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Excelling Through e-Learning
Companies discover upgrading worker skills doesn't necessarily require ‘going the distance'
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Business New Haven
4/30/2001
By: Susan Cornell
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It is self-evident that improving individual performance improves the performance of the organization. That's why corporations send employees to training seminars that teach business skills ranging from management to sales to customer service and communications. Of course, sending employees off-site to refine such skills is an expensive investment: the business incurs training costs, travel and facilities costs, plus the cost of downtime as long as the employee is out of the workplace. An educational alternative is quickly emerging: web-based delivery of training designed for the corporate world.
According to IDC Research, the online corporate learning industry is growing extremely rapidly in the face of the tremendous demand. IDC's research shows that companies spent $1.1 billion on online training in 1999 and by 2003, the research firm anticipates that spending will have swelled to the $11-billion range.
According to Cushing Anderson, a program manager at IDC, demand for this online training is exploding for two reasons: first, businesses are finding that “upscaling” employees is both practical and viable because of the labor shortage. Secondly, the use of technology to deliver training is more efficient than sending employees to workshops or bringing instructors in-house.
Ed Klonoski, executive director of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, adds that lifestyles are also driving demand. He explains, “Adults are busy working and raising children, so [employees] must schedule their learning into their busy lives. E-learning allows them the flexibility to integrate learning into their lives.”
Corporations turning to the private sector for online options will find that Stamford is home to one of the fastest-growing providers of online business training anywhere, PrimeLearning.com. Although the company is just two years old, PrimeLearning.com has already achieved ssignficant growth worldwide with Internet-delivered corporate education.
Explains PrimeLearning.com's Liz Homes, “Organizations trying to 'scale' themselves very rapidly, or consolidate after mergers or acquisitions, or trying to 'reinvent' themselves into more of an e-business, need people to communicate more effectively to make it happen.”
Homes says that the distance-learning solution plays a strategic role in making companies more agile. E-training provides a solution by breaking down the barriers of the traditional classroom such as inaccessibility and “cookie-cutter” training as time for questions and answers are at a premium. In fact, PrimeLearning.com asserts that its approach to online business training delivers 20 to 25 percent higher outcomes than for employees training in the traditional classroom.
Online education is a practicable and often preferable option for employees at all levels - from top-tier executives to project managers to sales staff and administrative personnel. With a desktop computer and Internet access, clients can enroll employees in areas such as leadership, management, team-building, interpersonal skills, sales, customer service, project management and communication.
How can a company get started developing a program? Says Homes, “One should begin at the business level by looking closely at business and organizational goals, establishing learning goals that would support them, and examining the particular role that e-learning would play. Ask questions such as these:
n Do you need your employees to perform a broader range of tasks than they now do?
n Do you need to increase the selling time of your sales staff?
n Do you need to increase employee productivity?
n Do you need to develop more effective ways to reach your salespeople with new product information?
n Do you need to improve your employee attraction and retention figures?
n Do you need to find ways to reach a wider employee and/or customer audience with information about your products or services?
“The goal at this point should be to identify the needs, and to articulate which business needs your e-learning solution will be targeted to support and which ones it will not. These needs will form the basis for the design and implementation strategies you pursue as you move forward.”
But is the virtual classroom as effective as its real-world counterpart? Trainers argue that by using a combination of tools such as chat rooms, discussion forums, scheduled chat sessions and live virtual classrooms, the virtual classroom contains the same “human element” as found in the traditional class.
The operative words are synchronous (live) and asynchronous (at the student's convenience); e-learners have all the advantages of a convenient, personalized and interactive classroom yet without the costs that can range in the thousands.
Glenn Reyer, president of the company, says PrimeLearning.com course fees range from $50 to $400, depending upon the number of trainees and the particular courses. Homes adds, “According to a recent study, e-learning can offer anywhere from one-third to one-half less the cost of traditional classroom training. Training that historically may have taken six to nine months to rollout through a company may now be reduced to two to three weeks.” The pricing schedule ranges from a per-curriculum, per-user basis to a library subscription agreement, the most cost-effective option, Homes says.
Self-paced e-learning used on its own does not ensure that performance objectives will be achieved. Some students, Homes finds, “may be reluctant to attend a virtual class because they perceive that learning via a computer will be too impersonal.” But usually, Reyer contends, business skills training is effective because “it's multi-skills learning. People learn not only from an instructor lecturing, but also because they are interacting with one another, learning by asking questions of each other and the instructor. Then, add the reading, individual exercises and practice sessions - it's the combination.”
Other pluses include: 24/7 online mentoring, personalized electronic assessments, case studies and practical applications using real-life situations and solutions, dramatic time savings, and significant bottom-line results.
To maximize the effectiveness of e-learning experience for the organization, Homes says that clients should:
n Develop an e-learning strategy;
n Establish a steering committee;
n Recruit a champion;
n Select the right solution for your organization;
n Develop an awareness campaign;
n Create links to performance goals; and
n Keep your organizational culture in mind.
To enhance services, PrimeLearning.com has teamed up with training experts at organizations such as the American Management Association (AMA), Xerox Corp. and John Wiley & Sons Publishing.
Will online learning ever replace the traditional model? Probably not, says Bob Frail, AMA senior vice president. Still, he adds, online learning will democratize the education option by allowing small companies and more employees to access training.
“It used to be that this kind of training was only available to the privileged few. Now companies are realizing that their only important asset is their people. E-learning opens the experience for all employees.”
et the Ridgefield-based Avanti Group, the company's Web team can create online training modules using either its own servers or those of the client. The e-training company's online suite of modules includes real-time scoring, content presentation and automated administration (e.g., password protection, certificate generation, e-mail notification and more).
Avanti's “e-director/producer,” Chuck Scott, says his company's forte is verification of trainee comprehension. “While others might view/use the Web to deliver training content [text, graphics, videos], we have found that the one thing the Web does better than any other medium is confirm trainee comprehension via real-time scoring app[lication]s which also streamline the backend admin[istrative] process for HR teams.”
“Like the Hollywood model, Avanti helps client teams innovate (write the script) and/or implement (produce, distribute) their e-blockbusters.” Avanti recently produced an e-training solution to assist two companies in a cross-training venture - or adventure. The players are Shemin Nurseries in Danbury and Roots Inc., whose research center is in New Haven.
The e-training program was designed “to help Shemin employees increase their awareness of the M-Roots product line, which Shemin sells throughout the country, so [Shemin employees] can be of greater service to their landscape-contractor clients.”
The program was designed by visionary leaders at both companies and then orchestrated by Avanti. “All training technology is CGI based, which means no browser plug-ins [are] required for content-test-score,” Scott says, “although the MP3 file does require a multimedia player, but this is more of a sizzle piece than cornerstone.” The result, www.hortsmart.com, provides an example of a blockbuster for the two client teams who wrote the script.
Public-sector examples include the state's Leadership Development Program Distance Workshops offered through Central Connecticut State University's Institute for Industrial Engineering. The Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (CTDLC) Corporate Services also offers online training as well as Web services designed for Connecticut businesses.
CTDLC offers both credit-free courses and certificate programs delivered via online training modules and boasts advantages similar to those of PrimeLearning.com: travel reduction, instructor access, down-time reduction, assessment modules, self-paced conveniences, online conferencing and chat capability. And competitive rates are a tangible plus.
In addition, the CTDLC's corporate-services arm assists with Web services. Not bad: For $75 per hour, CTDLC will build an interactive or dynamic site including an e-catalogue with product descriptions and ordering information, search by product, contact information, order tracking and so on. So, while you and your employees are obtaining business-skills training through the consortium's online training offerings, the Web folks are busy at work helping you to deliver services and products to your clients.
Executive director Klonoski asserts that e-learning “can be more effective [than traditional classroom methods] if the tools of the online conference are carefully employed, because online learning offers more communication tools than traditional classrooms.” Indeed, on-ground classes are using e-mail and online conferencing to take advantage of these powerful interactivity-builders.
Klonoski also notes, “Any course - online or on-ground - is only as good as its instructional design and delivery.”
What does a company need to do to get training off the ground and online? Says Klonoski: “The CTDLC offers support for the planning process. We help institutions or companies do a readiness assessment: We work with administrators on questions of policy, technology, training and promotion. We supply a robust infrastructure for online delivery - servers, learning-management systems, seven-day help desk and more, [including] faculty development, marketing, online student services, and online assessment.”
Apparently, e-learning is gaining significant traction in the corporate world. CTDLC is currently working with Norwalk Community College on a project for GE Capital as well as with two Connecticut companies with an international clientele, Loctite and the Stanley Works. “We have built courses for CBIA in the past and are working on a new project as we speak,” Klonoski adds.
He emphasizes that price is a key selling feature for distance learning. “Our fees are very low: We charge our members $200 to build a course and $20 a head for the students enrolled. We charge $400 a day for our Learning Designer. Our online courses are free to members. Our rates for non-members are higher, but still lower than almost any other technical company.”
Finally, in-house alternatives exist. One example includes People's Bank new e-school, launched last month as part of People's Corporate University. Peggy D. Alfonso, the bank's vice president of organization and people development, explains that the University's goals are to “unleash the power of the staff in the organization” and “to increase the frequency of career bests for employee,” or matching worker tasks with worker skills.
E-Learning at People's, Alfonso explains, “is a strategic tool to help the bank go from a bank to a financial-services institution and to help achieve the 'Workplace of Choice.'” People's strives to be the state's Workplace of Choice by the year 2004 and recognizes that compensation is only one component of earning this designation. As Paul Nonnenmacher of Corporate Communications says, “Employee satisfaction and opportunities for advancement” also are key components in achieving this goal. E-learning is one means by which employees can train for these opportunities.
E-courses will be available to all People's employees at all levels in each of People's 146 branches statewide. Says Alfonso, “Many courses are technology-related such as [Microsoft] Word, PowerPoint and Excel, while others will focus on project-management and leadership.”
She adds that the bank offers “interactive courses though learning labs across the state to help people understand their own skills and such topics as interviewing and stress management.” Employees will even be able to take courses at home at any time, day or night. And, the distance learning option will also be used to distribute pre-work for courses “to get everyone on the same level,” Alfonso says.
To track how learning is applied, People's will employ adjunct faculty members responsible for particular courses and the individuals enrolled.
Finally, both Nonnenmacher and Alfonso concur that the launch of Corporate University is not really a “launch” at all, but an “evolutionary process” in which more and more training is achieved in-house as the organization evolves into a financial-services institution. The future will include increased on-line conferencing and chat capabilities among students.
For now, one of the biggest plusses, as Alfonso notes, is that “at all 146 branches e-learning allows every employee training right at their desktop so that much more will be available to each one right at their fingertips.”
E-learning is a powerful tool and compelling approach to efficiently and effectively (and relatively inexpensively) acquire or tune-up business skills. But students needs tenacity, drive and self-motivation to put this tool to work.
It is clear that the best online students are ones who are self-disciplined, independent workers with technical know-how. Anyone lacking either personal drive or computer skills would not be a qualified candidate for this new class of learners. Says PrimeLearning.com founder and CEO Terry O'Brien, “Learners must view themselves as being in charge of product development - and the product is themselves.”
Experts offer the ten tips to optimize the distance-learning experience:
1. Allocate quiet time.
2. Discuss your schedule with your manager and co-workers.
3. Be considerate of others.
4. Set realistic learning goals.
5. Be an active participant.
6. Where possible, create a peer e-learning group.
7. Accommodate your body.
8. Use all available resources.
9. Reflect on what you have learned.
10. Share what you have learned.
By improving individual performance of employees from the executive to her assistant, overall performance of the organization can be measurably improved. E-learning is proving itself as a leading strategy for any size company with just the basics: computers, Internet access, motivated employees and a modest amount of capital.
With Web-based technology, competitive advantages may just be express-delivered to your door - or monitor.
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