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The Second Wave of e-Learning
The future of e-learning can be looked at from the perspectives included in this Fieldbook:
Aligning e-learning with the Business
e-Learning Solutions
Deployment of e-learning
Trends in Aligning e-Learning with the Business
A host of opportunities to leverage e-learning for high business impact have been discovered as the early e-learning pioneers have explored various applications of this new learning delivery methodology. Business goals that can be achieved through e-learning include, but are not limited to:
Expeditious time-to-market of new products and services (Chapter 10)
Rapid implementation of new information systems and business processes (Chapter 11)
Complete compliance with legal and regulatory mandates (Chapter 12)
Efficient on-boarding of new hires in the organization (Chapter 13)
Integration of a global workforce and creation of a strong business culture (Chapter 14)
Enhanced leadership and generation of new business development (Chapter 15)
Improved sales by developing a knowledgeable and effective sales force (Chapter 16)
Effective retention of customers and suppliers through training in products and services (Chapter 17)
Obviously, to attract senior executive support and to contribute real value to the organization, the main objective of e-learning must be to create or enhance the shareholder value—the company’s growth in profitability and value in the marketplace—by linking the e-learning initiative to the business drivers and by proposing a value proposition for future investments in e-learning (see Chapter 2).
Impact of an e-Learning Program at JPMorgan Chase*
An opportunity to build key relationships within the company and build their credibility as a learning organization A sharp jump in the number of people requesting and participating in online learning Increased accuracy and amount of key information being shared with customers Customer satisfaction has increased from 75 to 80 percent in some areas *See Chapter 16:Training the Sales Force of the Future
Trends in e-Learning Solutions
In the first wave, e-learning focused on courseware designed to transfer knowledge, called online education, and to develop skills, called online training. These are still important components of the total e-learning vision for the future (see Figure 1-3).
Figure 1-3: Integrated e-Learning Solutions
Organizations now recognize the importance of additional online learning solutions, including:
Online performance support solutions: Enabling workers to improve performance on-the-job, through job-aids, online coaching, embedded systems, and wizards
Online information and knowledge: Improving access to documents and research that inform the employee’s work
Online collaboration: Leveraging the shared capabilities of resources through learning communities, supported by a number of tools, such as e-mail, instant messenger, chat, threaded discussions, electronic whiteboards, application and document sharing, Web meetings, and file transfer
At the heart of future online learning solutions will be online learning management. This refers to the online guidance, facilitation, and management of all the learner’s experiences. It creates the overall learning experience and supports the learning process, including: registration, tracking, assignments, assessments, coaching, mentoring, and reporting. Face-to-face learning refers to the physical classroom training experience where two or more people participate in a workshop, a course, or seminar in one location at the same time. From this vantage point, the learning professionals who are preparing the learning roadmap will consider the full range of options and capabilities and apply with accuracy the e-learning technologies, tools, and methodologies that create a dynamic and effective learning solution.
Integrating e-Learning Solutions
What are some trends for integrating e-learning solutions today?
Learning programs, which are currently deployed through a variety of media, such as PowerPoint presentations, electronic documents, books, CD-ROM, audio tapes, and video tapes, will be converted into e-learning solutions.
Face-to-face training (classroom-based training) will be redesigned and become part of larger blended learning programs.
More online courseware will be available for various industries, applications, and functions. Companies will look for best-in-class vendor courseware. Some course titles will be commoditized, which will have a positive impact on pricing. However, most e-learning courseware required by enterprises is not available to the public market, as it is very specific to an individual organization, product, service, or culture. Therefore, the demand for customized courseware design and development will grow significantly.
Customized content development requires much more than people skilled with authoring tools. Specifically, for the design and development of the more sophisticated e-learning courseware, it is critical to have people with a strong background and solid experience in instructional design. Due to the lack of professionals with these skills, headcount limitations and cost control efforts, a significant portion of customized e-learning design will be outsourced to vendors who have made e-learning design their core competency.
With the rollout of e-learning in different cultures, there will be a growing need for localization of content as well, where the look and feel of the content and learning experience is matched more closely to the culture of the learner.
Finally, the younger generations who have grown up in the digital age, will demand more engaging, interesting, and fun learning experiences that are consistent with the way they collaborate, work, and learn. Game- and simulation-based learning is definitely a strong trend in the future.
Trends in Deployment of e-Learning
There are a number of trends in the deployment of e-learning. For example:
Organizations have become more knowledgeable about, and smarter in, identifying and selecting the best vendors for their e-learning technology infrastructure, courseware, services, and implementations.
Newer and better e-learning technologies will become available to the market and e-learning will be deployed on more devices, such as personal digital assistants and tablet PCs. Wireless high-speed Internet will be available in many places and geographies through Wireless Fidelity (WIFI) technologies, making it easier to for people to take e-learning any place.
IDC forecasts that vendor revenue from live e-learning should exceed US$5 billion in 2006, compared to US$500 million in 2001. Live e-learning is very popular because of its strong value proposition, the value of live and interactive instruction, speed of development, ease of distribution for large audiences and opportunities to reuse knowledge through recordings of live online sessions.
More emphasis will be placed on making the e-learning event part of the overall workflow. For example, online performance support, and online coaching, and mentoring, and learning will be more integrated with evolving business processes.
The usage, start and drop-out rates will continue to be a challenge for most organizations. Employees are very busy and an e-learning program can become just another todo on top of an already oversubscribed schedule. To deploy a successful e-learning strategy, it is important to put e-learning enablers in place including a strong marketing approach, a change management strategy including a time-to-learn policy, and a connection to performance management. You will find more information about these in Chapter 8.
Outsourcing has proven to be a good solution for content development, application maintenance and administration, and systems integration.
Marketing e-Learning at Cingular Wireless*
Provide e-learning resource guides for managers
Use live e-learning conferences
Send e-learning e-mail announcements
Contribute articles to company online newsletter
Offer on-site demonstrations
*See Chapter 13: Educating New Hires
Future Growth of e-Learning
The business alignment, content, and deployment trends will continue to support a significant growth in e-learning globally as shown in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4: Worldwide Corporate e-Learning Market Forecast: 2003 to 2006
Additionally, Gartner is very positive about the e-learning market and expects that the e-learning market will be as high as US$35 billion in 2005 (Gartner 2002). As times goes by, we will become even smarter about e-learning.
e-Learning is increasingly a key building block in emerging employee performance and work place solutions. By leveraging common business processes (for example, production enabled by Enterprise Resource Planning or sales managed enabled by Customer Relationship Management), companies are developing strategies and programs for employee and enterprise portals, which combine:
Employee Performance (often called ERM, Employee Relationship Management or B2E, Business to Employee solutions) that focuses on worker performance by integrating corporate communications, e-mail, learning, knowledge management and collaboration, and performance and competency management (see Figure 1-5)
E-HR, such as online, self-service employee human resource services for recruitment, payroll, benefits, and time and expense management
Common portal infrastructure, security, standards, log on, and look and feel
While companies move toward e-learning as part of larger employee performance and portal initiatives, the focus will be on integration issues, maintenance, and a new level of benefits.
Figure 1-5: Employee Relationship Management
As the knowledge, experience and applications of e-learning increases there will be significant contributions in more languages and from many cultures. The dissemination to the community of learning professionals through books, articles, research, e-learning professional organizations, conferences, seminars, courses, workshops, experience in enterprises, vendors and knowledge sharing will grow as the visionary explorers continue to apply new concepts to the capabilities provided by e-learning. There are many lessons to be learned from the first wave of e-learning, and you will find nuggets of experience contributed by major organizations in the various chapters of this Fieldbook. In the next chapter you will learn whether e-learning makes business sense for your organization.
