Kineo Connect event

I recently attended this event that allowed Kineo customers to get updates on:

• Totara LMS and the new ‘version 9’
• what Kineo are doing around modern learning design best practices
• their consultancy services.

These were followed up with a really good session from Boost Evaluation, considering the importance of evaluating learning projects and initiatives.

My summary of items of interest:

Totara improvements

• As suggested, these are mostly general and about tidying up the interface, including internal consistency of the product.
• The two new blocks (last course accessed and my current learning) are both sensible – the immediate fear for me though is that ‘last course accessed’ may often be one you’ve finished and not of interest and ‘my current learning’ could include too many links if you use Totara with a lot of ‘courses’ (for example if they are different resources banks, modules, etc).
• Question marks, for me, over the new multiple job functionality, with split manager support for when it comes to appraisals rather than booking management (it sounded like it has been mostly built around the latter).
• Seminar Management replacing the Face-to-Face tool.  Thankfully isn’t just semantics and the new multiple events within a session logic makes sense.  Devil will, of course, be in the detail and it says something that still tweaking session/room/resource booking is a priority at this stage of the product’s life-cycle.
• Learning plans will now work with dynamic audiences, making them a far more realistic piece of the puzzle in terms of solving the distribution challenges.
• Going forward there will be a major annual release on the same date every year but also ‘evergreen’ continuously evolving core product updates.

Kineo content and consultancy

• Started with a bit on general trends in the market and workplace learning in general (for example resources not courses).
• There were a few nice things shown for what they were doing with TUI and Dominos – including the use of testimonials (staff video) and quality web style interactions/visuals.
• I did quite like the WISE approach that was set out: web style, interactive, self-directed, erudite.
• Showed new filter menu in Adapt content to create personalisation within a piece of content, this looked quite nice but I think I’d typically do that outside of an item via the LMS – really comes back to how you are distributing.
• Have developed own interactive video technology – goes beyond branching with hot-spots, scoring, tracking and drama.  Showed some nice examples from Rolls Royce and Compass.
• The consultancy piece pointed out that video is, in part, a return of old tech now that Internet delivery has caught up.
• Argued a few different points, including: The 10%/f-2-f still has a role and remains popular in surveys but needs to be thought about as facilitating the business, not owning knowledge.  Consultancy services working with clients to setup appropriate structures and solutions.
• Difficult to argue with a lot of the points: such as the need to design for experiences and make use of appropriate curation.

Boost Evaluation Session

• The genesis of the service, helping people with learning industry award submissions where the submitter hadn’t done enough on evaluation is interesting in itself – showing the tendency in the profession to jump to solutions or to evaluate need without thinking about quantifying and checking progress on the ‘to be’ situation.
• I like Boost’s approach in arguing it is not about maths – more about thinking who you are doing the valuation for and developing a hypothesis.  This makes sense to me – not least as I used to help people develop their hypothesis based consulting skills in a past role!
• The key thing really is to have a plan to evaluate and not leave it as an after thought – of course this is the classic criticism of ADDIE and the need for evaluation at the heart of the ADDI, ideally with more agile development, than at the end.
• We ran through a speedy version of the process (normally they recommend a workshop including a wall with possible measures on post it notes).
• Overall, it was useful in my thinking around if I can continue to argue against ‘numbers for the sake of numbers’ and really try to build quantifiable measures be it for engagement, performance improvement or another area.

Author: iangardnergb

My name is Ian Gardner and I am interested in various topics that can be seen as related to learning, technology and information. To see what I am reading elsewhere, follow me on The Old Reader (I.gardner.gb) and/or Twitter (@iangardnergb). View all posts by iangardnergb