Typical Learning Management Systems are run by a very small, centralized group of administrators to procure and distribute training to their learners. With the rise of social media, new ideas for democratizing learning have come as a great method for broadening the range of content and decentralizing information within organizations. Through a comprehensive series of client interviews, a common thread of opportunities emerged along these lines. Administrators wanted Learners to be able to share their expertise and knowledge with one another directly, allowing a community to serve itself more independently from the admin.

In a complex work environment, crucial documents can get lost in the dark corners of niche programs/apps. Therefore blending learner contributions with admin content could serve as a centralized repository.

An open-ended forum feature with teams and chat integrations for instant-messaging was determined to be the foundation of building more social communities. Users can be members of any number of communities, with the ability to browse historical content within them, or aggregated within their activity feed for easy access. Promoting mentorship opportunities using these tools would serve to disseminate information from experts and promote leader opportunities.

Communities of Practice

This categorization was simplest to define as a collection of users with a shared goal by contributing helpful insights, resources and practical advice to advance the understanding of a specific topic. Our solution was to focus discussion around specific courses, with the ability to both embed the collaboration within the course itself, or as a standalone related to it.

Users can easily start a post with as little or robust amount of content necessary to get their point across, bucketed into a Collaboration community.

Communities of Interest

This was a concept derived to cover broader topics than what might fit within the context of a course, allowing learners to educate one another on related topics that might extend far beyond a course's completion for meaningful updates and findings. Individual 'Collaborations' would serve as thematic hubs of activity for learners to browse and participate in.

Finding the Best from the Rest

A number of quality-of-life features were added to posts to more easily surface quality content, including a like feature to gauge interest, a one-click share link option, bookmarking useful content, and a question variant.

Question formats allow for a more hierarchical perspective to content. Features like upvoting surface the quality responses to the original author, who can then nominate the best answer. Along with an 'answered' tag on the post summary, these features help to fast-track users looking for the best solution to commonly asked questions.

Iterating on Early Feedback

After release, a series of controlled usertests were conducted to highlight painpoints in the journey from posting to consuming content in a controlled test portal. Following the findings, a number of features/fixes were added, including:

• A more central, inline create post mechanism that was easier to find

• Embedded collaborations directly within courses, rather than the initial weak link between pages

• Social profile previews + direct messaging for different avenues of private discussion

• Tools for reporting inappropriate content and cheating in lieu of more detailed moderation