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E-learning News and More

Issue # 010802

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This issue of Competence News contains:

e-learn·ing n. Learning that is assisted by using computer and information technology as a tool to help transfer knowledge.

Visit our sponsor — Competence Software, Inc. Over 500,000 e-learning courses covering Business Finance, Investing and Computer technology have been delivered to individuals and corporations large and small. Our online training tutorials can train virtually anyone to be competent in these three areas:

  • Understanding Computers — the basics of computer technology
  • Financial Competence — the basics of business finance
  • Investment Competence — the basics of investing

News Item - ADL Evangelizes elearning

ADL* Releases the Technical Repository Investigation Report
December 23, 2002

The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative is preparing for a world where communication networks and personal information delivery devices are widespread, inexpensive and transparent to users in terms of ease of use, bandwidth and portability. ADL envisions the creation of repositories, or learning "knowledge" libraries where learning objects may be accumulated and catalogued for broad distribution and use. These objects must be readily accessible across the World Wide Web or whatever forms our global information network takes in the future.

The full release can be found at:

http://www.adlnet.org/

*The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative is a collaborative effort between government, industry and academia to establish a new distributed learning environment that permits the interoperability of learning tools and course content on a global scale. ADL's vision is to provide access to the highest quality education and training, tailored to individual needs, delivered cost-effectively anywhere and anytime.

Editorial - E-learning - The Basis for the new economy

With the next presidential election less than 2 years away, the White House is working overtime to stimulate the U.S. economy. Remember the Clinton elections? His public relations experts correctly advised him - "It's the economy stupid!"

But what are the simple basics of an "economy"?.

A businessperson or entrepreneur acquires knowledge on how to build a product or provide a service and obtains some knowledge of who could possibly need the product or service (the market). The businessperson creates the product or service, promotes to that market, sells the product or service and collects money. Then he/she gains some knowledge of money and how to manage finance so that less money is spent than is made (profit). The business person then learns how to use the profit to expand production and sales, then employs and pays people to help the business expand, makes more profit and thus builds a successful business. This is the engine that drives the economy.

The government taxes the sales, taxes the profit and taxes the employee pay and so gets income. The government is supposed to spend the income to protect its citizens and assist them to live a better life. Additionally, the government issues currency as a medium of exchange and, ideally, carefully balances the amount of money in circulation with the amount of goods and services being produced to avoid having too much currency (which would cause inflation) or too little (which would cause deflation). In order to do its job effectively, the government must have employees with expert knowledge on how to protect citizens and also have knowledge about money, finance and economics.

When the government grows bureaucratic and authoritarian (where in the entire history of man is there an exception?), we need consultants, accountants, lawyers and educators to gather and transfer detailed knowledge of the governments bureaucratic and authoritative arbitraries (called laws and regulations). We need this knowledge to comply to the laws of the land, avoid government intervention and get on with the job of building an economy that does indeed function to improve living conditions.

When ethics deficient finance "experts" (relying on general financial illiteracy) publish financial statements that are complex enough to give a statue a headache, the need for knowledge of basic business finance and how to read these statements becomes obvious.

Look this over and you will see that knowledge has quite a bit to do with the health of an economy. An increasingly global economy is accelerating the demand for just in time, just enough, and just right training and education (knowledge transfer). E-learning is becoming an increasingly important part of our civilization's landscape.

A phone company, for example, rolling out the latest cell phone needs to rapidly train thousands of sales, service and administrative personnel on the new product and its marketing plan.

The government Defense Department needs to give its warriors knowledge of the latest high tech weaponry to meet the threat of terrorism - something they do not learn in our education system.

The boom in corporate universities and corporate elearning initiatives demonstrates that the education sector is not the sole source for meeting the demand for skilled, knowledgeable personnel in the private and government sectors. Schools and universities are correctly embracing elearning, if for no other reason that the necessity to stay in the game.

This is a megatrend friends, and you are right here and now at its birth and infancy.

Fueling this trend into the foreseeable future will be the ubiquitous and insatiable need for efficient knowledge transfer. The infrastructure of the internet has enabled knowledge transfer on an unprecedented scale. Learning management and learning content management systems are the current rage (see series of articles in Competence News) and are one of the high growth areas of our economy.

We believe that elearning will be THE basis for economic recovery and, indeed, become the platform for the international economy for this century and beyond.

Congratulations on being in the right place at the right time and may you have a wonderful and prosperous 2003!

All the best!

Larry Byrnes
Editor
Competence News
Visit our sponsor — financialcompetence.com — provides a thorough understanding of the basics of business finance.

Continuing Series- Learning Management Systems and the IT Professional

What’s next – Gardening?

Part 2 – The purpose of Learning Management Systems/Learning Content Management Systems (LMS/LCMS)

In the first article, we defined the functions of an LMS/LCMS – the creation, storing, assembling, delivering and administrating of training courses to individuals so that the organization has the needed skills to achieve its overall objectives. In this article we will define, precisely, the purpose of a learning management system.

Several years ago, while we were proposing to implement our interactive basic business finance course on the network of a very large insurance company, the IT Manager was heard to say, “What’s next, gardening?” His priority was training his staff on how to make a network reliable, secure, high performance and cost effective. The idea of a basic business finance course running on his network was obviously a bad joke to this IT manager. With CFOs of major corporations being carted off to jail in handcuffs on prime time TV news, he may feel differently today. The cognition is arriving that financial statements are seldom if ever read, never mind understood. This opens the door to falsified numbers reported by ethics deficient “experts”. Thus financial literacy has become a major issue.

Priorities have obviously changed, but unless the relevancy and value of a LMS/LCMS is fully grasped by IT pros, the very high potential return on investment is unlikely to be realized. We certainly don’t want to miss the opportunity of a lifetime to “embrace and extend” the inevitable preeminence of enterprise “knowledge systems”.

Increasingly you will hear these terms “Knowledge Systems” and Human Capital Resource Systems. Putting aside whether or not one likes to be referred to as “capital”, the concept here is that an investment in training will enhance the value of an individual employee. This investment will pay off in terms of increased productivity, expansion in chosen markets, increased profitability and increased shareholder/stakeholder value. There are also indications that investment in training will pay off in increased employee loyalty – an important benefit given today’s “free agent” economy where job-hopping is an every day occurrence. All of this should add up to helping to achieving the strategic objectives of the corporation.

This brings us to the purpose of an LMS/LCMS which is to rapidly provide employees with the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs competently, enhance their value to the corporation and help achieve the strategic objectives of the corporation.

In the next article we will give some of the “drivers” that give management incentive to invest in learning management systems. You will want to know these and use them at budget time.

A good elearning glossary - http://www.e-learningguru.com/gloss.htm

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