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It seems like everything gets the 2.0 moniker these days. From accounting 2.0 to Web 2.0 to office productivity 2.0, it’s a veritable second coming. Another 2.0 title joins the fray in the form of training 2.0.

Litmos in an on-demand training delivery offering that aims to make it easy to both create online training courses but also to deliver them and track the progress of trainees. In a constrained economy good training is an important tool to both building productivity and often to retaining staff – it is towards easing the training hurdle that Litmos’ offering is directed.

Training course creation

Litmos has several ways to build training courses. First course creators can upload existing presentation, Litmos supports the major presentation formats (.ppt, .odp and .pdf). Once core materials are uploaded, course administrators can build complete training courses using the online editor which supports video and audio files, allowing for the creation of media rich and attention retaining training courses.

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No training course is complete without assessment and Litmos allows for a range of assessment options including multi-choice, keyword, and essay style questions to test trainees’ understanding of the course content.

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Training course delivery

Of course there is little point in creating a SaaS tool and the expecting users to revert to traditional method to delivery its output. Litmos also includes a delivery offering. Trainees see their own personalised screen which shows both training to complete and already completed training

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Administrators can choose which parts of the training course are delivered to which trainees. As the trainees start completing course work Litmos provides reports based on several metrics, time taken, number of attempts, score and completion or otherwise.

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Summary

Distance learning is a big market and as companies respond to a tight labour market and uncertain times by looking further afield for employees, distance learning will grow in importance. Litmos looks like a good offering, I like the way it creates a friendly opportunity for trainers to create nicely presented training materials.

It does however seem to be a fairly static offering, there is not yet any real ability for trainees and trainers to communicate via the training material. It would be nice to see an online meeting type window were trainers and trainees could talk/IM/email. Similarly the reporting functions could have ability to push out real time alerts to trainers.

The Litmos crew tells me that this sort of functionality is on the cards – it’ll be good to see them roll it out – as it stand Litmos is a solid offering but nothing that one couldn’t replicate in other, non specialist offerings – more training-centric functionality will help them carve their own niche.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • Cheers for the review Ben,

    Yes, a messaging platform and alert system will be rolling out within the next few weeks.

    With the core training essentials covered in an easy-to-use way, the improved communication features will make Litmos a unique training experience.

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