Last Friday I attended a great webinar on re-use and the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS) hosted by our partners at GeoLearning.

The hour-long session was presented by Rick Judson of Sales Performance International (SPI) and GeoLearning's Dr. Paul Schneider.

SPI is a dominKnow LCMS client through our partnership with GeoLearning.

If you've ever heard of the phrase "Solution Selling®" then you are aware of the impact SPI has had on the world of sales. Solution Selling is SPI's trademarked methodology for approaching sales from a customer-centered perspective, and innumerable organizations use this approach throughout the world. It is the core of Microsoft's internal and partner sales training approach, for example. SPI offers training on the Solution Selling methodology, including online training created using the dominKnow LCMS.

Last Friday's webinar offered a look at how SPI's use of the dominKnow LCMS and its content management and re-use options has evolved in the past three or so years.

Evolved is the key – SPI's Rick Judson explained that SPI is currently in its third phase of re-use, and is already looking forward to evolving again.

SPI started out initially just using the LCMS as a course structuring system, working with a third-party partner to create Flash movies as pages uploaded into the LCMS. This approach, Rick explained, was one of expedience – SPI needed to get new courses made and simply altered an approach that it already had in place in order to meet initial timelines. These courses could be re-used for various audiences quite quickly, and tweaks and changes could be made by altering the Flash movies and updating them in the LCMS.

SPI's next leap in re-use came with the move to using the LCMS's integrated authoring tool. By moving to the authoring tool, SPI was able to make more granular re-use of page assets such as images or media files. Rather than having to update a graphic in several different Flash movies then update the files in the LCMS, graphic updates could be updated once in the LCMS's asset manager and then shared by all pages using the image, for example.

The next evolutionary step, Rick explained, was to move to the re-use of Learning Objects within the LCMS. The dominKnow LCMS allows the creation of complete, stand-alone instructional packages that address specific topics, tasks or enabling objectives to support the overall learning objectives in a course. These packages include knowledge presentation pages, review exercises and assessment questions. Here's a visual that explains how a Learning Object is constructed in the dominKnow LCMS. Rick noted that making this evolutionary step has offered several advantages to SPI, such as speeding up development, reducing errors and improving control over content. Along with this step, SPI has also taken advantage of the LCMS's translation support features to create versions of its online courses for other languages.

Rick said that SPI's next evolution will be to make a more concerted effort to work with re-usable templates in the LCMS's integrated Authoring Tool.

The webinar was a great glimpse into how a client is successfully taking advantage of re-use in many forms, all empowered by the LCMS, and we definitely appreciated Rick's time and energy.

If you are interested in learning more, here's a PDF copy of the presentation slide deck.

Our thanks to Rick and Paul for putting together an excellent learning event!

Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems.

Visitors to the 2009 edition of BETT, the world's largest educational technology event, will be able to get a first-hand glimpse of some exciting new features in the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (dominKnow LCMS).

BETT – once known as the British Educational and Training Technology show, but now just going by the shorter acronym alone – saw almost 29,000 visitors walk the aisles at the Olympia facility in London, UK. And we're excited to be at booth SW 30 in the software area to show off the latest developments in the dominKnow LCMS.

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Safety is the one area of training where people's lives hang in the balance. Every organization takes it seriously, but most organizations also know that they could do it better.

Our new initiative with North Safety by Honeywell offers a great opportunity for safety training, bringing together our two companies' expertise to create a range of solutions to improve safety training in any organization.

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"Remember the e-learning!"

This new battle cry has replaced the classic "Remember the Alamo!" this week in San Antonio as the GeoLearning 2008 Summit on Learning & Performance has rolled into town.

Today marked the official release of version 5.2 of the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS), and the Summit was a great place to mark the occasion. dominKnow Learning Systems is the platinum sponsor of the event, honouring the six-year partnership between the two companies.

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Next week the dominKnow instructional design team is off to the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) conference in Toronto.

Of all the conferences of its kind that I have attended, the CSTD event is one of the best for the quality of the sessions. Since dominKnow offers a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) as well as learning solutions through courseware consultation and development, I have interests in many different areas. It is often difficult to choose a CSTD session to attend from amongst many worthwhile options.

If you're not familiar with CSTD, the conference is a great way to learn more. Our local Ottawa chapter recently held a great workshop on storytelling in the workplace, led by Jennifer Cayley and Lucie Roy. Sprinkled throughout the workshop were quotes on storytelling, leadership, and learning. One was from Alan Kay, the vice president at Walt Disney, who said, "Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories."

That's one of the things I look for at the conference... the opportunity to listen to and share stories with others working in training and development.

In previous years, I have come back to work with practical tips to improve workflow, write challenging assessments, motivate learners, and more. This year, I'm looking forward to keynote speakers David Weiss with Leadership Solutions, Ed Hoffman's Project Management and the Three Little Pigs: The Power of Stories, and Pamela Wallin's Cross Border Connections as well as sessions on emerging trends, Web 2.0, and learning strategy.

The dominKnow team will also be in the trade show in booth 611.

The exhibit floor is a good place for us to meet people interested in learning solutions, find out what others are doing, as well as chat to some of our current partners. We hope to see you there or in one of the sessions.

Catherine Orfald, Senior Instructional Designer

Our new API is an exciting development for the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS).

By giving clients better tools to access the LCMS and the learning content it contains, we really feel we're taking the idea of re-usable learning content another step forward.

I'm writing this from the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference, where Stephen Downes opened with this morning's keynote address - a presentation on the development of E-learning 2.0 that included the audience's live blogging comments on one side of the stage while Downes' presentation ran on the other side. It was an interesting experiment, one that hopefully inspired the creativity of those sitting in the crowd.

Our new API is something that we hope will lead to some interesting and inspiring experiences as well. We can already predict some applications for it, such as simplifying the process for hooking the dominKnow LCMS up to an e-commerce site, for instance, or for allowing Learning Objects to be used in context-sensitive help within other applications.

What I think will be most interesting, though, is what others may try to do.

The new API opens up a world of learning possibilities and can help remove barriers to learning. We have no doubt that there are challenges out there, waiting to be solved and the API is an important way for us to empower our users to solve those challenges.

It's shaping up to be a busy fall for the dominKnow team, including several road trips for us in addition to development work on the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and our services team's custom courseware work.

Two events we're looking forward to in September are the Oil Sands Trade Show and Conference in Edmonton, Alberta on Sept. 19-20 and the Innovations in Learning Conference in Santa Clara, California on Sept. 24-27.

The Oil Sands Trade Show and Conference will give us a chance to once again meet with folks in the oil and gas industry in Alberta.

This industry is struggling with many growth pains, including a shortage of trained and qualified workers, and we feel that e-learning is a very powerful tool to help address many aspects of this issue. We'll be at booth 573 at the Northlands AgriCom.

The Innovations in Learning Conference, set for the following week, is an event that has the instructional designers among us quite excited. We're attending as part of a contingent of Canadian e-learning companies under the auspices of the Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance (CeLEA). We'll be providing a short presentation on the dominKnow LCMS during the Canadian E-Learning Showcase scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 25.

We're looking forward to the "non-trade show" approach of the event's Conference Café, and, we must admit, there is also some interest in the wine-tasting on the Santa Cruz Pier.

Look us up if you're planning on attending the conference or even just the wine tasting!

The Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) annual conference and trade show kicks off on Sunday, Nov. 5 in Toronto.

CSTD has been gathering some great momentum over the past few years, and really has consolidated its role in the training community in Canada.

Last year's CSTD conference was one of the best such events I've been to in the past five years.

I was only able to attend for one day, but all three conference sessions I attended were well-done.

I came away with new knowledge and insight (something that doesn't always happen at conferences!) and I found the whole experience to be very energizing - I talked the ear off one of my colleagues for several hours afterwards.

That experience convinced us that dominKnow Learning Systems needed to be a bigger part of this year's show, to help build on the CSTD energy.

We will be at Booth 603 on the show floor, and we're looking forward to greeting many new faces and re-greeting old friends.

If you are attending the show, feel free to drop by our booth - we'd love to meet you in person.

We'll see you there!