Of Two Minds About Training: Employers are finding that blended approaches are critical to success in e-learning programs
By Jill Elswick
Way back in 1998, when optimism about the nascent Internet economy ran feverish, a group of benchmarking firms surveyed by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) predicted that 23% of their employee training would be delivered via e-learning in 2000.
That prediction apparently did not pan out. The most recent ASTD "State of the Industry Report" shows that by 1999, these firms delivered just 8.4% of their training via e-learning - a drop from 8.5% in 1998. E-learning saw a modest gain, from 12.3% to 13.8%, only among very large companies that benefit most from economies of scale.
The ASTD report cites "negative experiences" with e-learning as one factor in the method's relative lack of success. A significant number of employees, for unclear reasons, rejected e-learning, while classroom training gained from 78.4% to 79.9% during the same time period.
"We believe the growth in classroom training and a leveling off in e-learning may be an indication that companies are trying more of a blended approach, or a combination of e-learning and classroom training," says Mark Van Buren, director of research for ASTD.
The social element
"There's a great deal of evidence that blended learning is far more effective than e-learning or classroom learning alone," says Steve Thomas, CEO of Pathlore, a learning management system (LMS) company serving 75% of the Fortune 100.
What employees need to know to do their jobs effectively, notes Thomas, comes from a broad variety of sources, including articles, discussions with co-workers, and independent study, in addition to more formal training methods.
"Education has always been a social thing. And that's the one thing that's really been missing in online learning," says Thomas. "Most of us don't like sitting in front of the PC for hours, not having any interactivity with others."
More "peer-to-peer" communication is needed in e-learning, believes Thomas, because "we learn more by being part of a group, by sharing information." In this scenario, the corporate classroom - whether live or virtual - becomes less a place of instructor-led information delivery and more a place of team-oriented exercises.
The challenge, stresses Thomas, is to capture, organize, and manage the right information, then to give employees access to it in such a way that not only helps them on the job but also inspires their participation in the system. An LMS, he says, can help a company do this through supporting multiple means of training delivery and tracking the usage and effectiveness of e-learning programs.
Senior management, says Thomas, is finally beginning to see training as an investment, not a cost. It's all about increasing competitive advantages and hastening response to unpredictable market forces that are goading established companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and Boeing to embrace such alien product lines - respectively - as video game consoles, telephones and the delivery of movies via satellite.
Catching the rookies
To enhance its own competitive edge, Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group is rolling out its Pathlore-developed eKnowledge Network, an LMS to manage training for the 10,000 employees of the company's regional community bank.
Prior to implementing eKnowledge Network, PNC Bank relied on CD-ROMs to train its tellers and customer service representatives on the bank's products and policies. But this practice failed to keep up with the bank's rapidly changing business environment.
"By the time we'd get a CD-ROM in their hands and get them loaded onto machines, the information was out of date," says Michael Hellman, e-learning project manager. "And we'd have to go through a massive distribution in order to update the CD-ROM and get it back out again."
With the LMS, however, PNC Bank can revise its e-learning courses from a centralized source, eliminating the slow and costly CD-ROM distribution cycle.
What's more, the LMS provides a high level of interactivity to PNC employees. They can take pre-tests in order to skip e-learning course modules they already know well enough. They can plan their career paths by weighing their skills assessments against competency models for their jobs, then signing up for the appropriate e-learning courses.
While the e-learning courses at PNC are engaging, with interactive exercises such as simulations and case study scenarios, they are not intended to replace classroom and hands-on education, says Barbara Roehm, director of performance improvement and learning.
"There will always be a need for face-to-face communication," says Roehm. "[The e-learning courses] serve as a pre-requisite for the classroom. The types of content include compliance, products and an introduction to our different systems."
PNC's training delivery mix for its tellers and customer service representatives currently stands at 40% e-learning versus 60% live classroom instruction and hands-on practice in the bank branches. The approach is already generating encouraging signs of success in boosting employee performance.
"New tellers are getting the latest and greatest information," says Hellman. "When they go back to the branch, the other tellers say, "I don't know this. Where did you learn this?' "
Experienced tellers, Hellman notes gleefully, are signing up for the bank's e-learning courses themselves in order to catch up with the rookies.
The right blend
LearnShare, an e-learning consortium of 13 non-competing Fortune 500 companies and smaller-sized subscribers, has also absorbed a valuable lesson about blending self-directed e-learning and peer-to-peer interaction.
The companies' mutually developed e-learning course for managers, called the First-Time Leader Survival Kit, was a flop at first. But given a little tweaking based on employee feedback, the course has now become quite successful.
"We all had a common interest in getting new managers up to proficiency faster," explains John Mallin, chairman of LearnShare and director of employee training at Owens Corning. "We worked together to create content that we all could endorse about what a new manager should be exposed to over his or her first 90 days on the job."
The LearnShare members then placed that content into a self-directed e-learning class that would guide new managers in the ways of management leadership, complete with exercises such as recommended conversations to have with employees. Problem was, the newly minted managers didn't take well to the course.
"We found that, while the material was right, it just wasn't a terribly effective learning experience for our employees," Mallin says. "It took managers too much time over 90 days, with all the other things that were pulling at them. They were having difficulty disciplining themselves to carve out the time and not be interrupted."
Based on feedback, LearnShare first improved the program by parsing the e-learning program into smaller units, breaking two-hour long courses into 20-minute "discrete bits of learning." After that, LearnShare added a peer-to-peer aspect to the new manager training program.
"Companies found that what really worked for them was to organize a group of new leaders, start them at the same time, and map a curriculum for them over a period of weeks," says Mallin.
Under the guided curriculum, managers would complete some of the e-learning modules, then come together for a facilitated discussion about how the learning applies to their organization and how they can use it in their jobs.
New managers at the companies within the LearnShare consortium now appreciate the "Survival Kit" training program, says Mallin, because it holds their attention and allows them to work through leadership issues with others in their situation.
"LearnShare is playing an increasingly large role in facilitating the sharing of best practices among the companies," says Lois Webster, general manager. Consortium members that already have a corporate university, for example, are helping other members learn how to establish one through discussions, shared resources and personal tours of corporate university sites and systems.
The most vital learning methods, it seems, are still low-tech.
|