The Business Case for E-Learning

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Summary: Where to use and how to create an e-learning environment
Review: From the figures quoted in this book, the case for e-learning is a slam dunk. Several years ago, Cisco embarked on a major e-learning initiative, and according to their figures, their return was $16 per every dollar invested in the training during the year 2003. That is of course enormous, and there are few other investments that could come close to giving that magnitude of a dividend. Chapter three is devoted to an in-depth analysis of the benefits that Cisco garnered and how the figure of 16/1 was arrived at.
Of course, these achievements did not come easy, e-learning is not a panacea for the illness of a lack of knowledge. Like any new thing, it is easily possible to misapply it or misinterpret how it can be used. There will always be some forms of training where electronic delivery simply is not adequate. In cases where there are a large number of possibilities with results that can be unpredictable, a knowledgeable and experienced instructor is a necessity. However, there are many situations where the appropriate knowledge can be acquired via e-learning. Much of the remainder of the book is devoted to explaining how to recognize the circumstances when e-learning is a viable option and the best ways to create and deliver the coursework.
The development of an e-learning network is approached the way large software projects are constructed. First, it is necessary to create a realistic appraisal of the advantages of the network so that you can get management support from the highest levels. After approval is received, you choose a solid management team. The tools and vendors needed to develop the content are selected and the content is created. Once everything is in place, the content is made available and there is an effective mechanism to get feedback from the students.
One of the most valuable points made in the book is not emphasized enough. In my opinion, the greatest advantage of e-learning is that it can be consumed in fragments as short as ten minutes at a time. In the current frantic pace of life in information technology, most windows where people can study and learn are less than thirty minutes in length. There have been many times when I have seen people studying at youth athletic events, in waiting rooms and on buses. I have asked them what their most common window of study time is and the universal agreement is that it is 15-30 minutes in length. Traditional classes are also difficult for working people to deal with. I teach many non-traditional students and they find it difficult to maintain their focus for a full class when they have worked all day. The advantage of being able to segment the learning down to short bursts should not be underestimated.
While there is a bit of pro-Cisco bias in this book, it is not enough to weaken the major premise, which is that e-learning can work and work very well. From it you can learn the reasons for doing it, how to do it and how to quantify the benefits after the fact.

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Summary: Before you invest in elearning, read this book
Review: I score this 4.5, the book gets off to a slow start, but the authors have "been there, done that". After reading the book, I bought a copy for everyone involved in the development of our next generation online training product at SANS. As the book says, most organizations end up scrapping their first system and that is what we have just done. After reading the book, I now know to focus on reusable learning modules and prioritize assessment. From the book, I learned make our new system employer centric first with mandatory skills triaining and assessment and second learner centric so that individuals have the tools to design and track their own individualized learning plans.

If you are creating some form of distance learning, buying this book and forcing yourself to read every word might save you a lot of money and heartache.

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Summary: The time has come, and it is starting now.
Review: There are so many reasons to believe that E-Learning is going to become a major part of how people learn that it's unreal.

So far, most of e-learning has been business oriented. Businesses educating their employees is a major expense and is easy to quantify. You can have someone take a course in almost anything from human resources Policies, to transmission repair, to the details on the new life insurance policy you've just come out with. And at the end of the course you can ask a few questions and you know the effectiveness of the training immediately. And the business case is also easy to measure. For a few hundred dollars in equipment and communications cost you replace a classroom, a teacher and their administration.

Not far behind are the colleges with distributed campuses. I live in the American west. We have a small branch of a college some hundreds of miles away. A wide range of subjects which cannot generate enough interest for a class to be held here can be taught with this student studying one thing while the one next to her studies something entirely different.

Finally we have become a nation of computer users. That kid playing that video game may not realize it, but he is in training to be able to drive a tank. The Army just needs to make the tank controls match those of the game.

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Summary: The book is the title...
Review: This book is all about its title: building the BUSINESS case for e-learning.

It turns out that the obvious reasons for doing e-learning are just the ones that lie on the surface. As you read and explore Tom Kelly's and Nader Nanjiani's tightly focused book, you'll learn not only how to build that justification for e-learning on sound business practices, but will be exposed to a number of ancillary reasons for implementing this evolving area of empowering your people.

The book gives solid reasons - with hard, real-world numbers - about why e-learning is rapidly becoming mission critical to businesses of all sizes. Besides the plentiful examples from Cisco Systems, several case studies from other industries and companies are included. When you are finished reading this book, you will be convinced of why now is the time to get serious about implementing e-learning in your organization, and, you'll pretty much have all the steps and material you need to put a plan into action.

I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: This Train Has Left the Station
Review: This book provides a lot of useful data on the productivity gains that an enterprise can realize from an online learning program. In providing the validation for implementing e-learning and in showing how to model the productivity gains in terms of returns on investments and improvements to the supply and value chains (the so-called ecosystem) in a large organization, the book merits five stars. It accomplishes what it sets out to do.

The next step, of course, is to figure out how to implement an e-learning program. The book doesn't tackle this process in very much detail, but does provide some guidelines to follow when setting up an e-learning initiative. It also provides some useful detail on how Cisco built its own e-learning program.

This book is really aimed at CxO and upper management. It's main intent is to provide justification and proofs of the efficacy of e-learning programs in general and of some specific programs (Bearing Point, Toyota, and the Cisco Networking Academy) that are detailed in case study format. These studies will give you a decent sense of what these companies went through to implement e-learning; this should hopefully help a training manager to navigate through the maze of requirements for putting together an e-learning program of their own.

How do you measure the output of an e-learning program? This is an area that seems nebulous at first, and the book takes us through its methodology so that we can be more comfortable with the data. Cisco commissioned an independent survey conducted to take some measurements from its Partner E-Learning Connection (PEC) program. Respondents reported hard figures such as a savings of 9-10 hours per month and increased sales of an average of $9700 per month. When these figures were extrapolated across the entire partner program, and compared to the costs of implementing the PEC, it was found that the training investment had paid off at an astonishing ratio of 16-1. The case studies for the other vendors was somewhat more anecdotal but also contained hard evidence.

The pyramid of the productivity sets apart the Cisco program and gives it a unique credibility that makes it worth studying. At the base of this pyramid is communications; in the middle is the training itself and assessment is at the top. I think in some ways this is really key - when you take away the live instructor and the reporting that an expert can give you as to whether the students truly understand he material, the need for assessment is obvious.

But it can be rather tricky to construct the assessment portion of a training class so as not to be too general and high level, and also not to be too nit-picky on details that can always be looked up in the field (as long as the basics of a technology are understood). There is an art form to this, and if it's done well, it can make a training program much more effective.

There is, I believe, no doubt that many kinds of subject matter, particularly in the industrial realm, are better served by e-learning than any other method. Reasons for this include the lower cost of an e-learning program (assuming, of course, that there is a large enough student base to justify the rollout) and the fact that an e-learning initiative fits really well into the difficult-to-predict schedules of the recipients of the courseware. People who are under pressure to sell or to deliver IT consulting of their own cannot necessarily afford to take a week off of work to receive specialized training in a technology, product, or methodology.

What almost anyone can do, however, is find a chunk of time here and there to study a segment of a larger course. When the course is available online, with assessments to measure progress, and the ability to remember where the student last left off, the resulting flexibility allows the student to take in more subject matter.

All of this is not to say (and the book doesn't claim) that classroom training should be eliminated in favor of online learning. Subjects that benefit from "give and take" between an instructor and students (or between the students themselves) would certainly lend themselves to having a classroom component. The art of troubleshooting comes to mind, or of providing technical support. However, a great deal of industrial training can be handled more effectively, and more cheaply, through e-learning. This is bound to be increasingly true in the future, as more young students are comfortable with this mode of learning.

After laying out the case for e-learning, the book describes how to organize an e-learning initiative. I think this area is a little bit more high level and less concrete than the case studies themselves, and that a training manager responsible for implementing an e-learning initiative will still have more work to do in fighting the battle to put a program together. Still, some good high-level rules are laid out, such as demonstrating cost advantages, and identifying benefits and key dependencies. These are all good rules of thumb.

There is probably no "one size fits all" template for putting together an e-learning program, and training developers have to muddle through their unique situations to apply these principles to their individual companies and the subject matter at hand. However, if you are starting out cold, you will benefit from the descriptions of how to get support from management, how to implement a pilot, and how to set goals to measure your results.
But the bottom line is that the e-learning train has left the station, and if you're involved in corporate training in any way, you absolutely have to take a hard look at it.



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Summary: A Single Source E-Learning Deployment Guide
Review: With the implementation of our corporate e-learning platform, national sales training, product launch cycles and real-time, collaborative customer engagements have all been dramatically improved. "The Business Case for E-Learning" provides the complete road map for deploying an e-learning platform and achieving similar success. Before the success, however comes the e-learning campaign. The overall acceptance of the e-learning methodology is built around influencing corporate culture and creating internal buy-in of a truly, new school approach to knowledge transfer. For their efforts, Kelly and Nanjiani address this critical issue in a complete, deliverable approach. From building platform brand identity to identifying an in-house team of champions; this book defines the process for successful organizational adoption of an e-learning platform. For anyone evaluating the strategic value of e-learning for their organization, this book will save valuable creative and due diligence cycles and serves as your single source reference tool.

Lance Mehaffey
Manager of Marketing
NEC Unified Solutions, Inc.