Sydney, Australia – What a magnificent day it was as B Online Learning kicked off its Insight Conference to celebrate its 10 year birthday!
The client exclusive affair was held at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, with a gorgeous backdrop of blue skies, water and sunshine.
With our valued partners in tow, we sat down for a great day discussing a whole raft of online learning and development opportunities including: building online communities, creating learning solutions, building learning eco-systems, setting goals and creating the right look and feel for any eLearning project.
It was also exciting to have eLearning ‘rockstars’ Tom Kuhlmann and David Anderson from Articulate, to share their knowledge and experience with a room eager for conversation and collaboration.
The day kicked off with our very own Ruth McElhone (Learning Director for B Online Learning) taking on MC duties to keep the day moving, and ensuring plenty of opportunities for questions and knowledge sharing. Ruth introduced our first speaker of the day was Tom Kuhlmann, Vice President, Articulate, sharing with us his experiences about How to Make Community Part of Your Training.
Tom stressed that community is all about sharing, if you want to encourage it you need to share the knowledge. That’s one of the underlying reasons that the E-learning Heroes community works so well, whether it is sharing advice, examples or downloads.
Tom went on to discuss how community is also made up of two groups: Participators and Gleaners. Participators want a sense of belonging and connection. To provide that as a community manager you need to affirm, encourage, recognise and reward them. The Gleaners are after convenience; they want quick access to resources and information to help them solve a problem. As a Community Manager we need to make community easy for them to find things, self-serve as required, and get back to their day to day jobs; don’t expect them to hang around. If we can create an easy mechanism for the gleaners to find things, chances are they will be back, hang around and spread the word to others. Who knows? They may become participators or attract new participators for you. That’s how community grows!
Ruth had some great key messages for attendees during her talk. She kicked off with the statement that learning is NOT a onetime event. Learning needs to be reinforced through other channels. It’s more than an 8 hour workshop, or a 1 hour online module, you need an ecosystem that ensures that your learning environment is an interactive self – sustaining system. The ecosystem can be made up of talent management, performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking & collaboration and structured learning.
The great news about an ecosystem is that you don’t necessarily need to have all six components! Even 2-3 of them if done well, are enough to establish a functional and efficient learning ecosystem. Ruth went on to give an example of an ecosystem by breaking down B Online Learning’s Master E-Learning Course, which embodies the concept of an ecosystem in its design.
We then got really ‘hands on’, and conference participants created a design map for the VIVID Festival that was kicking off in Sydney that night!
Our last two events of the day, started with our expert Q&A panel made up of Tom Kuhlmann, John Kouzaba, Chris Rankin and Ben Saunders, B Online Learning’s own Solutions Manager. MC’d again by Ruth, our experts answered questions from the attendees about eLearning, learning solutions and their experiences. The session also had a fantastic discussion around innovation, and what it means to our industry, its impacts and what changes we might possibly see over the next 3-5 years.
Our final session of the day was hosted by Ben Saunders and Belinda Wetenhall, eLearning Specialist & Trainer, Blackmores. Their presentation Blackmores – A Successful Learning Model Across Multiple Channels discussed how Blackmores implement and manage learning, across all four of their main learning channels. The presentation also discussed how they use the B Online Learning LMS to successfully manage multiple entry points for their learners, and provide a customised experience for each of their four primary audiences.
The key message that came out of the presentation was that to a user, the LMS should be simple, quick and easy to use.
Belinda and Ben also shared with attendees the types of graphical reporting that can be pulled out of the LMS, with reports taken over multiple courses, time and by different groups of users, making the reporting extensive, but above all, easy!
That brought our Insight Conference to a close, with attendees discussing excitedly the opportunities and learnings the day had provided.
With the day itself coming to a close and the VIVID festival starting to kick in, the celebration was by no means over! Attendees and the team from B Online, moved onto The Terrace at the Australian National Maritime Museum to enjoy an opportunity to mingle and celebrate all that B Online has achieved over the past 10 years with the clients, team and partners that made it possible.
A BIG thank you to all our supporters who have been with us on this journey, and we look forward to continuing the journey with you as we move into our next ten years and beyond!
Happy 10th Birthday B Online Learning!
Sydney, Australia – B Online Learning are pleased to announce we have won the 
