Is Your Hammer Looking for a Nail?
By Rick Nigol
 Regular readers of eLearn Campus
publications will know that we spend a lot of time talking about the
design and management of eLearning. That is because there is a lot
of poor design and equally poor management out there. We believe
that eLearning went through an initial phase of technology focus
where people did not spend a lot of time thinking about design and
management. If these aspects are improved, it is more likely that
eLearning will be used to support organizational performance.
Our research tells us that early stage eLearning
was focused on technical occupations and technical skills. A large
survey that we conducted in 2002 found that most eLearning was being
used for software training and was targeted at technical employees.
That, too, will change. We believe that eLearning will increasingly
be used to support mission-critical management processes.
So, in anticipation of that change, we have
decided to introduce our Performance Series of webinars this fall.
These webinars will focus less on the "what" and "how" of the
eLearning product (the hammer) and more on the "why" of a specific
business problems (the nails).
In general, the type of business problem that
lends itself to eLearning has the following characteristics:
-
A business process improvement that
depends critically on the skills of people in the
organization
-
Relatively large numbers of people needing skill upgrading
-
People geographically distributed, so
the cost of face-to-face is prohibitive
-
There is a need to sustain and support learning beyond a "training event" (learning on demand in the
workplace)
-
People are open to learning through
technology, or can be taught to be
There are many business problems that meet these
criteria. Any major organizational effectiveness initiative, by its
very nature, involves many levels of training and a need to sustain
training.
The Performance Series will define a specific
business problem which lends itself to an eLearning application. We
will invite guests from the business community to discuss their
issue, suggest an approach to it, and discuss some of the
challenges. The guest may not always even be doing eLearning as the
initial focus is on a clearly defined business issue. Indeed, we see
that as one of the advantages. These guests are the sort of people
who need to be convinced that an eLearning solution makes
sense.
Our first guest, on September 7th, is Catharine
Johnston, Executive Vice President, Business and Organizational
Excellence, Intrawest
Corporation. Intrawest is a world leader in destination resorts
and adventure travel. The Intrawest network of resorts attract over
8 million annual skier visits on 10 mountains, thousands of golfers
on 36 championship golf courses, thousands more visiting lakeside
and ocean beaches, and now offers adventure travel around the globe
through Abercrombie & Kent. Intrawest has more than 24,000
employees located around the world.
Catharine will speak about the challenge of
implementing Lean Sigma at a large, geographically-distributed
leisure company. This challenge certainly meets our criteria as a
business challenge that may be open to eLearning.
Rick
Nigol is Co-Founder and Director
of Education for eLearn Campus.
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