Category: Blogs

As 2024 draws to a close, we thought it would be a good chance to retrospect, dig into the innovations that enhanced Skill Lake, and explore this amazing journey you’ve all been a part of. 

We’re wrapping up this year with unique product updates and feature enhancements that can maximize the impact of learning and development in your organization. In this comprehensive round-up, we’ll look at Skill Lake 2024 product updates. 

AI Course Builder: Create Courses on the Fly

One of the most remarkable updates from the Skill Lake learning management system this year is the new AI course builder. Content managers using Skill Lake can now harness the power of AI to create and publish courses in minutes. 

The AI course generator facilitates clear, structured planning of course outlines and content. Before publishing the AI-generated course, you can review the entire course content to organize your ideas and ensure comprehensive coverage of topics.

Integrations to Support User Onboarding

To help users get started with our platform quickly, we’ve implemented the following integrations:

• Azure AD Integration: With the Microsoft Azure AD integration, Skill Lake assists you in automatically provisioning relevant applications for new hires as part of the onboarding process.
• MS Entra SSO Integration: Now, you can log into Skill Lake with your Microsoft credentials and access the LMS seamlessly without entering separate login credentials. 
• Google SSO Integration: Instead of typing in your login credentials every time you access Skill Lake, Google Single Sign-On (SSO) gives you instant access to the platform. Skill Lake supports Google SSO on both web and mobile. 

Course Bundling

To ensure better convenience and significant cost savings for our customers, we’ve introduced course bundling in Skill Lake this year. 

A course bundle allows you to group multiple online (self-paced) courses and instructor-led courses into a single enrollment package. Currently, we offer the ability to add up to 60+ courses as part of a course bundle. 

Make Self-Paced Courses Available Outside Skill Lake

You can now offer self-paced eLearning courses outside the Skill Lake LMS and accept course enrollments. This helps expand the reach of your learning programs and initiatives. 

Instructor-Led Courses

Here are the new capabilities we have introduced to enhance your instructor-led courses in Skill Lake:

• Publish Internal Batches: Within your organization, you can create and publish internal learning batches (groups) and allow employees to self-enroll in them.
• Make Batches Available Externally: You can now make the learning batches available outside of Skill Lake (to non Skill Lake users) and accept batch enrollments.
• Batch Enrollments: Learners can browse the available instructor-led course batches on Skill Lake and enroll to any of the batches instantly through mobile. 

Create and Manage Performance Review Forms

You can now create and manage performance review forms using Skill Lake to assess your learners’ performance. 

Within the performance review form, you can add and manage rating scales to assess different aspects related to training performance.   

Performance Management Features for All LMS Users 

Skill Lake users belonging to different levels of the organizational hierarchy—such as HR leaders, team managers, learners (employees), course moderators—can now benefit from a suite of performance management features offered by our platform. 

• HR Teams: HR leaders can create and manage learning performance reviews for the entire organization, departments, or individuals. HR managers can configure whether they want to calculate the performance review rating. They can also reopen performance reviews that have been closed to make further assessments.  
• Team Managers: Team managers (reporting managers) in your organization can evaluate the learning performance of their team members (employees). Skill Lake also allows them to view each team member’s self-rating, manager rating, and overall rating as part of the performance review.   
• Employees (Learners): Employees can now submit their self-evaluation on Skill Lake as part of their performance assessment process. They can view their self-rated, manager-rated, and overall rating in Skill Lake. Employees can also see their performance review as a feedback journal entry.
• Moderators: Moderators responsible for managing performance assessments in your organization can use Skill Lake to support the process and close reviews on time.
• Email Notifications: Skill Lake now helps you get notified at each stage of the performance review process through email notifications. 

Gather Course Feedback

Content managers (course admins) can now create and manage feedback forms for each course delivered through Skill Lake. As a content manager, you can enable feedback forms for courses assigned to your learners.

Learners, in turn, can use the feedback forms to share their response on the courses they’ve completed. Learners can access the course feedback form on web or mobile.

Enhanced Reports

The newly updated Reports feature in Skill Lake allows content managers/ mentors/ course administrators to get a quick summary of every report they want to see. The reports enriched with visualizations and snapshots aid better decision-making. 

Content managers can use the Reports feature to evaluate the responses shared by learners through course feedback.  

Assign and Earn Course Credits

As a content manager, you can now assign credits for courses in Skill Lake. Learners can earn these credits by completing the courses assigned to them. 

Course Snippets

Course snippets in Skill Lake are designed to give your learners a preview of the course content that best relates to their specific search. A recent update allows content managers to customize course snippets, and Skill Lake supports this feature on both web and mobile. 

Content managers can:

• Upload images and videos as part of course snippets
• Import (share) external content to Skill Lake as snippets

Learners can watch videos from within a course snippet. 

Assign To-Do List

Skill Lake now allows content managers and course administrators to assign courses to their team members as a “to-do” list. 

Mentors can help learners prioritize or organize their task items as To-Dos. Learners can access their to-do list by visiting Skill Lake’s web or mobile application. 

Share Announcements

Using Skill Lake, course admins can share general announcements with the entire organization/ specific learning groups. 

Learners can view all the announcements shared with them individually or with their learning group/ team. 

Language Support: Switch Your LMS Language to Hindi

All users of Skill Lake can now select between Hindi and English as the language of the LMS. When you choose Hindi as your learning language, you help us show your content and course materials in Hindi.  

The language-switching ability in Skill Lake ensures that learners can better understand and engage with the course materials in their own language. It results in improved learning outcomes.

User Interface and Tech Stack Upgrades

Skill Lake has undergone a complete technology stack upgrade this year. The changes have reinforced the LMS platform’s efficiency, reliability, security, scalability, and maintainability. 

Moreover, we have revised the color theme and improved the overall content readability to make Skill Lake more user-friendly and intuitive for everyone.

Global Search for Faster Content Discovery

The Skill Lake LMS now offers a Global Search feature to help users easily discover courses and learning materials. 

With the new search option, learners can quickly find the learning resources available on the platform that are related to what they seek. 

 

 

Wrapping Up

2024 has been a phenomenal year of transformations for Skill Lake. From AI-based course creator to course bundling and customized snippets for learners, we have implemented a suite of product updates to supercharge your learning programs and training outcomes. 

As more organizations and educational institutions transition to virtual learning, we’re committed to helping you stay up-to-date with the latest educational trends and provide the best online learning experience for your learners, from anywhere, on any device. Here’s to another year of collaborative growth and success!