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 NEWSE-learning tested By Ted Smalley Bowen October 27, 2000 1:01 pm PT The proliferation of online and computer-based training options gives IT shops new opportunities to upgrade skills, but implementation challenges loom
 The portion of the e-learning market devoted to IT content is expected to grow from $1.7 billion this year to $5.3 billion in 2003, stimulated largely by IT-related training, according to market research firm IDC, in Framingham, Mass. E-learning is surging largely on the strength of advances in networking and Web technologies, collaboration software, multimedia, content management systems, and other building blocks for educational and training applications. At the same time, more players are entering the market, increasing the options for IT departments. As a result, e-learning tools and practices are increasingly coming into play in the training of IT workers, which has tended to be haphazard and often taken a backseat to daily operations. Emerging e-learning tools promise a boost in IT skills, given their capability to replace or bolster traditional teaching methods. "The overall reliance on instructor-led training will be about the same [over the next several years]. People will still need that. But, for new external spending, it's e-learning," says Cushing Anderson, an IDC analyst, pointing to the expected rise in the use of computer-based, Web-based, and other technology-assisted pedagogical tools grouped under the e-learning banner.  However, e-learning is not seen as a panacea, but rather as one tool or set of tools that can augment other forms of training. "I think [e-learning] will be used more and more, as people are pressed for time," says Deirdre Woods, senior director at Wharton Computing and Information Technology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. "And it's expensive to send people away for a week, if just-in-time training is available." One of e-learning's major lures is its flexible delivery, which can be self-paced and individualized, group-oriented, synchronous, and asynchronous. Scheduling conflicts, the death of many a training session, can be sidestepped by Web broadcasts of lectures and presentations, for example. "How do you let people have lives, work billable hours, and consistently improve themselves?" asks Dave Lawson, professional services programs coordinator at Taos, a 500-consultant company, based in Santa Clara, Calif. "A big part of why we looked at Web-based learning, and a big reason we do Webcasting, is to pack up the content and put it in the freezer, and let people thaw it out when they can," he says. Not surprisingly, one of the first groups expected to benefit from e-learning is IT personnel. "IT training is a natural fit. The skills involved with programming languages and administration tools are a natural fit," says John Dalton, an analyst at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm. Distance-learning technologies also can bolster globally dispersed, virtual business efforts, such as international e-commerce and systems integration ventures that tap offshore labor, Dalton notes. "You could keep your programmers in Ireland or India in the loop on a given project using e-learning technologies," he says. One case sometimes made against major investments in IT training is that today's programming class is tomorrow's ticket to a better job at the competition. To such arguments Anderson responds that the primary reason for training "is to make [employees] more valuable to the company. If they have to go elsewhere to be appreciated, then that's not a training issue, but a management issue." Increasingly, organizations are realizing IT is not the place to hold training costs to a minimum. "We have to keep up with the technology. There are so many upgrades, we have to stay ahead, and we have to keep those skills up-to-date," says Harris Hof, director of e-learning team at high-concept office furniture purveyor Herman Miller, in Zeeland, Mich. A key to effective IT training is to tailor information to the needs of the business. "I don't think the vendors understand it from a real production environment. The material's pretty canned, so we usually have to go ahead and start building systems and learn for ourselves," Hof says. Another source of vexation for IT managers is the volatility of the skills requirements for using a given product, as vendors pile on new features and hooks. "As software gets more involved, like [Lotus] LearningSpace 4, you go from having to know a little about back-end systems to a great deal about Notes and Domino and relational databases, Internet Information Server, and a little about Java and HTML," Hof says. Fairly universally, IT departments are left to their own devices when choosing training options, as are other departments. At Herman Miller, for example, "each team sets forward a plan, and during performance evaluations, they decide the kinds of courses that person needs to be taking, and depending on the discipline, maybe certification is involved," Hof explains. Fostering a creative environment can encourage the use of new tools, as shown by the approach of Ars Digita, a Cambridge, Mass., vendor of Web-based community software. The company's internal technical training emphasizes creative problem-solving as well as immersion in the requisite technology to get the job done, according to Alan Shaheen, CEO of Ars Digita. Developers are encouraged to submit their own extensions to the product documentation, and online teaching materials for the platform. As to the question of how to best train IT workers, Shaheen stresses method over any given body of content. "The approach should be about how to learn, not what," Shaheen says. "You need to provide people with an interesting problem and a set of resources to start with, and a safety net of individuals to advise them." According to Taos' Lawson, traditional lab-based instruction works best for technical certification, whereas "when someone's basically building a foundation -- if an NT person is moving to Unix -- you might as well give a person a book and they can go off and read by a lake, instead of being trapped in front of a screen," he says. E-learning platforms that include tracking functions should be used sparingly, according to Lawson. "Monitoring can be way too micromanaging, and we generally have pretty driven people to begin with," he says. In addition, questions of training should lead to broader questions of just which IT functions are critical to a company's strategic goals, and which can be outsourced, Shaheen notes. But as to whether or not outsourcing your IT training is a good idea, Lawson cites the concern of turning over training to an outside operation and getting caught in an exclusive or proprietary deal that underdelivers. "A lot of companies lock you in to subscription and hosting deals, but aren't always able to keep pace with technology. We only work with content providers that will work with us on a class-by-class basis," Lawson says. However, standards initiatives for content and platforms promise to remove at least some potential pitfalls. "There's a constant push toward standardization," IDC's Anderson says. "No content provider wants to be locked in to one platform, and no platform wants to exclude bodies of content." Given the e-learning stampede, the market is ripe for a shakeout, Forrester's Dalton says. This is partly due to the glut of platforms and content providers, but it's also likely to result from the use of "general-purpose" collaboration, conferencing, and Internet tools. "We're going to see a massive consolidation," Dalton says. "A lot of what you can do well online is knowledge transfer. There are a lot of tools you can use. "Early efforts at corporate e-learning have been flawed, HTML-heavy, and boring," Dalton continues. "They don't leverage collaboration and simulation, and don't integrate training into real-world experience. But it has real potential. There's no reason companies can't streamline their training and leverage it across internal groups, partners, and customers." Dalton expects the majority to continue to invest at the departmental level. "I expect there will probably be a fragmented, disorganized, and uneven adoption of these technologies within companies," he says. "I just don't see people pulling together robust, interoperable, scalable systems that run across entire companies in the Fortune 2,000. Those organizations are just so massive." Send comments to Editor at Large Ted Bowen (ted_bowen@infoworld.com).
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