KeyNotes Blog

Wednesday Jan 25, 2012

Feedback from KeyStone user

By: Robert Hodges

“I recommend KeyStone's LMS System to all of my clients; it provides outstanding out of the box trainings that minimize IT/HRs trainings, and trainings can seamlessly be captured and published on demand. An easy user interface ensure adoptions from your business teams- allowing for a means knowledge capture and collaboration.”

- Lisa M. Chipetine, PMP, President, QC Consulting, LLC 

This was a testimonial one of our sales representatives recently received. We are always excited to receive feedback from our customers, and one of the things I love about KeyStone is that our users are as passionate about our products as we are. We value their opinions, and it is encouraging to hear how KeyStone OnDemand is making a difference in the lives of those using it.

As Ms. Chipetine pointed out, our platform integrates into your HR/IT training techniques by providing a real-time OnDemand solution for your training needs. Our product makes it easier for you to focus on higher priorities by enabling you the opportunity to create short articles and videos on common tasks that acquire many questions.

We are always excited to hear how KeyStone products are working for our users, so be sure to let us know your feedback or questions at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Monday Nov 14, 2011

Support your school district’s Office 2010 migration

By: Robert Hodges

Part 3: Support your school district’s Office 2010 migration with Office 2010 Training in KeyStone OnDemand

In Part 1, I spoke a little about Office 2010 Training as a key element for a successful Office 2010 Migration.  Part 2 focused on helpdesk and support integration to provide support for those common day-to-day problems, even including custom “how to” training for the unique challenges you face in your district or school.  Today, I wanted to wrap up with some overall best practices for your Office 2010 migration support.

Best practices for Office 2010 migration support:

1.  To maintain productivity and avoid overloading your support teams, it is critical to include an effective Office 2010 Training program (like KeyStone OnDemand) in your rollout.  Not only will you increase productivity with Office 2010’s powerful tools, but you will see a drastic reduction in end-user support.  An effective training program must provide real-time results to educators, allowing them to get the answers they need when they need them.  In addition, it should provide comprehensive coverage, tracking all progress and results for continuing education and professional development.  

2.  Communication is a big part of change management.  It’s a good idea to develop a rollout plan that includes emails and/or other communication to help educators see the value in why you are migrating.  Explain the benefits of moving to Office 2010, talk about the time-saving new features, and show them how easy it is to learn to use the new features available to them.  Ironically, educators can be one of the toughest crowds when it comes to training... make sure you show them the value of both the new software (e.g. Office 2010) and the training from the beginning to mitigate this challenge. KeyStone OnDemand includes a workflow feature for automated follow up so you can set up a communication plan and schedule it all at once.  In addition, KeyStone provides a number of services, including kick-off webinars, to assist you with adoption.

3.  One size does not fit everyone.  The ability to address the ongoing day-to-day challenges unique to your environment will both reduce your overall support burden and increase adoption of the training, allowing your teams more time to focus on critical support and giving educators more time to spend with students.  With KeyStone OnDemand, you can easily capture and share articles and videos.  Whether a a quick “how to...” or a complete custom course for professional development, you can create custom content and share it district-wide.  Build your own knowledge base and share best practices.  

Best of luck with your Office 2010 migration.  Whether you are in full swing or planning a future roll out, give us a call anytime with questions and we’ll be happy to help.

Monday Oct 31, 2011

Now that you have your written outline, build your course

Implementing the course outline in the CourseBuilder

In a previous post, we discussed where to begin when authoring a course: create a course purpose, course objectives, an outline and an introduction.

Now, we will discuss how, once you follow the above steps, you can use the outline you created to build the course.

In KeyStone OnDemand, you have the ability to create an outline in the CourseBuilder before you officially add the content. The image below shows you an example of a new course outline in the CourseBuilder. You can use the written outline you created to form this outline. Keep in mind that this outline can be edited and the names can be changed at any time. So while this outline will help with organizing your content, it does not have to be the final form.

The CourseBuilder allows you to add a name and place for an article, quiz or video without actually adding the item itself. It is our suggestion you do so, then you know exactly where you will be placing all your content. Once you have created the outline, you can search for content you have already created to place in the course. If you create content after you create the course, you can assign the content to that course while you are creating it.

As you can see, building a course in KeyStone OnDemand is simple, especially if you take a few minutes to prepare a course outline.

Wednesday Jul 27, 2011

Are you filling in the related solutions field?

When you add content to your KeyStone OnDemand account, like writing an article or making screencasts, it’s easy to stop once you’ve entered your descriptions and added a title.

But, don’t forget to use the Additional Info panel on the right. When you click the Keywords, Related Content, Attach Files… link, a secondary panel is displayed.

Once displayed, enter the IDs of any content already stored inside KeyStone OnDemand.

Not sure where to find the IDs?

Each piece of content is assigned a unique ID when it’s first created. That ID is displayed in your browser’s Address Bar when you view it.

It’s that ID that you place in the Related Content field when you’re editing an article or video.

This is a great way to connect your training content without having to create an actual course. We see clients using this field to link from an text-based article directly to a video that demonstrates the same or a similar topic and vice versa.

Wednesday Jul 20, 2011

Create a course and a category at the same time

As you go through the KeyStone OnDemand training courses, you’ll notice that we have a recurring theme: First create the category, then create the course.

It’s a method we find works pretty well for most administrators, especially when you’re first getting started. You see, it’s helpful to define your content structure before you define your content.

But, once you get the hang of create content and organizing it inside KeyStone OnDemand, you can jump right to creating a course and a new category at the same time.

To start, click the Add New button on the Menu bar and then choose Course.

As you fill in the course details, under “To What Category Should This Course Belong?” enable the first option, “Create a new category called:” and type the new category name in the text box.