A Standard Fit

Should training managers buy learning management systems now or wait until the standards dust settles?



Web-based training standards entered a new era in June when the major developers agreed to make learning management systems (LMSs) and content from different vendors work together.



The agreement between the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Global Learning Consortium is not an official partnership , yet. And because it is informal in nature the responsibilities of the respective parties haven't been clearly defined. But it was determined that the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative of the Department of Defense, which was the catalyst for the new spirit of cooperation, would act as a coordinating body.



"I think everybody's on the same page; the IMS, IEEE and AICC all agreed to agree," says George C. Koch, team leader at the Federal Learning Exchange, a Washington, D.C., group that keeps track of federal government training. "There is real interest in common standards because it is so difficult to do business without them. But that does not mean that people are not pushing the envelope in different directions."



Despite the differences among its individual members, the nascent movement toward uniform Web-based training (WBT) standards gathered momentum in September, when the U.S. Army announced a new online training contract (see "Learn all that you can learn," p. 15) worth an estimated $600 million and, at the same time, embraced the notion of ADL as a standards promulgating body. To win the contract to develop the Web portal for Army University Access Online, vendors must use the ADL initiative's SCORM (Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model) specification as a guideline.

"With the Army requiring SCORM for a $600 million contract, I don't think vendors have any choice but to comply," says Judy Brown, an emerging technology analyst at the University of Wisconsin System in Madison.

The Army's stipulations and the handshake agreement between the standards bodies appear to be good news for corporate trainers and buyers. However, no one knows for sure when the standards battles will be over. Optimists say the first standards-based systems will be out this year. The more cautious say standards won't really be settled upon for another year. The pessimists say it could take two years.



Sorting through the confusion

Behind all the talk about standards lies a single problem: the fact that it's difficult, if not impossible, to transfer content and test results between today's proprietary learning management systems.



With standards in place, companies could purchase a single LMS that could accept content from any developer and manage the training results from this patchwork learning quilt. In the long run, the adoption of standards would allow organizations to save money, Koch says. That's because the cost of developing courseware could be recouped more easily if the courseware could be used on multiple learning management systems. "The more people that adhere to one standard, the cheaper it is going to get," he says.



Standards also would enable trainers to maintain databases of reusable training material that would be classified in a universally understood way for easy retrieval. These reusable course elements are sometimes described as "learning objects." What's important about these reusable learning objects is that, by mixing and matching them, course developers could do a much better job of customizing learning for individuals, Brown says.



Just which of the standards bodies will do what to promote the new unified Web training standards isn't clear. But Don Johnson, director of the ADL Initiative and a staff member for the secretary of defense, says he would like to see the IMS take the lead on developing new specifications, the ADL become the testing organization for those specifications and the IEEE become a ratifier of the specifications. The role of the AICC is less clear, he says.



Buy now, pay later?

So should training managers who need learning management systems buy them now, when standards are in a state of flux, or wait until the dust settles? There are advocates on both sides of the issue.



Bob Sanregret, vice president of distance learning at Global Knowledge Network Inc., a Carey, N.C., provider of Web-based corporate training services, says his firm is itself an LMS customer caught up in the dilemma of whether to buy now or wait for the confusion to subside.



Although Sanregret favors buying now, others in his organization want to set up new learning management processes on existing systems as they wait to see what happens during the next 12 months. "My gut feeling is that if you wait a year to buy a learning management system, you'll know who the winner is and you can pick the right one, but you'll be a year behind some of your competitors," he says.



Sanregret is advocating a middle-ground solution for his firm: Buy a system now, but without spending too much money in case it doesn't use the WBT standard that eventually is adopted. "I'd put $500,000 down to buy a small version of whatever is the best system now. If we end up having to switch systems because of the way the standards come out, we will have lost $500,000 but gained a lot of experience about how to set up training and how to put the processes in place to assess people," he says.



But Sanregret concedes that not every company should be in a hurry to buy a learning management system. Big corporations such as General Motors or Ford might not be much affected by putting off the purchase for a year or so, he says. But an electronics manufacturer, such as Intel or Motorola, that constantly trains employees in fast-changing technologies might lose workers if it waited.



Others advise buyers to go ahead and purchase an LMS based on which vendor they believe to be the front-runner in the standards race. Alan Salisbury, a consultant and chair of e-learning firm Avilar Technologies Inc., recommends buying one that embraces the ADL initiative's work.



Salisbury believes the buying power of the Department of Defense could drive the adoption of ADL's SCORM specifications as the standard. "There's a lot of resources behind making that happen, and a lot of market potential for selling learning management systems to government agencies if it does," he says.



Ask the right questions

William McDonald, advanced computing technologist at FlightSafetyBoeing Training International, a joint venture of the aircraft manufacturer and a training firm, sympathizes with corporate buyers who are worried about the outcome of the Web-based training standardization battle.



McDonald, who chairs the AICC's independent test lab subcommittee, advises putting off LMS purchases for six to 12 months. If you can't delay the purchase, he says, you should ask some hard questions about a vendor's stance on standards , for example, whether the system is AICC certified, which guarantees a minimum level of interoperability between courseware and learning management systems. Half a dozen LMS vendors already subscribe to these minimal standards, he says.



In addition, ask vendors whether any of their employees participate in the standards-setting organizations, and which versions of the standards specifications their equipment will use. "If they don't know about the standards organizations, then they don't know what's going on," McDonald says.



Salisbury warns LMS purchasers to protect themselves by getting some promises from the vendor they choose to work with. "Ensure there is a commitment on the part of your vendor that, if a standard emerges, they will be compliant with it," he says.



Consultant Philip Dodds agrees. "Ask your vendor what their standards conformance plans are. If the answer is that they'll migrate you to a new standard, that's a good answer," says Dodds, who also is lead technical person for the ADL project and an adjunct staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded defense think tank in Arlington, Va. He says most of the vendors his organization has talked to are moving toward conformance with the standards being pushed by ADL.



Wayne Hodgins, a strategic futurist at Autodesk Inc. in San Rafael, Calif., says vendors should be able to talk about their "exit strategy," or their plan for migrating to a new system if new standards make their present learning management systems obsolete. "The exit strategy should explain how they will transfer their collection of content from one learning management system model to another while retaining as much of the customer's investment as possible," he says.



The hardest hit

But LMS buyers also face another consequence of the standards battle: how it will affect courseware developers.



Salisbury says third-party courseware developers could be affected even more than corporate training departments or LMS manufacturers. "Courseware developers face the biggest risk if they bet on the wrong standard. But they can't hold off on development for a year or they'll be out of the game," he says. As a result, he says, content developers need to design their products carefully so that, if their favorite standard doesn't win, they won't have to start over.



Norman Fraley is product line manager for distance learning at Kelly Scientific, a unit of temporary help firm Kelly Services of Troy, Mich., that generates courseware for internal and external use. Fraley says Kelly is taking a conservative approach by creating HTML-based courseware that can easily be ported to whatever the standard becomes. "I don't want to have to change from one standard to another if I guess wrong," he says.



But because HTML is the "plain vanilla" of training, Fraley says the content will be less interesting than it could be with standards in place. "That's because the eye candy and the bells and whistles we could have put into the content , things that could have increased the perceived value of the training experience , won't be there."



This tendency not to innovate could persist in the content community for some time, Fraley says, because it doesn't appear that the standards debate will be settled anytime soon. "If you assume there's going to be a single standard in a year, I think you're smoking something," Fraley says. "If you think there will be a single standard in two years, I'd say that's more likely."



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