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How_to_make_good_Elearning_succeed_in_your_Organization
| How to make good Elearning succeed in your Organization
1.What will good ELearning do for your Organization?
According to a study by the IDC, worldwide spending on ELearning
will surpass $23 billion by the end of 2004. However, with the
current economic climate, companies are less inclined to spend
money unless they get a great return on their investment. So
exactly why is ELearning so popular?
1. What will good ELearning do for your organization?
ELearning can be much more effective, and cheaper than more
traditional learning methods for many reasons.
ELearning can tailor itself in ‘real time’ in response to
student progress. Immediate feedback allows the student’s
progress to be monitored and the learning materials to be
automatically adjusted accordingly. The student can also monitor
his/her own progress in an ELearning environment much more
easily than in traditional learning environments.
Elearning can employ all of the senses in the learning process,
by using the latest technologies. People remember 10 percent of
what they read, 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what
they see and 50 percent of what they hear and see. Because
different people have different learning styles, allowing
student to receive information using more than one of the senses
increases recall greatly.
While few organizations find ELearning courses cheaper to
develop than traditional methods, many find them cheaper to
deliver once they are built . Once an ELearning course has been
built, it can be reused day in, day out and can be used to reach
a potentially unlimited audience without the costs associated
with more traditional methods of learning – for example, there
is no need to pay an instructor, rent out a room, pay for lunch
for the students or pay any travel costs involved in running a
course.
A Student can choose the most convenient time and place in which
to learn, and can also work at his/her own pace. For an
organization, this can mean reduced cost of training, as the
student does not have to take time off of work to attend
training and there are no hotel / food / travel costs involved.
For the student, this can mean more convenience. ELearning is
always available, and can be fit around a student’s family and
working commitments. Many students also tend to feel less
intimidated by ELearning than they do by having to face other
students in a classroom atmosphere, and compare their own
progress to that of others in the classroom who may be of a
different competency level, age, race or gender.
ELearning courses can be kept up to date much more easily (and
more cheaply) than traditional paper-based courses. Only one
copy of the course needs to be updated – course binders, books,
and other materials do not have to be re-printed each time there
is an update - and ELearning can thus much more easily and
cheaply include relevant information from the student’s everyday
life, from the latest news events or developments within an
industry or academic field. This can make the courses more
relevant, timely and more interesting to the student.
An ELearning program can help companies successfully train
people in specific skills for specific performances
(Study-Center.com offers ELearning in specialist skills to the
Electricity industry as well as general courses in subjects like
Telephone skills) while providing increased access to
information tools for decision-making and general skills that
effect overall employee performance.
Very importantly, ELearning is widely available to all, often
extremely cheaply (sometimes even free!). With increasing
numbers of people having direct access to the web (72% of
employees now have access to a computer with internet access as
part of their jobs ), a wide number of courses on a wide number
of subjects is available, making it possible for people in
remote locations and people with disabilities to participate in
ELearning much more easily.
For the organization that developed a good quality ELearning
course in the first place, it means extra income from that
course, as well as the reputation for providing good quality
ELearning content outside of the organization. For the purchaser
of such ELearning content, it provides a cheaper way to develop
ELearning content. And for the LMS host (in this case,
Blackboard.com) it makes their LMS system more appealing to
those who wish to use an LMS as they know they can choose from a
wealth of ELearning content that has already been developed.
2.How can you ensure that good ELearning succeeds?
In order to ensure that good ELearning succeeds, it is firstly
important to select one LMS that your organization will
standardize upon and work only with that. It is very costly to
support many different products, and it is far easier to provide
technical support if only one tool is used organization-wide. It
is also easier for students and tutors to use a single product
so that the tool itself does not obstruct the learning process.
It is important to help students to feel comfortable with the
ELearning system early on. Where possible, it is good to have
very good help / support facilities – or, ideally, live online
helpers to interact with students - to help them to get started
so that they do not grow frustrated at the system or find that
they are not able to use it. Drop out rates are at their highest
within the first use of an ELearning system, so try to ensure
that your students have a good experience the first time!
Live online interaction with other students and/or tutors at
pre-appointed times tends to increase retention rates also. This
can take the form of ‘online classrooms’, in which the tutor
reviews material for that week/module with the students, or
‘café’ type chatrooms in which students can chat informally
about course subjects etc.
Having an ‘online classroom’ or ‘webinar’ to attend each
week/month can provide the incentive for students to go online
more often, especially if those sessions improve the student’s
chances of passing tests, exams or coursework, and if the
students can ask questions in a question/answer session while
online. Incentive to attend such events increases if the
coursework, tests or exams are mandatory in order to pass the
course.
Any online events should be timed to be convenient to the
maximum number of students in order to be effective – students
have lives offline and may live within different timezones so it
is important to make the course flexible enough to accommodate
for the fact that students may also have work commitments,
children or even be taking other ELearning courses. Transcripts
of online sessions can allow students who missed the sessions to
catch up on anything they missed and in some cases it is
possible to rerun the online session at different times for
different timezones or provide access to a recording of a
webinar that can be re-run at any time.
Lisa Currin, in her special to ELearn magazine entitled ‘Feeling
Groovy’ , says that Elearning must elicit positive emotions in
order to succeed. While this is true, any good psychologist
knows that it is easier to motivate human beings to avoid pain
than it is to motivate them simply by giving them pleasure !
Thus, to make ELearning succeed beyond your wildest dreams,
students or employees must see that they will suffer pain if
they do not participate. There are many ways to motivate people
to take ELearning courses in this manner – making it a
pre-requisite for promotion (the employee knows he will fail to
get promoted if he does not take the course) is an effective
one, or for graduation/certification (the student knows they
will fail to get their degree/certification if they do not take
the course, and will suffer the inability to get a good job, or
simply suffer embarrassment as a result) is another.
However, there are some courses which are not ‘required’ in this
way, and a good way to motivate students to take such courses is
to show them that if they do not they will suffer public
humiliation! Publicising results of ELearning courses and
ranking participants publicly against one another is a very
effective means of ‘encouraging’ people to take ELearning
courses – For example, for an employee at Coca Cola, knowing
that employees at PepsiCo were scoring far higher on average in
Sales/Marketing courses, would be a good incentive to the Coca
Cola employee to increase his/her score! Also, Coca Cola’s HR
department would encourage staff to take the courses and to do
well in them also.
Brainbench.com is one ELearning provider that has benefited
greatly from the idea of ranking ELearners. IT ELearners
purportedly have large egos, so Brainbench’s facility that
enables them to compare their own scores in certification tests
with those of others in the same city, state or country as
themselves means that instead of simply taking certification
tests until they pass, Brainbenchers are instead repeatedly
taking the same certification tests in the hope that they can
improve on their previous score(s) and push themselves higher in
the ranking.
Another way in which Brainbench encourages huge numbers of
people to take its ELearning courses and certification tests is
by getting students ‘hooked’ by offering some courses and
certification tests for free. This is a ‘loss leader’ approach
that has been employed by a number of successful ELearning
organizations – SmartCertify, LearnKeyDirect, Certy.com – but is
especially appropriate in IT ELearning.
3.How can you ensure it is good ELearning?
There are a number of different types of ELearning. It is
important to use the most appropriate type of ELearning for the
skill/subject area concerned.
Simulations are a good way of teaching students how to carry out
a business process or a technical process or to develop a skill
for a number of reasons – perhaps because the ‘real life’
situation is not an appropriate learning environment, or because
it takes a great deal of practice to perfect a required skill.
For example, airline pilots are trained on simulators to ensure
that mistakes made during training do not lead to plane crashes
and the deaths of passengers.
Interactive learning is a great way to teach language skills.
For example, a number of audio-visual interactive language
courses now provide the student with feedback of how closely the
student’s pronunciation matches ‘correct pronunciation’ of words
by displaying their voice patterns mapped against the ‘correct’
voice patterns.
Live online training, webinars or online events (though costly)
may be appropriate where specialist participants are dispersed
over a wide geographic area and they all need to see the same
specialist instructor/presentation/seminar to get the latest
research or thought on a particular subject area.
For example, NetRoadshow , Webex and Gartner employ live online
training/seminars/webinars for a wide variety of specialist
subjects.
Virtual classrooms are a great way to make a course and its
instructor available to a great number of students dispersed
over a wide geographic area, and still allow students to
interact with the instructor, discuss coursework and so on.
For example, virtual classrooms are used by those who use the
LMS at Blackboard.com as a means to teach subjects as wide in
range as ‘Wicca 101’ through to ‘American Literature’ and
‘Molecular Biology’ through to ‘AstroPhysics’.
4.How to show that it is succeeding?
So, once you have good ELearning that is succeeding, how do you
show that to management?
Of course, the simplest way to show that ELearning is improving
knowledge and skill-level within the organization is through
providing students with a quizzes, a pre-test and a post-test
for each ELearning module (such as the pre-test below from
Apogee Interactive’s Fundamentals of Electricity course in
Study-Center.com) and reporting on improvements.
All good ELearning systems such as Blackboard, WebCT and
TheLearningManager offer management and reporting facilities
that allow flexibility of reporting such improvements.
ELearning audits and surveys can be used to report where the
organization was before an ELearning course was implemented, how
training was rated then, and comparing that to where the
organization is after it is implemented and how
training/skills/knowledge/job satisfaction are rated afterwards.
However, the most important part of measuring ELearning Return
On Investment is to develop meaningful measurements that are
directly linked to strategic business drivers, so that
management can see that ELearning leads to dramatic improvements
that affect the ‘bottom line’.
For example, show the success of an ‘Effective Sales Meetings’
course by comparing sales before the course went ‘live’ with
sales after the course went live.
Compare software development times, and bug/defect rates before
and after an ‘Effective Software Development’ course went live.
Show the success of a Health and Safety course by comparing
accident/injury rates prior to the course going ‘live’ with
those after the course went live.
And, most importantly, compare the costs of running traditional
paper-based, location-based courses to the cost of running the
ELearning replacement course.
5. How do you promote ELearning in Your Organization?
It is important to make ELearning inspirational – make students
feel that they can make a big difference to their own future and
that of the organization by embarking on ELearning.
Everyone knows that a great way to motivate people to take
ELearning is to tie it in to their salary and promotion – such
that it is not possible to rise to the next level of seniority
in the company without having taken certain ELearning courses. A
way of taking this further is to publish ‘job roles’ which list
the ELearning courses and pass marks required in order to be
considered for that particular role within an organization.
Another extra incentive is to provide a certificate (or an
ECertificate/EResume – a URL which an employer could visit to
see that the student is certified) to certify that the student
has passed the course, providing the date, score and pass mark.
To see this full article, go to My
article
About the author:
Michelle Johnston is an Ebusiness expert. She is currently
Ebusiness Director of Apogee Interactive Inc. in Atlanta USA.
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