The Hindu Business Line : Hear ye learners!

HERE is a book for trainers and HR people, "The E-Learning Revolution" by Martyn Sloman where the trainers are exhorted to "demand technological solutions that serve training objectives, rather than shoehorn their programs into a one-size-fits-all delivery system." A series of `provocative propositions' have been put on the back-cover: Such as - `The Internet changes everything, including training'; `any part of the training supply chain that does not add value will disappear' and so on. There is more:

Together speed, connectivity, and intangibles coalesce and interact to create the blur economy. There is a blur of desires, in which product and services meld into one to become an offer and buyers and sellers merge. There is a blur of resources, in which people can no longer separate their working and consuming selves.

In e-learning, standards will allow learning objects (a precise, if clumsy item defined as any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning education or training) to be developed by a company, educational institute, or individual trainer and accessed by users in another organisation.

As long ago as 1946, educator and writer Edgar Dale introduced the "cone of experience". This has found its way into countless "train the trainers" sessions. Briefly, it states that people generally remember 10 per cent of what they read, 20 per cent of what they hear, 30 per cent of what they see, 50 per cent of what they hear and see, 70 per cent of what they say and write, and 90 per cent of what they say as they do a thing.

According to Xchange, there are more than 2,000 corporate universities in the US (up from 400 in 1986). Of the Fortune 500 companies, 40 per cent have invested in a corporate university. The average cost is 2 per cent of the company's payroll. One attractive feature of many corporate universities is the opportunity for greater collaboration between the educational establishment and the corporate organisation.

The age of CBT and CD-ROMs led to purchase of material that did not find sufficient acceptance by many users and is now littering cupboards the length and breadth of the land.

Proposition 19: Time, not money, will become a scarce resource. Monitoring of use and evaluation of effectiveness will become critically important. Time for individual learning competes with other organisational demands: time for client contact and selling, creative time to develop new products, time to develop staff, time for general administration.

If money is not scarce, what are you waiting for?

Towards security

Taking sensible precautions may protect your company from crippling losses in the wake of sudden events, and in extreme cases may even save lives. Thus reads commonsense advice on the cover of "Unforeseen Circumstances", by Alexis D.Gutzman. Excerpts:

Many businesses learned on September 11, 2001, that they had no clear succession plans in place. Succession planning is an essential part of making your business disaster-proof. Succession planning can include insurance, but certainly includes legal documents showing clear lines of succession, such as buy-out procedures, particularly for a small family-owned business or a partnership.

An online meeting is not necessarily better organised than a face-to-face meeting. It's just that in a face-to-face meeting, the meeting leader has an easier time bluffing the organisation... Online meetings require more preparation in advance, which is usually an advantage to the attendees.

Webcasts are a highly efficient way to gather information about vendors.

When you attend a Webcast, you can expect to see the landscape defined for the product or service being presented.

You can also ask questions of the presenter both about the product and about the industry.

Finally, you can see what kinds of questions other attendees are asking.

Tracking time is an issue when the employees are out of sight. Weekly time sheets or status reports, if not previously required, should become standard.

Time tracking software, such as StandardTime by Scoutwest is a good choice, as it integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Project, the most common project planning software.

eBilling is the process of turning your accounts receivable data into a bill or invoice for each customer that is then delivered electronically to the customers' e-mail box or a link that delivers an online copy of each bill or invoice to the customers' inbox.

Packet sniffers are software programs that sit on the Internet and watch each packet as it passes.

They can look at the headers to see where the packet came from and where it is heading.

They can also read the majority of data that is sent - since it is sent unencrypted - as clear text.

Packet sniffers typically look for credit card numbers or data that contains certain keywords.

However, packet sniffers can just as easily sit on the network, just outside your firewall, watching for information sent to other locations of your business.

Sniff trouble when it is around!

The author can be

contacted at hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

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