How To Make the Most of E-Learning

One of the fastest growing areas of corporate training and education is elearning — courses, seminars or workshops where the information is delivered via the use of technology rather than face-to-face by a teacher. These days this often involves the Web and online education, either through a company’s own website or server or another organization’s. However, the category has traditionally included things like DVDs, videotapes, CD-ROMs and video conferencing. Companies are turning to e-learning to help train and educate employees in a big way: In 2002, the market for business-to-business e-learning was $2.9 billion, according to Eduventures, a Boston consulting firm that studies the industry.

To get an overview of e-learning and how to best use it in your company The New York Enterprise Report put some questions to Clark Quinn. Quinn has been involved, in one way or another, with e-learning for more than 25 years. He has worked as an educational computer game designer, done research at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, and was the director of education technology for an Australian government initiative to partner new media companies with universities. More recently he was director of cognitive systems for Knowledge Universe Interactive Studio (one of the family of companies that devised the Teacher Universe and LeapFrog products). Currently Quinn is principal at Quinnovation, a Walnut Creek, Calif., consulting firm that provides learning strategy solutions to corporations and government, educational and nonprofit organizations. He is also the author of the book Engaging Learning: Designing E-Learning Simulation Games.

What are the benefits of e-learning and what type of material can be taught this way?
One of the big benefits of it is being able to reach people where they’re reachable. You don’t have to get people together at a certain time or in a certain place; they can do it at their convenience — from home, for instance. As far as what can be taught, anything can be. This isn’t just for technical subjects, as some people think.                                                          

How is e-learning conducted?

It can vary. We’re moving away from the hard, fixed media like DVDs or CDs for the reason that if something changes you’ve got to reissue those and go back and make sure everyone has the right edition. On the Web, you can make changes and everything is up-to-date again. E-learning can be asynchronous, where everyone does it at their own convenience, or synchronous, where a group of people all take the course at the same time.

But there’s a whole spectrum of approaches. There’s the virtual classroom approach. There are tools like Web Ex or Elluminate that allow you to do things like put up a PowerPoint presentation on the Web and allow people to log on and ask questions. You can typically capture and save those. You can also capture a presentation or a seminar and run it at other times, or allow people to log on and view it at different hours.

There are other things you can make available to people. For example, if you have field service engineers and they need support, maybe they could have a PDA where you’ve downloaded the repair manuals, rather than having them carrying around a stack of papers. I know a firm where the engineers wanted to keep up with the white papers their colleagues in the company were writing, but they couldn’t find time to read them. They had someone read and record them and captured that on iPods so the engineers could listen to it during their commutes.

Then there is the notion of building an e-community for learning. You may have people who are experts who need to share their knowledge with practitioners. In a field where people are retiring and the new people haven’t captured the knowledge of those experts, if you can get the information out of the experts and make it available through Web technologies, that’s a powerful tool. That can be done through collaborative software or things like wikis.

Where can a small business owner start to find and choose the best e-learning course or provider?
The first thing to do is not to start by thinking of providers and courses. Start by asking, what is the problem in my business that I have not been able to solve, or what is the behavior that, if I could change it, it would make the biggest change in my business? Then ask if there’s something that technology can do to help with that.

Maybe you have several managers and everyone has different personal development needs. This person needs coaching or that person needs help with business writing. Maybe some need Microsoft Office Skills training or others need information on basic negotiations. There are several companies that have whole libraries of courses. SkillSoft is one of them; it’s a company that has a suite of online courses, and you can choose bits and pieces. There are also providers in specific vertical niche markets — if you need financial training or something on occupational health and safety or handling chemicals and hazardous materials, you can find specific libraries that people have developed and are offering.