B Y N A N C Y
H I L D E B R A N D T
Silicon Valley Chapter
| 1 | "Our New Employee Orientation is sometimes difficult to deliver to some associates who work in offices that are about 10 miles away from our main facility. Taking the course online was a great alternative to them, especially since our New Employee Orientation was being delivered an average of 6 weeks after the initial date of hire." |
In the first motivation example described above, which involved the problem of distance from the site and speed of new employee orientation, the training department decided to take their PowerPoint course online. Here is how they did it.
How interactive was your PowerPoint instructor-led presentation to begin with?
Not at all. Mostly informational. Participants only had choices of when to actually take the class, and in which order to do the modules.
How did you change the design of the materials to make it appropriate for online use?
We used PowerPoint's hyperlink feature to tie together the different modules. It was then ready to put onto the server. Very easy.
What technology did you use to put the course online?
It's all tied to an instructional Web page, designed with Microsoft Front Page. There are links to appropriate sites and to a couple of modules that were not tied together via PowerPoint. I have direct access to my server, so I did not have to "publish" the page... just "Move" the files onto my server location. Great news, for a non-techie, like me!
If you had tests, were they scored manually or online?
No tests. I would like to try that, some time.
Did your technology register students?
Since it was a pilot, I just kept in e-mail contact with them. I will need help if we continue to use this version, as I do not know how to ensure completion, registration, tracking, etc. We may change the way we deliver our New Employee Orientation so that associates get the course before starting their jobs. If that happens, the Web version will not be needed.
But our pilot shows us: When designing courses that are primarily for information delivery, the Web can be useful for reaching folks who have trouble attending an instructor-led class.
How expensive was it (time and $$$)?
Timewise, about 10 hours. But the original slides already existed. I only needed to edit and tweak them. Cost savings were estimated at $45.00/associate, since it took a bit less time to do than the classroom version, and there were no travel costs. Savings would be higher if instituted on a regional scale.
Did you get any feedback or data about the new course?
Yes. They liked not having to travel. They liked being able to skip around to the sections they most needed information on. They loved the fact that they could break up the course material into sections, and complete it over a period of several days, instead of doing it all in one shot. They did not like the fact that they were missing a facilitator who could answer quick questions. One associate had some technical problems with the Intranet. Another had to have the help desk install needed software and hardware.
This is not the course that you would display if you wanted to show the full power of Web-based Training (WBT). It is a PowerPoint course shifted over to the Web. There is no testing, just as there wasn't in the PowerPoint course. There is no tracking and apparently only limited chance to interact with a real person.
Yet it accomplished its objectives of conquering time and travel. In terms of instructional quality, the lack of an expert to answer questions was a minus, but the ability to self-pace the course was a plus. The logistical advantages were appreciated by the participants as well as the staff: not having to attend a long course at a distant site at a specific time.
The technology was also not a barrier. Most training departments have staff with the PowerPoint and Front Page skills that were involved in this conversion. Randall Kindley, President of the Performance Group (http://www.performgroup.net) sent me this comment:
| "Of course you know that it is very easy to convert the PowerPoint presentation, complete with animation and other controls using PowerPoint2000. You just save as HTML and walk through the wizard. I have not converted them for online learning, though I have converted them for simple online presentations." |
Randall also emphasized broadband learning, by following up an online course with a workshop. "Just about any WBT needs to be combined with reinforcement and 'hands-on' practice. One-day, facilitated, highly interactive sessions are great for this."
One very important feature of a Web-based course is the ability to interact with a real person if the need arises. If you do not have much interactivity built into your PowerPoint course, it is even more critical. And, just as I emphasized for instructor-led courses, there is more of a sense of community and a different quality of learning if participants can interact with their peers about the course. In future columns I will explore the technology to do this, but again, you can find creative ways to accomplish this with the technology and expertise you have.
Winter 2000
Volume 3, # 1