That’s the whole point. You backpack has everything you’ll need and nothing else. You will have a daily meeting (called a Scrum) with all the developers with tasks on the project and you, the project leader and no one else. No managers, no other developers, no business analysts, just the “doers.” These meetings will be no longer than 15 minutes. You’ll ask each developer just three simple questions: which task did you work yesterday, which tasks will you be working on today, what is blocking your progress? That’s it. No lengthy design discussions or play by play of your development day. Just these three simple questions and 15 minutes later you are done. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure that any blocks from progress are removed immediately and that your developers stay on task. You, as leader of the Scrum, are there to listen for blockers and remove them as fast as possible. All the team members know exactly where the project is all the time.

One final task.

At the end of each day, developers update their task list with their best guess of the amount of time remaining to complete each task. Sometimes these numbers go down as work progresses, sometimes they increase (as you discover the task is more complex or taking longer than you guessed). Over time, you get a nice chart of all the hours remaining for the Sprint, called a “Burndown” chart. This chart, while simple, is amazingly powerful. Bersin reports,

“Companies which can adapt to agile management models will move faster and out-perform their competitors.”

So that’s it. Your team writes code each day to fulfill the tests in your User Stories, meets for 15 minutes each day, updates the time remaining for their development tasks — and after 4 weeks (in our example), you done. Delivered on time and to spec.

It sounds easy, and it is!

In our next in the series, we’ll look at how this simple process translates into faster time to market, lower costs and wildly happy customers.

Technorati Tags: Agile Development

Sarah Danzl Agile Development, informal learning, Learning Technologies Agile Development

By Jeffrey Katzman

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeanne Meister for Xyleme Voices. Based on insights from her book, the podcast looks at trends and predictions about what the workforce will look like in 2020. Jeanne packs a tremendous amount of valuable information into a 19 minute podcast, so it’s worth a full listen, but here is a small glimpse:

• In 2020, there will be five generations in the workplace. 50% will be Millennials and Gen 2020 will just be entering the workforce. This means that over half an organization’s workforce will have been hyper-connected since birth.
• By 2020, the workplace will be highly personalized and social. Social networks will be the first point of contact between companies and their future employees and internal social networks will be the primary way that workers communicate, connect and collaborate.
• Smart phones and tablets will replace personal computers as the internet connection devices of choice. The mobile device will become an office, a classroom and a concierge.
• Employee engagement will be a key driver in helping workers more efficiently find information and increase productivity.

However, before Jeanne’s hopeful predictions of the highly agile and fluid 2020 workforce connected by mobile social networks can come to fruition, the dependence on the enterprise LMS and the old modes of training delivery needs to be broken. Read more…

Technorati Tags: 2020 Workforce, elearning, Jeanne Meister, learning content, LMS, Social Learning, social networks

Jeff Katzman 2020 Workforce 2020 Workforce, elearning, Jeanne Meister, learning content, LMS, Social Learning, social networks

By Ramon Guiu

The Pastiche iPad app version 1.4 is out! You can now download it from the App Store.

This new version comes with support for glossary. So now when you open a course from the Bookshelf you can access the glossary for that course through a button on the bottom bar. Keeping true to our flexible model, publishers can decide whether they want to have a glossary or not when they create a course for Pastiche. The feature will automatically be enabled or disabled by the app for each particular course. Read more…

Technorati Tags: iPad, Pastiche™

Ramon Guiu iPad, News iPad, Pastiche™

By Roberta Gogos

As social learning grows does the requirement for traditional training departments shrink? U.K.-based eLearning development firm Epic asks this very question in its fourth E-learning Debate – and this Epic debate is being hosted only online.

The motion presented for discussion: This house believes that as social learning grows, so the requirement for traditional training departments shrinks. Those arguing in favor include Donna Hamilton, Head of Group Learning at Royal Bank of Scotland and Jane Hart, founder of C4LPT. Those arguing against the motion: Melissa Highton, Head of the Learning Technologies Group at the University of Oxford, and Clive Shepherd, Chair of the UK’s eLearning Network.

The debate is engaging people in an important discussion about topics that are vital to anyone working in L&D, with participants on both sides making some excellent points. Read more…

Technorati Tags: elearning, formal learning, Social Learning, social media

Sarah Danzl L&D, Social Learning elearning, formal learning, Social Learning, social media

By Ramon Guiu

This is the first in a series of articles about the tablet market and the impact of this new device on education and training.

The tablet is a disrupter for Learning & Development. Members at every level of your organization – from the field to management to the C-suite – are gaining the experience of touching, expanding, holding and dealing with content in a personalized and collaborative fashion. This is the new normal of content consumption and we as an industry can’t afford not to give this experience to learners.

Today, the iPad is the undisputed leader both for massive corporate deployments and usage in schools. Since Apple launched the iPad in April 2010, the first in the new generation of media tablets to hit the market, it has sold more than 30 million units. According to a study by Gartner published in April, 70 million tablets will be sold in 2011, 300% more than in 2010. In comparison, 325 million laptops were sold last year. These stats are shocking if we realize that before the iPad this market did not exist. And even more so if we take into account the current market conditions and the fact that the iPad often acts as a secondary device – or “second screen” – as it cannot completely replace a PC. Read more…

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Android, Apple, iPad, mobile learning, tablet

Ramon Guiu iPad, mobile learning Amazon, Android, Apple, iPad, mobile learning, tablet

By Ramon Guiu

You have probably heard the (rather exciting) news of Xyleme’s new “iPad app that creates apps” - Pastiche™.  We believe that it’s a revolutionary product that will change the way organizations define blended learning and we’re proud of our continued work on its development. We will try to keep release cycles for the Pastiche™ app short and agile with new versions to be released every 5-8 weeks and numbered with even numbers as follows: v 1.0, v1.2, v1.4 etc.

Keeping true to that process we just released a new version to the App Store last week.  Based on early user feedback we decided to release Pastiche v1.2, a slightly modified version with two major user interface features. This release also includes a few minor design improvements.

Here are the latest feature updates: Read more…