A few years ago e-learning was being hyped as the ‘next big thing.’ It would render conventional training obsolete. It would be the saviour of dotcoms. It would, in short, pervade our every waking moment and change our lives forever (and make lots of money for those involved.) So what went wrong?
Well actually, if you talk to people in the business today, they will say that they never promised any of the above, and if you go back and look at what was said at the time, you would find they are right. But promises about high growth were made. So again, what if anything, went wrong?
‘The view is that things have not moved along as fast as had been thought,’ admits Deborah Threadgold, Learning Services Manager at IBM Ireland.
Takeup has been slower than foreseen, she says, particularly given the expectation that the economic downturn would encourage companies to adopt e-learning as a way of cutting costs. She attributes this to the relatively high up front investment that e-learning can require. ‘Nevertheless,’ she says, ‘Irish companies are dipping their toes into e-learning in a risk-free manner as possible.’
Laura Overton, Global Programme Manager of SmartForce, one of the world’s leading suppliers of content for e-learning agrees that there was a certain degree of hype. ‘There are quite a number of analysts who have had to recalibrate their predictions,’ she says.
‘To be honest there were some quite ridiculous expectations from analysts’ perspectives. Having said that, growth is still predicted. I think the rate of growth was the only thing that was misquoted. What I find incredibly interesting is the acceptance of e-learning. It’s like the Internet. It’s not being used for everything that was predicted but the sheer numbers of people using it, it’s now considered a way of life. Similarly, e-learning is now considered inevitable in many companies.’
Emmet Hedigan, CEO of Unlimited, an Irish company that has specialised in e-learning since the late 80s agrees that the predictions made for e-learning were crazy and that the sector failed to deliver. Much of the blame, he feels, rests with poor content. ‘Crap content does not get better when you take it to the Web,’ he says. ‘It just gets exposed more widely and more quickly.’
The general consensus is that the one area where e-learning remains strong is in IT skills and that where it has failed to deliver is in the area of soft skills. Overton credits this to two factors. Number one that the individuals at whom the training is targeted are familiar with technology and two that the rate of change of technological change means that traditional methods of teaching are unable to keep pace.
IT training covers a broad spectrum from such advanced syllabi such as MSCE or Cisco certification to more basic qualifications such as the European Computer Drivers Licence (ECDL) or the Microsoft Office User (MOUS).
Many organisations that offered such courses as classroom based in the past are now offering them through e-learning. The Irish Academy of Computer Training (IACT), for instance, has launched IACTonline.com. ‘We offer about 60 courses that are classroom based and we’ve taken the most popular of those and converted them to a format that can be used online,’ says IACT’s Shane Broadbury.
According to Broadbury, many people see computer based training (CBT) as tedious and ‘not much different than a help file.’ But the IACT offer is different in that it contains multi-media and enables the academy to support the students and track their progress. The end result, he says, is that those doing the MOUS and ECDL exams coming from e-learning do ‘substantially better’ than those emerging from traditional teaching methods.
E-learning also has the potential to deliver IT skills to those who would never ordinarily have a chance to acquire them. The Equal Skills project is currently being trialled with approximately 100,000 users in the south west of the country in an attempt to close the so-called ‘digital divide.’ The project is being coordinated by ECDL Ireland in cooperation with the Shannon Development E-Region Initiative and the South West Regional Authority, with financing from the Information Society Commission. The content was developed by Electronic Paper, an Irish company with offices in the UK and North America, as well as a roving international unit.
‘It’s aimed at anyone who falls into the digital divide,’ explains Mike McMahon, Electronic Paper’s National Manager for Ireland and Northern Ireland. ‘That includes senior citizens, isolated households, housewives who see their children using IT and so on. The idea is to take the fear and stigma out of using computers. It’s delivered entirely online through equalskills.com and the participants get a certificate at the end.’
At the other end of the scale, Electronic Paper has developed the content for a new programme called ECDL for Schools. ‘School children are not afraid of technology,’ says McMahon. ‘They use Xbox and Playstations all the time, but that does not mean they know how to send e-mail or create a Word document.’
The programme has been trialled in 22 schools so far, says McMahon and there are now 30 schools, representing 2500 students—mainly in transition year—signed up for the coming academic year. Given that the product was only launched seven weeks before the summer holidays, McMahon is quite pleased with the takeup and fully expects to double the number of students taking the course by the beginning of October.
Since its introduction, the ECDL has been quite successful, however it now faces competition from a new certificate emerging from the US: The Internet and Computing Core Certification or IC3.
According to Hedigan, the ECDL was not a success in the US due to the American emphasis on validation. ‘The thinking behind IC3 is that only one vendor does independent testing and there is one global database. ECDL does not have that.’ IC3, on the other hand, is backed by a single big vendor, Certiport, formerly known as NIVO, a Microsoft spinoff.
IC3 also differs in its course content. ‘It has three modules,’ says Hedigan. ‘First, the basics of hardware, software and file management; secondly, applications such as word processing and spreadsheets with a little bit on operating systems and thirdly, living online.’
In the more advanced skill levels, e-learning is also playing a strong role, although it is not supplanting the more traditional teaching methods. The one thing that these advance courses have in common with basic ones, such as ECDL, is that in a company environment there has to be management commitment to the success. The operative term is blended learning where the teaching methods most appropriate to the subject and the student are combined.
‘You need to create the right environment,’ says Threadgold. ‘People learn at different times and at different rates. Most importantly, managers have to make time available to their employees to participate. One of the biggest causes of failure is students not being given a dedicated time and environment.’ Mentoring and coaching are particularly important at the high end of the skills spectrum.
Many companies are now establishing learning centres within their organisations to facilitate employees. ‘These are quiet areas where students can actually learn,’ says Hedigan, whose company, Unlimited, equips such centres. ‘We get involved in everything from the fit out, ergonomic layout, integration with the classroom and so on. We provide someone to go in and manage the centre for the first six months or so and then hand over to the company.’ According to Hedigan, such centres are more conducive to e-learning than a students own desk. Students are much more likely to be interrupted while they are at their own workstations.
Blended learning is also becoming more than just a buzzword. ‘We are finding that our customers are using both e-learning and classroom for training requirements,’ says Philip O’Callaghan, Technical Curriculum Manager of Learning Services, IBM Ireland.
‘We find e-learning is most effective if used as part of a training initiative within a company and not as a quick fix. Students do a portion of their work online and that would be supported with, say, two days in the classroom with a lot of practical work. It gives them the best of both worlds: Access to an instructor and the freedom to do a chunk of the course at a time that suits them best.’
Another tool at the disposal of companies is the virtual classroom. ‘It’s a more “sexy” type of e-learning delivery,’ explains Threadgold. ‘No matter where the students are, they can participate in the same class. It’s like being in a classroom but not in the same room as the instructor and other students. IBM has pieced together a number of technologies to test this on, such as Websphere, to see how rigorous it is. We have had various degrees of success. We now intend to test it for a while longer and then roll it out.’
Smartforce also sees the virtual classroom as a useful tool. ‘It’s about using the right tool at the right time,’ says Overton. According to Overton, companies are using self-paced learning with a mentor on hand 24 hours a day as a way of giving their employees generic skills. However, at a certain point in time, students need to focus on company-specific skills and this is where the virtual classroom is useful, beginning a process that culminates in students participating in physical classrooms.
‘You do not have to have every element for an effective learning experience,’ says Overton. ‘You can get successful certification with self-paced training. But, a classroom on the other hand, can be about brainstorming or creating ideas.’
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