Learning management part I: blue collar, white collar, and post-secondary

Mark Murrell

January 8, 2025

As I write this, it’s now 2025, which means I’ve officially been designing and building learning management systems for 25 years. Yes, I am old. A lot has changed in that time, and the current state of technology and Internet speeds lets us do things we never imagined possible back then, but many of the fundamentals haven’t really changed much.

We talk a lot about safety and general training best practices in this space, but I thought it would be useful to devote a couple of segments to learning management. It’s often hidden behind the scenes, an unseen helper or antagonist, but it’s a critical part of a successful training program.

When I first started designing learning management systems (LMS), the Internet was brand new and was just starting to allow significant numbers of people to be trained online in a short period. That meant that something was needed to track all that training. The LMS allowed for that tracking, but it quickly grew into something much more than just a log of activities. It soon started to develop in ways that were very specific to the environments in which it was being used, and those differences are now really distinct.

In trucking, we’ve reached a point where online training has become a standard tool. As we wrap up scoring for the 17th edition of Best Fleets to Drive For, we’ve seen that (for the first time ever) online training is now the default training delivery method.

With fleets getting increasingly serious about their online training activities, the LMS also becomes increasingly important. Understanding the elements of an LMS, and which types will work well or not work well in a given fleet, can be the difference between success and failure in online efforts.

For this series, I’m going to look at:

• The basics of learning management
• Why white collar, blue collar, and post-secondary systems are so different
• Why trucking needs a specific set of LMS features

The basics

At its core, an LMS has three main components – users, courses, and the activity of users in those courses. It’s basically a matching system, connecting users to courses and keeping track of what they do together.

Some systems are very simple, tracking only that a user completed a course on a specific date. Some are very granular, tracking every training element that a user views or engages with, how long they spend on each thing, every answer they submit, and geolocating them when they do it.

At the foundation, though, they’re matching users and courses, and tracking activity.

In the beginning, that was just fine. When systems had very few courses and a fixed number of users, there wasn’t much more to do. However, once course libraries started expanding, and the users interacting with training exploded, systems quickly evolved to be more powerful, but also more specific in use.

Instead of just tracking who did what when, they shifted focus to who should be or could be doing what, when it should happen, and whether or not it actually did.

One of the first commercially successful systems, Saba (now part of Cornerstone), tracked all the job roles in a company and the training requirements for each. As a result, it was easy to see what training people needed when they moved into a new position. Workers could also see what was required for jobs they aspired to, and get started working on it in advance.

That’s just one example, but it starts to highlight the differences between systems designed for different audiences.

White collar, blue collar, and post-secondary

Saba was a great example of a “white collar” LMS, a system designed for office workers and their specific education needs. Most off-the-shelf commercial LMS are designed for white collar audiences, but there are other audiences who have distinct needs as well.

When we compare those audiences, and the systems designed for them, it’s easy to see why some of them absolutely do not work in trucking.

White collar

In the white collar world, training tends to be self-directed or learner-led. Workers are thinking about their careers, what they need to do to advance, and how they can improve their skills to move up the corporate ladder. Systems designed to serve that audience have distinct characteristics:

• They assume people will spend time learning how to navigate the system, and seek out content they’re after. Interfaces have a lot more text explaining things, and there are tools for keeping notes, glossaries, indexes, and other things that are useful when users return regularly.
• All or most of the content is available for users to see and engage with. Search tools let people explore different courses and try them out if they want to.
• For things that aren’t immediately available, there are tools to request participation. Users can register for a physical course and initiate a workflow requesting approval from their manager.
• Content delivery assumes that users are tech-savvy, on newer computers with high speed connections, and accessing from a finite number of locations.
• Reporting is focused on who completed what, and tends to be more basic.

Blue collar

The blue collar world, in many ways, is the complete opposite. Training tends to be more regulated and compliance-based, rather than career-based and aspirational, so the focus is on getting it done, with as little hassle as possible. Systems designed for this audience have their own characteristics:

• The interface is much simpler and more direct, showing people only the things they need to complete their tasks.
• Since users are doing what they’re required to, not what they’re necessarily interested in, they may seek shortcuts or ways to cheat the system. Protections and limits may be required to ensure everyone does what they’re supposed to do.
• There may be renewal requirements, or other time constraints, so management needs more tools to see what deadlines are coming up, who’s expiring, whether they’re renewing, and various other related details.
• Outside entities may periodically audit or review activities, so tools for managing and demonstrating compliance are needed.
• Content delivery can’t make assumptions about the tech literacy of the audience, the quality of their computers or connections, or where they’re connecting from.

Post-secondary

The post-secondary world has its own characteristics, overlapping the above in some ways and completely different in others. While there’s an assumption that students want to participate in the learning to further their career options (like the white collar model), there are also strict requirements about what needs to be completed in order to graduate (similar to blue collar). Systems designed to serve this audience build on the core post-secondary assumptions with their own unique attributes:

• Education is instructor-led, rather than self-paced, with assignments given out and marked by professors, and taking place in a fixed period.
• Building on the old correspondence course model, content is heavily text-based with fewer interactive elements.
• Major assessment activities (like exams) are monitored or proctored to prevent cheating.
• Instructors may assign coursework and grade assignments, but don’t care whether or not participants submit, complete, or pass anything.
• Participants only see the content they’re registered for, and may be able to search out other options but won’t be able to access it without registering directly.
• Reporting tends to be more focused on registration (to balance workloads) and course completion. Proof of attendance and completion for students may be required occasionally, but it’s not a major element.
• Content delivery can require specific computer and network minimums.

Comparing the models

Comparing the three models, you can see that the main differences often come down to who cares most about what’s happening, and what it is they care about.

In the white collar and post-secondary models, the learner cares most and they want to capitalize on the opportunity.

In the blue collar model, on the other hand, management and outside auditors care most, and they need to ensure the learners are completing the right things at the right time.

Based on that, it’s easy to see why the white collar and post-secondary models don’t really work for trucking. There are certainly systems designed for white collar or post-secondary being used by fleets currently, but it’s a square-peg-round-hole and they’re rarely successful.

However, while trucking needs learning management designed for blue collar, that’s not enough on its own. There are many idiosyncracies of trucking that require a system specifically designed for the industry.

In part II we’ll dig into those things and see how what a trucking LMS really needs to do.