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ELearning Whats Working Whats not

Guest post by: Arupa Tesolin

Article Overview: The path to successful e-learning is shaping up for small and mid-size companies to gain the most advantage from it's economy of scale. Here's an overview of the ways that it is working.

ELearning Whats Working Whats not

We’ve talked so much about e-learning but not a lot about what’s working and what’s not. The Conference Board of Canada held a 2-day symposium on Maximizing the Business Value of e-Learning in Toronto earlier this month. Here’s what I learned from attendees and presenters.

The rule-of-thumb average resource cost of custom e-learning design is 220 hours for 1 hour of e-learning. This time is divided about 50% in programming time and 50% in content development. And it is expensive! So expensive in fact that many larger companies that signed on with e-learning firms to develop and maintain these programs are taking a second look when contract time comes along. As a result some of these contracts are not being renewed and second looks are being taken in favour of alternative arrangements that consume less overhead and cost.

On the other hand where e-learning is working well it is reaping its’ cost many times over in better business practices, standards and staff knowledge. Consider the following case scenario. A travel related company implemented a 4-hour e-learning program for 15,000 associates, each working in a remote location. The program manager stated that one component beyond the training program was considered absolutely critical to successful implementation - an orientation training program to teach users how to navigate the system and how to use it. This proved absolutely right. Feedback taken from participants who later welcomed and used the system was laden with accolades and grateful thank-yous. The program and implementation was both verbally and measureably regarded a huge success.

Other companies are reported cost savings of 50% or more over traditional classroom trainings and sometimes an increase as high as 50% in sales or business results. This latter is highly variable depending on the training subject and business need.

The key issue across the board at both large and small companies where e-learning is implemented, is effective implementation, use and measured results. It is simply not enough to build the system and expect it to be used. It must be guided, directed, and championed and clear goals and completion requirements in order to be most effective.

At the other end of the bells and whistles scale, these days ready made e-learning curriculum bundles are more widely available, some systems cost less than $1 per day annually for an entire curriculum and provide a great opportunity to engage smaller and mid-size businesses in low cost training.

Highlights from Conference Board reseach report on training:
More than half of Canadian companies participating in a current survey rated themselves as somewhat of a “learning organization”. Of these 30% had formal learning methods in place and the other 70% relied on informal learning methods. Only 12% of companies used training technologies. Other methods of training in use were rated considerably higher, among them job rotation/cross-assignments (from 70-90%), mentoring (from 43-90%) and mandatory annual training (from 38-72%). Companies with a higher or more sophisticated learning commitment tended to use more mentoring and mandatory training. The us of job rotation was high in all companies.

The average company in Canada spent $838 per employee in 2002. The highest percent of training dollars spent were allocated to management and professional staff followed by information technology. Nearly 80% of companies still deliver training in the classroom.

Canadian investment in Training & Development has not increased in the past 8 years. It has been flat-lined. Many companies, it seems, are still trying to justify the investment between training and business results.

Technology based training methods in 2002 comprised the following:
Multimedia 24
Intranet 18
Internet 12.
Simulators 13.
Performance Management 11
TV (cable, satellite) 9
CD Rom 8
Teleconferencing 7

In short, training and training commitment in Canada have a lot of room to grow. Changes in workplace culture seem to be the biggest obstacle/opportunity namely in terms of management style and encouraging risk and experimentation in the work culture. E-learning still presents an opportunity but it must be implemented properly and chosen wisely.

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