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eLearning Alliance Survey
Historically, we have run our survey annually, but with change now a common feature of our industry, we will be keeping our survey open at all times.   As your eLearning needs change, let us know via the online survey, and we will update the reports to reflect these ongoing changes.  Complete the survey today (and again in the future) here.
 
Recent News:
Aurion Learning Appoint New Instructional Designer
Bringing with him a wealth of technical and educational experience Aurion Learning have appointed Ciarán Friel as Instructional Designer.  Ciarán joins from Liverpool Community Health Trust, where he was an eLearning Systems Developer. Ciarán has also held a number of positions within the educational and training sector over the past 12 years.

World of Learning 2015 Seek Conference Speakers
World of Learning have announced its 'call for speakers' for its 2015 Conference.  This year’s event is being held at Birmingham’s NEC on the 29th & 30th September.  Event organisers are seeking speakers from across L&D who can provide insights and knowledge on case studies. More ...

Association for Learning Technology Annual Survey Findings
The first report from the ALT 2014 Annual Survey has been published, identifing the priorities for the ALT membership as ‘Intelligent use of learning technology’ and ‘Research and practice’, while ‘Online/blended delivery’ and ‘Course design’ remain key areas of work.  The survey reveals a number of emerging areas including ‘Data and Analytics’ and ‘Open Education’.  More ...

Market News
On the corporate front, Totara have launched version 2.7 of their LMS, Docebo have raised $3m to fund further expansion in UK and US, whilst SABA have confirmed that they have been bought by Vector Capital in a deal worth $268m. More market news from eLearningNow.
 
Upcoming Events:
Synergy Learning Webinar – Multi-tenancy
How do you make it possible for different parts of an organisation to access some, but not all, of a Learning Management System (LMS)?  The answer: a multi-tenancy LMS.

In this free webinar on 26th March, Synergy Learning will draw on real life examples using Totara LMS to achieve multi-tenancy, exploring how to allow different organisations and departments within a large enterprise to have their own identity in the LMS.

University of Glasgow, Learning & Teaching conference - 'Learning and Teaching in a Changing Environment'
The Conference will be of interest to all members of the higher education community with an interest in teaching, learning and assessment, and will be open to a limited number of external delegates.
 
OER15 Conference - ‘Mainstreaming Open Education’ 
This year’s Open Education Conference (OER15) will take place at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.  It is one of a series of conferences which discuss research and practice in the adoption of Open Education in all sectors of Education and Training.  The conference runs on 14th & 15th April 2015

Opening Educational Practices in Scotland Advisory forum
The next forum meeting is being held on Thursday 19th March 2015 at the Stirling Court Hotel, University of Stirling.  The forum encourages you to explore the latest developments in open educational practice and pedagogy.  Highlights of this free one day face to face event include a keynote by Laura Czerniewicz, an update on OEPS project progress and a series of interactive workshops during the afternoon.
The next eLearning Alliance Members Meeting is scheduled to take place in Edinburgh on Friday 24th April, whilst we will be running a workshop (Getting Started with eLearning) on 20th May, also in Edinburgh.  Further information on these events (and an Aberdeen based Members Meeting Meeting) will be published once venues are confirmed.
 
eLearning Stories from Across the Web:
A Typology of Web 2.0 Learning Technologies
Macquarie University present the outcomes of a typological analysis of Web 2.0 learning technologies, covering a comprehensive review (including over two thousand links) which led to identification of 212 Web 2.0 technologies that were suitable for learning and teaching purposes.  The analysis resulted in identifying 37 types of Web 2.0 technologies that were arranged into 14 clusters.

Results of this study show there's a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools available, but, perhaps, they've yet to be fully harnessed by learning designers and practitioners.

eLearning as Good as Traditional Training for Health Professionals
A review commissioned by the World Health Organisation and carried out by Imperial College London researchers concludes that eLearning is likely to be as effective as traditional methods for training health professionals.

The Imperial team, led by Dr Josip Car, carried out a review of the scientific literature to evaluate the effectiveness of eLearning for undergraduate health professional education.  The findings, drawn from a total of 108 studies, showed students acquire knowledge and skills through online and offline eLearning as well as or better than they do through traditional teaching.  The authors suggest combining eLearning with traditional teaching might be more suitable for healthcare training than courses that rely fully on eLearning because of the need to acquire practical skills.

Why We Badge 
The potential of digital badges often eludes funders, administrators, partners, and the educators, learners, and staff.  But it’s a pretty reasonable question, “why badge?”.  This article gives a straightforward history of badges at the Mouse Project in New York.

The Modern L&D Dept requires other skills than instructional design 
Jane Hart talks about instructional design, but how in the workplace we don’t just learn from instruction, i.e. by being taught in classroom training or online courses. We learn in many different ways – from information, from working with our teams as well as through our own experiences in doing our jobs.  In fact most of the way we learn in the workplace happens in these non-taught ways.

Interview with Clive Shepherd -
Clive Shephard talks about his recently launched, More Than Blended Learning project.

Are Your Staff Ready to Learn Online? 
When three out of five L&D staff report that learners are failing to engage, should we be asking if our workforce is ready for online learning?  Laura Overton shares 6 questions we can ask before going online, along with crowdsourced suggestions that will help to improve our approach and impact.