e-Learning and Beyond!

Getting the Most Out of Your SME

2008-09-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Over the past few years, the process of custom content development has changed drastically. In its early years, content development was a simple process primarily because most of the information that was needed for developing learning or training content was available on the Internet. Content developers just had to conduct a simple search on the Internet, download all the relevant content, run it through a make-over process, package it neatly, and ship it to the customer on time. Subject matter experts (SMEs) played a marginal role in this process. In contrast, content developers today have to depend heavily on SMEs as the specialized information that they seek is no longer easy to procure. The growing need for customized learning or training content has made the developer’s task rather difficult. More and more organizations are now looking for training programs that are “customized” in every sense of the word. Developers therefore have to be in constant touch with SMEs to tailor training content to the needs of specific groups of employees, keeping in mind the niche areas where employees need to be up-skilled,..

The high dependency on SMEs has posed a new challenge for organizations involved in developing custom content for their customers. Extracting relevant information from SMEs is both arduous and time-consuming. It usually delays the release of training programs, which may have serious repercussions for the organization. Such delays may carry financial penalties or may cause customer dissatisfaction.

This article focuses on the two most common issues that development teams normally face while interacting with SMEs. It also provides a few suggestions on how these issues can be resolved.

The suggestions proposed here are based on the author’s experience and may not be applicable to all scenarios.

Problem No. 1: The SME does not have time

More often than not, delays in releasing learning or training content are attributed to the inability of the SME to devote sufficient time to the issues faced by content developers. To resolve this problem, it is imperative to know what is meant by “sufficient” time. The required amount of SME time should be communicated to the customer stakeholders as early as possible, that is, while proposing the engagement model. This measure will help gauge management commitment to providing SME time. It will also enable the organization to appropriately plan for project commercials. In addition, the SME turn-around-time (TAT) must be incorporated in the project plan to ensure that all timelines and delays are tracked.

Insufficient SME time may well be the key reason why organizations decide to hire vendors to develop training programs. In this scenario, it would be advisable to place a resource at the customer location who could “steal” additional windows of time from the SME so that the project is completed on time. Alternately, an internal SME can be hired and trained at the beginning of the project. This step will take some burden off the customer SME and reduce review iterations.

Problem No. 2: I am doing what I am paid to do

In some cases, SME time may not be the real issue. The problem may be related to the degree of willingness of SMEs to share information with content developers. In such cases, the question “What’s in it for me?” has to be answered precisely and carefully.

In such a scenario, the vendor organization needs to understand the perspective of both the customer management and the SME. For the management, leveraging SME’s knowledge in developing training programs is a way to creating a knowledge repository and building redundancy in the system. For the SME, it is additional work.

It is advisable to keep both the parties happy by giving brownie points to SMEs in their appraisal process for assisting in the development of training programs.

Conclusion

In today’s era of rapid technological change, the demand for specialists who can operate and manage new emerging technologies is increasing in leaps and bounds. Needless to say, this demand can be met only with efficient and timely training, and to create effective training programs, we need sufficient SME time. Are we back to square one?

Oracle Buys Global Knowledge Software

2008-08-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

In yet another strategic move from Oracle, it acquired Global Knowledge Software to ensure that its end user training solutions are more robust. With this acquisition, Oracle will be able to provide just-in-time, Web-based training support across an enterprise.

Note that Global Knowledge Software has been associated with Oracle for a long time and the much appreciated Oracle User Productivity Kit (UPK) is in fact GSK's Personal Navigator product to the core.

Read more on the Trainingoutsourcing Website:

http://www.trainingoutsourcing.com/pressrelease.asp?id=8610

NIIT, Genpact form JV; to impart IT training

2008-06-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

Genpact and NIIT Ltd announced their new joint venture, NIIT Institute of Process Excellence that will provide training programmes to skilled workers in the business and technology services industry.

NIIT will be 75% stakeholder in the JV and the companies are jointly planning to invest Rs 25 crore in the first year of operations. Genpact and NIIT expect the new institute to have over 250 learning centers by 2012. Genpact will provide most of the content for the training programmes with other partners. Read in detail here.

Informal Learning in 10 Minutes by Jay Cross!

2008-03-08T20:40:00.000-08:00

Education portal solution for schools from IBM

2008-02-26T07:16:00.000-08:00

IBM's Education portal is a simplified access system to all administration and instructional data at a school and state level. It is capable of inter-connecting your back-end systems, such as human resources, general ledger and purchasing, as well as student records, and instructional and curricular materials. Details and contact information may be obtained at the following link:
http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/education/doc/content/solution/902841110.html

NIIT Acquires Equity Stake in Evolv

2008-01-20T03:47:00.001-08:00

NIIT recently announced that it has acquired stake in Evolv Management Services Private Limited. Evolv is a leading provider of English Language and Communication Training, headquartered in Noida, India. Read the details here.

With this acquisition, NIIT has taken another important step in becoming a complete training services provider. With Evolv under the NIIT umbrella, it will also compete and possibly take away a lot of business from the likes of Hero Mindmine, whose pureplay business is corporate training in areas similar to Evolv as well as customer service.

What does Google get by providing free games?

2007-11-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, here is the latest addiction for all Google pros. Google has deployed this very interesting strategy for indexing its images so that Google users get better results. Check it out here:

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

You can log in as a Guest or sign in with your Google account. You will be paired with a randomly selected partner (any online Google users worldwide). Then, both you and the partner will see the same image and need to provide as many labels as possible for that image. The moment you and your partner provide a matching label, you get points for it and the next image is displayed. Needless to say, you cannot see the labels that your partner has provided until the allocated 2 minutes per round are over. Go ahead and give it a shot.

So what does Google get by providing free games? Well, with this fun, game experience, actually Google is getting the indexing done for all those images to appear in search results without paying a penny for the time and resources that all of us are spending!! Amazingly, Google comes up with such great ideas where they are actually getting a business project completed and its loyal users take it in the right spirit and enjoy the "games" while helping their own Google grow!

Brandon Hall 2007 Awards

2007-10-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Brandon Hall 2007 results are out. The awards were anounced in the SFO get together last week. Here is a list of winners...

http://www.brandon-hall.com/awards/2007_winners.shtml

Interestingly, companies such as GE, who had always participated in conjunction with their content development partners in the past, also came in directly this time. They have won a Gold for their Ergonomics course under the Best Blended Learning Program category.

Immersive Learning - II

2007-07-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

What if I tell you that your kid is not in a classroom while in school, rather he is in a cave sitting with an old caveman!Or, your 3rd-grader is not learning spelling but working as a bank cashier? Do I see your jaw falling?

The response is expected! And that is precisely what Immersive Learning is all about. Learners are completely immersed into the environment where they need to apply their skills and they learn while they do their tasks. I was going through http://www.experiencia.org/ - a unique learning experience for school going kids. This is a perfect example of how Immersive Learning works.

One of the key differences between traditional online simulations and ILS is that the learner is in the real environment. Give it a shot and your learners are sure to love it!

Please post any good examples that you come across here, meanwhile, I will come up with a case study for all of us to work on, till then...

Immersive Learning - I

2007-07-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

The latest buzz now is Immersive Learning. So what is it? Why is it getting so much of attention and why does it work better?

In this series about Immersive Learning, I will start today with the Web Definition for it as searched from Google :-)

Literally speaking, Immersive Learning is a system of complete immersion in a new subject in order to gain skills in the subject. The most extreme, perhaps, is immersive learning of a new language, in which the learner subjects himself to non-stop bombardment of the language by native speakers.

Read more at...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_learning

I will write more about immersive learning - where is it being used, who is talking about it, and what kind of market/learner base is accepting it.

The Storm Has Hit Again...

2007-07-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Some of my concerns have materialized into real issues... sooner than I thought. The attrition storm has hit the elearning providers in India yet again. Biggies moving out to other organizations for "better career prospects" has left every elearning professional in doubt about their future with the company. Here are some of the most recent ones:

1. Sify - DGM (Delivery), Senior PM (Tech), Director (Business Development)

2. Gecis/Genpact - Operations Leader, Business Leader, both Product Leaders (one moved to a different role, one moved out of the organization)

3. Aptara/Teckbooks - Operations Leader

With service providers claiming as much as 300% growth in revenues, why is the top brass looking at other "better" career opportunities?

Finally - India Inc. Gets a Certification in Instructional Design

2007-07-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

For a long time, Indian e-learning companies have struggled to get "certified" instructional designers. I mean certified in the real sense. The demand for the skill is high and resource readiness is a key challenge that most of the companies are facing.

Here's some relief!! Tenable Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd. a Hyderabad (India) based firm, has started a certificate program in instructional methodology in partnership with Philadelphia University. The company itself is an amalgamation of seasoned e-learning professionals who really feel the pains of this industry in India. Although the results of this 5-month program are are yet to be seen, it is a significant step over the one and only basic program currently offered by Symbiosis institute in Pune, India. I wish Team tenable all the very best in this initiative and hope that the entire industry benefits from this. More details can be found on www.tenableindia.com.

Watch out for the coming press releases and newspaper items soon!

Is elearning Really Growing in India?

2007-05-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Try searching for a job with the keyword "elearning" on http://www.naukri.com/ or http://www.monsterindia.com/ and chances are that you will get pages full of new postings. It definitely seems to be expanding! And who is hiring? The biggest IT names in India... Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Satyam; the world biggies such as IBM, Dell, Hewitt, Accenture; and of course the hardcore elearning players such as Sify, NIIT, GE Capital (now Genpact), Lionbridge, Hurix ... you name it and they are there!

So, yes, elearning is growing. The question is how much? Is the overall growth of the entire elearning industry really transforming into new business for Indian companies?

With more and more companies venturing into elearning, new opportunities are created everyday, so the endless job openings seem logical. However, meeting the ever-growing resource demands has forced HR managers to stop recruiting for talent and rather make stopgap arrangements to solve immediate "fires". A classic example is when you come across elearning Project Managers who have been enticed to manage teams, projects, and customers simultaneously - with less than 5 years of total experience under their belts. The obvious result is a high attrition rate. 70% of the new listings that I talked about earlier are to fill these gaps; only 30% are really new jobs. This is also evident from the fact that most elearning companies could not increase their employee numbers enough so that one may see an appropriate ratio between replacements and new jobs.

I am a strong believer of the saying, "An industry that cannot retain its employees cannot retain itself" and if the trend continues, we will keep losing more and more professionals and victimize this industry so that it has to evolve itself all over again!

God Bless the elearning Fraternity in India - Amen!

Brainvisa Releases New Avataar of RapideL

2007-04-30T05:13:00.001-07:00

RapideL, the rapid e-Learning authoring solution innovated by Brainvisa is now set to unveil its suite of rapid e-Learning applications. The basic version of RapideL will now be labeled as Enhance. RapideL Discover will enable rapid creation of non linear e-Learning from the easy to use MS Word.RapideL was recently showcased at the Learning Technologies Exhibition in London on Jan 31 and Feb 1. Visitors were happy to view this innovation and commended its ease of use and valuable features that would help reducing their eLearning development time by 50%. Support for localization, the online review mechanism and the familiar MS Word authoring interface seemed to be the most popular and appreciated features of the tool.Product details and free trial download at www.rapidel.com.

All About Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS)

2007-04-30T05:11:00.000-07:00

How about one central location where you get it all about EPSS? Well, help is on the way... log on to http://www.epsscentral.info/ now! The newsletter is a god option to stay updated on the latest happenings in the world of EPSS. Highly recommended!

Sify eLearning on the Winning Spree...

2007-04-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Sify continued its thrust in expanding its international business, led by two lines of service; Remote Infrastructure Management and Corporate eLearning Services. Both lines of business are seeing excellent customer traction and several important wins in the last quarter:

Sify has been selected as the preferred eLearning services partner by one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, for whom Sify is already providing eLearning content development as well as remote infrastructure support for their learning technology platforms. Sify expects this engagement to scale to $3-4 Million per year in the next 12-18 months
Sify has been awarded substantial repeat orders from a global leader in computer software, to provide eLearning courseware for several of their current and forthcoming products. This relationship is expected to yield $3-4 Million in revenues in 2007-08
Sify has been chosen as the learning services provider by a global leader in aero energy to provide a range of learning services including learning strategy design and content development. Sify has already completed the design phase and will now be developing a range of eLearning courses over the next 2 years, valued at over $3.0 Million.
As part of its international expansion, Sify has opened new sales offices in London and Dubai. This is in addition to its two existing offices in California and New Jersey, USA.

*Source: http://www.sifycorp.com/scripts/press/content.asp?PressId=242

Brainvisa Getting Sold...?

2007-04-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

Rumor is stronger than before and some internal sources say this is true, however, no one knows exactly which company is BV selling to. It is believed to be a BPO with a good market positioning. I think it may well be Brainvisa's existing Middle East partner Momenta Global. Momenta has been providing Knowledge Management solutions to its customers for a long time and they joined hands with BV for any learning solution requirements.

What it turns out to be, only time will tell. But I am sure BV would have been evaluated at a good price given its current market position.