Welcome to a brand new episode of GE TV! This week we’re joined by Craig Weiss, the CEO of E-Learning 24/7.
At E-Learning 24/7, Craig acts as an eLearning analyst, advisor and consultant for buyers and suppliers alike. He travels the world to deliver keynotes and he shares his thoughts on his blog, which is a must-read for anyone with even a remote interest in online learning.
If that hasn’t convinced you, for two years in a row, Craig has been named as the world’s most influential person in the eLearning industry!
Watch this interview to find out:
What Craig would look for in an LMS
Where LMS vendors are falling behind the trends
Which new technologies will impact the LMS industry
Where the authoring tools industry will head over the next 12 months
What to expect from Craig’s new book
Check below the video for a full transcript.
Full interview transcript
(0:00) Hello and welcome to another episode of GE TV. We’re super excited this week because we’re joined by the one and only Craig Weiss. Now I’m sure Craig needs no introduction, but let’s give him one anyway!
Craig is the CEO of E-Learning 24/7, where he acts as an eLearning analyst, advisor and consultant for buyers and suppliers alike. He travels the world, delivers keynotes, and shares his thoughts on his blog, which is an absolute must-read for anyone with a remote interest in online learning.
And if that hasn’t convinced you, for two years in a row, Craig has been named the world’s most influential person in the eLearning industry.
Craig, it’s a huge honour to have you, thank you very much for joining us today!
I’m excited, thank you so much Juliette for having me. I look forward to this interview and the questions that you’re asking.
(1:11) Craig, you review a whopping 690 learning management systems for your annual report. If you were looking for an LMS today, what questions would you be asking?
The very first question would be ‘what features do you offer?’ Whether or not it actually matches what I’m seeking.
The second thing would be getting a ballpark estimate of a price. Vendors know the prices already, so they can give you a ballpark estimate of what it would cost. This way you’re not wasting your time having an additional conversation.
The vendors will always ask: ‘Tell me a little bit about yourself’, ‘Give me a use case’ and what not. I’m a believer in going ahead to answer. What I’m not a fan of is when some vendors ask ‘what’s your budget?’ I never recommend that people actually tell them, because unfortunately there are vendors who will then increase their price in order to align into their budget. So I never go with those kinds of pieces.
I think it’s essential though, again going back to the feature sets that you need, if you’re somebody who wants detailed analytics, then that could be a cut-off point. If you want some of the generals like everybody does course catalogue, they all do that.
In today’s market, more and more people are going into mobile learning. Whether or not you want to have specific features and get an understanding of what those pieces are.
Then I actually recommend that people ask about the vendor’s roadmap over the coming year, the current year, and what their completion rate was over the previous year. This way you can tell whether or not the vendor is actually close to the roadmap, or whether they’re just saying these things and never actually hitting them.
Fantastic. And you’ve got a series of product videos on your website as well, which must be a great value-add I would have thought, for people looking around for an LMS, perhaps if they’re not 100% sure which features they’re looking at. Your blog is a fantastic insight for that sort of thing.
Yeah, absolutely. I do product reviews that are on there. The reviews are always very independent, honest and fair. I tell it like it is.
There’s screenshots in there. Some vendors appreciate it, some don’t, but it’s all about what the consumer is. And going about it not just from an expert standpoint, but also a consumer and vendor side.
What many people are unaware of is that I used to be a director of training, and a training manager reporting to COOs directly, for numerous years on the corporate side and in multiple verticals. So I’ve been in those shoes that they have been in, and now I’ve flipped over and been able to say that this is what’s really going on, and what you need to realise is that there’s a lot of misperceived and erroneous information out there.
I always say that you have to be careful what you read, because there are people who just don’t know. They’re espousing some ideas that are going on there, they’re looking at a variety of different things that take place in the market, and so they can steer you one way without actually telling you the way it is.
That’s what the blog is all about, and that’s what the reviews are. And at the end of the thing, I always provide recommendations, whether it’s good, bad or otherwise. And I have no problems sleeping at night!
(4:55) So Craig, where do you see vendors falling behind? In terms of key trends, where consumers are going, where do you see vendors failing to keep up?
The challenge I think in the industry as a whole is that it’s a lemming industry, and it always has been.
You have more vendors today, which you’d think increases early adoption, but in many ways it’s a re-tread. They come out, their feature sets tend to be very streamlined, and they come up with different terms – learning platform, training management system. Whatever, they’re still an LMS they just don’t want to call themselves an LMS.
That’s one trend that takes place.
I’m also seeing an increase in courseware LMSs. A courseware LMS means you’re buying the courses, then the LMS is kind of thrown in.
It used to be very specific for the consumer. So when they came out, it was about me. I want to learn in English or Spanish, and I want bookmarking, or whatever. I’d buy some of these courses and then get some analytics if I choose to use it.
Now what they’re doing is expanding into the enterprise market, which is the corporate market, and targeting those as well under the same premise.
Again, to explain to the general buyers, you’re buying the courses and the LMS is thrown in. Is it a great LMS? No, it’s basic. It’s about the courses, not the LMS. So those are being thrown in.
There’s an increase finally in micro-learning, which has taken forever. These are small bits of courses, content that can be created. If you’re doing video then I recommend no longer than 2-3 minutes. And you focus on a specific topic.
Anybody who says they can’t do something because it will take them ten minutes, I’m sorry but that’s not true. You can do it in 2-3 minutes in focus.
So you’re starting to see chunks, you’re starting to see more video come into play, especially with mobile video and going forward.
And with the systems themselves, I think you’re seeing a split between vendors who are increasing certain analytics, and vendors that are not. For me, I’m a data collector, I’m a big statistics guy and I always was with analytics. I think it’s important in training to get an understanding of what’s going on with your people, at a much more detailed level.
I’m not really a fan when I see histograms or just pie charts, and then maybe you click and get one little bit of data. I don’t think that tells you anything. But there are many vendors going that route, so clearly there’s a need and demand for certain people.
And I’m also seeing certain vendors fall off the grand map of things. For example, SABA was always a really big name, but they’re sort of starting to slip off. I think there’s a variety of factors behind that which are taking place. I don’t really hear them as often as certain other vendors. I don’t think it means they’re disappearing, it just means they’ve slipped down, on a personal feeling of that.
And the funny thing is that there was a big push a couple of years ago by other analysts about talent management. I think performance management, which is talent management, sort of hit a peak and is going down. People who want that are buying a separate system, and it’s fine if a vendor puts that in there, but there are many consumers who are just not interested in having it.
The other thing is that I see a big increase, and I’ve been talking about it for years, is with B2B and B2C. In my opinion, I would say that overwhelmingly the number of vendors in the space haven’t really figured out how to hit that market.
So they’re doing what we call internal pricing models, assuming that’s going to get people, they don’t really have a B2B and B2C price model. So what’s now taking place is that the people doing that will say that everybody’s doing corporate training, they’re not interested in me. I think there’s just a huge disconnect.
Echo systems are finally growing more and more. An echo system to me doesn’t mean that it’s got performance management, it just means it’s got a more robust feature set.
Deep learning, which is predicative analysis is on a fast rise, much quicker than on-off sync with mobile apps. Which is ironic, because people say they want on-off sync with mobile apps, but the market isn’t really driving towards that.
In order to have deep learning, you need to have an algorithm. So for people who are not familiar with deep learning, what that basically says is that a person takes courses A, B and C. They don’t have to complete them, or they do complete them, they look at some videos and documents. Then the system, think of it as an early-stage artificial intelligence, then outputs and recommends these courses or this content for the person to do.
Eventually you could add skills, I think of it as multiple variables. And at the end of the day, it will eventually create down the road a learning path that goes through there.
The challenge for some vendors is that they’re putting in these algorithms, but they’re changing the scope of what the power of online learning is, which is non-linear.
I can bounce anywhere I want to in the course. I always use Microsoft Excel as an example. If I want to learn about Labels, why do I have to start with opening a file? I couldn’t care less.
But what’s happening with some of these algorithms is that they’re saying you have to complete the course. And they don’t give the administrator the option of changing the weights of values. So the vendor is telling the person, the L&D people, the HR people, that they know more about training their people than they do.
It’s really a huge irritant with me, and almost a pompous attitude that you think you know more than the company itself.
So in order for it to be effective, it has to give the administrator the right, because a completed course defeats the purpose of workplace training. What are we doing with workplace training from that regard?
And I think you’re seeing an increase in some game-based learning, which is finally moving forward. But the biggest challenge I find with game-based learning is things like you’ll be shooting ducks and then at the end it will give you brief training bits, that have nothing to do with the guys shooting the ducks.
So I think it has to be tied to learning activities, and it brings together an engaging, interactive process. And it should be short and fun, and should have a variety of different things for different people.
So those are the main trends I see happening here in 2016, and I think you’ll see more so in 2017.
(12:45) Fantastic! Just one thing, what’s your thoughts on social learning? Great to hear your thoughts on gamification and game-based learning, but what about social learning? We’re obviously seeing a lot of social, video-type platforms. Do you think that is the future of the LMS market?
No. I think video learning platforms have been around for multiple years. They do a lot of cool things if all of your content is video. There’s a variety of them out there, some are more robust than others.
I find with social, again it sort of gets back to my big peeve, is that now there are maybe 400 social media sites and I’m seeing the same four. Facebook, big deal. Microblog, who cares? Maybe a Twitter feed if they allow them to bounce around.
I know one vendor does Pinterest and Instagram, they can connect to them. One vendor, that’s it!
I still see discussion boards and forums. In 1994 I created my own discussion board and forum. 1994, and I’m seeing this stuff still today!
I think the collaboration piece has an opportunity. But you can have all the social functionality you want, the key is you got to get buy-in with your people and they’ve all got to use it. It doesn’t serve a purpose if you start seeing the same three or four folks in there.
So I think you could do a lot with social interactivity and social engagement. But I think that more power will come with the mobile app. Having it in the app is going to be more successful. Yes you’re going to have it on your site, but you need to have that connectivity with on-off sync so I can push through.
If I’m walking round the halls in my office and I see somebody and start to do collaboration with them, then I should be able to utilise the system so everybody can see.
There’s lots of wins here that you can do with training. If you look beyond me having a talk with you, and we’re screening something like here, I can post this up as part of my training and other people can see this experience and can provide additional feedback, and vote and provide rankings and comments.
Having some of this ask an expert thing where you can add social interactivity, you have to look forward to what you think is taking place. One of my favourite things is about the millennials and how they’re doing this and that. I remember reading an article in the New York Times and they said that this was the same thing they said about Gen X.
Sure they have certain things that are different to myself, which was Gen X, but at the same time, learning is learning and social engagement is social engagement.
I’ll just give you a quick story. My nephew is 18 years old, WhatsApp has over a billion users. So when I came overseas I said ‘let’s connect on WhatsApp’. I mean, hey, he’s a millennial! He asked ‘what’s that?’
Facebook is a great example. Millennials are jumping off Facebook and going to Snapchat. They have feature sets in there that a vendor can utilise in an LMS, but they’re not doing it. So for me I always get back to being repetitive about the same features.
Show me something that socially wows me and I’ll buy into it. Show me something that I’ve seen dozens of times. Show me something that was created in 1995 and you’ll bore me. And that’s why we have huge problems with social and the engagement of learners.
(17:12) Craig, you’ve made a name for yourself as a bit of a clairvoyant in the industry. Which new technologies can you see making a real impact in the LMS space over the next year or two?
Well I think there’s going to be a big interest in virtual reality. I think the big question, first and foremost, is whether or not the content matches the people’s expectations.
The second question is whether or not the authoring tools vendors buy in. I don’t see that initially, I think a couple will try to do something. There has to be some kind of a course standard, but I think some people will just try to do something.
The third thing is who’s going to be buying these headsets. There will be some companies in certain industries that will have an interest in doing this, probably maritime, cruise lines and some others.
I don’t see everybody necessarily jumping in, because the true VR headsets right now create motion sickness, and the headsets are heavy. It’s kind of hard to utilise that when people are about to throw up.
I think there will be an interest. I know one LMS vendor already has a VR app for Oculus Rift. How exciting will that be? I don’t know.
It’s funny because I’ve been looking at Internet of Things, which is wearables. There’s talk on the consumer side of the marketplace that they’re gaining steam.
I could see some interest in say a FitBit. I don’t know about Apple Watch, I think right now there’s some challenges, some developers aren’t building apps any more, a lot of people still think of it as a watch.
So I’m not sold on the IoT stuff. I think some people will be dabbling in there in terms of new technologies going across the board, but I think you’ll see a lot of stuff going on with what I call ultra-portables, the 2-in-1 hybrids. Like the Microsoft Surface or Lenovo Yoga, where it can be a tablet or a laptop, you’ll see a lot more stuff targeting that.
Phablets, which are bigger sized smartphones. I think again you’ll see people eyeing that. Unfortunately, I think a lot of vendors are still going to tie-in too focused on smartphones. Then you have the tablets which are of interest, so there’s going to be a lot of mobile.
And I think you’re going to see from a video technology standpoint. In other words, you’ll start seeing stuff dealing with 4K, which is ultra-high definition. You’re going to start seeing this come out for people who are interested.
The content has got to go into the system. So the challenge is if you create these videos in 4K, because the product enables it, what happens when you go to the LMS? The LMS has to support it.
So I think there’s going to be a technology disconnect with many vendors, again because it’s a living industry. You’re going to have some early adopters trying some really amazing things, and then will it buy in?
Sony’s just announced that their new PlayStation will have a faster processing speed for VR and 4K. So manufacturers are pushing 4K TVs. I think it says one thing that 3D was a loser, I always thought it was a loser in the LMS space. Google Glass was another big loser.
I think if Microsoft’s HoloLens comes out and does what it actually claims to do, I think it could have a much bigger impact than Oculus Rift or other VRs, because of the way it’s designed and built. We’ll have to see, but it will come into a price range for many people. I think you’re also going to see more augmented reality, or some people testing it.
I would say that the technology, not necessarily from the device standpoint but from the capabilities of the technology to increase and make things better, better graphics, faster processors, on your mobile devices, which then in turn affects your LMSs.
At the end of the day, I believe an LMS needs to be a portable LMS. That means you have the online-offline disconnect with the mobile tied in, and different devices. I would say that overwhelmingly the majority of LMS vendors are not portable, so they’ve got to change to match the technology.
There’s plenty of vendors out there whose technology is really better suited to the mid-2000s than 2016.
The last piece, which is kind of an aside, is that I believe you’ll start to see technological advancements in terms of people with instructor-led driven moving more into an online learning environment.
I’ll still stand by my belief that by 2020 in the corporate market, 90% of your training will be online and 10% will be instructor-led. There’s always going to be people living and dying by instructor-led, but all the data supports online training as being far superior.
(23:25) Craig, let’s talk authoring tools! We were over the moon when you named us as the number 3 authoring tool on your recent blog post. Where do you see authoring tools going in the next 12 months?
I see the cloud-based ones continuing to add basic analytics. We’re talking histograms and graphs, I see them continuing that with the premise of the administrator sends a link to learners and then they go and take the course, because the content is on the vendor servers. And then they get some basic kind of analytics.
To me, that’s sort of steering into a hybrid LMS, and I see that with quite a few vendors. I think you’re going to continue to see them provide content for mobile devices, that’s very clear.
The other thing is for the cloud-based, you’re going to continue to see an increase in them keeping the content that’s been created on their server. Then what they do is push it into whatever your LMS might be. So your course is in your LMS but never uploaded.
Their premise is that it’s real-time, you can come into our servers, update and it will get pushed through.
It’s funny because one authoring tool has an LRS, which is a learning record store. That tells me that they’re looking towards the LMS market. You don’t need a learning record store to be an authoring tool, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think on the desktop side, what I’m seeing is a continued gap. So you get fewer and fewer in the high level, many in the average level, and then many in the poor level. I see that continuing.
But I think you’re going to see an increase in cloud-based authoring tools. I think you’re not really going to see too many vendors add video-based courses. In other words, the video becomes a course, with bookmarks and chapters and a table of contents, and you can do course tracking with it.
I really don’t see too many vendors touching that. I see vendors attempting to do some game-based learning, I’m seeing a little bit of that right now. But I expect another thing is you’re going to see an increase in asset management, these repositories which can have all these different assets put into place.
I think you’re going to see more and more templates, more of the approach of how easy it is to build these courses and output them. You’re going to see those things taking place in the market, about the simplicity and the ability to do this across the board.
(26:40) Craig, you recently published a chapter of your new book on your blog. When can we expect the full book? And tell us a little bit about what we can expect.
The full book is scheduled to come out this fall. What I decided to do was to publish it as an eBook. It will be available on Amazon, on iBooks, on my website, and a few other locations on the internet. So you’ll be able to purchase it in that fashion.
The book is an LMS how-to guidebook, I want to call it a guide rather than this meaty monster book like Tolstoy, which it’s not.
What it does is enable you to bounce around between different chapters. There’s a chapter about committees. Who should be on your committee, if you’re going to do a committee? And by the way, you can get an LMS without a committee, which it states!
But if you’re going to do a committee, who should be on that committee? Should it procurement? should it be somebody from IT? Should it be a stakeholder? Should it be an employee? So there’s a chapter on that, for example.
There’s a chapter that gives an overview of different types of LMSs. There’s a chapter that talks about pre-implementation and what you need to do.
There’s a chapter about marketing. People thing that they build this thing and everybody runs to it, or they force them to run to it. It doesn’t work that way. So it talks about marketing and how to put that strategy into place. You don’t have to be a guru in marketing to do some basic things like emails, newsletters or contests.
It’s ideal if you’re brand new or have limited experience. But I also think it’s great for people who are intermediate or advanced, because there’s things in there that you can utilise.
Maybe you’re facing the challenge of boosting your audience. Okay, go to the marketing chapter. Maybe you’re now looking at switching your LMS and you need a committee. Okay, go to the committee chapter and find out how many people you need to make it successful, who do you need, who do you not need, here’s the pros and cons.
Maybe you’re concerned about implementation. It’s a lot different today because they’re cloud-based systems. So for example people need to set out these massive documents asking for the technical requirements of the system.
I always say to people, go to the Amazon, go to Rackspace, ask the vendor where they host their LMS. Then just go to that site because they’re just regurgitating all that information. Maybe they have one or two extra things, but it’s pretty much those kinds of pieces.
And it also includes the trends for 2016-17. So I think it’s a very encompassing guide. It doesn’t tell you who has the best LMS, that’s not its role. Its role is to tell you how to get from this point to this point.
If you want to utilise the guide and use every single chapter, you can. There’s a checklist at the end of each chapter, asking how you’ll do this or what you recall of this information.
There’s a section dealing with RFPs and RFIs. I never did RFIs, it was all in my brain, but I have created one. So for people who buy the book, there will be a special area on my blog for them to get access to the latest version of the template, so there’s an exclusivity. And there’s also going to be an exclusive section on my blog for people who purchase the book, where I’ll provide tips and techniques in a variety of short videos.
So it’s not about buying the book and just having all the information today. By buying the book you get all the information today, but you also get all this other cool stuff. This guy’s going to continue to be this mini-expert who’s going to help me along the way. And I think that’s what makes the book very unique in that regard.
And it’s mobile-responsive, as they say, so I think it’s great for on the go. I hope that people enjoy it!
Fantastic! We will most certainly be picking up a copy, thank you!
Thank you very much Juliette, I enjoyed being here!
(31:08) As ever Craig, it’s been an absolute pleasure to sit down with you. Very thought-provoking discussion, I always feel as though I’ve embarked on a learning journey just by having the opportunity to speak with you. So thank you very much for your time!
A lot of people watching this will be thinking, how do I find out more about Craig? Tell us a bit about your website, the URL, how can people really get engaged with what you’re doing?
Sure, thank you Juliette!
I would say first and foremost, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can type in my name ‘Craig Weiss’ into search engines and I pop right up. That’s a quick route to go.
My business site is elearning247.org. I offer a Top 50 LMS Report for 2016, and services to help people find learning management systems, because there’s so many of them out there! I always say, why spend the time when you can find somebody who takes care of it for you? And then I offer services as well for vendors.
Then the blog is on elearninfo247.com. There’s plenty of great information available on that, and they can locate a variety of resources. Those are really the best ways to find me.
And then of course here on GE TV! One of my personal favourite channels, I watch it every week!
Thank you Craig! All of that information will of course be on the screen at the bottom, so thank you again very much! As always, an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you Juliette!
Be sure to check our Craig’s website, and keep an eye out for plenty more GE TV interviews in the coming weeks!
If you’re looking to develop a learning solution which utilises gamification, social and personalised learning, then you need to build an Engagement Engine! Download our free, interactive workbook to plan out a solution which will keep any learner engaged:
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