Learning Pool launches L&D’s first virtual learning assistant

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Libby Cross, Senior Marketing Executive

Learning Pool announced on Monday the launch of Otto, the industry’s first virtual personal learning assistant for workplace learning.

An artificial intelligence-driven chatbot, Otto sits in the workflow pushing and pulling information and courses to the learner to create a true performance support tool.  

“We’ve taken the insight from the market adoption of technologies like Alexa and Google Home,”

commented Learning Pool’s CEO Paul McElvaney

“within three years you will be talking to your company’s knowledge and learning management systems.  Otto is the first progress along this curve.”

Otto pushes course enrolment notifications at the learner and responds to a set of LMS-like commands, such as “what courses do you have?”, “show my progress”, “tell me about…”, “what’s my learning record?”.  It also records progress within courses and completions.

Deep-dive Google-like searches bring back snippets of course links.  In fact, Otto will search any secure textual content to create a light knowledgebase and performance support solution.  This finally unlocks the promised potential of content reuse: write it once within a course of learning, use it often within Otto as performance support and on the job training.

“Otto does not need an LMS,” says Head of Business Innovation, Paul Healy.  “Some companies will prefer the ‘learning in the workflow’ model as an alternative to making employees sign into a learning management system.  Others will see it as an extension of their existing L&D solution, putting learning in the hands of your learners when they need it.”

Learning Pool is talking to existing and potential clients in financial services, retail and contact centres about the use of Otto as a pure performance support tool for querying knowledge bases crafted from inbound call logs, compliance documents and other knowledge sources.

Cloud-based and using IBM’s Watson natural language question and answer engine, Otto requires no additional software installation besides a collaboration tool to house the chatbot.  Currently, Otto sits within Slack, Facebook’s Workplace and Microsoft Teams and is easily integrated into others as required.Since launching this product, we have created a new platform and have created a fresh approach to AI chatbots called Flo. Find out more about the Learning Pool platform and how you can incorporate Flo as part of your elearning workflow.