Lambda Solutions e-Learning 2.0 Online Training and Moodle Experts

Vancouver, BC, Aug 10, 2009 - Lambda Solutions has announced today that it has received official Partner Status from Moodle Pty Ltd., creators of the Moodle.org Open-Source Learning Management System (LMS).
 
Moodle Partners, according to their website, are “a group of service companies guided by the core developers of Moodle”. Lambda Solutions will be added to a list of over 40 other Moodle-partnered eLearning organizations, which span over 30 countries.

As a Moodle Partner, Lambda Solutions will receive endorsement from the Moodle community as a reputable Moodle Services provider. The partnership will also give Lambda access to Moodle’s internal Business and Technical resources, including core Moodle Developers.
 
“We are happy to receive Moodle Partnership status and to be recognized as one of the top Full Service Moodle companies in North America,” said Jonathan Rand, Lambda’s VP of Marketing. “Lambda Solutions has become synonymous with providing the Highest Quality Moodle Services and being an authorized partner will allow us to expand our operations throughout Canada and the United States”.

About Lambda Solutions
Lambda Solutions provides a wide range of e-Learning services, including online course creation as well as Moodle (LMS) provisioning, support and training. Lambda Solutions has worked with a variety of Corporations, Government Organizations and Educational Institutions throughout North America, including PMC-Sierra, Kumon, Rogers, Vancity, BC Hydro, UBC, SFU and the governments of Alberta and British Columbia. The company was founded in 2002 and is based out of Vancouver, Canada. For more information, visit www.lambdasolutions.net.

About Moodle
Moodle is an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) and eLearning platform, which allows users to create and administer interactive online courses. The Moodle software is web-based and free for registration, use and customization. Moodle was created in 1999 with a “Social Constructionist Pedagogy”, which emphasizes that both students and teachers should contribute to knowledge creation. It has grown to become the most popular eLearning platform of its kind, with over 2 million courses and 24 million users in over 200 countries. For more information, visit www.moodle.com.

TRADES TRAINING GOES ONLINE
First E-PPRENTICE Programs Announced

VANCOUVER – BCcampus, on behalf of the Industry Training Authority (ITA), today announced the successful proponents of a recent RFP to design, develop and implement two flexible learning (FL) trades programs for cooking and welding as part of the new E-PPRENTICE initiative.

“Today’s announcement is an important first step in the rollout of the E-PPRENTICE flexible learning program,” said Kevin Evans, Chief Executive Officer of the ITA. “We are very pleased with the talent and skill brought to the table by these successful proponents and look forward to the online product they will deliver to students across the province. Our goal is to make sure quality trades training is available to as many apprentices and employers as possible, to encourage more to get involved in and ultimately complete apprenticeship programs.”

The E-PPRENTICE program for professional cooking will be led by Camosun College, while development of the online welder program will be led by the Piping Industry Apprenticeship Board (PIAB) United Association (UA) Training Centre and Lambda Solutions, a B.C. eLearning company.

The professional cook and welder E-PPRENTICE programs will provide students with an integrated, community-based approach to flexible learning. Learners will be supported by their employer, instructor, and peers throughout the program. Weaving together workplace and technical training the model uses face-to-face and online teaching and learning.
The online structure of the program gives students flexibility and convenience, allowing them to stay in their home communities and work in their chosen trade during much of their studies.

“Camosun has assembled a broad and diverse team of educational and industry partners to build this new program. Along with partners Northern Lights College and Okanagan College, four expert chefs will assist in program development, and their contribution will make sure our course material is of the highest possible quality and relevance to the industry,” said Liz Ashton, recently retired President of Camosun College. “Our eLearning partners – Desire2Learn and eTraffic Solutions – will provide the interactive media content necessary to enhance our students’ educational experience.”
“Our team is excited and truly committed to ensuring that this project will be successful and that BC’s students receive an outstanding E-PPRENTICE option for the welding professionals,” said Al Phillips, Executive Director of the Piping Industry Apprenticeship Board (PIAB). “We will leverage the considerable e-learning expertise of our partner Lambda Solutions, existing course material, templates, and assets, as well as public training providers in order to deliver this project in the most efficient manner possible. Experience from prior assignments will allow our project team to kick-start this initiative, accelerate project time-lines, and not reinvent the wheel.”

Design for the two E-PPRENTICE programs will begin immediately with courses available for student entry by early 2010.

A second call for proposals to develop further flexible trades programs will occur in two phases. An Expression of Interest is scheduled to be released in July to assess the interest of various industry partners, associations and training providers. Following this, a mixer event is scheduled in late August to connect new media and e-learning companies with the training institutions and industry associations. In September the second RFP is scheduled to be released. The E-PPRENTICE trades included in that RFP will be announced at that time.

A request to design, develop and implement a flexible millwright program was not awarded and will be re-issued with the next round of RFPs.

ITA manages BC’s trades training system and works collaboratively with industry, training providers, labour unions, government and other stakeholders to provide career development opportunities for individual British Columbians. BCcampus is responsible for leading and coordinating the new E-PPRENTICE program on behalf of ITA.

Funding for E-PPRENTICE is provided by the Industry Training Authority, through the Labour Market Agreement between the Governments of British Columbia and Canada.

DOWNLOAD PDF

Vancouver, B.C., June 9, 2009 - Lambda Solutions, providers of exceptional e-learning products and expertise, has forged an alliance with ERAC, (Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium) a consortium of public school districts. An agreement was reached earlier this week to deliver School Safety Orientation for New Employees, an Online Course for new and existing staff to 194 school districts in BC.

ERAC’s Janet Gregory explained, “Lambda’s school safety course was a great fit based on Worksafe BC’s requirement that every new employee of a school district complete a course of this nature prior to commencing their employment with the school district.”

“Lambda Solutions has created an effective and concise method of delivering this course to employees. The web-hosted online course is divided into a number of modules which employees can complete at their own pace. Their progress is recorded and submitted to the employer once the employee has completed the course.”

“We are extremely excited to form an alliance with ERAC, who will now be able to provide our excellent Safety Orientation course to it’s extensive network of members in a cooperative buying program, explained Jonathan Rand Lambda’s Director of Sales and Marketing.”

School Districts in BC who would like to participate in the Program can contact ERAC or Lambda Solutions for details.  

About ERAC

ERAC is a consortium of BC public school districts and independent schools that cooperate on software, textbook, video and learning resource evaluations and purchases. The goal of ERAC is to reduce the amount of time school and school district staff spend evaluating, selecting, negotiating and purchasing software, textbooks, videos and learning resources. The company is operated under the umbrella of the Vancouver School Board and is funded by The Ministry of Education and independent schools, which pay an annual fee to remain members of ERAC. For more information visit, www.bcerac.ca.

About Lambda Solutions

Lambda Solutions provides a wide range of e-Learning services, including online course creation as well as Moodle (LMS) provisioning, support and training. Lambda Solutions has worked with a variety of Corporations, Government Organizations and Educational Institutions throughout North America, including PMC-Sierra, Kumon, Rogers, Vancity, BC Hydro, UBC, SFU and the governments of Alberta and British Columbia. The company was founded in 2002 and is based out of Vancouver, Canada.

BCcampus has been using Lambda support services for over 3 years, to help enable Moodle support for their university clients such as Kwantlen University College. Because of the quick response times and excellence in customer service BCcampus  has chosen to use Lambda to provide a hosting environment for institutions to rapidly deploy new applications for evaluation purposes.  The first trial application is Drupal with expectations of additional applications to be added some time in December.

Lambda Solutions is pleased to announce Decision Lens as our new customer. Decision Lens has decided to launch an online course to show its users how to user Decision Lens Web.

Decision Lens Web is a full-featured, collaborative application that provides a rich and interactive decision framework for better decision making.

The project aims to provide learners a clear understanding of Decision Lens Web as well as the ability to communicate to their co-workers the value of Decision Lens Web.

Lambda Solutions is pleased to announce BC Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) has decided to explore the possibilities of e-Learning strategy with the help of Lambda.

Lambda Solutions was selected through a competitive bidding process to facilitate and create a comprehensive e-Learning strategy in partnership with LDB.
Through out the four sessions Lambda Solutions helped:

• Determine LDB goals, values and culture
• Educate on the current e-Learning structure
• Determine how e-Learning would support key business drivers
• Outline risk factors and mitigations strategies

The outcome was an e-Learning best practices strategy for the LDB and its stakeholders.
The LDB, under the authority of the Liquor Distribution Act, has the sole right to purchase beverage alcohol, both in and out of British Columbia, in accordance with the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (Canada). The LDB is responsible for the importation, distribution and retailing of beverage alcohol in British Columbia. The LDB operates approximately 200 government liquor stores throughout the province; two distribution centres, one in Vancouver and one in Kamloops; and a head office facility in Vancouver. The LDB also authorizes the sale of liquor in rural communities by Rural Agency Stores.

If your organization is trying to lower budget, provide more efficient, easily track able training system, or just want to get a clue on what e-Learning is, don't hesitate to give us a call.

Howard Wu
Director of Marketing and Communications
Lambda Solutions

A recent contract with ACL illustrates our on-going commitment to serve our clientele with the most appropriate methodology in online training. ACL (Business Assurance Analytics) works closely with the internal and external audit communities to provide monitoring and analytic technology solutions required to assess data integrity and transaction compliance. Fiona Van Antwerp, Director of Sales Operations was kind enough to answer our questions.

What business need did ACL have to meet by using rapid eLearning development?

Our challenge was based on the fact that there was only one trainer with a sales group of 70 people. Sales employees were being hired at different times and couldn't really wait for a classroom-training course to be offered. We also had a great deal of content to communicate and yet still needed our content experts, who were being used to facilitate in the classroom back on the operation side. We found that eLearning allowed our new employees and existing employees the flexibility they needed to learn at their own pace. We also needed to have a means to test our employees to ensure that they did the training and that they could apply the content.

Was the content considered time-sensitive?

Yes, both in terms of new content that we had to deliver and also because we hired people based on organizational needs at differing times during the year so it had to get to them in a timely way.

Did you rely on using a Subject Matter Expert (SME's) to produce the content for the course?

Yes, we did and as a result of using a rapid eLearning approach we could better utilize our SME's time. Efficiencies are created in terms of producing online training and in putting our experts back into the operational side of the business as quickly as possible.

How much sitting time would an employee take in going through the course/module?

Half an hour has been the general rule with content created into smaller logical modules.

Was the content originally created in PowerPoint slides?

Yes it was because our SME's used Power-Point to deliver the content.

Before

After

How quickly was Lambda able to turn your projects around?

Once the template was created, we have been able to use it again and again for subsequent courses. Our sales reps are now familiar with the layout of our courses, which means that they can access new information more rapidly.

We found that as a result of using the rapid eLearning approach that we are spending roughly a third of the time from start to finish. That means all members of the team including content creation from the SME, Lambda development time and our administration are roughly cut by a full third.

That does not mean that all courses are cookie cutter and certainly we do different activities for each course, but the instructional design is pre-done and that's the aspect that I like.

Company name:

Vancity

Location:

Primarily Lower Mainland

Industry:

Financial Services

Motivation:

To increase accessibility to information/learning; to reduce carbon footprint

Date Initiative started:

Type of users:

Primarily account managers who work within our retail branches.

Biggest obstacle to increasing usage:

Motivation, as a stand-alone program it wouldn't have much impact

A cohort program was built around the eLearning course to blend high tech with high touch. The 12 week program allowed employees to do some work on their own (but completion of the course was broken down for them week by week) and share their learnings through web collaboration (regular meetings through virtual classroom - Microsoft LiveMeeting). Observational coaching from an expert was included and ensured that the behaviours were encouraged through ongoing performance feedback and coaching from their manager. Finally, the course linked to online FAQs and other reference tools.

Lambda recently delivered an on-line training course to Kumon (Reading and math after school learning centers). In order to maximize face-to-face training for franchisees across North America, Kumon needed to replace one of the existing sections of their training currently presented in-person (using PowerPoint), with an interactive, self-paced online course.

Using Lambda ClearView technology, we repurposed an hour and a half session into an online course and will host it so that learners can login via a secure site, complete the course and take all necessary tests. Learners will be able to choose subjects independently from the table of contents (pictured below) in between the two-four day sessions.

This online course represents a first for Kumon, North America and was designed to be a highly interactive hosted course with an ability to easily update course content as needed. According to our Director of Client Relations, Jason McIvor, "Kumon wants to put a solid first step forward and see what they can do with online learning. The fact that they chose Lambda Solutions to guide them through this process is pretty exciting."

Background: Vancity needed a way to capture their knowledge capital and standardize product knowledge for staff.

Lambda developed online training modules that standardized their product training. Moodle was helpful in conducting employee pre and post-tests so that they would be directed to specific lessons most appropriate for their learning needs.

Our Newsletter editor asked Simon Fulber and his team the following questions about how the course, Building your Personal Financial Acumen has been received by employees.

It is always critical for a company to do follow-up evaluation and assessment on the products they produce. We wanted to learn how Vancity has adapted to using Moodle and to learn generally how the course was received by employees.

Have you received any verbal feedback or post-course evaluations on the course? If you could summarize the comments, what are the negative and positive remarks?

As the course belonged to part of a larger program, it was identified as the most valuable component by staff. Layout, easy to navigate, design (both visual and breakdown of content) as well as interactive features such as Activities and Tips seemed to resonate with our participants.

Difficulties around Log In process, Computer Requirements (resolution), and Navigation (links sometimes had to be double clicked to access) were mentioned, but were very minor and could be dealt with once participants spoke to our team of Field Trainers. In terms of Admin, other than minor glitches, the only challenging component is the Marking Scheme or Logic with Quizzes.

What was the process of developing the course like for your team?

Collaborating with Lambda Solutions on our Building Your Personal Financial Acumen program has been a very educational and effective experience for our whole team. From the Design, Development and Project Management perspective, Lambda was very flexible and adaptive to our needs. For some members of the team, this was their first eLearning project. I can safely say that it was a positive experience and Lambda staff really provided assistance, support and learning that will prove invaluable!

Has the course been easy to maintain thus far?

Overall, the course has been fairly easy to maintain and the members from Lambda have been very helpful when we have needed to figure things out. They have always made themselves available and have responded to all our questions and requests.

Have you been able to define a Return-on-investment (ROI) from this course?

At this point, we have not yet calculated an ROI on the program. We have been using the Building Your Personal Financial Acumen program as of last September and while we have some data that will formulate our ROI, we are not yet comfortable to share results.