* IBM talks about flexible training
Instead of having to take days out of your schedule to attend classroom training or even take some time out to attend a scheduled group online training course, we should be able to take training on the fly, on our own, and in our own time. That’s the message that IBM is spreading as it pushes its IBM Learning Solutions offerings that integrate IBM software and hardware for training delivery.
For the past 18 months, IBM has been showing organizations how to deliver training in bite size pieces that employees and business partners can take whenever they have the time – whether at work or at home, any time of the day or week. There will still be a need for classroom-based instruction for courses that don’t translate well to e-learning, such as management skills, but people should be given more flexibility over how, when and where training is delivered for courses that don’t require human instructor to student interactions.
Over the next few issues, we’ll discuss how financial holding company National City, retailer Pep Boys, and Cingular Wireless deliver flexible training to its employees and associates, but today, we’ll look at what IBM believes is the future for training.
According to Nancy DeViney, general manager at IBM Learning Solutions, technologies such as instant messaging, Web conferencing and Weblogs could be used to help create a collaborative learning environment where students, while taking online courses, could locate topic experts within the company and ask them questions on the fly.
The company says learning could also be embedded in employees’ work. For instance, an employee could be working on an application and the software could serve up learning suggestions if it senses the individual is struggling with a function or a topic. IBM also says companies could enable “Google learning” – the ability to look up materials and procedures while participating in an online training course or carrying out their work.
Delivering training in this way means course content needs to be broken into modules that could take between 10 or 40 minutes to complete. You wouldn’t want the employee to be served a 4-hour course when they have a few moments to kill in between meetings.
Also, the choice of courses should be focused at the worker’s job profile. Rather than putting a library of thousands of courses online and asking the worker to pick, a learning management system could identify each user through their user name and password and suggest courses relevant to their job roles.
Companies shouldn’t limit this kind of training to their employees, as the techniques could also be used to educate your business partners, customers and suppliers, says IBM. By enabling access to your training intranet, your associates could pick training material – such as details about your latest products and services – that’s relevant to them.
We’ll stay on this topic for a while as we discuss how some of IBM’s customers are bringing flexible training to their workers. More next time.
** After a short spring break, my Events colleagues are back on the road with Network World’s free Technology Tours. In June, Network World columnist and President of Nemertes Research Johna Till Johnson will be presenting this year’s VoIP roadshow. The VoIP tour is one of our most popular events, so make sure you sign up to attend. At the seminar, you’ll learn about VoIP and wireless, integrating VoIP and messaging, VoIP and telecommuting, and VoIP and security.
For more about the 4-city VoIP tour that’s taking place June 7-16, please go to:
http://www.networkworld.com/events/voip05/index.html
*** We’ve also added two new dates to the Wireless and Mobility Tour. My colleagues Craig Mathias, principal of Farpoint Group, and Keith Shaw, Network World senior editor of product testing, will be in Boston on June 21, and Denver June 23.
For more information about the Wireless and Mobility Tour, please go to:
http://www.networkworld.com/events/wireless05/agendapresenters.html
