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"Chatty LMS Syndrome"? Or Less is More?

  • April 22, 2024
  • 6 replies
  • 101 views

dklinger
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I have always been worried about a system that is too chatty.

When I came to work for my current org? I found that the one largest learning system instance had a user enrolled notification was essentially set on full blast with all courses triggering notifications (that I eventually helped to shut down). To many it felt horrible, if you enrolled yourself, you got an email. If someone else enrolled you? You got an email. If the course was part of a learning plan?? A person got two or more emails. Working at places 10X the size of where I am currently at makes me know that larger organizations dont stand for it and will even cap system notifications if they seem like they are being spoofed.

IMHO - that's not the way to configure things. I truly believe in the mantra that “less is more”. It is more powerful when you deploy targeted notifications to campaigns and onboarding programs. This paired with protecting the function of a manager to have an option to deploy a notification to only their team about courses they enrolled their staff into.

IMHO - this is not a set and forget configuration. People do and will talk about your system implementation. They let others know. And having email after email go out about system activity related to it can be nearly scary.

But I also know that there can be two sides to the story. How do yawl do it? Set it and forget it? Configure it at the branch level????? Or it depends? 

I ask to only gain perspective.

Best answer by lrnlab

It always depends on the course, audience, stakeholder requirements and so on...we have some notifs that are “set it and forget it” for standard offerings but when it comes to special projects and initiatives, we usually create a custom set and control it in a way to minimize the amount of ‘spam’. For example, when a project is based on mainly learning plans, we usually opt not to send notifs for the courses inside the LP, but only for the LP itself. That said, if the courses in the LP are shared (available for individual enrolment) and where thee courses are set to send notifs on enrolment, we will sometimes create custom versions of those courses only for the LP and add equivalencies where applicable so as not to send emails for those pre-existing courses in the LP...does that make sense?

6 replies

lrnlab
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  • Hero III
  • Answer
  • April 22, 2024

It always depends on the course, audience, stakeholder requirements and so on...we have some notifs that are “set it and forget it” for standard offerings but when it comes to special projects and initiatives, we usually create a custom set and control it in a way to minimize the amount of ‘spam’. For example, when a project is based on mainly learning plans, we usually opt not to send notifs for the courses inside the LP, but only for the LP itself. That said, if the courses in the LP are shared (available for individual enrolment) and where thee courses are set to send notifs on enrolment, we will sometimes create custom versions of those courses only for the LP and add equivalencies where applicable so as not to send emails for those pre-existing courses in the LP...does that make sense?


dklinger
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  • Author
  • Hero III
  • April 22, 2024

That said, if the courses in the LP are shared (available for individual enrolment) and where the courses are set to send notifs on enrolment, we will sometimes create custom versions of those courses only for the LP and add equivalencies where applicable so as not to send emails for those pre-existing courses in the LP...does that make sense?

Yeap. It totally does. I think you are bringing to the table the wisdom that we usually measure by - depending on the content/audience/stakeholder requirements triplet. There are a few nuances in each bucket that get into the next level of detail as well that we look at, but having it fire off all the time...I think is a no-no.


lrnlab
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  • Hero III
  • April 22, 2024

Hopefully we’ll see some much needed improvements to notifications soon...


dklinger
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  • Author
  • Hero III
  • April 22, 2024

I hear that the notifications queue is coming along.


lrnlab
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  • Hero III
  • April 22, 2024

any improvements are welcome...lol!


JKolodner
Helper III
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  • Helper III
  • January 20, 2025

We are implementing digest notifications shortly which we expect will help a bit, especially with the LP/course enrollment notifications. Of course, we can’t wait to see the new notifications engine, but it’s TBD.