Chrisp’s e-learning expriences

 

News report from 2004 detailing the expanding use of webinars for business use.

 

Tectura is leveraging Webinars in the following ways:

* Hosting Webinars to get the company’s message out. These are usually focused on Microsoft’s product information and vision. “This allows us to take our message and span it across the U.S., and it gets information in front of prospects faster,” says Petrzelka.

* One-on-one prospect-facing Webinars. Tectura has project teams spread throughout the U.S., and these sessions enable them to come together with clients.

* Internal-training Webinars. Tectura has 15 widely dispersed offices. Webinars help in the conduct of sales and product training. For example, when the firm rolled out Microsoft CRM internally, it used a Webinar to train the staff.

The firm holds one major national prospecting Webinar, several one-on-ones, and approximately four smaller internal sessions per quarter. Attendance has ranged from 60 to 300 people each. “People used to believe that participants in Webinars weren’t serious buyers or strong leads, but we’ve found we’re closing more leads through Webinars than in our live events,” says Petrzelka.

Tectura’s experience illustrates what many accounting resellers and vendors such as Best, Intuit, Accpac, and AccountantsWorld are finding to be true–interactive Webinars are engaging, and provide hands-on tips that help their clients and staff reach and maintain goals for business.

“We started conducting Webinars because our accountants wanted information before their clients got it, and Webinars are a perfect fit for this,” says Trae Harris, Intuit training specialist.

Taylor Macdonald, Best’s senior vice president for business partners, agrees. “Webinars are becoming the norm because you can’t get to every city with live seminars. And our partners are finding Webinars invaluable because they reach a geographical client base they wouldn’t have been able to reach.”
<http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-20188846_ITM>

E-learning is now being applied for a myraid of different educational purposes. One purpose or use for the e-learning approach that gets rarely mentioned is that of education for social change. In this entry I have pasted a section for the  Journal of Distance Education. The article is tittled e-learning and union mobilisation. It documents and describes an account of e-learning in practice as applied by the Canadian trade union movement; an interesting read:

‘E-learning has obvious contributions to make toward overcoming the problem of space for national and international labour movements. It can help connect dispersed populations for the purposes of solidarity and mobilization. At the same time, in the case of already overworked activists, e-learning can become yet another element of their activist life for which they barely have the time. In one sense, then, e-learning may find a particularly useful application among novice activists who, possibly assured by the pace and anonymity of e-learning, can nevertheless find preliminary entry into the types of informal apprenticeships and mentor-ships of union activism while also building a basic set of skills and sensitivities. More fundamentally, we saw that the oral culture and learning traditions of organized labour did not mix easily with e-learning environments. However, we conclude that when we recognize articulating activity systems as essential to the realization of a learning process and steps are taken to interlink the on-line and off-line worlds, e-learning has something significant to contribute. The emergence of labour history as a topic in one workshop showed us an important example of how heightened attention, functioning activity systems, and hence learning can be generated. Especially when we see critiques of e-learning from the activists/participants in this research, it becomes clear that these and other points must be taken seriously if the technology is to become more than a novelty. This tells us that e-learning can be nothing less than a form ofmobilization and action in the real world, linking past struggles to present struggles, if it is to retain its relevance.’  (Sawchuk, 2002 p.11)

 

Webinar as a term seem to be relatively new. Whilst researching material on the subject i find the use of the term webinar extremely rare prior to 2000. Before that the method did exist and was in common use however it seems more likely to be referred to as ‘web conference’ or ’synchronous e-learning’. A succinct definition provided in a 2004 publication that explores the subject is as follows;

Conduct a “webinar One step beyond a telephone seminar is a webinar. A webinar is a combination telephone and \\’eb browser seminar. Similar to a telephone seminar, participants call into a conference coordinator to hear the audio of the presentation.

At the same time, they connect to a website that displays the presenter’s slides. The slide presentation is synchronized and controlled by the presenter as if the presenter was in the room with the participants (Florzak 2004, p. 158)

I found this of interest

The Society of Automotive Engineers, an organisation of which I am a member makes extensive use of ‘Webcasting’. Following is a promo for the service. They are quite active in advertising the service and promoting the benefits of the method.

“Convenient and cost effective, SAE’s Telephone/Webcasts offer 90-120 minutes of engaging dialogue from top subject-matter experts, along with an invaluable opportunity to customize your learning through interactive question-and-answer sessions. Topics cover current and emerging technologies and related issues, challenges and perspectives.” (SAE 2008)

Synchronous e-learning is a term used to describe a type of e-learning that takes place in ‘real’ time. This is interest in relation to my research into webinars.  Following news item sheds light on synchronous e-learning popularity and growth.

““Synchronous e-learning now constitutes a third of all e-learning activities in the USA – or ten per cent of the total learning activities in the whole of the USA,” revealed the eLN’s chairman, Clive Shepherd. “Moreover, the take-up of synchronous e-learning in Europe

is accelerating as organisations seek to cut down on travel expenses and reduce their carbon emissions.

 

ClickPress 2008, The eLearning Network provides a unique learning opportunity, ClickPress

viewed 24/09/08 2008 <http://www.clickpress.com/releases/Detailed/90368005cp.shtml>.

As with most industries, economies or comunities e-learning in its various forms has been adopted with enthusiasm within the industry that i work. I train and educate in the Automotive service and repair sector. As a trainer for a major automotive manufacturer teaching mainly in technological change in this sector it can be effective to make use of the tools offered by e-learning. For the purpose of developing my own skill and knowledge of e-learning i have sigened up for a industry seminar on………you guessed it!……e-learning.  The following passage is an excerpt from a industry flyer promoting the seminar;

“This is a must attend night for all those person’s involved with training in the Automotive Industry, a night where you can get some real hands on experience with ‘E’ Learning Techniques, and in this case it will be concerned with ‘POD’ casting” (IAME 2008).

I have stumbled across the term ‘ALN’ or Asynchrous Learning Networks and a paper/ case study conducted in the subject. Makes for an interesting read. It seems ALN may be something of a generic term covering of on all sorts of e-learning. However of particular interest to be are the sections in relation to web conferencing or ‘webinars’. Included in the passage is an example of a effective case study con one organisation. This i intend to examine in finer detail possibly as a webinar case study.

Following is a passage from the paper describing ALNs;

Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALNs) provide the capability to learn anywhere and at any time. The acronym ALN might just as well be used to represent the term Anywhere/Anytime Learning Networks1. Both interpretations reflect and emphasize that ALNs are different from traditional distance learning methods (e.g., video broadcasting) because the learner can be anywhere and can learn at any time. While an ALN might be a correspondence course or a course offered by recording messages on answering machines, most modern interpretations link ALN with on-line or world-wide-webbased learning. The key ingredient of an ALN is the capability for learners to learn anywhere and at anytime and to be part of a community of learners. Modern implementations of ALN systems utilize conferencing systems and on-line reading materials and exercises. In many curricula, the traditional classroom experience is best characterized as a “sage on the stage” (Bourne et al. 1997, p. 1) 

It is interesting to note that not all users of e-learning define it and its uses the same. Much like anything in life , as ‘they’ say. Whilst strolling through the colourful landscape that is weblogs i came across the following passage that kind of grabbed my imagination;

‘The very first point Richardson makes is that “this may look like a book about technology, but it’s really a book about …connections” (p.vii). With a nod to Jonassen, the author discusses “cool tools”, “collaborations and conversations” and “creatively motivating students to learn more deeply” using a teaching and learning “toolbox” (p.9). He’s obviously talking about e-learning, but does not see the need to define what it is. So, e-learning has become a common if imprecise term used to refer to technology-enhanced learning’ .

The elearning ‘industry’ appears to be set for continued growth as the methods and techniques gain popularity and prove there effectiveness. The following news article bares witness to this reality.

“E-learning giant creates 450 Dublin jobs – €350m investment in R&D

10.09.2008
E-learning global player Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) – formerly known as Riverdeep – is to create 450 jobs at a new R&D headquarters in Dublin, it emerged today.

Tags: http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11403/business/

Seems there are a  smorgasbord of different e-learning providers offering varied services online.

Choosing a good course could be challenging.

Following is a passage from one provider that may be of some value.

“ABOUT THE COURSE
The technical competencies essential or desirable for virtual reference librarians to acquire or to improve on are the foundation of virtual reference service provision. Virtual reference service is built on a technical infrastructure. The Internet, the World Wide Web, e-mail, Web chat, Instant Messaging, and all the associated supportive technology and software are the environment in which virtual reference librarians work. In “Virtual Reference Competencies: Acquire and Improve Technical Skills and Knowledge,” participants will engage in learning activities, supported by readings as well as lecture and discussion to acquire and improve the technical competencies required by effective virtual reference librarians.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
·         assess and improve your ability to type on a computer keyboard and make use of other related input devices (mouse, trackball, touchpad, etc.)
·         assess and improve your work with multiple software applications on a computer with multiple windows, to move appropriately between windows/applications, and to move quickly and mindfully between multiple activities chatting, searching print or electronic sources, etc. (minimal multi-tasking)
·         evaluate and add to your detailed functional knowledge of how to access the Internet, use Internet e-mail, connect to Web sites
·         increase your detailed functional knowledge of at least one Web browser
·         cultivate your awareness of the basic technologies that any given virtual reference service user may or may not be using, have access to, or be limited by
·         develop awareness of the chat software specifics for a given system you are going to be using then develop detailed functional knowledge of the specific chat software used by your library or other organization for chat reference
·         cultivate awareness of how to connect to and chat through Web-based chat software, Internet messaging, etc.
·         add to your awareness of the options for document or information delivery”