00:01

Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Megan Torrance joining me to discuss the webinar Ready, Set, Go: xAPI Implementation in Your L&D Ecosystem.

00:27

Megan has a way of breaking down complex topics into a digestible and engaging manner. And I’m excited to jump into the content today. So thanks for joining me, Megan. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks, Sarah. I’m excited to be here. So let’s start things off just for anybody who didn’t have a chance to listen to one of your webinars before, this previous webinar. Can you share a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got to where you’re at today?

00:52

Sure thing. So um I’m the founder and CEO at TorranceLearning and do strategic workplace learning navigation, really. um So we start with strategy, where’s the organization going? What do you need to accomplish with a particular learning program? And then we offer support every step of the way from how do I articulate that strategy? How do I design programs to meet that strategy? Actually building those programs and then

01:21

setting up and measuring the impact of those, right? So setting up the ecosystem in which they live and how do we measure them? ah Along the way, I am um a huge proponent of professional development and sharing what we’ve figured out works with other people, hence these webinars, right? And so I wrote Agile for instructional designers and Data and Analytics for instructional designers, trying to break down these tasks that are really, really important for all of us.

01:48

And then I’m also a facilitator and instructor at Cornell University and an adjunct at Penn State University. So um all sorts of ways to keep me out of trouble. Well, thanks so much for sharing that. It’s nice to be able to hear about your insights as CEO at Torrance Learning and all the other things that you do as well. So can we talk about the changes right now? everything’s ever changing right now. What about in the L&D space? What do you see happening?

02:17

This is a fantastic time in our space. um And there’s so much going on, right? So L&D pros, like when you’re in learning and development, we do lots of things, right? So we’re always juggling, always running around with multiple projects, serving multiple different uh leaders within our organization. uh But I see the entire space taking a much more

02:47

technology forward, look at things. It’s data and analytics, it’s designing a seamless learning ecosystem, it’s uh artificial intelligence, and all of this brings in a much more rigorous approach to our work. We’re no longer taking about of knowledge and figuring out a palatable way to cram it down people’s throats and then check and make sure that they did that. um

03:15

And that’s an unfair oversimplification of, but when you think about the ways in which we can be using uh data and learning science and excellence in design and development, it feels like we’re light years ahead of where we were just five or six years ago, right? And I’ve also recently been getting into the learning engineering community, which…

03:42

knits all these things together, right? So learning engineering is a, they call it a team sport, right? It’s a learning sciences, it’s learning experience design, it’s data science, it’s software engineering, it’s a rigorous testing and an evidence-based approach. It’s actually like really, really exciting. Yeah. And with all of these changes that are happening, and they happen so fast, think then, you know, businesses have to really pivot. So what exciting things do you have in your pipeline that you’re

04:09

that you’ll be implementing with all of the changes that you see happening um in the space right now. So we’ve got a number of really, really interesting client projects going on right now. um And at all different points in that, right? it’s what’s really, actually I just had this call yesterday, right? What’s really, really exciting.

04:33

to me is when organizations used to work with us on an e-learning basically, right? They would come and they’d say, hey, we need this course, we needed to do this, blah, blah, blah. And we need it by July or whatever, right? And we’d build them a very nice e-learning course and everybody would go along on their way. And now we’re having conversations as part because our team has evolved, the industry has evolved and the learning leaders that we support are evolving and meeting much more strategic needs, right? So yesterday, one of these leaders comes and says, um

05:02

We’re talking about e-learning projects, but then all of a sudden we’re talking about the actual delivery platform and how do we bring in artificial intelligence in order to really challenge learners and personalize the feedback that we give back to them and whether or not we can do that in SCORM or XAPI and how we want to approach all that. And suddenly our conversation is much more rich. And I’m just super geeked because what that means is that the learners are going to get a better solution.

05:32

And we will have a better insight into how it is we got there, how we are uh caring for it and being good stewards of the investment it takes to release a program like that and understanding the details and the data on the impact of that investment. So I’ve got that consulting work, which is super fun, right? And actual build work.

06:00

And then we’re at the same time, like doing for ourselves what we do for our clients. So we’re designing new learning experiences to help learning and development professionals take on these new things. So we just released this course, well, we ran it.

06:21

once in 2023. Our first 2024 instance is going to start in March. And we call it OLA, which stands for Hands-On Learning and Application. And so it’s like a, it’s all the things, right? Learning developers will love this. It’s a blended social learning experience. There’s some asynchronous, there’s some social, there’s some live. It’s nine weeks long. It’s hands-on. It’s project-based, lots of discussion and office hours with geeks. So.

06:47

Like it’s all the things that you need to get yourself and your team ready to use XAPI, right? And ready to talk about it, to advocate it for it in the organization. And that course goes all the way from what is XAPI to how do I send data, how do I receive data, what do I do with the data, and then what. And so it takes you all the way through that process, which is… uh

07:17

but in rapid fashion, right? Because you’re in a course, you’re in a microcosm. We even supply the learning record store. Like everything you need to make it happen is right there. um And it was kind of cool after we designed the course, we sat back and the course runs on a platform called HowSpace, which is super fun, it’s super flexible, and it’s got some AI capabilities baked into it. And we sat back and we’re like, this is all the things. Like, this is really cool.

07:44

Yeah. That’s really exciting. love to whenever I connect with you because your passion just emulates and I think that it’s really inspiring. That’s great to hear all the exciting projects that you have up and coming in this new year. And so we recently worked on this webinar together titled Ready, Set, Go! Implementing XAPI in your L&D ecosystem. Can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants during that event? Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s like three big things, right? oh

08:14

um One was, and honestly, it’s my new favorite slide, right? And it says, So it’s a presentation on XAPI. And one of the very first slides I have is no one wants XAPI. But what comes on top of that is the great big letters is everyone wants data. Right? And so we really, I think the message there is, right? When you’re talking to your organization, you’re talking to your business and your leaders, right?

08:44

They want data. In fact, when they find out how little data we tend to create in the training environment and how shallow it is, ah they’re surprised. Everybody in the organization has better data than learning and development does. So everyone wants data. They don’t care how we get it. We care about, in learning and development, we care about XAPI because it allows us to get

09:13

interoperable data, all of our pieces and parts work together. It’s like buying multiple Lego sets and they all fit together, right? Which is pretty cool. So that’s point one. Point number two is that really you can’t just turn on all these things, right? None of us has unlimited funds, unlimited decision-making capability and no pre-existing environment, right? You need a roadmap through that maturity and we break that into five steps. So prototype.

09:44

just making stuff and seeing if it works, right? Which I might do in a learning experience like XAPI cohort or XAPI OLAW. I have a pilot where I’m actually doing something. I may throw out the data afterwards, but I’m actually doing it within the organization. And then first production project, right? So step three is that first production. Like we’re really doing it. We have full fledged tools. We are rolling this out to people. We are really, really doing it. That leads into a multi-production phase, which is…

10:12

kind of messy. You’ve got some SCORM projects and some XAPI projects and kind of a little bit of a hodgepodge while you’re migrating over and then full scale. And this takes years to get through those five phases of maturity. Each step, you are not only doing whatever learning program you have in that one step, right? So you’re doing the thing, but you’re also building the skills and the confidence and the credibility to move to the next stage, right?

10:41

So each stage, you’re not only doing and releasing the work, but you are convincing your leaders that you’re capable of doing this and worth the investment in more resources to be able to do the next stage. And then the third point really is that we spend all this time, I spend all this time talking about the learning technology ecosystem or the learning ecosystem as if all it is is technology.

11:08

actually is built on relationships and skills. And so those relationships within your organization, your IT department, your legal department, your data privacy and security and your risk management folks, your vendors who have great tools and amazing processes and investment dollars of their own to be building things out and experience, and then your own team skills and our…

11:34

um Does your own team know what to do with these tools when you get them? So you could give me a Lamborghini and I would probably promptly run it around a telephone pole because I don’t know how to drive something with that much power. So um those are really the three pieces of that webinar. It was actually really fun time. We had a good group. We did have a really good group. They were very engaged and interactive with us, which was really fun. fun.

12:01

And so why would an organization adopt XAPI into their L&D ecosystem? What benefit are they looking for when they do so? know, SCORM, which has been the standard of the land, the standard of the planet for the last two decades, is fantastically successful. It’s just also fantastically limited. And so right now, you have SCORM, and so you have a bunch of data in your LMS, and then

12:30

Because of all the things SCORM doesn’t do, you have a bunch of other data standards that exist completely separately, right? So my webinar platform uses different data and doesn’t share it with my e-learning data that uses SCORM, which doesn’t share it with what’s going on in Yammer or Slack or Teams, and doesn’t share with it what’s ever going on in my mobile tools, right? So I have all these different data silos. And if for nothing else, simply being able to get all your data in one place, rather than managing learning, get this.

12:59

We manage learning data right now by tool that creates it, not by what it is we’re teaching people and the learning that’s going on. And if for no other reason, that’s why, right, that’s completely non-technical reason why XAPI ought to be adapted. I’ll leave it there. We could go on forever. You’ll never get rid of me. And so then how does the L&D team align with an organization’s strategic objectives?

13:27

So here’s, yeah, this is such a good one. ah

13:33

in order to offer value to our organizations and to get the resources and the go-ahead to do it, right? We have to be aligned with what the organization wants. We can’t be kind of like rowing 15 degrees off to the side. um And so we really need to support that. And in the webinar and then in one of the articles I wrote for HRDQ, uh we really looked at ways in which we can identify how we align, right?

14:02

So there are some, right, if you go to what the organization’s strategic initiatives are, and there’s usually somewhere between three and seven of them, seven’s a lot, right? But some of them are gonna directly say things like grow capacity. And in L&D, like, okay, great, I’m growing capacity, right? Strategically, we’re growing capacity, that’s our job, that’s what we do, right? We grow capacity. And so you find out where those key capacity areas are and you fulfill them. And that’s probably what everybody’s are. oh

14:32

already doing that makes a lot of sense, right? There are then a set of strategic initiatives that around, that organizations have that are usually around operational excellence, delivery excellence, right? And there’s a lot of things that go into that, right? Process and assets and go-to-market strategies and all these things, right? But one of the key things that organization needs in order to deliver excellence is capable people.

15:02

The skills and capabilities to do that. So wherever that kind of operational strategy takes you is a logical place for L&D to come in and align. And then the third is really around, I see some business objectives that almost every organization has at least one business objective that’s focused around supporting their customers and clients better. And here’s where I’m gonna take a slightly different stretch. So of course you have all those other things around

15:31

growing capacity, like the operational excellence, right? But then you have an opportunity for the L&D team to be seeing themselves in delivering customer service to the rest of the business and to be amping up and operating and measuring how we operate in very similar ways to how the business supports their clients, right?

15:54

So if it’s a client first strategy or an educated client strategy or everything, all things to all people client strategy, that can be a way in which the L&D function aligns and thinks about their work in order to support the rest of the business. So then let me ask you this, if you could only purchase one piece of software for your ecosystem in 2024, which would you recommend? You’re going put me on the spot, aren’t you?

16:24

So if you could only buy one piece, I would say get a learning record store. So that’s the database that holds your XAPI data. And here’s why I say that. Many organizations already have tools that could send XAPI data. Your e-learning authoring tools, your video tools, all sorts of tools already send some sort of XAPI data. Most learning management systems

16:52

don’t do a great job of handling great XAPI data. So you already have a learning management system, you already have your authoring tools that are already sent, so you don’t have to buy them. And then you get a learning record store and you point your authoring tool, you host them from the LMS and you point them at your learning record store. And that then starts to let you see the depth of data that you can start getting on your programs. And then,

17:19

You could say, oh, but I need a different LMS or oh, but I need different authoring programs or oh, but I need to do these certain things. Right. But until you have that data in your LMS, there’s no point in having that. Right. So it’s sorry, the data in your LRS. Oh, that was scary. Take a minute there. Right. It’s like having a learning management system with no content. So what? Nobody goes there. Nobody needs it. Right. So you need a learning record store.

17:47

how’s your data and then you know what to do with your data. And then could you just clarify for those listening in the difference between like a learning record store and a learning management system? Yes, if I’m going to slip and miss them up, I should at least explain myself. Yes. So your learning management system, right? um You still need a learning management system. If your organization has one, you still need one. So your learning management system, well, it manages your learning. So it knows who your learners are.

18:17

It knows their organization units and who they report to and what they bought and what they have access to. And it then also manages your courses and it hosts your courses and it organizes them into pathways and curricula and it prevents some people from having access to things and it manages all that. And then your learning management system manages, I’m using the word manage a lot, right? Manages the interaction between people and courses. Who signed up for what?

18:45

Who’s supposed to take it, who has taken it, who hasn’t taken it, and how do we go and chase you down to take the things that we know you need to take, right? And so your learning management system does a ton of really, really useful things. Your learning record store doesn’t do those things. Your learning record store simply keeps track of activity that happens during learning. So Sarah launched a course, Sarah started, Sarah answered,

19:15

Option number B on screen number 14, Sarah read a book and took these notes on them. Sarah passed this course. All these transactions, every one of these sentences gets stored as a data transaction in your learning record store. So it serves an entirely different purpose. Great. And then, so if you’re looking for an LMS system, should you look for one that does XAPI if you’re shopping for a new?

19:44

system, you know, for this new year? Yes. And so if you’re looking for an LMS, ah I’m going to say absolutely look for an LMS that supports XAPI, right? Because you’re going to sign a multi-year contract. You might as well sign a multi-year contract with something that will like live with you for those multiple years. Right. And my guess is you are not going to stay stagnant with SCORM.

20:13

for the next five years during your LMS contract, right? So you absolutely wanna be looking for an LMS that does XAPI. At the same time, many LMSs do not, even the ones that say they support XAPI, do not fully support XAPI. So they may support XAPI launch and completion. So they do all the scorn like things that you need them to do, which is super important and awesome. But it doesn’t keep track of the stuff like,

20:41

Sarah took these notes about a book that she wrote or Sarah chose option B, that was only after choosing option D and that was wrong and option A and that was wrong. And then she got option B, um but then she went on and rocked the rest of the course. just nailed it, right? That was her one sticking point. That kind of granularity with our learning activity is something that you can only do in a fully fledged LRS. And most of the LMSs don’t have that yet.

21:10

So you, yes, you want an LMS with XAPI and it’s probably not gonna do all the things that you want it yet. And so lastly, Megan, where can listeners go so they can connect with you um and, you know, learn more about, you know, Torrance Learning? So I am um always available on LinkedIn. I’m a pretty easy find because I have a not super common name and uh at torrancelearning.com.

21:40

So that’s another good place to find us. And then I’m heading out to a bunch of conferences this year. So I am sure bet to be at most of the ATD Learning Guild and training conferences plus a few extras. So Dev Camp and Icicle and all sorts of places. So I’m not home very often. So if you’re at a conference, it’s about learning and development, I might be there too.

22:08

Well, yes, make sure that you go look for Megan at those conferences that are upcoming in the 2024 year. And thank you, Megan, for your time today. Happy to be here. This is fun. Thanks, Sarah. And we will have all of Megan’s information linked down below so you can check that out. We hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ You In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five star review. Thank you all for tuning in to this week’s episode of the HRDQ You In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQU.

00:01

Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQU In Review Podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQ.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQU. And today I have Megan Torrance joining me to discuss the webinar Ready, Set, Go! Implementing XAPI into your L&D ecosystem.

00:27

Megan has a way of breaking down complex topics into a digestible and engaging manner. uh And I’m excited to jump into the content today. So thanks for joining me, Megan. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks, Sarah. I’m excited to be here. So let’s start things off just for anybody who didn’t have a chance to listen to one of your webinars before, this previous webinar. Can you share a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got to where you’re at today?

00:52

Sure thing. So um I’m the founder and CEO at Torrance Learning and uh we do strategic workplace learning navigation, really. um So we start with strategy, where’s the organization going? What do you need to accomplish with a particular learning program? And then we offer support every step of the way from how do I articulate that strategy? How do I design programs to meet that strategy? Actually building those programs and then

01:21

setting up and measuring the impact of those, right? So setting up the ecosystem in which they live and how do we measure them? ah Along the way, I am um a huge proponent of professional development and sharing what we’ve figured out works with other people, hence these webinars, right? And so I wrote Agile for instructional designers and Data and Analytics for instructional designers, trying to break down these tasks that are really, really important for all of us.

01:48

And then I’m also a facilitator and instructor at Cornell University and an adjunct at Penn State University. So um all sorts of ways to keep me out of trouble. Well, thanks so much for sharing that. It’s nice to be able to hear about your insights as CEO at Torrance Learning and all the other things that you do as well. So can we talk about the changes right now? everything’s ever changing right now. What about in the L&D space? What do you see happening?

02:17

This is a fantastic time in our space. um And there’s so much going on, right? So L&D pros, like when you’re in learning and development, we do lots of things, right? So we’re always juggling, always running around with multiple projects, serving multiple different uh leaders within our organization. uh But I see the entire space taking a much more

02:47

technology forward, look at things. It’s data and analytics, it’s designing a seamless learning ecosystem, it’s uh artificial intelligence, and all of this brings in a much more rigorous approach to our work. We’re no longer taking about of knowledge and figuring out a palatable way to cram it down people’s throats and then check and make sure that they did that. um

03:15

And that’s an unfair oversimplification of, but when you think about the ways in which we can be using uh data and learning science and excellence in design and development, it feels like we’re light years ahead of where we were just five or six years ago, right? And I’ve also recently been getting into the learning engineering community, which…

03:42

knits all these things together, right? So learning engineering is a, they call it a team sport, right? It’s a learning sciences, it’s learning experience design, it’s data science, it’s software engineering, it’s a rigorous testing and an evidence-based approach. It’s actually like really, really exciting. Yeah. And with all of these changes that are happening, and they happen so fast, think then, you know, businesses have to really pivot. So what exciting things do you have in your pipeline that you’re

04:09

that you’ll be implementing with all of the changes that you see happening um in the space right now. So we’ve got a number of really, really interesting client projects going on right now. um And at all different points in that, right? it’s what’s really, actually I just had this call yesterday, right? What’s really, really exciting.

04:33

to me is when organizations used to work with us on an e-learning basically, right? They would come and they’d say, hey, we need this course, we needed to do this, blah, blah, blah. And we need it by July or whatever, right? And we’d build them a very nice e-learning course and everybody would go along on their way. And now we’re having conversations as part because our team has evolved, the industry has evolved and the learning leaders that we support are evolving and meeting much more strategic needs, right? So yesterday, one of these leaders comes and says, um

05:02

We’re talking about e-learning projects, but then all of a sudden we’re talking about the actual delivery platform and how do we bring in artificial intelligence in order to really challenge learners and personalize the feedback that we give back to them and whether or not we can do that in SCORM or XAPI and how we want to approach all that. And suddenly our conversation is much more rich. And I’m just super geeked because what that means is that the learners are going to get a better solution.

05:32

And we will have a better insight into how it is we got there, how we are uh caring for it and being good stewards of the investment it takes to release a program like that and understanding the details and the data on the impact of that investment. So I’ve got that consulting work, which is super fun, right? And actual build work.

06:00

And then we’re at the same time, like doing for ourselves what we do for our clients. So we’re designing new learning experiences to help learning and development professionals take on these new things. So we just released this course, well, we ran it.

06:21

once in 2023. Our first 2024 instance is going to start in March. And we call it OLA, which stands for Hands-On Learning and Application. And so it’s like a, it’s all the things, right? Learning developers will love this. It’s a blended social learning experience. There’s some asynchronous, there’s some social, there’s some live. It’s nine weeks long. It’s hands-on. It’s project-based, lots of discussion and office hours with geeks. So.

06:47

Like it’s all the things that you need to get yourself and your team ready to use XAPI, right? And ready to talk about it, to advocate it for it in the organization. And that course goes all the way from what is XAPI to how do I send data, how do I receive data, what do I do with the data, and then what. And so it takes you all the way through that process, which is… uh

07:17

but in rapid fashion, right? Because you’re in a course, you’re in a microcosm. We even supply the learning record store. Like everything you need to make it happen is right there. um And it was kind of cool after we designed the course, we sat back and the course runs on a platform called HowSpace, which is super fun, it’s super flexible, and it’s got some AI capabilities baked into it. And we sat back and we’re like, this is all the things. Like, this is really cool.

07:44

Yeah. That’s really exciting. love to whenever I connect with you because your passion just emulates and I think that it’s really inspiring. That’s great to hear all the exciting projects that you have up and coming in this new year. And so we recently worked on this webinar together titled Ready, Set, Go! Implementing XAPI in your L&D ecosystem. Can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants during that event? Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s like three big things, right? oh

08:14

um One was, and honestly, it’s my new favorite slide, right? And it says, So it’s a presentation on XAPI. And one of the very first slides I have is no one wants XAPI. But what comes on top of that is the great big letters is everyone wants data. Right? And so we really, I think the message there is, right? When you’re talking to your organization, you’re talking to your business and your leaders, right?

08:44

They want data. In fact, when they find out how little data we tend to create in the training environment and how shallow it is, ah they’re surprised. Everybody in the organization has better data than learning and development does. So everyone wants data. They don’t care how we get it. We care about, in learning and development, we care about XAPI because it allows us to get

09:13

interoperable data, all of our pieces and parts work together. It’s like buying multiple Lego sets and they all fit together, right? Which is pretty cool. So that’s point one. Point number two is that really you can’t just turn on all these things, right? None of us has unlimited funds, unlimited decision-making capability and no pre-existing environment, right? You need a roadmap through that maturity and we break that into five steps. So prototype.

09:44

just making stuff and seeing if it works, right? Which I might do in a learning experience like XAPI cohort or XAPI OLAW. I have a pilot where I’m actually doing something. I may throw out the data afterwards, but I’m actually doing it within the organization. And then first production project, right? So step three is that first production. Like we’re really doing it. We have full fledged tools. We are rolling this out to people. We are really, really doing it. That leads into a multi-production phase, which is…

10:12

kind of messy. You’ve got some SCORM projects and some XAPI projects and kind of a little bit of a hodgepodge while you’re migrating over and then full scale. And this takes years to get through those five phases of maturity. Each step, you are not only doing whatever learning program you have in that one step, right? So you’re doing the thing, but you’re also building the skills and the confidence and the credibility to move to the next stage, right?

10:41

So each stage, you’re not only doing and releasing the work, but you are convincing your leaders that you’re capable of doing this and worth the investment in more resources to be able to do the next stage. And then the third point really is that we spend all this time, I spend all this time talking about the learning technology ecosystem or the learning ecosystem as if all it is is technology.

11:08

actually is built on relationships and skills. And so those relationships within your organization, your IT department, your legal department, your data privacy and security and your risk management folks, your vendors who have great tools and amazing processes and investment dollars of their own to be building things out and experience, and then your own team skills and our…

11:34

um Does your own team know what to do with these tools when you get them? So you could give me a Lamborghini and I would probably promptly run it around a telephone pole because I don’t know how to drive something with that much power. So um those are really the three pieces of that webinar. It was actually really fun time. We had a good group. We did have a really good group. They were very engaged and interactive with us, which was really fun. fun.

12:01

And so why would an organization adopt XAPI into their L&D ecosystem? What benefit are they looking for when they do so? know, SCORM, which has been the standard of the land, the standard of the planet for the last two decades, is fantastically successful. It’s just also fantastically limited. And so right now, you have SCORM, and so you have a bunch of data in your LMS, and then

12:30

Because of all the things SCORM doesn’t do, you have a bunch of other data standards that exist completely separately, right? So my webinar platform uses different data and doesn’t share it with my e-learning data that uses SCORM, which doesn’t share it with what’s going on in Yammer or Slack or Teams, and doesn’t share with it what’s ever going on in my mobile tools, right? So I have all these different data silos. And if for nothing else, simply being able to get all your data in one place, rather than managing learning, get this.

12:59

We manage learning data right now by tool that creates it, not by what it is we’re teaching people and the learning that’s going on. And if for no other reason, that’s why, right, that’s completely non-technical reason why XAPI ought to be adapted. I’ll leave it there. We could go on forever. You’ll never get rid of me. And so then how does the L&D team align with an organization’s strategic objectives?

13:27

So here’s, yeah, this is such a good one. ah

13:33

in order to offer value to our organizations and to get the resources and the go-ahead to do it, right? We have to be aligned with what the organization wants. We can’t be kind of like rowing 15 degrees off to the side. um And so we really need to support that. And in the webinar and then in one of the articles I wrote for HRDQ, uh we really looked at ways in which we can identify how we align, right?

14:02

So there are some, right, if you go to what the organization’s strategic initiatives are, and there’s usually somewhere between three and seven of them, seven’s a lot, right? But some of them are gonna directly say things like grow capacity. And in L&D, like, okay, great, I’m growing capacity, right? Strategically, we’re growing capacity, that’s our job, that’s what we do, right? We grow capacity. And so you find out where those key capacity areas are and you fulfill them. And that’s probably what everybody’s are. oh

14:32

already doing that makes a lot of sense, right? There are then a set of strategic initiatives that around, that organizations have that are usually around operational excellence, delivery excellence, right? And there’s a lot of things that go into that, right? Process and assets and go-to-market strategies and all these things, right? But one of the key things that organization needs in order to deliver excellence is capable people.

15:02

The skills and capabilities to do that. So wherever that kind of operational strategy takes you is a logical place for L&D to come in and align. And then the third is really around, I see some business objectives that almost every organization has at least one business objective that’s focused around supporting their customers and clients better. And here’s where I’m gonna take a slightly different stretch. So of course you have all those other things around

15:31

growing capacity, like the operational excellence, right? But then you have an opportunity for the L&D team to be seeing themselves in delivering customer service to the rest of the business and to be amping up and operating and measuring how we operate in very similar ways to how the business supports their clients, right?

15:54

So if it’s a client first strategy or an educated client strategy or everything, all things to all people client strategy, that can be a way in which the L&D function aligns and thinks about their work in order to support the rest of the business. So then let me ask you this, if you could only purchase one piece of software for your ecosystem in 2024, which would you recommend? You’re going put me on the spot, aren’t you?

16:24

So if you could only buy one piece, I would say get a learning record store. So that’s the database that holds your XAPI data. And here’s why I say that. Many organizations already have tools that could send XAPI data. Your e-learning authoring tools, your video tools, all sorts of tools already send some sort of XAPI data. Most learning management systems

16:52

don’t do a great job of handling great XAPI data. So you already have a learning management system, you already have your authoring tools that are already sent, so you don’t have to buy them. And then you get a learning record store and you point your authoring tool, you host them from the LMS and you point them at your learning record store. And that then starts to let you see the depth of data that you can start getting on your programs. And then,

17:19

You could say, oh, but I need a different LMS or oh, but I need different authoring programs or oh, but I need to do these certain things. Right. But until you have that data in your LMS, there’s no point in having that. Right. So it’s sorry, the data in your LRS. Oh, that was scary. Take a minute there. Right. It’s like having a learning management system with no content. So what? Nobody goes there. Nobody needs it. Right. So you need a learning record store.

17:47

how’s your data and then you know what to do with your data. And then could you just clarify for those listening in the difference between like a learning record store and a learning management system? Yes, if I’m going to slip and miss them up, I should at least explain myself. Yes. So your learning management system, right? um You still need a learning management system. If your organization has one, you still need one. So your learning management system, well, it manages your learning. So it knows who your learners are.

18:17

It knows their organization units and who they report to and what they bought and what they have access to. And it then also manages your courses and it hosts your courses and it organizes them into pathways and curricula and it prevents some people from having access to things and it manages all that. And then your learning management system manages, I’m using the word manage a lot, right? Manages the interaction between people and courses. Who signed up for what?

18:45

Who’s supposed to take it, who has taken it, who hasn’t taken it, and how do we go and chase you down to take the things that we know you need to take, right? And so your learning management system does a ton of really, really useful things. Your learning record store doesn’t do those things. Your learning record store simply keeps track of activity that happens during learning. So Sarah launched a course, Sarah started, Sarah answered,

19:15

Option number B on screen number 14, Sarah read a book and took these notes on them. Sarah passed this course. All these transactions, every one of these sentences gets stored as a data transaction in your learning record store. So it serves an entirely different purpose. Great. And then, so if you’re looking for an LMS system, should you look for one that does XAPI if you’re shopping for a new?

19:44

system, you know, for this new year? Yes. And so if you’re looking for an LMS, ah I’m going to say absolutely look for an LMS that supports XAPI, right? Because you’re going to sign a multi-year contract. You might as well sign a multi-year contract with something that will like live with you for those multiple years. Right. And my guess is you are not going to stay stagnant with SCORM.

20:13

for the next five years during your LMS contract, right? So you absolutely wanna be looking for an LMS that does XAPI. At the same time, many LMSs do not, even the ones that say they support XAPI, do not fully support XAPI. So they may support XAPI launch and completion. So they do all the scorn like things that you need them to do, which is super important and awesome. But it doesn’t keep track of the stuff like,

20:41

Sarah took these notes about a book that she wrote or Sarah chose option B, that was only after choosing option D and that was wrong and option A and that was wrong. And then she got option B, um but then she went on and rocked the rest of the course. just nailed it, right? That was her one sticking point. That kind of granularity with our learning activity is something that you can only do in a fully fledged LRS. And most of the LMSs don’t have that yet.

21:10

So you, yes, you want an LMS with XAPI and it’s probably not gonna do all the things that you want it yet. And so lastly, Megan, where can listeners go so they can connect with you um and, you know, learn more about, you know, Torrance Learning? So I am um always available on LinkedIn. I’m a pretty easy find because I have a not super common name and uh at torrancelearning.com.

21:40

So that’s another good place to find us. And then I’m heading out to a bunch of conferences this year. So I am sure bet to be at most of the ATD Learning Guild and training conferences plus a few extras. So Dev Camp and Icicle and all sorts of places. So I’m not home very often. So if you’re at a conference, it’s about learning and development, I might be there too.

22:08

Well, yes, make sure that you go look for Megan at those conferences that are upcoming in the 2024 year. And thank you, Megan, for your time today. Happy to be here. This is fun. Thanks, Sarah. And we will have all of Megan’s information linked down below so you can check that out. We hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review. Thank you all for tuning in to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQ-U.