SharePoint LMS

In my blog this week I am going to talk about how your existing SharePoint can be used to successfully manage all your learning needs, but first a bit about my week.

It’s been a strange week; becoming a ‘sort of’ Grandad, burying my cat, seeing the Villa in the relegation zone and putting my house up for sale. My step-daughter gave birth to a smashing baby named Edward at the weekend so a tiny Villa romper suit has been ordered. The Villa at least managed a draw against their local rivals so they are out of the drop zone for at least one week. Now after several days of tidying and rearranging furniture there is a sign outside my house saying ‘For Sale’. I expect the neighbours are now worrying who will be moving in next-door to them.

Getting the house ready for the taking of 'suitable pictures' for the property brochure was a challenge and made me realise the importance of a good management system. How it is important to be able to hide ornaments and paperwork etc but still be able to find them when needed. How the use of strategically arranged flowers can hide chips in walls and how borrowed mirrors can make a room look bigger. Good management is vital and it helps when the woman in your life has a flair for interior design. It is not just selling houses or getting a team out of the relegation zone that requires good management it is also important to manage your company’s (or organisation’s) learning and development correctly. You have probably heard of the term LMS (Learning Management System) this is a way of keeping track of your internal training courses and any other form of learning that your employees (or maybe students) take part in. It allows management to have reports on all areas of training and even catalogue the courses available.

So where does SharePoint fit into LMS? 

There is a fairly basic SharePoint Learning Kit available known as the SLK. This SharePoint Learning Kit is a SCORM 2004 certified e-learning delivery and tracking application built as a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solution. It works with either Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (There is currently a beta version out that works with SharePoint 2010). There are a couple of third party products that take the SLK and make it into a very functional full Learning Management System. Allowing you to create and incorporate E-Learning courses, mark and grade these courses, links information with other systems like SAP or PeopleSoft, assign courses and learning material via job title, set conditional prerequisites and many advanced features.

Although there are other SharePoint Learning Management Systems we at Office Talk recommend, resell and support the award winning Share Knowledge. To find out more about ShareKnowledge and more importantly get to play with it visit our website now. http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=170. 

ShareKnowledge extends the capabilities of the SharePoint Learning Kit to provide the ultimate Learning / Training Management System. It is proving popular worldwide in both the corporate and academic sectors. It is just one way in which SharePoint can be adapted to replace other expensive business systems and help companies through these difficult financial times.

So that is one way of managing learning and now hopefully Gerard Houiller will manage to get Villa out of this fine mess.

Whilst I have been writing this post Villa have bid a staggering £18 million for top goal-scoring striker Darren Bent. Hope it goes through and he’s plays against money-bags Man City on Saturday tea-time. 

If Villa can pay £18,000,000 for a footballer then surely I can find somebody to pay £140,000 for my house?

So I dedicate this week’s SharePoint blog to baby Edward and hope he has a great and healthy life (with a tint of claret and blue, of course!).