Meet Your New Teacher

Challenges And Goals

The cost of an E-learning program also is a challenge for some companies. Training budgets usually are slim, and big learning-management systems can cost more than $100,000. But less-expensive options are emerging from venders such as Dell, and open-source course-management software like Moodle is becoming available for just the cost of support.

Some businesses have more ambitious goals, despite the lack of funding and support from top management. In the last year, the Intercontinental Hotel Group has almost quadrupled the number of E-learning minutes it offers to a wide range of employees, including maids, concierges, and executives. Franchised hotels are asking for more online classes even though they have to pay for the software themselves. However, training suffers from the silo effect: It's dispersed among several areas and departments within the company.

Intercontinental's learning-technologies manager, who coordinates E-learning, is stuck with a small budget in the traditional trainer's role within a branch of human resources. And there's limited bandwidth available for E-learning; most of the company's network is devoted to business data, revenue-generating activities, and high-speed Internet access for guests. That makes multimedia simulations of hotel systems difficult or impossible. Buying an expensive learning-management system is just "pie in the sky," says Americas training manager John Courtney. "We have to sell the whole idea of sharing information and knowledge to the company."

For many companies like Intercontinental, E-learning probably can be called a qualified success. However, small and midsize businesses have yet to embrace E-learning in a big way.

Despite the growing use and acceptance of E-learning technology for training, there still are areas where conventional classroom and on-the-job training are the best approach. As workers need a better understanding of business processes, practices, and strategies, the lessons become more complex. Some companies are turning to products like Virtual Leader to teach more sophisticated concepts. "People are taking a more mature look at E-learning," IDC analyst Peter McStravick says. "It's the mix that matters."

The trend is for blended programs, in which E-learning is a supplement to classroom and on-the-job training. Travel and real-estate service provider Cendant Corp. includes in its E-learning strategies some initial on- line training through SumTotal Systems Inc.'s learning-management system, followed by class time, followed with more online assessments and courses.

"We're utilizing E-learning as a complement to on-the-job and classroom training," says Jaison Williams, Cendant's director of enterprise learning. That helps Cendant train people in complex skills like project management and leadership development.

Companies that have devoted time and resources to E-learning say it's money well spent. "We're building online courseware that's as good as or better than the content you would find in a face-to-face seminar," says Ernie Brescia, VP for organizational learning at real-estate broker Century 21 Real Estate LLC. "We're absolutely enhancing agent productivity." Century 21 has found that new real-estate agents who take the com- pany's Create 21 sales course earn 19% more on average than those who don't.

More agents can take Create 21 now that it's online compared with when it was offered in a classroom, and each class takes less time. Some 20,000 students took Century 21 online courses last year using online meeting software from Centra Software, which lets the company's 14 instructors guide students through a three-week series of virtual classes.

Companies now have a wide range of E-learning options and technologies from which to chose, and they need to find the right combination to suit their needs. "There aren't any magic bullets," says E-learning consultant Cross.

One major challenge is how to handle informal learning, the typically unstructured learning that goes on each day in hallway or water-cooler conversations, company E-mails, or when employees have to learn a new task on the fly. It goes beyond what's taught in classrooms and represents as much as 80% of all learning, according to experts.

"What started as classroom registration and tracking has turned into succession planning and informal learning," SumTotal CEO Kevin Oakes says. "We can now create create communities of practice where we match novices with experts and people of like interests with one another." That's what Turner Construction has tried to create with its E-learning effort.

Altus Learning Systems Inc. aims to capture informal information floating around a company by catching it at the source and distributing it within the company. For example, any time there's a new product launch, Altus records the introduction on video or audio, or gets a copy of the PowerPoint slides.

Altus partners with Raytheon Professional Services to record repair and new car launch video for General Motors. Within a week, Altus transcribes the media and inserts it into a searchable, indexed Web database where employees can easily find the text, the multimedia, or both. If a GM mechanic encounters a problem, the answer may be found in the database at the click of a mouse.

"The key knowledge in the company is in people's heads," Altus CEO Ted Cocheu says. "We're not creating a course, per se; we're creating a diverse knowledge database on a subject, digitizing it, and making it searchable so anyone can find it." The service costs about $5,000 per hour of video, compared with up to $30,000 to create and de-ploy a similar online course.

E-learning hasn't yet replaced chalkboards and classrooms, and may never. But it has earned a growing role in company training programs for its flexibility and cost-effectiveness. That's a lesson too important to ignore.