FOCUS Learning Corporation

Traditionally, companies organize day-long workshops to provide corporate training programs to their employees. But today, companies around the world prefer to conduct their training programs virtually. They are adopting online learning programs in a networked environment, with modern corporate learning management systems excelling at educating and developing learners. By 2023, the global eLearning market is anticipated to earn a price tag of 23.2 billion dollars. It is widely used by companies of all sizes, national government agencies, local governments, consulting firms, traditional learning and online education institutions for various internal and external enterprise applications, including partner training, compliance training, customer training, employee onboarding, and employee development and retention.

Needless to say, organizations will need a competent Learning Management System (LMS) to provide quality eLearning courses that optimize workplace performance, but the adoption is not without a few hurdles. Organizations must consider the challenges associated with deploying an LMS to the business, such as poor usability and customer support. However, an often overlooked and critical hurtle is not the LMS itself, but the training it delivers.

Most trainers will agree that effective workforce training should focus directly on the job tasks being performed. The typical LMS is a delivery system, not associated with the design of the training it delivers. But, what if the LMS is connected directly to a performance-based design foundation that links job tasks precisely to the knowledge required to perform them? As specialist in performance-based instructional design methods, FOCUS Learning Corporation steps in make this happen. The result is the VISION Learning and Performance Support System, a powerful instructional design platform with its own seamlessly integrated LMS.

For decades, the San Luis Obispo, CA-based FOCUS Learning has provided a comprehensive performance-based instructional systems platform to enterprise training organzations operating in high consequence industries such as nuclear power plants, Department of Energy facilities, and commercial airlines worldwide.

Our learning platform identifies the essential connections between the tasks the learner performs, and all of the instructional components necessary to fully train each one of them. These connections are the essential ingredient to the quality training demanded by regulated, high consequence industries

The company’s proprietary Learning and Performance Support system called “VISION” is based on the principles of performance-based training. It provides the functions that FOCUS clients need to analyze jobs, and design, develop and maintain a workforce training system foundation (database) based precisely on the job tasks. The integrated LMS is capable of delivering exactly the right training, exams and qualification solutions for individual workers based on their tasks, training history, exam results and other essential factors.

VISION’s origins date back to the early 90s, and now reflects decades of best practices to ensure that user organizations can meet the highest standards for workforce training and qualification. “Our learning platform identifies the essential connections between the tasks the learner performs and all of the instructional components necessary to fully train and assess each one of them. These connections are the essential ingredient to the quality training demanded by regulated, high consequence industries” states, Gary Sprague, President and Co-Founder of FOCUS. Since no existing LMS could generate materials from the VISION database, FOCUS created its own.

But the FOCUS LMS has another unique capability: it can act as “middleware”, connecting the power of the instructional design foundation in VISION to any enterprise LMS. VISION Connect “teams up” with the customer’s existing LMS, enabling it to launch training, exams, qualification checklists and more, directly from the instructional design foundation in VISION, and record the results. There is no need for an organization to abandon its current LMS to get the benefits of precise, performance-based training.

“Now we’re looking at the non-regulated industries after years of refining VISION for the regulated industries. We believe we have a product that can be used by any enterprise that wants to develop training that is performance-based, sustainable, and more automated,” says Sprague.