It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S. And so I’ve taken a few liberties with today’s blog post. In essence it’s just me sharing an experience and a few thoughts. I hope it makes your think a little, and inspires you to start or join conversations around training. Happy Thanksgiving!

I recently wrote “Why You Should Produce Your Own Video Learning Content“. It was just another attempt, like many before it, to inspire people to record, produce, and publish videos. It’s a drum I’ve been beating for many years, and have often wondered if anyone is listening. I’m confident enough in my predictions to never be too concerned. But at times it would be nice to hear from people who have been inspired to test out my theories.

Back in the early days of blogging that’s what bloggers did. They would read something, get inspired and write something of their own, and feed that out to the blogosphere. And so I called it Rip, Mix, and Feed Learning. And yes, it’s just a simple change to the short-lived Apple ad campaign Rip, Mix, and Burn. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.

Today, the blogosphere only works like that occasionally. It’s more about selling ads, or driving web site traffic, than it is about collaboration and community. But that’s okay. Things change. You gotta remember we didn’t have twitter and all the other collaborative social media tools there are today. But every now and then I get a glimpse of the old days…if you can call 2006 the old days.

This week I received a blog notification called a pingback. A pingback notifies me when another blog has linked to one of my blog posts. This was interesting because it wasn’t one of the usual eLearning web sites. It was from a brand new blog that was just launched titled LearnTechAnalysis.com, and written by Dean Rogers.

Dean read my post titled “Why You Should Produce Your Own Video Learning Content“. And he wrote “Shooting Training Videos, Just Go For It!” The following statement he made, is one I hear quite often:

“My biggest challenge is recording and editing the videos because I typically feel as though they need to be scripted, well thought out, and perfectly edited.”

Dean goes on to mention all the different ways he can apply the ideas I proposed, and he is spot on. I’m really looking forward to hearing from him next year for feedback on his progress. He closes his post with a statement I hope everyone takes to heart.

“Overall, I think this is a great idea, and Brent’s blog post gave me a bit of extra confidence in knowing that not every video I make needs to look like the next Spielberg movie.”

Non-Training Professionals Creating Training

There is one significant reality that I’ve accepted over the last 2 years. Training professionals are a minority in the world of training content creators. Consider all of the corporate training content and generic learning content that currently exists. My guess is that only a very small percentage of it was created by a graduate level instructional designer or other degreed training professional. And with technology becoming easier and more accessible I only see that trend rising. Without question, there are more of them than there are of us. Dean and his courses at www.kasestatware.com are a perfect example of this trend.

What’s a Learning Management System?

I often wonder how many of these non-training-professionals-doing-training even know what a learning management system(LMS) is? And even more importantly how a SaaS based LMS can benefit them. As the old saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. And maybe there is a stigma that only large corporations need an LMS. All logical and valid thoughts from those not familiar with newer LMS solutions.

But what if there was a system that could improve the many elements of producing, tracking, and selling training? Managing attendees for multiple instructor-led training sessions can sometimes be overwhelming. An LMS can make that so much easier to manage. And moving courses from instructor-led training to eLearning becomes a simple process using all the content you’ve already created. And do you need to test your attendees to make sure they’ve learned a few things? Why not let the LMS manage that process too? And selling your courses? No problem.

Learning Management Systems are not just for big corporations. The benefits of SaaS based LMSs like Litmos are being enjoyed by small, medium, AND large businesses. If you do training of any kind, for a business of any size, I encourage you to sign up for a free trial and see for yourself how much more productive you can be managing your training responsibilities.

Brent’s Final Comments

I guess that was a very round about way towards a sales pitch. However, just the thought of people out there creating training courses on basic web pages is frustrating for me. So if I need to stop beating around the bush, and just shout it out loud, then I will.  I believe the future of training has only just begun. Our first generation of eLearning has been little more than ivory tower educational professionals using old methods and old models to move the traditional course online. But the next generation of 21st century training will be built by anyone interested in sharing what they know…rules be damned!

There will be no constraints. No rules. No right way or wrong way. Average people will ignore the “experts” and just do it. Everyone will create the best content they can, in whatever way they want. But they will also want to publish their content, gather data, sell it, manage multiple courses, and so much more. There will come a point in everyone’s training creation journey when they will need to decide how to manage these efforts. And when they’re ready, we’ll be here ready to help.

Ask me any questions via twitter @Litmos.