What benefits does your company expect to gain from using E-learning
for training your staff internally?
The 250 IT and business managers in InformationWeek Research’s E-learning:
How Smart Is This? report say: *
92% Less travel time and costs
91% Better convenience and service
80% More training about company products or procedures
79% More access to corporate information
78% Better quality training
62% Nonwork-hour training
43% New customers
30% New revenue source for company
Intel Sees E-Learning as Next Killer App EE Times Online (04/06/01); Mannion, Patrick
Intel executive vice president Sean Maloney told attendees at the
Comdex trade show in Chicago that e-learning is a market quickly growing
in importance. "E-learning will be the killer application over the
next two to three years, with over half of IT training being done
remotely," he said. He argued that the key to e-learning success will
be peer-to-peer networking, a form of file-sharing that came under
attack as having few real uses in a recent Wall Street Journal article.
Maloney said peer-to-peer networking will allow multiple users to
access e-learning sessions without each of them being required to
download the session separately, which would be too bandwidth-intensive
to be practical. A peer-to-peer network would allow multiple users
to access the e-learning session simultaneously from a single user's
download of that session. "Huge libraries can then be built up locally
and accessed any time by the users," Maloney said. (www.eetimes.com)
Employee Training, Without the No-Doz New York Times--E-Business (04/18/01) P. 7; Stellin, Susan
Web-based employee training cuts expenses and makes courses more accessible
to workers. Otherwise known as e-learning, the movement is shifting
from IT-related fields to other industries and will comprise a $11
billion market by 2003, according to International Data Corp. Circuit
City saw e-learning as a perfect solution for updating its 50,000-plus
employees on new products and sales techniques. Although the company
still uses traditional classroom settings for some topics, Web courses
are much more accessible, and 90 percent of the company's employees
have logged on to complete more than 400,000 online courses.
American Airlines also saw an opportunity for its 23,000 globally
dispersed flight attendants in e-learning. Flight attendants now can
complete a portion of their yearly certification training online instead
of using the previous workbook, which some described as tedious and
hard to gauge in its effectiveness. MasterCard International has also
moved training via the Web by updating 2,800 of its 3,000 employees
with new sexual harassment courses. The company used to spend $150
per person for the class, but has cut costs down to only $10 per person
and has succeeded in reaching a broader amount of its workforce. (www.nytimes.com)
According to Clark Quinn, director of cognitive systems at KnowledgePlanet,
the vision of m-learning is clear: the intersection of mobile computing
and e-learning that includes anytime, anywhere resources; strong search
capabilities; rich interaction; powerful support for effective learning;
and performance-based assessment.
What is less clear, he asserts, is where we are now and how we'll
deliver on the vision. According to Quinn, "Two major issues confront
us. The first is having managed learning through an intermittent connection."
The second issue, he says, is cross-platform solutions.
So what lies ahead? In the long run, says Quinn, we'll realize that
learning should move from an organizational function to an individual
necessity. "Eventually, learners will not know or care where the learner
model is kept, where the content resides, nor how the communication
is handled. This will happen as cost drops, product power improves,
and design takes into account a wider range of learning styles and
lifestyle needs. And that will be true mobile learning." Source LINE
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