LMS Launch Happens in 11 More Sleeps

Wow, I really can't believe that the day has finally come. It's been delayed countless times since Fall 2007 for one reason or another and now in 7 short business days (including today) it will be here in all it's glory.





(image retrieved from: Nasa http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts121/launch/index.html, Sept 10, 2009)

I speak of our (MY) LMS. It's mine now. I've lost much of my sight peering deeply into my computer monitors over the last many months tweaking the system, finding faults, fixing and testing. I'm alone on my side of the project, but the overall launch has much to do with the great help I eventually received through the vendor to get the system just right. Once I had one true contact on the vendor's side things really begin rolling and we come to where we are now. A system that I think will suit our needs very well as we boldly step into the new Millennium. (Oh right we've been here for a while.)

I know it won't meet all our needs. Health care training is complicated. I'm finding that staffing alone is complicated and knowing who is responsible for which nurse is not as easy as you might think. However, it will do what we need it to do for an initial system. It will test our staff to see how willing they are to train using this method, it will push some of our more seasoned staff to try new things, it will force us to look at this entire need in a much different light and perspective.

My launch plan currently is to continue to test over the next few days (there are some minor glitches still occurring). I'm conducting 10 webinars for the management team members all next week so that they may get a look at the system. They have not yet seen any piece of the tool. Flyers will be distributed electronically and posted on our message boards for staff to see. I will be hosting 30 minute drop-in sessions on the launch day all day for staff to come and see what it looks like. Finally, I'll be in our main lobby the days following the launch over the lunch time shifts with several laptops so that staff may demo the system as I sit there.

Future plans will be some greater hands on training with educators and trainers that will need to create courses, track students, etc. I'm also anticipating that there will be a need to do some hands on training with staff to get them comfortable with using the system. I may deploy this as after hours webinars so that staff may look at it from their own homes. The only issue here is that we don't yet have a home access solution yet, but I talked to the right people on the right day and have the powers-that-be (IT Dept) looking at an extranet solution.

So I haven't written much in a while here, but I think you may see why now. I've been scrambling madly to get everything working, populated, piloted and ready to go. I'll continue to post on my experiences over the next few weeks as my "years' work" begins to come to a close and a new phase begins.

LMS Project Finally Begins (Day 1 part 1)

Tuesday was our first meeting with our LMS vendor regarding how we as an organization are going to develop and rollout our new intranet, content management system and LMS. Several key project leads from each of the three components were present and the fact that we will be the core group through out the entire project is apparently a key success factor. If the people at the first meeting are also the key representatives that will be there for the entire project process then this will ensure motivation among members, approval point people don't change, and synergy will continue through to completion.

The first part of our day consisted of going over a bit of a timeline that we hope will work out for the project. We are working with a guide of a 16 week rollout. Wow! That's great....(let's see what happens).

• Weeks 1-4 site structure development, staff databases created, some training
• Weeks 5-8 will see interface development/layout and beginning configuration
• Weeks 8-9 will have train the trainer and deployment to admin users
• Weeks 10-12 data migration will begin (docs, policies, etc)
• Weeks 13-14 final testing and Q&A
• Weeks 15-16 sign off by admin users and roll out to staff

Looks tight, but achievable if everyone does their part. So our meetings for the remainder of the day were broken into 3 parts:
Content Management - The Intranet
Document Management - our Policies and Procedures
LMS - our elearning management system