ComputerLink articles by Brian Pitre

eLearning: The most efficient way to educate

When people first think of eLearning, also known as online training, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is the old CBT (Computer Based Training) courseware that led a student through a sort of guided tour of some piece of software. However, there is a much larger training opportunity to take advantage of when thinking outside of the limited area of software training and starting to consider all the other forms of training required for your business. Whether you are educating service technicians on new products, rolling out new corporate policies to the workforce, or teaching a college course to graduate students, eLearning can provide a better, more efficient way to deliver your courseware.

Getting back to the CBT course example, due to the nature of how the programs were delivered, students were often dissatisfied with the results and they never felt like they received the training or support they needed. The courses, delivered on videotapes, printed study guides and CD-ROM's, quickly became outdated due to the time it took to produce them. In addition, production and delivery costs added significantly to any training budget.

Today, new technologies and the capabilities of the Internet are changing that process. Web pages, online presentation tools and web conferencing provide a variety of ways to deliver any training program.

The early forms of eLearning followed the design of the CBT courses, except they were most often delivered as a series of static HTML web pages. HTML offered a significant advantage over CBT because you gained the flexibility to easily update the content of the training program without the cost of writing new CD's or duplicating videotapes. By simply updating a page, content is easily modified and is immediately available to the students. However, the biggest obstacle to success in these programs was still the lack of interactivity and support. There was no way to contact the instructor, ask a question, or collaborate with other students.

Quickly gaining popularity now are online presentation tools, such as Placeware (www.placeware.com) and Centra (www.centra.com). These applications offer a whole new level of capability delivered over the web. The key feature they provide is the ability to make a live presentation through the Internet. Audio from the meeting is carried over the web or a phone line, and presentation graphics are delivered through a web browser. The number of attendees at a presentation is limited only by restrictions set up by the application. I have attended online presentations ranging from two or three attendees to over 500. You can even hold small meetings (4 or 5 attendees) over the web for free through these web sites. Most of the presentation is usually one sided, with the presenter speaking and the audience listening. However, all of these tools offer the ability to pose questions, either through voice or text chat capabilities.

At dockside.net, we use these tools regularly for things such as demonstrating applications, holding collaborative meetings and even delivering sales presentations. The cost savings in time and travel alone for these meetings allow us to provide better service and shorter delivery times to meet our clients' needs.

Webcasting and applications like RealPresenter offer additional capabilities to include video along with the presentation, so the viewer feels more involved by being able to see the instructor while they speak. However, at this time, bandwidth limitations and the lack of interactivity prevent these applications from being widely utilized. Finally, collaboration tools, such as NetMeeting and WebEx, allow for real-time collaboration within applications and among widespread users.

Let's take a look at a hypothetical example of how eLearning could provide a substantial benefit to a business. NewThings Manufacturing sells a product throughout the US. This product needs routine maintenance by trained technicians. In this example, the technicians could work directly for NewThings or even be third party partners located around the country. With the launch of a new product, NewThings would traditionally send their trainers to the various locations to train the technicians on how to setup and maintain this new product. If NewThings had four trainers and forty locations and each training session took two days, it would take at least one month to get all the service people trained (and probably even longer).

Now, let's look at this from an eLearning perspective. While the product was being finalized video demonstrations of the prototypes would be taped and assembled. Documentation for the product would be developed and Acrobat PDF files would be made. Then, upon the launch of the new product, the CEO of NewThings would hold a webcast for all the service techs to introduce the new product (note: the CEO couldn't make an appearance at all the sites in the traditional training program). At the end of the webcast, a secure web site would be made available to the service technicians, including all the setup and maintenance videos, as well as the documentation for downloading. Assuming a few of the service techs would be very interested in the product, they would have the opportunity to go home and review some of the materials over the weekend. Presumably, others would wait until it was time to go and set up the new product and then go online and learn the proper steps (and they would be fresh in their mind). By the way, when the maintenance procedures would change six months down the road, all the technicians would have the most current information available to them.

The technology requirements for eLearning are available today. The potential cost savings and ease of distribution make eLearning an important part of any business' plan for success.