The Business Case For ELearning [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

E-Communication

Organizations often refer to e-communication as knowledge sharing. Many decision makers consider e-communication to be the same as e-learning. For the purpose of analysis, identifying e-communication and e-training as distinct components of e-learning offers greater insight into each application and more clarity about deployment methods, design, and intent.

In a pyramid metaphor, e-communication constitutes the foundational (bottom-most) layer. Many organizations already have in place the underlying IT infrastructure required to enable e-communication and e-training. At Cisco, over the years, e-communication has presented itself as a strong offshoot of the learning infrastructure. As a result, not only has e-communication in most cases taken precedence over e-training, but also the impact of e-communication has been broader in terms of employees, channel partners, and customers reached. (See Figure 3-1.)

From a business perspective, the following list identifies just some of the specific benefits of e-communication:

Time to market Enables product managers to communicate features and benefits of new products and services to a large audience of sales force and channel partners

Organizational agility and morale Offers more frequent and consistent executive messaging about business status, goals, or new policies

Customer focus Shares customer feedback and solutions more rapidly with the customer service or support network

Customer intimacy Provides customers with access to executives and experts within the company

Sales force readiness Offers anytime-anyplace access to the latest and most accurate product and service information for those "feet on the street"

Reduced cost of access Reduces cost of communications in terms of travel, telecommunications, event management, and time away from work

Widespread adoption of information technologies means that organizations now have more communication tools at their disposal. The use of these newer tools, including e-communication, has produced significant work-place integration and work-force advantages.

Beyond Awareness: Retention and Motivation

To communicate with internal audiences, organizational leaders have long relied on tools such as voicemail broadcasts, e-mail alerts, announcements on the corporate intranet, and articles in organizational e-newsletters. Web portals enable audience participants, at their convenience, to access updated organizational information. These tools work well to convey awareness-level information, but organizations still must confirm audience understanding and adoption of the content conveyed via these tools. Comprehension is the key factor bearing on retention of a message.

Perhaps the messaging goals of an organization extend beyond awareness to motivation or retention. If so, IP video offers significant advantages over other tools. IP video enables trainers to both explain and demonstrate a concept simultaneously, which enhances clarity and viewer understanding. In addition, people tend to find visual media (such as IP video) more personal, a fact that may influence viewers to internalize messages conveyed via IP video. If the video broadcast occurs in real time (synchronous), the broadcast may even create a "congregation" effect that boosts target-audience participation.

Besides video, online and multimedia tools such as simulations and games offer the audience a more comprehensive understanding of technologies, tools, and terminologies. At Cisco, employee and customer audiences have responded favorably to the use of simulations and games for knowledge sharing (of both concepts and technologies).

Video over IP: An E-Communication Breakthrough

Adoption of video has been the hallmark of e-communication/e-training efforts and has generated a substantial portion of the $142 million in productivity gains for Cisco in fiscal year 2003. (See Table 3-1.) Through effective use of video, Cisco has reduced the geographic barriers among its managers, its employees, channel partners, and customers. Finally, instead of the student going to knowledge, knowledge was coming to the student in all three dimensions: voice, video, and data.

Whether in the form of live broadcasts or on-demand streaming media, the use of video over IP has enhanced the quality and reduced the cost of executive communications, product introductions, competitive analysis, and market updates. These video solutions provide clear, consistent, and accessible communications. By reducing layers of messages, video use results in consistent communication across the organization. The nonverbal cues of the speaker (tone, tenor, eye movement, facial expressions, and so on) enhance the intimacy with the audience, eventually improving retention of the message.

When using video as a means of communications and delivery, organizations have two options:

Broadcast video Broadcast video over IP allows real-time (synchronous) live presentations. The participant can watch, ask questions via instant messaging, and see the presentations and any additional screenshots or graphics.

Video on demand Video on demand, on the other hand, offers anytime-anyplace (asynchronous) access to the video, audio, and accompanying slide presentation. The content for video on demand can be anything, including the following:

Past broadcasts or those created on demandVoD can include past broadcast (synchronous) video presentations or those video presentations created solely on demand (asynchronous).

Knowledge bytesSales and sales-support personnel may receive an e-mail alert with a short (30-second to 5-minute) video that demonstrates a specific solution, appropriate use of a specific feature, or troubleshooting of a technical problem.

Message and trainingLonger-duration VoD training modules. A series of modules complete a lesson or a meeting. Each module is about 10 to 20 minutes in length.

As a medium, video has constraints, not the least of which is the audience attention span. The attention span of a participant reviewing a video presentation, for example, begins to taper after 5 to 7 minutes and becomes nonexistent soon after 15 minutes. [1] Some speakers who excel in face-to-face communication struggle in the two-dimensional realm of video presentations, which does not have live feedback.

Bandwidth considerations, especially at the individual level, remain an important consideration. Many viewers, especially in areas where broadband is not fully deployed, still use dial-up modems to access content over the Internet. Such individuals might be hard to reach with a video message only unless a downloadable version of the message is available or the message is available in an alternative audio-only format.

Besides access, factors such as security of the information, crisp quality, and uninterrupted stream of video affect content acceptance. A weak delivery effort is likely to distractand worse still, discouragethe learner.

The strength of the visual media is hard to dispute. As the adoption of broadband grows, organizational networks assume greater capability to carry IP video, and decision makers become more willing to communicate using video as a tool, the increased role of video as a means of knowledge sharing within organizations will be inevitable.