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| Focus on eLearning |
September 1, 2006 |
When Technology and Education go Hand in Hand
Canada’s smartest businesses are applying new technologies to employee training
Employee training has often been a difficult proposition for business managers because of the inherent overheads. It has not always been easy to offset travel expenses and time out of the office against the qualitative benefits of traditional training. Now, a growing number of Canadian companies are taking employee education out of the classroom and on to the desktop—with considerable success.
Electronic learning (eLearning) offers benefits in several key areas, explained Chris Moore, a technical specialist at Canada’s Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Resource (CCOHS). CCOHS has been effectively using eLearning techniques to help increase staff competencies.
“eLearning is effective and takes less time,” he explained. “And knowledge retention is higher with eLearning than with traditional classroom courses.” Students are able to learn at their own pace, and will often feel less intimidated than in a classroom setting, where the number of attendees restricts opportunities for instructor interaction.
Targeted instruction
eLearning offers the chance to customize content quickly to suit a particular organization or department, but perhaps one of the most appealing benefits of eLearning is the emphasis on just-in-time education, rather than just-in-case learning. “In industries where there are constant changes, things can be communicated fairly quickly, and you’ll know who knows it and who doesn’t because you can track who has accessed the information,” said Barry Nicolle, chair of the Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance (CeLEA).
CeLEA board member Gary Woodill categorizes eLearning solutions into four main models. Synchronous eLearning involves live interaction with an instructor, often via a chat room or video conference. Conversely, asynchronous e-students learn entirely on their own, using prepared courseware that could be delivered online, or via CD. A third model involves a mixture of the two, perhaps with regular chat room sessions to backup offline learning.
“A fourth model is collaborative learning, which is getting people online to work with each other,” he said. “That’s not necessarily instructor-based, although an instructor could be there as a mentor. It’s about peer-to-peer learning.” This revolves around communities of practice—collections of people with a common business interest. Technology can play an important part here, because of its ability to facilitate communication between disparate groups.
Strategy for success
But experts agree that technology is the means, rather than the end. CCOHS provides the subject-matter expertise for its courseware, but enlisted a third-party company to help create the multimedia assets it needed. Its eLearning initiative would not be effective unless it involved stakeholders in the process, explained Moore. “We find external reviewers from our tripartite set of stakeholders— government, labour and employers—and have them review it before we make it available,” he said.
Moore’s approach puts people at the heart of the learning process, which is a crucial part of any eLearning initiative. A strategy connecting the eLearning material and the organizational goals with the needs of the employees is a critical success factor, said Lloyd Elder, president of TTG Systems.
Elder’s company specializes in software solutions and consultancy for effective competency management. It helps employees develop the skills and competencies necessary to meet the organization’s goals. “eLearning without strategy is a recipe for failure,” Elder said. “There needs to be a disciplined approach to the sustainable structure of learning.”
Elder draws a direct line between the competency of the company’s staff and its financial well-being. The company’s financial output comes from its customer base, and customer satisfaction comes from effective business processes. Those in turn are driven by the employees. The moral is clear: “The only sustainable thing a firm has is what it knows,” Elder said.
When built around an effective organizational skills-management strategy, eLearning can be a highly effective training mechanism. Its just in time nature can help staff do the jobs that matter today, while gaining the longer-term skills that will fuel the company’s success tomorrow.
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