Mzinga Unveils Industry-Changing Social Learning Suite

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mzinga (http://www.mzinga.com/pr/), the leader in on-demand social software solutions for marketing, customer support, and learning, today announced the immediate availability of the industry's first true collaborative learning solution — The Mzinga Social Learning Suite. Designed to bridge the gap between prescribed learning and the social knowledge sharing that is essential to developing talent and improving job performance, the Mzinga Social Learning Suite ushers in a new era of collaborative blended learning never before seen in enterprise technologies.

“Social software is disrupting traditional approaches to learning, and we’ve described the emergence of a social learning platform in our research,” said Carol Rozwell, VP, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc. “The business value that’s facilitated through this type of solution is the ability to learn by example, discuss options with peers who have more experience, and to more readily access just in time snippets of learning. In short, social learning more closely mirrors the way people really work and learn, so the potential impact to the overall learner experience is very significant.”

The Mzinga Social Learning Suite incorporates a broad range of social technologies into Mzinga’s existing learning development, delivery, and management tools, further amplifying the value of formal learning curricula and also allowing users to interact and share information of their own. The result is a rich, unified learning environment that lets employees, customers, and partners connect with peers, access prescribed learning courses, share resources and expertise, and benefit from the feedback and ideas of others.

“We’re ecstatic about bringing this pioneering solution to market today,” said Rick Faulk, Mzinga’s Chief Executive Officer. “We know, and a host of research supports it, that the 80% of learning that truly improves how people do their jobs is not captured in traditional learning systems. Our new Social Learning Suite now makes that possible, which will improve the entire spectrum of corporate learning functions, from recruiting & on-boarding to talent development and retention.”

Mzinga Learning with Embedded Social Media & Networking

With this release, Mzinga’s award-winning, web-based learning management system (LMS) now includes the following capabilities:

• Blogs enable multiple subject matter experts to self-publish articles within the learning environment in two forms—as a complementary enhancement to prescribed learning courses, or as a standalone communication vehicle for sharing information on other topics. Both forms include user commenting and author avatars that link to social profiles.
• Discussions allow learners to engage in online conversations directly within the learning environment, either about a particular learning program or on ancillary topics. Discussions can be associated with any learning resource and can contain up 16 categories, multiple folders, and unlimited topic threads. Learners also have the option to attach files and polls within discussion posts.
• Rating & Comments empower learners to post and view feedback and suggestions about any type of learning resource. Using a five-star format, learners can individually rate learning resources, allowing others to view at a glance the highest-rated resources as determined by their peers.
• Polls let both administrators and learners pose multiple choice questions to the audience to gather feedback on topics of interest. Polls can be made accessible across multiple sites within the system, and users can easily vote and view results.
• Social Profiles enable learners to find and connect with others who share common interests, skills, and job roles. Fully configurable, system administrators can customize the type of information that is captured and displayed in social profiles according to their business needs and policies.

Enterprise-wide Learning Ecosystem

The Mzinga Social Learning Suite also introduces refreshing new default user interface options that take advantage of the system’s enhanced Site Designer. Using the Site Designer, organizations can easily create an enterprise-wide learning ecosystem with single or multiple "instances" of their Mzinga Learning site, each with distinct branding, layouts, and languages. This is particularly useful for organizations seeking to extend learning to their employees, customers, and partners from within one easy-to-manage platform.

When administrators want to modify site homepages, the new enhancements let them drag and drop both formal and social learning widgets o to the page and use simple, in-line property settings to adjust how they display.

Flexible Administration & Moderation

At the administrative level, advanced controls grant organizations the flexibility to activate Mzinga Learning's social technologies incrementally, for a specific set of learners, around specific types of content, or tied to a particular site. In addition, a rich moderation engine allows administrators to easily monitor, filter, and edit user content in accordance with corporate standards.

Mzinga Publisher

In its latest release, Mzinga’s web-based collaborative authoring toolset has been completely transformed into the industry’s most powerful social content authoring solution, with social features included within the authoring platform and its resulting courseware. New authoring resources include development blogs, a team presence monitor, chat, tagging, task management reporting, and project dashboards — all of which provide optimal team collaboration during the development process.

Within courses built using Publisher, developers can effortlessly add social technologies such as blogs, comments, ratings, and widgets, including YouTube movies, Google charts, and multiple search engines.

Mzinga Link

Mzinga’s virtual learning and web conferencing tool has been redesigned to be even more collaborative and user friendly. New features include an improved user interface, in-session instant messaging with tabbed public and private chats, updated polling and question/answer views, sophisticated session management features, and a "Green Meter" to display each attendee's locale and accumulated CO2 savings.

Mzinga Catalog

Catalog puts a robust collection of eLearning and blended learning courses at users’ fingertips through easy accessibility from within Mzinga Learning, while flexible packaging enables companies to create a custom catalog of courseware that directly complements their training needs.

Learn More About the Mzinga Social Learning Suite

Mzinga will be available via Twitter (http://twitter.com/mzinga) to answer questions and provide information about the new Social Learning Suite from 10 AM to 12 PM EST on Wednesday, February 18th. Additionally, the company offers a regular series of informational webinars about its products and services on its website, http://www.mzinga.com/en/AboutUs/Events/Webinars/.

About Mzinga

Mzinga is the leading provider of business social media solutions that drive growth, innovation, and learning. Its combination of highly scalable technology, rich domain expertise, and moderation services enables businesses to harness the collective intelligence of employees, customers, and partners to achieve tangible business results. Marketing, customer service, and human resources professionals deploy Mzinga’s “pervasive community” solutions to achieve higher revenues, lower costs, greater workplace satisfaction, and improved customer support.

Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, Mzinga services more than 1 billion monthly page requests from 40 million unique visitors in 160 countries worldwide.

Mzinga’s marquee list of customers includes such global brands as ABC, AOL, CBS.com, iVillage, Chevron Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Marsh, Inc., Mercer, Prudential Financial, Deutsche Post World Net, and The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.

To learn more about Mzinga, visit http://www.mzinga.com/pr/.