The Gantry Group Building Business Through Research

Gantry Group Newsletter Issue No. 8, December 2001

e-Learning has been readily gaining acceptance over the past four years. Recent economic downturn and the threat of terrorist attacks post-September 11^th has made business travel both cost prohibitive and unappealing. The idea of being able to brush up on skills, at home or in the office is a very attractive alternative.

Many of CRKInteractive's clients were already moving to distance learning or e-Learning because of the savings that could be realized from fewer  overnight stays and the related travel savings. Add to this the appeal to employees of not having to be away from their families and homes, and you have a classic "win-win" situation. The company saves money in delivering a training program and the employee doesn't have to travel.

IDC estimates that the U.S. E-learning market will grow from $2.3 billion last year to $14.7 billion by 2004. Today the Education and Training market represents over a $770 Billion industry. That's the second largest sector of the U.S. economy, surpassed only by healthcare. The chart on the right breaks it down. e-Learning makes up an ever-increasing share of each of these segments.
 
 

Ok... so what's the catch? A Case Study.

Well, there isn't one. When CRKInteractive was asked four years ago to investigate an e-Learning training delivery for a large computer software client, they were skeptical. How effective could the training be if people were not physically in the same room? How could CRKI make sure the intended participants attended the training and were paying attention when no one could see them?

Nevertheless, CRKI was pleasantly surprised with the results of their initial pilot sessions - and so was their client. Instead of sending people to the headquarters location for a three-day training session, a series of 90-minute online classes was developed. People could log into a session anywhere they had a phone connection for their PC. These sessions were scheduled in advance so people could plan their daily activities around them. The software used to conduct these sessions (LearnLinc from Mentergy) enabled live class interactions (via voice and text chat), question and answer sessions, white-boarding, and even the ability to quiz participants on the subjects that were covered.

How successful were they? Four years later, CRKI is still training their client's employees using an e-Learning format with live instructor-led sessions over the Internet. Lessons learned: e-Learning is efficient and effective and offers significant savings over traditional classroom training. In addition to the savings companies realize in travel, rental cars, hotel and meals, there is also the advantage of people staying on the job and being more productive. Employee time away from the job continues to be the most expensive component of training costs.
 
 

The Age of Blended Learning

We are not suggesting that e-Learning will replace traditional classroom training. In fact, we see it as an excellent augmentation to traditional classroom sessions. The industry "buzz-word" for this mixture of training delivery methods is Blended Learning. This is where you combine traditional classroom training with live instructor-led Internet training and self-paced training over the web. Blended learning is further defined as the convergence of independent and group learning, utilizing two or more learning or distribution methods.

Some examples are:

• Self-paced learning via the web, followed by face-to-face classroom role-plays;

 
• Satellite/Video Conferencing with web-based simulated learning scenarios;

 
• Virtual, ILT (Instructor Led Training) with peer discussion groups to share best practices followed by face-to-face skills demonstrations for assessment.

Education and training has many benefits. For most professionals and students, skill enhancement helps to advance careers and improve income potential. E-Learning has many advantages over traditional methods. Some of the obvious ones are: convenience to the learner, the reduction of training costs (up to 70% of training costs involve travel expenses), augmenting the effectiveness of instructors through additional instructional content, and rich selection of materials and subjects.

Some of the less obvious reasons can be summarized into three broad categories:

Source: Boston e-Learning Association

 

While different people learn in different ways, in these uncertain times, e-Learning may be the best way to deliver training to your people when they feel the need to stay close to home.

How do you know if your people are ready for this type of blended learning delivery?

Many corporations are being proactive and asking their employees how they feel and what they think about what topics and forums they prefer for learning. A simple survey among corporate staffers and partners can provide management with answers to these questions and open the door for better communications.

In particular an online survey can help to pinpoint the specific areas of need - on an individual basis - enabling enterprises to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. Again, the power of the Internet makes it cost effective to run a basic in-house survey to gain important insights into your employee's needs, helping to stratify the organization both by satisfaction and by its knowledge base. By no means should such a survey be positioned as a tool for testing the skill level of employees. Rather, it should be presented as a means for employees to voice their needs and as an opportunity for growth and enhanced communication. Just as with customer satisfaction surveys, when people know their company cares about their feelings and opinions, they often take a greater interest in their work. When people feel their company is concerned about their safety and home life by minimizing the time they have to be away - strong loyalty will develop.

Another primary benefit of an internal survey concerns the customization or tailoring of content. Putting blended learning into practice starts with a good roadmap, based on a variety of factors including: learning objectives, business goals, technology infrastructure, and timeframe. There's no one-size-fits-all blended learning solution. The survey approach works because it asks various questions about your staff's current and desired learning needs in order to target and calibrate learning objectives. The survey provides a framework for generating a blended learning strategy and implementation plan to achieve the learning objectives identified in the survey results. A detailed report with recommendations for implementing a blended solution tailored to the specific needs of the targeted learning objectives can then be created.

e-Learning technology, augmented with Internet-based online surveys, can make learning highly cost effective, creative and fun, while still being manageable. As an integrated approach, Internet-based e-Learning and online surveys form the basis for an ongoing and continuous dialog with employees and partners leading to incremental improvements and more satisfied employees. This is not just smart business - it's good common sense.
 
 

More Than Cost Savings

According to NEC America's training and education manager, companies that do not embrace e-Learning will wind up paying more for outside training where it is difficult to track ROI. Other cost savings show up in the form of employees being able to spend more time doing their job than attending classes - much of which are designed to such a broad audience that only a small percentage is useful to any one employee.

One of the benefits of using multi-media training tools is the ease of breaking down large amounts of content into smaller, more digestible pieces called "learning objects." These objects are fundamental building blocks for e-Learning courses and are designed to personalize the learning experience. Smaller components can be easily combined for just-in-time learning programs personalized through data collected from in-house online surveys. By querying the workforce, highly suitable learning programs can be assembled cost effectively and quickly, delivering timely information with almost 100% relevancy.

The value of e-Learning systems can be extended even further. By conducting online surveys before and after a learning program, workforce attendees can provide feedback that can make the next rendition even better. A closed-loop between employees and learning content creators and management results in an environment where "learning" and "training" are distinct. Learning connotes improvement and progress toward a goal. The connotation of training, for most people, relates to repetitive, often boring sessions that maintain the status quo rather than expand skill bases and foster environments where the opportunity for improvement is an interesting quest rather than obligatory drudgery.

The collective knowledge within a company is one of the main components of human and intellectual capital -valued assets that require at least as much attention as facilities and physical plant property and equipment.
 

About Gantry Group: Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Concord, MA, we are a full-service, custom market research and advisory firm dedicated to helping companies cost-effectively accelerate the successful market adoption of their products and services - online and offline.

The Gantry Group has been helping companies design, manage and analyze quantitative and qualitative research studies to accurately determine market needs - for both internal and external markets. Using Gantry Group's proven technologies and methodologies, our clients quickly validate, prioritize and react to market needs. Contact us today to see how we can make a difference in your workforce effectiveness.
 

The Gantry Group, LLC 30 Monument Square, Suite 135  Concord MA 01742

Phone: 978-371-7557 Fax:  978-287-0043 Email: info@gantrygroup.com Web: www.gantrygroup.com

About CRKInteractive, Inc. - CRKInteractive (CRKI) is a learning solutions company with a proprietary curriculum, developed over the past twelve years. CRKI's mission is to maximize employee potential to positively drive an organization's bottom-line results by helping its clients realize employee potential through tailored learning experiences. CRKInteractive offers diverse training courses and professional services for companies that want to dramatically improve productivity, customer satisfaction and employee retention.

CRKI's curriculum focuses on seven Learning Practices designed for business: Workforce Optimization; Leadership; Team Building; Customer Focused Selling; Customer Focused Service; Client Focused Consulting and Communications. Our Professional Services group specializes in website and course development for online corporate learning. CRKI delivers its curricula via flexible delivery formats, including traditional classroom; live instructor-led training over the Internet or corporate Intranet; and self-paced Web-based courses.

For more information please contact CRKInteractive at (978) 474-8657 or visit them on the web at www.crkinteractive.com.
 

If you are receiving this email, you either know one of the Gantry Group team personally or we met you or your firm through a business interaction. If for some reason this newsletter is reaching you in error, please let us apologize immediately for our mistake. However we hope you discover value in our monthly newsletters. Feel free to forward to friends and colleagues.