Lifelong eLearning
Anyone who wants to add value to their business cannot afford to neglect their investment in human capital. Increasingly, companies are using new technology to deliver training to their staff, both to refresh their existing skills and develop new ones.
Shameema Parveen, knowledge officer, Edutech, says that businesses are starting to realise the added benefits they can receive when they deliver their training through eLearning. "Companies now want to be able to manage their learning and link it to performance management and the talent management of the company itself, so they're not just providing learning for the current need but they're building their workforce for their business needs of tomorrow," she says.
"They're providing them with those skills and the competence that they require so that the business can be successful three or four years from now, not just providing them with the top courses that meet the needs of today."
Parveen also points out that eLearning need not be the solitary activity some perceive it to be. "When eLearning first started it was said that you can save on travel costs and on lodging costs," she says.
"That's why content was provided online, just as static content, you can go in and browse and learn by yourself. But using that same concept, you can have something like live eLearning where a trainer is situated in one country and the learner is situated in another part of the world, and they can come together at one particular time online to collaborate and learn with each other.
"So learning from a static eLearning programme is just one thing. You cannot interact enough with it. You need to have the additional support of a trainer to respond to those interactions, if you have questions, or want to be able to provide a comment or provide an input to someone else's question. That is how we really learn."
The collaboration aspect is also useful when many users need to learn the same thing at the same time. "These tools have actually expanded that capability from just chatting to include other capabilities like application sharing," says Parveen.
"Let's say a company wants to roll out a new application and they want to be able to train all of these people at the same time. They can share that application, so a learner in Saudi Arabia, for example, can take control of an application that is being run from a PC in Dubai, and learn with it, and be able to ask questions and interact." Countries where voice over IP is in use can also utilise it as a means for users to interact.
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Full Article by Daniel Stanton Published at ITP.net
