Not one but two learning management systems (LMS) success stories have just emerged – from the broadcasting as well as the oil and gas industries.

For the last three years, the e-learning consultancy Core Learning Services (CLS) has been working with Global Radio (GR) – the UK’s premier commercial radio company – to host Global Radio’s LMS solution for developing health and safety e-learning materials to its staff.

Jonathan Barker, the Head of Health and Safety at GR – the home of such well known radio brands as Heart, Capital and Classic FM – explained: “We’re a national company and have 21 regional radio stations. These radio stations employ a large number of people to deliver various marketing and promotional services to the radio stations’ listeners – often on behalf of advertisers and sponsors. Many of these people we employ are on ‘casual contracts’ and we tend to experience, in some instances, quite a high ‘turnover’ among these casual workers. Nonetheless – or, perhaps, particularly because of this – we must provide them with immediate and effective job related training, especially in health and safety subjects.

“Moreover, because of the ‘casual’ nature of their employment coupled to the fact that they are nationally dispersed working anywhere in the broadcast region, it’s not always possible to get a group of them together to go on a classroom-delivered training course as soon as they join Global Radio,” he continued.

So, some three years ago, realising that ITV had used a similar training solution for production staff and had overcome these issues by introducing e-learning for its staff, GR did the same thing, asking Course-Source to host the LMS.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen Drilling Consultants Ltd, (ADC Virtual Academy) a training company with facilities in Aberdeen, and which serves the petroleum industry worldwide, is now co-ordinating its supply of training via the Absorb LMS supplied by Omniplex. Omniplex is also providing ADC Virtual Academy with special training not only in how to operate the LMS but also in how ADC staff can train their clients to administer and interrogate the LMS.

ADC Virtual Academy designs and delivers operationally relevant training courses and produces related technical manuals and documentation for the petroleum industry worldwide. Each year, the company trains some 1,000 people all over the world in the theoretical and practical aspects of understanding drilling equipment and well pressure control for drilling to ensuring – through in-house and externally-validated assessment processes – that they are ready for field operations using specific equipment and systems.

“In addition to technical proficiency, trainees need to understand health and safety as well as environment issues associated with their activities,” said Douglas Hay, the Managing Director of ADC Virtual Academy. “This makes it extremely important that we have an able and efficient learning management system (LMS) to not only make these courses available to learners but also to monitor the learners’ usage of the materials and assess their progress.”

Omniplex’s Stephen Miller explained: “We’re finding that Absorb LMS is continuing to gain new clients who’re migrating from legacy systems because of the way in which Absorb LMS evolves to match the client’s unique workflow – rather than forcing the client to adapt to the LMS.”

Comment: ADC Virtual Academy seems to be bucking the trend by not using the cloud but, instead, putting the LMS on its own servers. However, this may be the result of its particular needs – to ensure its clients and their employees comply with industry regulations.

Nonetheless, in addition to LMS vendors and resellers, industry experts keep saying – witness Clive Shepherd, Donald H Taylor and Nigel Paine in Rome recently – that the LMS is very far from being dead.