Elearning can have a transformational impact on small business, not-for-profit and other fragmented groups sharing common interests, challenges or opportunities.

Leaders who champion these approaches, and buy-in from participants, is key – but once people are on-board a widespread and consistent improvement in  performance can occur in a rapid and substantial fashion.

Social networking and related services have taken elearning beyond self-contained training that offered little more than traditional distance learning. It now offers an important level of interaction that brings real people together.

The opportunity for interaction between participants promotes collaboration.  This can lead to superior, and often creative, solutions which can benefit every member. Small business, for example, will only get so far working with local competitors, but can interact freely with similar businesses in other parts of the country. Innovative product or service ideas, marketing approaches, and sources of suppliers can all be freely discussed when businesses are not in direct competition.

The benefits are not solely commercial. I am constantly amazed at how much ‘cash-strapped’ government agenices and not-for-profit groups will spend to get members to centralised training, or to bring training opportunities to geographically spread groups. The travel, accommodation and venue costs alone are often substantial, and the reach limited as a result.

Take a typical sporting organisation for example. They might have national, regional, club and school based administration nationwide from the largest centres to the smallest rural communities. They probably share common issues – perhaps they all seek greater levels of grant funding.

One well designed elearning programme in which the participants learn how to submit winning funding applications would address this need. It would involve many members and be delivered simultaneously nationwide, with valuable collaboration between participants sharing experiences and looking for solutions. This would immediately lift performance across the board, and impact nationwide through many members. An initiative like this could generate thousands of dollars of additional revenue and great benefits as a result.

Complement that with programmes in strategic planning, financial practise, volunteer management, and recruitment and suddenly you have strengthened and advanced the capability of your organisation in a very practical way – further and faster than you ever thought possible.

Put simply, this is about flexibility of time and place. This phrase is often used from the learner’s perspective, but it also applies to the delivery of training. Being able to provide training to a disjointed group spread over thousands of kilometres on a flexible schedule enables you to capture more people, more quickly, and more effectively.

What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better? Tell us and we will show you how elearning can make it happen!

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3. Organisation culture and E-learning

Organisation culture consists of three central components:

1. Myths: about how the organisation began, difficulties that were overcome, colourful figures and monumental events.
2. Ideology: the unified set of beliefs which explain and legitimise the organisation.
3. Values: which tell people what is important, and how to behave. Values provide meaning and standards.

In an organisation with a strong culture, key values are intensely and widely shared. The stronger the culture is, the greater the influence it has on the behaviour of an organisation.[i]

In customised elearning programmes,  good instructional design will consider and reflect the culture of the organisation. It should tell the myths, speak to the ideology and advocate key values of the organisation. It should be integrated into design from the very early stages.

Because the strength of a culture is built upon consistency, elearning can be a useful way to reinforce and shape culture. It is particularly effective when used to induct and train employees new to the organisation. Well designed elearning programmes for new staff can deliberately and convincingly shape their thinking and teach the legends of the organisations history to ensure continuity in the way culture is learned and applied across the organisation.

For these reasons, using the standard public offerings of independent training organisations for developing staff can sometimes be contrary to maintaining a powerful internal culture,  or at least be off less value than a customised solution that meets training needs and is fully consistent with the core culture of the employer.

Sometimes culture is being considered not as something to be maintained and strengthened, but instead as something to be created, shifted or changed.

Handling change is not easy. People fell uncomfortable when shifted from the status quo, negativity grows very easily and there is often tremendous resistance. Taking risks, or looking at the organisation from a different perspective can be exciting, but people will need extra support to help them reach their potential. [ii]

Often a conscious shift in culture is being implemented by key change agents and needs to be sold to the wider ‘community’ within the organisation. Sound decisions by champions of change are often carefully considered and meaningful, but rational decisions mean little to others unless they fully understand the reasons behind them.

Elearning can be an effective way to bring people on board and promote a desired change. Organisation theories can be taught, advantages can be understood, new knowledge can be acquired and essential skills developed. Perhaps most importantly, ideas that make sense in principle can be applied to ‘real life’ scenarios so people grow to believe in the change being advocated.

Finally, elearning itself can be a manifestation of a healthy and vibrant culture. If your organisation values innovation, best practise, learning, competitiveness or quality, e-learning should definitely be part of the mix!

[ii] Everything you ever needed to know about training, Thorne and Mackey,  p184, 2007.

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A world where best practise e-learning programmes allow you to learn your way.

A world where organisations can easily and afforably add e-learning capability.

Do you want the benefits of e-learning for yourself or your organisation but can’t find really good design and delivery of e-learning at a fair price?

We provide a range of e-learning programmes for the public, and design and deliver customised e-learning for organisations.

 We use best practise approaches to deliver excellent e-learning using software like Moodle through our own online campus. We use those same skills to provide e-learning capability to other organisations.

It’s a simple way to get all the benefits and savings of e-learning, and our advanced business model lets us do that at a very good price.

Here’s an example. They say the total cost of employing a staff member on a salary of $50,000 is more like $75,000. If that person’s job is training staff we can do it better and for half that, and save that company over $35,000 a year. That’s not counting the huge travel and accommodation savings if that training is delivered at different locations.  

 For our own learners it’s all about being able to study when and where you want to. In front of the fire on a cold night, on the deck in the sun. Anywhere with a computer and an internet connection really.

Please browse our site, have a look at our Blog and sign up for the updates if you like. We publish good information about e-learning every couple of days.

If you want to know more we would love to hear from you.

Note: Image:Satoru Kikuchi, Flickr (some rights reserved)

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Courses are delivered over 12 weeks and are designed to fit around full-time employment, or other obligations you might have. Every course is delivered with full support and a trained facilitator to guide you through. Learners who successfully complete a programme will receive a formal certificate verifying their achievement.

Our E-Campus uses the Moodle learning management system, widely used by the best Tertiary Education organisations throughout the world.

There is an intake at the start of each semester. Enrolments are currently closed for 2009, and we are upgrading our range for 2010.

Register to be advised when we announce our 2010 courses and open them for enrolments.

In the meantime, if there is a particular porgramme you would like us to offer please contact us.

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2. Affiliate Programme
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We believe in providing fair value in all we do and that extends to our affiliate programme. Put simply you will receive $150 (NZD) for every successful enrolment via your site.

We are currently redeveloping our e-campus and will not be enrolling new learners until 2010. At that time our affiliate programme will also go live.

Register for updates to be advised when this occurs, or use our contact form to register your interest today.

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