Earlier this week I delivered a session on “The 5 Keys to E-learning Success for Associations and Professional Bodies” for a Webinar sponsored by WBT Systems. (I encourage you to check out their free Webinar series.) A number of questions came up during the Webinar. I was able to answer some during the time we had, but I thought I’d take some time here to provide additional input and also to address some questions I did not have the chance to respond to online.
This is the first installment of an ongoing series that will cover not only questions from the WBT Systems Webinar, but also from other sessions I deliver in the future. Here is the first set of questions:
If an association is taking first steps into online learning, is it better to just start with a few e-learning courses, or would a blended approach be better – where maybe you offer a small online module in advance of a classroom session?
I’ll start with the classic consultant answer on this: it depends. Among the things it depends on are the characteristics and expectations of your prospective audience (and you will need to do some upfront footwork to be sure you really understand these), the learning objectives, and the overall strategic goals for e-learning.
If you are going to go for a blended approach initially, what value is that going to produce for you and your members? If there is clear value, then great, but if you are doing it based on the assumption that your members will resist e-learning, that you don’t have sufficient resources to produce a “few courses,” or both, then I would spend some time questioning those assumptions. Members are generally more receptive these days than organizations tend to think they are. I find consistently when doing market assessments for associations that more than half of members are already participating in online learning from sources other than the association. And producing reasonably good course content is not the challenge, in terms of either time or money, that it used to be. If you feel certain that you want to build out a significant online-only set of offerings, my bias is to test those waters sooner rather than later.
In answering this question during the Webinar, I also addressed the issue of “critical mass.” I’ve seen many organizations launch successful e-learning programs with a single, wisely-selected offering. I think this is often a great approach, but for continued success, most organizations benefit from moving towards a critical mass of offerings as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, e-learning tends to be perceived both internally and externally as a “one-off,” rather than as a strategic part of the organizations overall value to members. Keep in mind that you do not necessarily have to build all of the course in your catalog. It is possible to license relevant content in more generic areas – for example, Microsoft Office, or Time Management Skills – from a variety of content course vendors.
How well does e-learning work for very technical content? Do you have any experience of how e-learning works with engineers?
My view here is that the viability of e-learning should be determined not so much by the content per se as by the learning outcomes associated with the content. In general, there is no reason that effective e-learning experiences cannot be designed for highly technical content. Even for content that requires detailed demonstration and practice. The question is more likely to be “Is e-learning really the best way to achieve the desired learning objectives?” Determining what the “best” approach is requires you to take into account factors like the costs of the various options (e.g., e-learning vs. classroom-based), the time each option requires for achieving the learning objectives, what other objectives you want to achieve (e.g., networking), etc.
I don’t have specific experience with engineers, but similar to content, there is no reason to think that an appropriately designed e-learning experience cannot work for a specific target audience. The critical factor is that the needs and characteristics of the audience are kept firmly in mind when designing the experience. (I welcome comments from anyone who does have specific experience with engineers.)
Related to this question, I also recommend an excellent recent post on Midcourse Corrections in which Jeff Hurt outlines some of the studies that have suggested that online instruction is often better than face-to-face instruction.
What do you think about producing elearning to replace existing offerings vs. expand product line?
This is another one of those “it depends” questions. Why would you replace the existing offerings? Has demand for them waned? If so, you would want to be certain of the reasons for the decline and be sure that an e-learning option will not suffer a similar fate. If demand has not waned, are the existing offerings covering costs? Are there ways to bring costs in to line?
In general, there will always be a portion of your audience that prefers classroom-based offerings. As long as demand is sufficient and costs can be covered, I’m usually not a fan of total replacement. On the other hand, by offering an online variation, you give the existing audience a new option that may occasionally work better for them, and you open up the offering to an entirely new audience.
E-learning as an approach to expanding a product line (and, I’d add, diversifying risk in your education portfolio) can be valuable for most organizations. When taking this approach, I recommend a strong focus on differentiating the e-learning offerings from your place-based offerings. Among other benefits, differentiation can help a great deal when it comes to wrestling with issues of pricing. I’ll address this question in more detail in my next installment, but in general, if your e-learning offerings simply seem like a Web-based version of your classroom offerings, you will immediately be confronted with the issue of members thinking they should cost less. (I have found through numerous surveys that, rightly or wrongly, this is an almost universal viewpoint.)
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That’s it for installment one. Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I’ll tackle some tough questions related to pricing, sales, and marketing.
JTC
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