Fredrickson Communications eZine - December 2009

by Site Admin,

In this edition of the Fredrickson eZine . . .

Happy Holidays

by Lola Fredrickson, CEO
Fredrickson Communications

On behalf of the owners and all the employees of Fredrickson Communications, we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season and a prosperous beginning to 2010.

I know most of us will remember 2009 for the very difficult economic times that we’ve all had to face. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve managed to pull through and I hope that we all find better times ahead in 2010.

I hope everyone can take the time to be with family and friends and to enjoy the season. Happy holidays!

Lola Fredrickson

How Do We Improve the Learner Experience of LMS’s?

by John Wooden, Director of Usability Services
Fredrickson Communications

Corporate learning management systems do not appear very often in usability research literature. True, there’s been plenty of discussion of the issues that often arise during LMS implementations, especially as administrators try to integrate various types of content. (Fredrickson technical architect Monique Benson addressed these issues in an earlier article on our site.) But the end user (the learner rather than the administrator or instructor) experience of these applications has not been a high priority. This needs to change if the promise of these tools is ever to be realized. I don’t mean to suggest that vendors haven’t made improvements over the years, but more remains to be done.

As a client of ours explained in an email to me, “LMS’s are designed for learning professionals and not for mainstream learners. There’s a real need to make them more usable for the learners.” I agree completely. So what can be done about it?

Read more. . .