California to Scrap School Textbooks in Favour of eBooks!

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said, "It's nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form." The Governor is looking to cut school text book costs and balance the state budget. He is also leveraging the internet and new ebook technology from Kindle, Sony, and Apple.

The challenge is for teachers and administrators to select new electronic information and blend it into the school curriculum. Many teachers have been running classes for years without text books. Education professionals need to create innovation eCurriculum based on existing electronic materials, secure new materials, and agree national/state programs that can be distributed to teachers electronicially.

Kids who lug 25 pounds of text books back and forth to school every day will be happy. If we do eCurriculum properly, everyone will win.

Mandatory "Worthless" Training

"I'm in training for the next 2 days, but call me anytime. They don't teach us anything, so I can step out and talk to you." Sound familiar?

More and more, traditional training is outdated. Students do not want to travel to a classroom where they are lectured on materials they already know. Many professions (technology, financial, government, and education) require X hours per year and simply schedule training to fulfill the requirements. Management's response is, "sorry, just show up and catch up on paperwork."

With online training, students learn when and where they want to learn. They quickly pick up best practices and return to work more productive. It's a Revolution in Learning. Visit http://www.glsinc.com/ for more information.

SmartPhones Prime for Mobile Learning

Dad was puzzled. "Jessica, tell me why you need a SmartPhone!?!?"

"Dad, with 3G speeds, hi-res screens, and smart mobile devices, I can use a SmartPhone to view lectures and take quizzes. It's easy. And Dad, if you don't get it, you are a dinosaur!"

SmartPhones are changing education. Training & certification is poised to move to SmartPhones. Institutions with tight budgets are looking to improve training with SmartPhones and mobile learning platforms. Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm Pre, and Windows Mobile support hi-definition media. Users are able to view rich media training, access knowledge bases, and take tests.

"Dad, it's time to wake up. SmartPhones, 3G, and education rock!"

Your Grandkids May Not Go To College

Your grandkids may not be going to college. At least not moving into a dorm and having weekends at school with college friends. According to a new article, "Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive."

Online learning is changing the college experience. 10 years ago, people laughed at the University of Phoenix. Now families are concerned about costs and jobs after college. Virtual learning with specific focus on jobs is making steady progress. Students study at home using new online tools, work part or full-time, and benefit from distance learning.

The times, they are a changing...

Comparing eLearning and Classroom Learning through Real-Word Scenarios

This post is the last in a series about online training and traditional classroom learning. I hope you've enjoyed the previous posts - take a look at them if you havn't read them yet! This subject will hopefully be addressed again in the future.

So we’ve talked extensively about the pros and cons of online training and of traditional classroom learning. But these have been abstract subjects; I’d like to give some concrete examples.

The first is sports training. Online sports training. Seems pretty farfetched, doesn’t it? How can you train someone in a sport online? Well, the rules of many games are taught in classrooms through PowerPoint lectures. Why not make it interactive and do it online, where it’s much more accessible? Now, the problem with this is that there can be no substitute for on-field experience, especially if you’re training game officials or coaches. That’s why blended eLearning and face-to-face training can be extremely effective: the eLearning can save time and costs for students, while the blended learning allows them to gain the full educational experience.

How about a huge corporation that’s doing employee training over a specified period of time? It has hundreds, if not thousands, of employees to train in a specific subject matter. There needs to be tracking, course management, and reporting. So the corporation turns to a learning management system. The employees don’t have to travel, no classrooms need to be rented, and the corporation does not have to hire teaching professionals, saving it heaps of time and money. However, there is an incident in which an employee (or several) violate corporate rules or make a serious mistake, despite being taught against his/their actions. How does the corporation handle this? Does it totally cancel its eLearning program, or only punish the individuals responsible? How does it identify whether it was the irresponsibility of the employee(s), or ineffectiveness of the eLearning program? These are difficult questions, but important ones, for a large corporation trying to fulfill its training needs.

Finally, let’s take a college class that, experimentally, is going to be taught exclusively online (this has been done before!). The professor is going to conduct the class through various online sessions over a few weeks. Students log on to an e-classroom, and listen as the professor lectures through a microphone. Audio and video are streamed to the students, who can quickly type notes. There is a chat window to instant-message questions to the professor. This sounds like an effective learning environment, right? The professor gets the added bonus of being able to bring up certain videos or images to enrich his lecture. This is a definite advantage of eLearning. A problem arises, however, if the service is interrupted for either a student or the professor. Even if the session is being recorded, the student misses the opportunity of experiencing it live. Hopefully this highlights the importance of using a reliable service provider.

These examples should give you a clear example of some of the advantages and disadvantages of both online training and traditional classroom learning.

Is eLearning or in-person, classroom learning better? It’s subjective, and it’s completely up to the individual conducting the training. The clearest answer is that it is often a case-by-case basis. Certainly eLearning has been proven effective in many instances. But whether or not a company can make effective use of eLearning is completely up to it.

Categorizing Facets of Training

This post is part of a series concerning the differences between traditional classroom learning and online training or “e-Learning” and the various aspects of each.

We talked last post about some of the negative aspects of online training. So how can an eLearning company work around them? Can all of them be mitigated?

Essentially I addressed interaction/collaboration, service issues, and content as three possible weak areas of online training in the last post. I also touched on how they can be alleviated, to some degree. But here, I’d like to get a little more specific.

Interaction and collaboration are probably the hardest aspects of education to replicate in an online environment. I’ve talked in the past about possible methods of accomplishing this, and posed the question, “Do the other benefits of online training outweigh the potential interaction lost by not using a traditional classroom setting?” As I have previously mentioned, this question is at the heart of the debate between eLearning and traditional classroom education. But it may be difficult to understand just how important this question is. It is the “be all, end all” for companies deciding which method of learning to use. You may think that this would be cost, which is true, to a certain degree. But for a company to have a successful training program in the long run, it has to effectively educate students. So, the company must decide whether the cost and other benefits from using eLearning outweigh any potential educational value lost by not using face-to-face learning. Will in-person learning always be a required part of education? Can education effectively take place if it is exclusively online? The debate continues, with no end in sight.

I won’t spend much time on connection and service issues, as I covered them thoroughly enough in the last post. Companies just need to be careful when choosing a provider and providers must be watchful that their services remain intact and secure. Similar problems exist for classroom learning, so I don’t consider this to be a major issue.

Content was also addressed extensively in the last post. The traditional classroom setting and an eLearning environment differ in the ways content is used. In the last post I mentioned that I thought there was greater potential for content on the online side due to the wonders of technology. Certainly this can be applied to classroom training, but I think that it’s much easier to use in an online course.

Although I believe that eLearning has better potential in terms of educational content, I, like many education professionals (of which I am not), am still on the fence about the debate over face-to-face learning versus online training. I think that some training will require in-person interaction for many years to come, possibly forever. As I have talked about in pervious posts, I believe that the best solution is an intuitive blend of live, in-person training with a rich and enthralling eLearning environment.

Well, I didn't provide you with concrete examples. I will devote the next post to them, in order to illustrate the points made in this one and the last one.

Addressing the Downfalls of Online Training

This post is part of a series concerning the differences between traditional classroom learning and online training or “e-Learning” and the various aspects of each.

We’ve talked about how effective online training can be, how it can save money and time, and often provide an equally enriching experience as an equivalent lesson in the classroom. But naturally, nothing is perfect. There are some negative facets of eLearning. We’ve addressed some of them in past posts, but I’d like to reiterate and add to the list, and perhaps differentiate between true “negative” aspects of eLearning and problems that could feasibly be solved.

I’m going to lump instructor interaction and peer collaboration into one category here. Essentially, they both relate to the live interaction that is so important to education. Naturally there can be no “live” (or, more accurately, in-person) interaction using eLearning. Video streaming and live chat functions can alleviate this problem, of course. But many ask the question: Is it really the same? The answer is a subject of many debates and disagreements. Perhaps the more relevant question is: Do the other benefits of online training outweigh the potential interaction lost by not using a traditional classroom setting? I know that’s a confusing bunch of sentences to chew through, but these musings are at the center of the debate between eLearning and classroom training.

Connection and service issues can arise as well. The responsibility for maintaining working content depends on the party who is hosting that content. So, if you have thousands of people using an online training course, and something happens to interrupt the service of the host, you end up with a major problem. This is why it’s important to consider carefully who will be hosting the online training content and who will be responsible for its maintenance. Of course, there can be similar problems with in-class training. At the most obvious and basic level, a power outage would make it impossible to conduct a class, and inclement weather would make it difficult to travel. Also, convenience has to be taken into account – few people appreciate having to travel to a location that is often far from their home for a few hours of training. So service can be a difficult factor for both mediums of training.

Finally, content. Possibly the most important aspect of eLearning. I think that there is greater potential for content in terms of what can be developed using technology versus a live classroom session. For example, using computers one can create powerful graphics and animations that are impossible to replicate in a live setting. Without effective content, there will be no retention of the education materials. But it’s also important to note that without an effective Learning Management System (LMS), or content delivery mechanism, there will be no way to accurately convey the content. Basically, content is only as good as the system that backs it up. In my opinion, content and system go hand in hand. It’s important to develop great content, and perhaps just as important to have a method of delivering this content to users.

Phew, that was a lot of material. And I didn’t even get to the question from the last post: “Which negative aspects of online training can be mitigated, and what must stay exclusively in the classroom?” I’ll tackle it in the next post with some concrete examples.