A: Yes. A breakdown of a learner’s assessment answers can be viewed by going to the Reports tab and then under Quick Reports > Assessments > {Assessment Name} > {Learners Name}.

Q: One of the delegates did not receive the invitation to the platform. Does the “Send login email” link at the right panel do this? Otherwise, how else can we re-send an invitation?

A. To re-send just one user’s login information email out to them again, click on the People tab, then click in to the person’s profile, and then click the red ‘Send login email’ link on the right side of the page. This will re-send only their login details out to them again.

If you ever want to re-send all of the login emails out to every person that has never logged in to their account, then you can do this by using the ‘never logged in’ link on the main Admin Dashboard or the ‘Send login emails’ link on the People tab.

Q: Can you make the Course Reference Code available as a column in the Courses Report?

A: Although the course reference code is not included in our standard reports, you can include any field you like by creating a report export with custom data fields.

To do this go to the Reports area, click ‘Create a report’, then choose User or Team Report, select your report criteria and click the blue ‘Schedule Email for this Report’ link on the right. On the ‘Export a report’ screen, next to ‘Report Format’ you will select ‘Custom’ from the drop-down menu. You then need to enter the string of data fields you would like on your report.

To include the course reference code you would need to include [CourseCode] in your custom format string. Once you are ready and click ‘Save’ the report will be emailed to you in a .txt format to then be opened in the program of your choice.

To open a .txt file in Excel, you will need launch Excel, under the File menu click ‘Open’ and select the .txt file. During that import process make sure to stipulate the delimiter that you used in the report export to separate the fields – in the help guide example this is the $ symbol.

Q: How do I remove people from receiving a notification every time a student completes a quiz / assessment?

A: If it is just an email notification about an assessment module being completed (rather than an entire course) then you need to go in and update your assessment notification settings by going to the course as an admin (via Courses tab), then click in to the assessment module, and then click ‘Edit Settings’ at the top and make sure the name on the ‘Notification Email’ field at the bottom is correct or you can un-check the box completely. You will also need to check the ‘Edit Alerts’ tab in there too to make sure anyone on that alerts list is meant to be there.

Here is a help post that outlines the difference between the course completion notification, the assessment alert and the assessment email notification: Set up Trainer Alerts at a Course and Assessment Level.

@Schnicker

Yammer Founder and CEO, David Sacks (@davidsacks), kicked off the keynote with the product announcements which includes some exciting new features like Premium groups, Universal search, Activity Stream Aggregation, and Integration Partners.

This was followed up by a few brief case studies from Westfield and Super Saver and then the big case study from Deloitte. Finally, a rather impressive customer panel ended the event and then it was onwards for some socializing. I was happy to catch up with my friend Steve Nguyen and I was even more surprised to see some of the learning regulars there – Clark Quinn and Jay Cross. Thanks Yammer!

@Schnicker

As both an Instructional Designer and the manager of eLearning at my company, Articulate Storyline will be the missing piece of my professional jigsaw. I have always felt confident delivering effective training and have always had a vivid imagination and a desire to keep the content engaging.

Finally, with Articulate Storyline, I will have a tool that will quickly pull my L&D skills and design concepts together, to create exciting, interactive content, with the ability to be delivered across multiple platforms.

I have been involved with the testing of Storyline since the beta launch and have been avidly following dialogue from within the Articulate community. I also had the pleasure of attending a live demonstration by Articulate on the software, at which you could hear gasps of excitement from the audience!

The phrase ‘game-changer’ has been thrown around a lot since news of Storyline emerged.. it may sound a little dramatic, but Storyline will remove my requirement for a team of Flash developers and put the power directly into my hands, improving learning whilst reducing time and costs…. I can’t wait!! (ok now I sound like a complete geek!

Ant Pugh is the eLearning Manager and Instructional Designer at Inmarsat, Global Satellite Telecommunications company based in London, UK.

@Schnicker

6.     Make sure the LMS has the flexibility to import all types of content that you have now and will have in the future
This includes selecting a SCORM-certified system if you need it, or if you think you will be using an authoring tool that publishes to SCORM in the future.

7.     On-going upgrades to the product
Look for a vendor that offers on-going development to the LMS, because this means it will always be cutting edge. This is great because you won’t be left behind and find yourself looking for another LMS a few years down the track!

8.     Choose an online, hosted system
If you do not want to deal with things like file storage, servers, and technically supporting the LMS using your own IT team, choose a hosted LMS.

9.     The ability to fully customize and brand up your account
It’s your account and you need to be able to own it as much as possible – colors, logos, custom text, language support if you need it, single sign-on and the need for API access are just a few things to consider.

10.     Preferably the LMS has a cute green monster as it’s mascot
Well, although this isn’t really a must-have, I would definitely put it on your ‘like-to-have’ list ;-) Who can resist Lenny?

@Schnicker

Below is the top 10 ‘must-haves’ that we have come to know from our audience, and I consider these to be totally relevant to anyone out there shopping for a sparkly new LMS:

1. User-friendly & intuitive interface
   This may seem like a simple request but it’s actually very hard to find. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard the words ‘clunky’ and ‘impossible to navigate’ in reference to potential clients’ current or old learning management systems, I’d be rolling in it! Anyway, my point is, it does not have to be that way. I’m telling you that you can get a product that looks and acts like what you’re used to using in 2012.
2. Understand the difference between what you need to have and what you want to have.
   It’s very difficult to find an LMS with everything on your check-list, and often if you do, it’s even harder to use it. One thing that really sets my alarm bells ringing is when someone tells me that because they haven’t found the perfect, 100% suitable LMS for their organization, with everything that they want, they are instead going to build their own. Pretty pretty please with sugar on top – don’t do it! It’s taken us more than 5 years to get our product to where it is, and we’re a very young company for our industry and still building on our product every day! Plus, we didn’t get here without our share of mistakes and frustrations. Instead, why not see if you can tweak your list of ‘must-haves’ just a little – is there something you could drop from your list? Is there another way that you could achieve a similar result so that one of the many LMS options out there will fit the bill? I’ve seen it time and time again where the companies that go out insisting on building their own LMS take some years getting there and so many of the features on that list are dropped anyway, in favor of just getting something up and running.
3. Simple, exportable reporting
   This is generally why people buy in to an LMS as opposed to putting content up on a shared drive or emailing around a document, they need to be able to hold individuals accountable by having a system that tracks when a piece of content was viewed, if a quiz was completed etc. Test out the reporting features and make sure it’s easy to generate, filter, and export the exact information that you need. Don’t worry if the LMS doesn’t offer the exact stock report that you need, everyone’s reporting needs are very specific. But so long as you can create a custom report based on your criteria, or export all of the information and manipulate it in another program like Excel, then you’re set to go.
4. An integrated authoring tool like an html page, a quiz or questionnaire builder is a bonus
   Some kind of integrated authoring tool within the LMS, no matter how simple, can come in very handy. For example, if you want to quickly create a piece of content to fire out to your learners or you need to gather feedback on a topic or course via a survey/questionnaire. I need to clarify though that I’d advise steering clear of an Learning Management System where you build all of your content within the actual system. Because, down the track, should you decide to change vendor you may well be faced with the problem of having a bunch of courses in a proprietary format that you cannot export. It’s something to remember anyway.
5. Open and friendly lines of communication with your vendor’s support team
   This is an absolute must-have. Software is just one of those things where things can and often will go wrong, no matter how big or well-known the company. Even a tiny bug can throw a spanner in your plans for the day so make sure you have a friendly support team or account manager to report issues to and get prompt feedback on whether the issue is specific to you, if there is a temporary workaround and when the problem will be fixed. While this may have been a one-off occurrence (although I’ve heard to the contrary), I personally know a client who spent 6 hours on hold to Adobe’s support line with a Captivate issue, only to eventually have his call answered by a member of their call centre who promptly told him that yes, he was correct it was a bug for which a patch would be issued soon. But there was nothing else that could be done, end of conversation.  Another horror story I heard recently that totally blew my mind, involved an LMS vendor (I don’t know who) and a server that went down for 30 days. Meaning, their clients had no access to their LMS and courses for that time! During the 30 days not a single status update or straight answer was given by the vendor as to what was going on and when it would be back up, and (the clincher) when it was finally restored it was a back up from 2 years earlier! Look out for this kind of treatment – it is totally unacceptable!

The final 5 must-haves in this series will be posted on Friday. Stay tuned!

@Schnicker

A. Currently, the way to de-activate a user is to do so manually by going to the People tab, select the user, then click the big red ‘Deactivate’ button in the top right. This will mean the person can no longer log in, but their reporting information will still be available in the reports area should you filter on Inactive people. It also means that the user’s profile will automatically re-activate should the user purchase a subsequent course from your organization through the eCommerce page, using the same login information.

We are working on a way to automate the deactivation process but this will not be released for a few months.

Q. Does your API integrate with other eCommerce Merchant Accounts / Payment Providers?

A. While we provide eCommerce integrations for PayPal (http://help.litmos.com/2009/linking-a-paypal-account-to-a-litmos-account/) and Payment Express (http://help.litmos.com/2012/sell-courses-online-using-your-own-merchant-account/), using your own development resources our API can be used to create an integration with the payment provider of your choice. To do this the steps involved are that you would first need to advertise your courses – either using your own page, our course listing widget, our course listing page, or the Get a List of Courses API call: http://help.litmos.com/2010/courses-list/.

Next you would take care of the payment side using your provider and when you’re satisfied that the payment has been processed you use the ‘Create a User’ API call (http://help.litmos.com/2009/people/) to add the new user to your account and trigger the first login email, and then the ‘Add Course’ API Call to assign the purchased course to the new user (http://help.litmos.com/2010/users-list-add-remove-courses/).

Q. What defines an Active User?

A. An active user is defined by a person who logs in to Litmos one or more times during each billing cycle.

Therefore, the pricing plan you choose needs to reflect how many “active users” you estimate to have each billing period. You can also upgrade and downgrade your account in advance, month to month, if you know you will be rolling out training or alternatively, know you will have fewer people using Litmos during the next month.

Q. What is the URL for the page on which I listed my courses for sale?

A. Your course listing page is located at the login url you have chosen, plus the text: /online-courses added to the end of the url.  For example: http://demo.litmos.com/online-courses where ‘demo’ is your chosen company name/url. You can also find this outlined in your account under the ‘Account’ tab, then the ‘eCommerce’ sub-tab.

Q. How can I improve the SEO of my course listings for eCommerce? Does the use of keywords in our published Articulate lessons (SCORM) work with Litmos and SEO? Does Litmos come with the ability to put the coding necessary on our home page so that Google can “verify” our site? How is our Litmos content made searchable?

A. Content that you upload into Litmos will not be indexed by Google as it is not publicly available, ie. a user has to login to Litmos in order to view it.

If you’re selling courses via the Litmos course listing/shopping cart then the sales description text and also the course titles will be searchable by Google. To improve the chances of that page being found by Google you will need to link to it from other websites. For example, you might Tweet or Facebook the links, and post them up on to other blogs, forums, relevant discussion groups etc.

Also to track your page views you can use Google Analytics. To do this you will need to copy your Google Analytics account number into the relevant box in your Litmos account under the Account > Ecommerce settings.To further improve the SEO of the course description pages I would also recommend making the description more detailed. Generally, the more keyword-rich content you have in the description the better.

@Schnicker

Next month from May 6 – 8, Litmos’ parent company Callidus Cloud will host their annual user conference at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas. The conference, named C3 – Join the Sales Revolution, features over 70 sales effectiveness sessions by top industry analysts and practitioners.

We’re very excited to have Litmos client Chip Reaves, Co-Founder of Computer Troubleshooters, making a speaking appearance with this exciting topic: Boost Sales and Cut Expenses with Online Training. For more information on other topics, speakers and the conference agenda, you can check out the full schedule here.

From the website:

C³ - Callidus Customer Connections – is the number one Sales Performance Management user conference of 2012, bringing together the top technical and industry leaders to help you transform your sales organization with the latest cloud, mobile, and social technologies behind the most successful sales effectiveness missions across the globe.

———-

If you are wondering how to get a ticket or you want to make a group booking, make sure to send us an email first so that we can sort you out with the best deal possible. It’s the least we can do to say ‘thank you’!

@Schnicker

‘Litmos has really saved us a lot of time and hassle in finding an LMS that doesn’t need a lot of experts to work. Easy to set up, easy to publish courses and track the results. Excellent reports that document training to whatever level of detail we need.’ – Helge Hatleskog, Technical Instructor at Norwegian.com.

From their website:

Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, commercially branded “Norwegian”, is a publicly traded low-cost airline listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

The company is the second largest airline in Scandinavia and has a route portfolio that stretches across Europe into North Africa and the Middle East. The airline currently operates 296 routes to 114 destinations.

With competitive prices and customer friendly solutions and service, the company has experienced significant growth over the previous years. In 2011, close to16 million passengers travelled with the airline.

If you’re in the airline industry and looking to make the move to online and mobile learning, drop us an email at: sales@litmos.com to set up a live demo of the Litmos LMS and answer any questions you have for us. We look forward to talking to you soon!

@Schnicker

Video, Audio, and PowerPoint modules

From now on these types of module will only ‘Complete’ for a Learner once the media has been played to the end of the play timeline. While some may object to say that this leaves it possible for a student to scrub forward to the end of the video or audio content, this is no different to a Learner pressing play and then walking away from their computer, and is not something that can be prevented by Litmos at this time.

Tip: It’s always a a good idea to provide some kind of quiz follow up to media content to ensure that learners have watched and understood it all.

Timing: We record the time a Learner spends on the page viewing each of these module and this is visible in the Reporting area.

Attempts: If a student starts watching a video or listening to an audio track, then closes it part way through to come back at a later date, this all falls under the 1st attempt. In fact, every time a student comes back to continue watching/listening to the content will be part of the 1st attempt, until they reach the end of the play timeline and the module’ Completes’. The Learner can then continue to re-visit the module to review the content, but the only time a Learner would be logged as having a 2nd attempt is if their Admin resets their module result.

SCORM and Assessment modules

For the most part SCORM modules have their own in-built completion settings which are set up at the time of publishing from your content authoring tool. Litmos Assessment modules also have settings that can be defined such as the ‘Lock after ‘x’ attempts’ and the quiz passmark. Both of these determine how many attempts a student can have at a quiz, as well as when they are determined to have ‘Passed’.

Timing: We record the time a Learner spends in a SCORM or Assessment module and this is visible in the Reporting area.

Attempts: As above all lock, passmark and attempt restrictions are set up within the SCORM or Assessment module itself. Therefore, these types of modules will complete and lock according to their individual specifications.

Flash, Embeded and Page modules

These modules all ‘complete’ as soon as the student begins going through the content.

Timing: We record the time a Learner spends on the page viewing each of these module types and this is visible in the Reporting area.

Attempts: When a student starts watching Flash or Embeded content or reading a page, this is marked as their 1st attempt. The Learner can re-visit the module to review the content, but the only time a Learner would be logged as having a 2nd attempt is if their Admin resets their module result.

@Schnicker

Here at Litmos HQ we’re gearing up  for our next expo at the eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions conference in Orlando, FL! This one runs from March 21 – 23, 2012 and there’s still time to get your ticket and accommodation sorted out.

If you are attending you will find me (Nicole Fougère) and Ayoob Syed – our awesome Sales Manager – at Booth 314 in the Expo Hall ready to answer your questions or give you a demo of the world’s easiest to use LMS.

We’ll also have a limited number of our hugely popular business card holders available (containing Litmos monster-printed mints), so swing by for some conference schwag and a chin-wag. We may even have one of our new and highly anticipated Litmos monster plush toys available to one special visitor. See you there!

@Schnicker