E-learning becoming e-ssential

Betty James Duke made sure she was one of the first to enroll in e-learning courses at the Human Services Resources Administration, a Department of Health and Human Services agency in Rockville, Md. Duke, the agency's administrator, decided she needed to set an example for her staff as they were introduced to a new training method. If she didn't take courses ? and require her managers to take courses as well ? Duke knew many employees would be reluctant to enroll. The employees might wonder about the quality of the courses or if they had permission to take training during work hours. "Leadership has to start at the top," she said. "You have to be committed to it, you have to demonstrate it."Employees were given "do not disturb" signs that indicated they were in training, or they could design their own. Duke walked around during the day to see who was taking courses, and later returned to compliment those employees on their initiative. Duke was one of five federal managers at an April e-learning conference in Washington who described their experiences implementing e-learning. E-training is one of 24 e-government initiatives launched by the Office of Management and Budget in October 2001, and agencies are seeking to share lessons learned and improve the effectiveness of courses. Agencies participating in the OMB initiative are working to create a governmentwide repository of e-learning courses. E-learning includes training delivered electronically via a variety of methods, such as the Internet and intranets, audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast, interactive television and CD-ROM.At one HHS organization, where just $50 to $60 is available per employee for training each year, e-learning has enabled the agency to provide 1,400 courses online, said Roy Tucker, director of organizational and employee development at HHS in Washington. About 14,000 people are using the HHS learning portal, he said. IBM Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., helped HHS devise its e-learning strategy; SkillSoft Corp. of Nashua, N.H., and NETg of Naperville, Ill., have provided courses. THINQ Learning Solutions Inc. of Billerica, Mass., developed and maintains the HHS portal, Tucker said. Government customers are increasingly interested in developing custom courses, said Chris Moore, chief technology officer of THINQ. "There's not a lot of ready media available for security awareness," for example, so agencies are identifying experts and creating their own content, he said.The government market for training will be between $4 billion and $8 billion by 2005, according to Cushing Anderson, an analyst with International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass. It's hard to predict how much of that spending will be on e-learning, according to analysts and government officials. IDC predicts corporate spending on e-learning will exceed $11 billion by 2003.A recent study by the American Society for Training and Development predicted that by 2003, 71.4 percent of government agencies will be delivering training via intranets, CD-ROM and e-mail, and 42.9 percent will be delivering training via the Internet. Two high-profile e-learning projects, Navy E-learning and eArmyU, reach service members around the world. The eArmyU distance-learning portal is designed, built and operated by PwC Consulting, a unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers of New York, under a five-year, $435 million contract. The program, which launched in January 2001, has already enrolled more than 12,000 of a projected 80,000 personnel. In May 2001, the Navy launched its revamped e-learning network, which makes technical, military and business courses available to 1.2 million sailors, retirees, reservists, family members and civilians, according to contractor THINQ. Terms of the Navy's contract with THINQ were not disclosed. Anderson estimates the cost of the system at $600 million to $800 million.In addition to THINQ, several other companies have worked on the system. Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., won the initial one-year, $2 million contract to develop the e-learning network prototype in September 1999. Pathlore, a Columbus, Ohio, subcontractor, developed the original learning management system. Later, Coalescent Technologies Corp. of Orlando, Fla., was retained to maintain and enhance the system. Under a five-year, $75 million contract awarded in November 2001, NCS Pearson Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., manages a Navy e-learning program delivering college courses to sailors deployed on ships worldwide.Civilian agencies also have been enthusiastic about delivering courses via the Internet. Along the way, managers learned valuable lessons about what works and what doesn't.Managers have to tie e-learning to the mission of the agency and to employees' jobs, said Keith Namock, acting director of corporate training for the U.S. Forest Service in Arlington, Va. "If you don't do a good job of targeting training to individuals, a lot of them won't take advantage of it, even though it is related to their jobs," Namock said at the e-learning conference.Instructors and employees must be trained in e-learning, and that training must be reinforced, the managers said. Instructors who aren't completely comfortable with the technology may go back to their old methods, said Benn Aaronson, program manager at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division in Orlando, Fla."All of a sudden, they will try to revert back to the slide projector ... if you let them," he said.Duke helped employees get comfortable with a new way of learning by recruiting tech-savvy employees to coach co-workers.Marketing is essential, Tucker added. "You can't assume that if you build it, they will come," he said. "You really have to market it and help people understand what it is and how to use it."It's also important to realize e-learning can't always stand on its own, the managers said. In one HHS organization, Tucker said, supervisors and managers would take an online course, and later in the classroom, they would discuss the content and its application to their work. The discussion "made it real and vital," Tucker said. "It wasn't abstract, just something on a computer screen."Particularly challenging, the managers said, has been assessing their return on investment. While managers typically look at cost avoidance ? they're no longer spending thousands or millions of dollars on employee travel and lost work time ? assessing other benefits of e-learning is more difficult."How do you gauge if you've got a better student?" Aaronson asked. Sometimes, he said, Navy teams query sailors' supervisors to determine if training better prepared the sailors for their jobs. But most organizations don't have much money or resources to do an in-depth study of performance improvement after training, he said.Despite some stumbles along the way, e-learning is becoming widely accepted in the government, managers said. Tucker, for one, believes that within the next few years, online learning will be so accepted and commonplace that people will no longer talk about e-learning. The method of delivery will be secondary to the content delivered, and people will simply talk about "learning" or "training," he said.Jill Kidwell, however, thinks it will take longer than two or three years to drop the "e" in e-learning. "I think e-learning is going to continue to be big for a number of years, because it is seen as such a critical tool in transforming the work force in the federal government," said Kidwell, a PwC Consulting partner in Arlington, Va. She leads the firm's e-learning practice, including eArmyU.The federal government has several hurdles to overcome before e-learning becomes ubiquitous, she said. Agencies will have to Web-enable 70 percent of their training materials and enlist a cadre of training professionals to lead the charge for change. Right now, only about 7 percent of materials are Web-enabled, but agencies will move quickly to do this because e-learning is so cost-effective, Kidwell said.E-learning also needs to be more accessible across the federal government, she said. "I'm not convinced all the infrastructure is in place to make it totally ubiquitous," Kidwell said.