Industry: Enterprise Software Developer
Scope of Services and Products: Provides database software, development tools, and enterprise business applications; also provides consulting, education and support services
Estimated Number of Employees: 42,000
Year e-Learning Introduced: 1999
Offices and Locations: Offices globally with headquarters in Redwood Shores, California
Estimated 2002 Revenues: US$9.4 billion
Web Site: www.oracle.com
Number of e-Learning Programs in Entire Curriculum: Oracle offers hundreds of courses and learning objects through Oracle University, including the ability to obtain certifications online.
Oracle Corporation is the leading provider of enterprise-scale relational database management systems and tools, as well as one of the top providers of enterprise application software. As such it has a global customer base requiring extensive initial and ongoing training.
Oracle University now hosts a broad range of classroom, live and self-paced e-learning, and blended learning programs. The approach to many of these programs grew from one of Oracle’s first experiments in blended learning, the e-Learning Fast Track Program.
Oracle selected an e-learning approach to:
Reduce the classroom time commitment required for customers seeking to achieve Database Administrator certification
Reduce the overall time required to achieve certification
Maximize the efficiency and profitability of its training services and infrastructure
Scale the ability of Oracle instructors to reach and teach more learners
Blend the benefits of self-paced e-learning and classroom models
As one of Oracle’s first e-learning ventures, the Fast Track Program arose in response to growing customer demand for shortening the classroom time required to achieve an Oracle Database Administrator (DBA) certification. A substantial portion of Oracle’s learner population stood to benefit because about 60 percent were seeking DBA Certification.
The classroom version of the certification comprised four courses of five days each for twenty total days of instruction. These four courses were typically completed over an 18-month period. After coursework completion, candidates completed four certification tests. These were offered through third-party testing centers that supplied proctoring services.
Oracle’s customer personnel increasingly had difficulty getting away for 20 days of classroom training, both due to the direct expenses incurred for travel and related costs and concerns about time away from the job.
Because holding an Oracle DBA certification usually had a positive impact on a person’s earnings and position in the workforce, these individuals increasingly also wanted to shorten the average 18 months required to complete the program.
In the meantime, Oracle was looking for a way to maximize the efficiency and profitability of its training operations. Given that its classrooms, instructors, and the associated infrastructure are fixed costs, one way to both increase the efficiency and profitability would be to increase the number of learners who cycle through a program in a given time period.
Oracle had also set, as a goal of their e-learning program, that Oracle be recognized as the best place to learn about Oracle products.
Says Chris Pirie, Vice President of Oracle’s Learning Network, “The goal we set ourselves was that anybody in the world could learn Oracle from Oracle. That meant offering cost-effective programs in India and Pakistan as well as in the United States. It meant we could scale the assets and resources we have and make sure that there was really as little distinction as possible between an e-learning approach and a traditional learning approach.”
Customer demand for less time in a classroom
Customer demand for shorter overall program duration
Maximize efficiency and profitability of its existing training infrastructure
Maintain Oracle’s position as the best place to acquire Oracle knowledge and skills
Grow the Certification Program
Increase instructor utilization
The vision for the new program, which went into design in 2000, was a result of balancing the various business drivers with the needs of the learners. The result was a blended program that combined reduced class time embracing a period of self-paced e-learning and seminar offerings.
The original plan called for participants in the e-Learning Fast Track Program to attend an initial week of classroom training and orientation, followed by a ten-week period of self-paced e-learning punctuated with a weekly live e-learning seminar. There would then be a concluding week of class time. After this week, learners could then sit for the certification exams as before.
According to Pirie, the original design process for converting the classroom materials to a blended format consisted of sitting down with a virtual cardboard box of content from the classroom and reworking the materials.
It was an abbreviated effort, taking three people three months. The first focus was on restructuring the opening five-day session. This would stay in the classroom, but could not be the same as the original opening five- day course. The team needed to decide what information, concepts, and skills must be covered in this limited face-to-face time because people would not be coming back to the classroom for some time. The final design is that during this week, participants meet with instructors and their peers, learn basic concepts, and get started with basic skills, such as installing the software.
Oracle’s blended approach enables learners to get the best mix of learning experiences. The instructors provide group interaction, direct coaching, lecture, lab support, motivation, and feedback and reinforcement. The self-paced e-learning includes reading material, hand-on labs and exercises, quizzes, and communication with instructors and peers.
The next task was to build a self-study guide that made sense for someone spending 10 hours a week working on their own from a remote location. A substitute was also needed for the exercises students would complete using Oracle software in the classroom. Oracle now hosts an online lab where students can carry out these exercises in a computing environment that they can access remotely to practice various skills hands-on.
The final week of the program was then designed. It is again classroom-based and serves as the capstone and wrap-up experience, enabling participants to consolidate their learnings and address any remaining questions or issues.
At this point, learners are eligible to sit for the four certification exams to become an Oracle-certified database analyst.
The design team for the program was made up of one instructional designer and two instructors. Oracle wanted to capture instructor experience because the instructional components were of more interest to them than the content. Says Pirie, “Clearly from our experience, learners perceive a tremendous amount of value in those traditional instructional techniques of mentorship and guidance, and even discipline to some extent.”
Pirie continues, “The content needs to be good, it needs to be engaging, it needs to be accurate, it needs to be up-to-date, but really it is just a small piece of the instructional process.”
The structure continues to evolve. For example, the initial sessions featured periodic live e-learning sessions during the self-study period. These sessions brought the participants together virtually for live e-learning via the Internet. These have now been replaced by virtual office hours—times when the instructor is available online to the remotely located learners. This change was a result of participant feedback that indicated they could learn well on their own, but they wanted access to instructors for other purposes, such as mentoring or individual instruction and feedback.
Additionally, the self-study material in the original program consisted primarily of standard computer-based training (CBT) titles created by e-learning vendors and hosted on Oracle’s site. Over time these have been replaced by more focused learning objects developed by Oracle and hosted through its learning management system, iLearning.
Yet even in its original form, the program resulted in a substantial level of customer satisfaction, as well as a drop in the total time required to complete the program. Some participants achieved DBA certification in as little as 15 weeks instead of 18 months.
One key design factor from Oracle’s perspective was that they wanted the technology platform managing the effort to be compatible with the other business systems used by Oracle University. This would enable those registering for the online version of the program to receive the classroom components as well. It is also Oracle’s experience that for most companies, e-learning infrastructure is discreet and separate from their traditional learning management systems. It was important to have an infrastructure that worked across both delivery approaches.
“A lot of the challenges very early on were around integration,” says Pirie. “When somebody signs up for a class can we really give them a choice for that class of how they take it? And can we sell it to them in a way that we sell the class first and the delivery mode second? And then there is just pure integration work with e-commerce systems and various other systems that we use to run our business.”
At the start of the design process for the e-Learning Fast Track Program, the vision was that each of Oracle’s programs would become a vertically blended effort, with some pieces of each program being classroom-based and others online, either using live or self-paced, e-learning methods. It was believed that this would become the predominant way to do things, with each program becoming a predetermined blend of components available in a particular format.
However, Oracle ended up with much more of a horizontal blend. That is, where each learning component is available in different modes of delivery, like a menu selection. Says Pirie, “I can decide in what mode I am going to take [each] class, rather than buying the whole track already preconfigured for me.”
Things have evolved this way because many in Oracle’s audience now just want to take one or two classes and do not want to complete the certification. Having alternative formats for components gives each participant the ability to choose the best mix for themselves. In other words, Oracle now finds itself dealing more with learners wanting learning objects than with learners wanting programs.
One design issue that did not arise as part of the program was the target audience’s readiness for e-learning. Those learning Oracle’s database and application software spend their days around computers and the Internet and are accustomed to using the network to locate information and answers. The audience was, in fact, asking for online alternatives to classroom work.
Oracle developed the e-Learning Fast Track Program around their own learning management system, using standards such as SCORM and a reusable content object model structure. The same framework is used for both Oracle internal and customer-facing programs, such as the e-Learning Fast Track. This enables learning objects to be easily interchanged. Content developed for internal use can quickly be made available to customers, and vice versa. Oracle now has about 2000 hours worth of content, much of it, according to Pirie, built in a very disposable manner because of its short shelf life.
Finally, from a design standpoint, Oracle’s learning management system also includes another piece of functionality that Pirie considers very important—an assessment engine for creating and scoring tests.
Assessment and certification tests are critical to the program because learners can now take the DBA Certification Program in a classroom environment with some online pieces, as entirely online self-study, or as entirely online, live e-learning sessions. Regardless of the format, the learning objectives and the certification are always the same.
Pirie believes assessment is a key factor when working with e-learning. “I think certification and accreditation in general are much, much more important for online learning than they are for classroom,” Pirie says. According to Pirie, the classroom experience provides more real-time validation that you are on the right track as a learner because you answer questions, interact with the instructor and see others do the same. Observing all of this gives you a better sense of your own level of understanding. “There is some sort of perception that because I have physically been locked in a room for five days that I have been trained. People learning in a self-paced way or even in a kind of instructor-led way through the Internet, need even more validation.”
Also assessment provides a provisional baseline for measuring the success of program components offered in different formats. Testing of people who have used the different modes of learning has indicated very favorable results. Particularly for the live e-learning courses, participants perform as well as in the classroom version.
Oracle has used various live e-learning tools or environments in its courses, including Rain Dance Communications and Centra’s online learning products. Oracle will be moving to a product of their own that is almost ready to launch and will become part of the learning management system.
Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash
Microsoft PowerPoint
RealNetworks’ RealPlayer, as well as other streaming media products
XStream Software’s RapidBuilder for simulations and RapidExam
Once the e-Learning Fast Track Program was complete, Oracle established its value proposition based on time-to-certification. This path took less time overall and disrupted peoples’ work schedules less. The rich multimedia approach also appealed to many learners.
Pirie says that the learners who chose this path did not, in fact, need convincing. As mentioned earlier, people in the Oracle space use networks and computers to learn all the time. They are constantly on the Internet, searching and learning.
Minimal marketing required, as audience was "e-learning ready"
Marketed as an offering of Oracle University
Value proposition- based on reduced time- to-certification
One primary impact of implementing the e-learning Fast Track Program was a marked increase in the efficiency of classroom and instructor utilization. Through the use of staggered launch dates for program offerings, one instructor can handle several classes of participants at time. Taking them into the classroom for a week and then sending them off on their own and moving on to the next. Each program then progresses at its own rate.
The instructors like the approach of the blended learning as well because they build up long- term, closer relationships with the learners through the ongoing virtual office hours. To the instructors, it is almost as if they are working in a university setting. They also see it as a validation of their skill set, as they are still very much involved in a program throughout its lifecycle.
Because Oracle University is organized as a global business unit, with all parties involved constantly looking for ways to increase profitability, there was no tension between a learning group and a different group that would be in charge of, and responsible for, the utilization of classrooms or training centers.
Despite the early success, the program proved not to be as scalable as originally thought. There are segments of the program that still need to be offered in a classroom, so learners still need to go to a location, and they still need materials in their language and instructors who speak their language.
The program is run on a country basis, rather than consolidating it into a global program, which would bring maximum efficiency. “One thing we would like to do is run these across national borders and to consolidate and essentially run these programs by language,” says Pirie. “It has proved impossible to do because you still need people to go to physical locations, and it is just kind of tough to do that.”
Looking back, what would Oracle do differently, if anything? Pirie believes Oracle may have been too ambitious in tackling a 20-day program first. “I would have started on a five-day class and apply similar principles to smaller kinds of learning,” says Pirie. “I also think we were far too anxious about the live e-learning aspect of this than we needed to be. We really wanted to create a virtual classroom that was like a classroom. It took us a while to realize that that is not what learners wanted.”
The future looks bright for Oracle University. They project teaching about one million people in 2003.
"I was in the original e-learning DBA class that was taught in San Mateo last year. I am now an Oracle Certified Professional DBA. I want to thank you for your work in developing the e-learning curriculum. Due to family obligations, it would have taken several years to complete this had it not been for your program."
Purpose: The e-Learning Fast Track Program was designed to:
Reduce the classroom time and costs required for people seeking Oracle DBA certification
Reduce the time required to achieve the certification
Maximize use of Oracle’s learning infrastructure and instructors
Program Structure: The e-Learning Fast Track Program comprised:
An initial week of classroom learning, covering basic software skills and knowledge
An extended period of self-paced Web-based training
Several live e-learning sessions scheduled through the self-paced e-learning period of the original program were later replaced with scheduled virtual office hours for each instructor
A final week of classroom learning serving as a program capstone and wrap-up
Four certification exams to measure achievement
Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 332 hours available
Number of Learners:
564 learners have completed the program in the United States since its inception.
Completion Requirements:
Learners must attend beginning and ending classroom sessions, complete the self-paced e-learning portion, and pass certification exams.
Media and Tools:
Pre-packaged content from SkillSoft and Netg
Custom designed learning objects from Oracle, created using Macromedia products
Live e-learning sessions using Centra and Rain Dance
Deployment Mechanism: The program was deployed through Oracle University using Oracle’s iLearning platform, which integrated with Oracle’s other business systems. This provided:
Learner access to all of Oracle University, not just the e-learning components
Integration with other Oracle business systems
When converting a classroom course to a virtual or blended model, do not worry about mimicking the classroom experience exactly. Rather, create a structure that best communicates the concepts, skills, and interactions of the original classroom course.
Test assumptions. Once a program is launched, monitor learning use and reaction to it.
Oracle initially implemented live e-learning sessions only to find them unnecessary. Replacing them with virtual offices hours increased the utility of the course for learners.
Start small and then keep the program growing.
A blended learning model often enables you to make maximum use of all resources while providing the most benefit to learners.