“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”- Alvin Toffler.

We live in an era of constant technological advancements and unlimited access to information at our finger tips. This also puts everyone in a constant learning mode for various needs – to keep up the challenges at work, to provide pertinent services to today’s clients who are much more demanding and informed, for the sheer joy of learning, to bridge the generation gap (!!), to leverage the power of emerging technologies and trends in business, to gain entry into new arenas, to adapt to unfamiliar spaces and surroundings, to increase efficiency and productivity at work …. The list is endless.Ignorance is just not an excuse in this age where the mantra clearly is continuous dynamic learning. Not just schools and colleges, but individuals and organizations are also forced to prepare learning strategies today to keep themselves equipped with necessary skills for demands at work /elsewhere. This move towards life-long learning is what has really skyrocketed the demand for and popularity of eLearning Solutions – which give you the freedom, power and flexibility to move away from conventional learning methods and embrace the new style of self motivated, self paced learning.At iridium Interactive, we have been championing this paradigm shift in learning since our inception and have, over the years, developed customized learning solutions on a variety of disciplines. Be it the K-12 segment, or induction programmes , soft skill development or livelihood trainings, our solutions have time and again proven the effectiveness of eLearning.

Our competency requirements are diversifying/growing too… we are working on a variety of technologies to be in tandem with the technological pace and realized the need to have a platform where employees could keep themselves constantly updated on a continuous learning mode. This brought up an opportunity for us to delve deep into the various approaches to eLearning yet again.

About the different approaches to e-learning

A comprehensive approach to e-learning uses the technology in an iterative way for the overall educational development. Of late, the importance of customized e-learning content that supports business objectives and improves customer satisfaction is gaining a larger importance. Custom content development processes have a very unique set of objectives, requirements, and constraints that meet AICC and SCORM standards at all levels and are very flexible. Over the years, e-learning approaches have been changing to provide highly interactive learning activity. These can be looked from 3 different perspectives and can be categorized accordingly.

1. Vendor/Hosted Model: In a vendor/hostel model, the application vendor hosts, manages and upgrades the application throughout its lifecycle and provides it you out of its datacenters. In this arrangement, the vendor is responsible for installation, integration and maintenance of the application and any supporting software and hardware, which makes it easy for the customer to purchase and get a level of tracking on content usage and completion. The provider will only be responsible for the price of the service, typically per user or per transaction. Advantages of this model include simplicity and ease of implemention . But the disadvantage is that the customer is restricted to purchase and use only content offered by the provider.

2. Directory Service of Packages for download: This model aims to facilitate multi-vendor searches in solving the problems of reusing and finding the content. Its goal is to produce small, reusable SCORM conformant packages relevant to the learning situation. The only downside of this model is the consumer must understand the vendor’s technical abilities, which is highly impossible in majority of the cases.

3. Content Portal: Content Management in Portals are catching up well these days where content is aggregated from a number of providers and making it available from a single location to meet the needs. Content creation and the delivery process have become critical in providing a robust and scalable solution for the learning process. Content portals reduce the time and keep the costs under control.
On a closer look the main challenges that drive the need for change in the learning process are:
1. Significant resources for the separate procurement of LMS and content
2. Purchasing process of the learning-content needs
3. Renewal of the licenses
4. Integrating the LMS with content providers
5. Content communication with the LMS
6. Network issues because of traffic
7. Routine management with multiple content sources
8. Security challenges with firewalls
All these challenges are be taken into consideration to keep one updated with the latest trends in the learning process.
Content Portal model is something that caught our attention for the qualitative features it offers. Deliberately looking into this model and customizing it according to our specific learning needs gave rise to ‘The Disciple’ – a new age Learning Management System.

About The Disciple

The Disciple is a Learning Management System (LMS) designed specifically for internal use of our employees – for delivering, distributing and managing training materials over the internet. It facilitates access to interactive learning content to anyone at any time and place and caters services to educational, administrative and deployment requirements.
The Disciple is designed for the key attributes of the approaches of elearning which overcomes many tribulations in the old learning process and provides a greater flexibility to the new systems based on the content model which enhances the agility, relevance and responsiveness of the learning organization and in turn fosters interoperability, reusability and portability of the learning materials.

The Disciple has empowereed the HR & training department with efficient management and enterprise wide delivery of training and learning solutions. The LMS has enabled us to easily upload SCORM compliant courses,centralize learning content and make it available to our employees.The disciples ,including those who “love to learn but hate to be taught” are now able to learn at their own pace, in their own style and continuously assess their progress. The disciple is compliant with industry standards and regulations and also allows to track the progress of employees throughout the training cycle .Efficient reporting capabilities are provided in a convenient interface.

The Disciple has all the advanced features of a Learning Management portal and provides full-featured access to managers, instructors and students for immediate error correction making it the most reliable and accessible LMS in terms of standards. The employees and managers are extensively and effectively using this for updating competencies of varied nature-technical, functional as well as behavioural.

We firmly believe that the full potential of elearning can be realized by constantly incorporating technological advancements and innovative approaches in development, deployment and management into our learning solutions. And this is what we have been practising all long – for the internal as well as external customers of eLearning-to ensure a learning process with involvement from the disciples.

“Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand”.

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