We’ve enhanced our freelancer onboarding and profiles

Jam Pan, the global online learning marketplace announces platform updates to improve freelancer onboarding and to help freelancers and agencies quickly and easily update their profiles.

Onboarding

The platform, which connects expert freelancers and agencies with businesses looking for creative learning solutions, has responded to user feedback to make the sign-up process quicker and easier for freelancers.

At the heart of the update is an improved user experience which simplifies sign-up to the platform. To start pitching for work freelancers need to provide a range of information — from contact details to skills. Without this information they cannot start bidding for work. The new sign-up process enables freelancers to quickly input all the required information and start bidding on work within a matter of minutes.

Profiles

Freelancer profiles have also been enhanced. Skills now automatically populate against the types of services freelancers select. They can then manually add further skills or delete ones that are not relevant. Jam Pan is built on the concept of skills matching. When a new opportunity is posted on the site, all registered freelancers with skills matching those in the job post are automatically notified. This means clients can be sure they are reaching the widest possible pool of talent for their job post. The simplified profile building process ensures freelancers feature the right skills.

Freelancers are now asked for their level of expertise — expert, intermediate or entry level — and for an hourly and daily rate. The aim of this development is to ensure consistency over rates in the bidding process.

Jam Pan founder David Wood comments, “Jam Pan prides itself on delivering the highest quality user experience for freelancers and clients. These updates represent the small enhancements our users have asked for in order to make the platform easier to use. These incremental changes will make a real difference as the volume of freelancers and live jobs increases.

The updates to the platform are the latest in a series of ongoing enhancements which include fee-based targeting of freelancers and agencies and skill testing. Jam Pan has also announced partnerships with Elucidat and gomo learning to provide freelancers with the opportunity to develop new skills.

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/weve-enhanced-our-freelancer-onboarding-and-profiles/

Hire a freelancer: they face far less obstacles to being productive

If ever there was an advert for using freelancers to support your corporate learning, then the State of Enterprise report is it.

The research, carried out by Workfront, asked 600 workers about how they manage work. It will come as no surprise that activities that block productivity take up more time than those that enable it.

Survey respondents were asked to give a best guess estimate for what percentage of the working week is taken up by the following tasks:

• Performing the primary duties of my job – 39% (down from 46% the previous year)
• Emails – 16%
• Useful and productive meetings – 11%
• Administrative tasks – 11%
• Wasteful meetings – 10%
• Interruptions for non-essential tasks – 8%
• Everything else – 5%

As you can see from the list, 45% of the working week is taken up managing email, administrative tasks, wasteful meetings and interruptions for non-essential tasks.

If you are in full-time employment, these productivity blockers will be all too familiar. And as we become more connected so employees will spend more time managing communication. The amount of the working week spent on email rose from 12% in 2015 to 16% this year.

Other obstacles to work include poor work prioritisation methods (28%), unexpected phone calls (21%) and lack of collaboration with team mates (20%).

Now let’s take a look at the work experience of a freelancer.

Many freelancers use platforms that help manage the process of finding jobs as well as the tasks and workflows required to complete the job. They also help manage payments and communication between them and the client.

Jam-Pan Freelance platforms, ours included, have been created to reduce the administration around finding and doing freelance work. This means that time is freed up for freelancers to get on with the work. This is the number one factor full-time employees said would help with their productivity – uninterrupted blocks of time to actually do the work.

Being outside of an environment that is blighted by so many interruptions also helps freelancers focus 100% on the task that is required. Again, the technology helps with what full time employees say is the second most important factor in  doing better work and that is more efficient work processes.

The technology platforms and project planning tools used by freelancers tend to be more advanced than those used by their employee counterparts, 11% of whom say their productivity would improve if they used more more advanced technology. And 70% either currently use or would like to use a project management tool.

What is common across employees and freelancers is that they want work that is rewarding. Maybe the environment matters and obstacles to productivity negatively affect how rewarding work feels. If that were the case, freelancers could well be the ones who find their work more rewarding.

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/hire-a-freelancer-they-face-far-less-obstacles-to-being-productive/

Freelancers: the key to helping reinvent the corporate learning function

The freelance economy is on the rise. Just this week two new reports reveal the extent to which the freelance – or gig economy – is growing. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that this independent workforce consists of 162 million people working across the US and most of Europe. That’s 30% of the working-age population.

This is consistent with data from the Freelancing in America: 2016 report that shows 35% of the US workforce is now freelance. The study shows that the number of freelancers in the US has grown by two million in the last two years, from 53 to 55 million workers.

The trend is not a surprising one considering technology has made it easier for freelancers to find work. The job market is also changing as it adapts to what this growing, on-demand talent pool can offer. Highly-skilled freelancers can be found and hired on-demand and at a fraction of the cost of employing a full-time equivalent. It is the ability to access skills on-demand that is helping organisations respond more quickly to rapidly changing markets and economic trends. That’s why platforms such as Upwork, Task Rabbit and Uber are so popular.

So what do these trends mean for UK businesses and in particular L&D teams?

According to the UK government’s Office for National Statistics, there are 4.7 million self-employed workers in the UK representing almost 15% of the total working population.

The good news is that many freelancers work in the creative sector and are highly-skilled specialists. We have seen this reflected in the broad range of skills now available on the Jam Pan platform – ranging from digital learning skills through to a wide range of digital creative skills – from film making and animation to app building. These are the skills that L&D teams are looking for as they shift focus to digital learning.

Jam Pan has seen a sharp rise in the number of freelancers and agencies signing up to the platform as well as a large increase in the number of jobs that are being posted by organisations. We currently have more than 50 live jobs that range from elearning development work, app development and games to LMS management and performance support. These jobs reflect the diversity of skills available. They also reflect a growing interest by the industry in hiring skills on demand.

But it doesn’t stop there. One recent client used the platform to bring in a range of on-demand skills that have helped reinvent a major part of their L&D function. How? Starting with some business analysis, the client was able to identify the business need, create a business plan and design and deliver a new approach to deliver compliance training.

This was followed by help in identifying all content assets and duplication, re-engineering the learning management system to be able to deliver a new learning experience and introducing a new authoring tool to enable the organisation to create and update content as required, thereby no longer relying on costly third parties for ongoing content support.

All of this work was carried out by highly-skilled, on-demand freelancers. The small in-house L&D team was able to continue its work and the head of L&D was able to re-engineer how a large part of his function worked at relatively low cost and quickly.

The key here is that this client was able to tap into skills that were not available within his team. The team could focus on the business whilst freelancers plugged the gaps.

And because freelancers have a wealth of experience working across a range of organisations and sectors they are able to provide insights into how others may have approached a similar challenge.

Platforms such as Jam Pan bring a much broader range of skills to L&D teams and this is set to grow as the freelance market grows. Could your L&D team benefit from this freelance talent pool?

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/freelancers-the-key-to-helping-reinvent-the-corporate-learning-function/

Elearning alert: time is running out to convert Flash to HTML5

By the end of this year, with the exception of 10 websites anyone surfing the web using the Chrome browser will not see content powered by Adobe Flash – such as such as video and animations. For a variety of reasons, including security concerns, Google is turning its back on Flash. This is significant because Chrome currently has 72.4% of the global browser market.

This is even more significant for businesses that have spent years developing elearning content in Flash. Although many internal IT systems still run browsers that support Flash, increasingly employees are accessing content on mobile devices which run newer browsers. The shift to HTML5 is a real headache for L&D teams that have invested heavily in Flash but it is inevitable if they want to promote mobile learning and/or Bring Your Own Device strategies.

The HTML5 standard supports all mobile devices and more recent browsers support it too. This means that you can build content once using HTML5 and CSS3 responsive web design and it will work seamlessly across all devices from desktop to tablets and phones.

But, as Blake Beus points out in Business 2 Community, there are real challenges in shifting to HTML5. “But what about those older legacy courses housed in the darker recesses of the LMS? Many of them are workhorses that are still an essential part of your employee onboarding strategy. You want to make sure today’s learners can access these courses from their mobile devices and browsers that don’t support Flash,” he says.

Beus suggests three approaches to converting Flash courses to HTML5:

1. Off the shelf solutions that provide a level of conversion.
2. Rapid conversion that keeps course content intact whilst updating it to HTML5. The caveat here is that more complex custom content will need to be reworked.
3. Finally, rebuild the content from scratch. This will be necessary with more complex content.

As Beus points out, each approach requires a different level of resourcing. Whichever approach you opt for, you will need to consider which content is most in need of updating, what exactly needs updating and then how to do it.

In her article, How To Make A Successful Migration From Flash To HTML5, Asha Pandey draws on her company’s experience of having already converted hundreds of hours of Flash into HTML5. She provides some excellent, practical tips on successfully converting Flash-based content.

For example, ensure your internal technology and processes can support HTML5. This includes browser support for HTML5, learning management system support for mobile learning solutions and updates to your security policy.

And understand the differences in the user experience as both technologies do differ. What worked in Flash may not work in the same way in HTML5.

Finally, Payndey suggests starting small and learning as you go. “Draw up the priority list of courses to be converted from Flash to HTML5. Begin the migration exercise by picking a small number of courses, migrate, and perform a user testing for the feedback. More significantly, assess if the impact you had envisioned is being created (that is, better learning experience for the learners),” she says.

Jam Pan is a global, On-Demand eLearning Services platform. For help migrating from Flash-based elearning to HTML5 contact: hello@jam-pan.com

More info: http://jam-pan.com/blog/elearning-alert-time-is-running-out-to-convert-flash-to-html5/

A Partnership Made in Mobile Heaven

The partnership provides freelance e-learning developers signed up to Jam Pan free extended access to the gomo learning content authoring tool. The aim is to enable freelancers to develop their gomo skills so that they can then pitch for the growing amount of gomo client work that is appearing on the Jam Pan platform.

Jam Pan founder David Wood comments: “The best way to support growing demand in newer technologies like gomo learning is to help our freelancers develop skills in those technologies. This is the aim our partnership with gomo.”

Wood says that these partnerships help the market in two ways: they help freelance e-learning developers to stay up to date with new skills and they help support the growth of newer content authoring technologies.

Once a freelancer has developed a new skill they can add it to the their profile. Jam Pan’s skills matching feature ensures freelancers are notified as soon as there is a client job requiring those skills.

Wood adds: “We want our large pool of talented freelancers to be in a position to pitch for work requiring new skills which is why we want to build these partnerships. We also want to support new learning technologies and continue to provide the widest range of technology skills and solutions for our clients. Putting the skills development of our freelancers at the heart of what we do is good news for our freelancers, technology companies and clients.”

Mike Alcock, Managing Director of gomo adds: “we’re winning lots of huge new contracts and the demand for gomo skills is increasing every week. This initiative with Jam Pan allows even more freelancers to get up to speed with gomo and make themselves available to meet the rising demand in the marketplace”.

Gomo is one of the world’s leading responsive HTML5 authoring tools and uniquely offers integrated hosting and analytics. gomo has been honoured with a Brandon Hall Gold award and is rated #1 in the world by industry guru Craig Weiss. gomo has been chosen by global organisations including the BBC, PWC, Nike, Volvo, KPMG, British Airways and many more.

Freelancers keen to get access to gomo learning should contact Jam Pan at: hello@jam-pan.com

Reference Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/a-partnership-made-in-mobile-heaven/

Freelancer versus Agency – What’s The Best Approach for eLearning Projects?

When it comes to outsourcing elearning design or development the complexity of the overall project is reduced to a simple choice. Do you hire a freelancer or an agency?

But that simple choice has important ramifications for the project and for some projects can be the difference between success and failure. So how can an L&D teams make the right choice?

As a global online marketplace for elearning services, Jam Pan has helped deliver a wide range of outsourced elearning projects produced by agencies and freelancers. From this experience we have gleaned some important insights into when to use a freelancer and when to use an agency.

When to hire a Freelancer

To build capacity

L&D teams, like any other team or department in a business, plan their workflows according to business need. However, there are plenty of occasions when an unexpected project requires urgent attention. At this point, do you jeopardize other projects or build capacity to ensure that urgent project is delivered on time without negatively affecting the team’s other work? Freelancers enable you to build capacity quickly.

For speed

These urgent, unplanned requests from the business tend to need immediate attention. By accessing trusted freelancers you will be able to fill jobs within hours. Some freelance requests are filled in minutes on Jam Pan.

For smaller jobs

Freelancers are a great option for smaller jobs that require a fast turnaround. That might be a new module on a course or developing content from a subject matter expert. The key here is to know the limits of a freelance job.

For a fresh perspective

Freelancers are used to working across a variety of organisations and therefore have a broader perspective on how elearning could be designed and delivered. They are also free from approaching the project in the way an internal team member might be expected to do the job. That means they can challenge mindsets and ‘the way things are done around here’.

To quality assure the work

Freelance elearning designers tend to be very experienced and are therefore well placed to look at a brief and question how it will be rolled out and what the success criteria will look like. Savvy L&D teams will involve freelancers in this evaluation of the work to ensure the brief is a success.

To support the learning design process

Finally, freelancers should be seen as playing a part in a process. They are not managing the process, simply fulfilling their role. This is important because it helps L&D teams focus on the role of the freelancer in the process of designing and delivering elearning. This typically involves them in developing content.

When to hire an Agency

The job needs project management

Once a project involves more than three subject matter experts it requires project management. At this point you should look to an agency to manage the work as it can bring in the design and development skills as well as project management skills.

The job is complex

Bigger elearning projects require a mix of skills which can be delivered by an agency. These jobs become a process in themselves and therefore require management, both on the agency side and the client side.

The job is likely to grow

Bigger elearning projects can grow as internal stakeholders start to see successes and that the agency approach is working. This can lead to projects becoming bigger as they develop. Agencies are better placed to fulfill these projects as they have the capacity and project management skills.

They are the only people who can do the job

Some elearning jobs don’t require an elearning solution at all. They may require an app or an animated film or a virtual reality experience. These specialist skills tend to be delivered by bespoke agencies.

The decision to hire a freelancer or agency requires a lot of thinking through and there are benefits to both.

However, our experience shows that despite the fact a freelancer might be the best option, organisations are not set up to use them effectively.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the freelance market is very fast-paced which means someone could be available in the morning but hired by the end of the day. So, you need to be in a position to hire someone and that means having a good brief that outlines the job, the timescales and the fee. This is the basis upon which a freelancer can make a decision to do the work or not.

The second reason is payment. Many organisations have payment terms that preclude freelancers from pitching for the work – 90-day payment, for example. Some organisations pay on completion of the project, which means a freelancer could wait for months before they are paid. In order for freelancers to consider working for you, you will need freelance friendly payment terms such as 30 days.

Currently, the jobs won on Jam Pan show that there is increasing interest in hiring freelancers. However, organisations must work harder to make their projects more attractive to them.

Agencies continue to win larger-scale, more complex work but the message from our data is that there is a bulk of quick-turnaround elearning work that is well suited to freelancers. The challenge for organisations is to know when to use them and how to be ready to use them.

About Jam Pan

Jam Pan is a global On-Demand eLearning Services Platform founded by David Wood in 2014. Jam Pan connects expert freelancers and agencies from around the world with businesses that need them.

Platforms like Jam Pan are transforming how business services are purchased. In finance, marketing, technology, HR and right across business, marketplaces offer customers greater choice, ease of buying, lower prices, faster delivery, more customer-focused terms and greater purchase security. http://www.jam-pan.com

Ref Link: http://www.jam-pan.com/blog/freelancer-versus-agency-whats-best-approach-elearning-projects/

Expatiating the Concept of e-Learning

Technology has opened several gates facilitating numerous opportunities for development and innovation in the variant verticals like education and corporate. In order to keep up with this development and advancement, it is necessary for the people working in organizations and students to deploy latest services and tools. This enables them to enhance their efficiency as well as productivity and stand out in a crowd. E-Learning is the latest technology that has taken the technical industry by storm.  It is a method by which the people are trained via internet. This may include seminars, presentations, and training classes and so on. All the activities come under the umbrella term-E-Learning which is facilitated with the help of leading e-Learning agency like.

Arenas Where E-Learning Is Employed

 
With the help of its flexible methodology, e-Learning solutions are the most preferred technology for extending training to students and employees in various organizations. These two sectors form the basic platform where e-learning is used. 

The picture of education sector is undergoing a lot of changes and improvement. The traditional learning has taken the backseat and is being succeeded by E-Learning. Since more and more people look forward to learn beyond the confinement of classrooms, the traditional learning is becoming a thing of the past. The innovative field of E-learning is gaining popularity with each passing day and thus is becoming the first choice of students.

As discussed earlier, the area of E-Learning is not just limited to education sector. If we talk about corporate sector, it is spreading its roots in this domain as well. The organizations look for employees who have enhanced skill-set and thus strive to train their employees at regular intervals of time. The organizations conduct various seminars, sessions, presentations, etc. via E-Learning projects.

Advantages of E-Learning over Traditional Learning

If we talk about differences between traditional learning and e-learning, you will find a lot of them. Let us just have a look at few of them:

• Whilst traditional learning demands the learners to be available physically at the place of training, there is no such requirement for eLearning Freelancers. The learners can get the training in the comfort of their homes and offices.
• As compared to traditional learning, E-Learning makes training easy as it includes spreadsheets, graphics, animations which not only makes learning fun but also helps the learners to learn things faster.In E-Learning the learners can ask their queries in forums where other learners also post their queries. This gives them a chance to learn about different things from varied perspectives.

Things to Take Care of

 

• Whilst E-Learning is very efficient learning platform, there are a few things which need to be kept in mind. They are:Since E-learning completely depends on the instructor, it becomes necessary to getting training from experienced ones, which are efficient and talented. This can only be done by getting in contact with a reputed E-Learning agency.
• Since the assessment is not done in the physical presence of the students, it gets necessary to have an authentic assessment of the learners in tests and examinations.

Conclusion

Whilst there are several E-Learning projects that can be subscribed, the ladder to success is in their authenticity and their level of academic excellence. More information to visit our website:

Ref Link: http://articles.abilogic.com/165088/expatiating-concept-learning.html