By Nina Silberstein

If you think you're the only one attracted to the pursuit of an online degree, think again. More and more corporations, both large and small, plan to make distance learning an integral part of their future as well.

In a recent poll of senior human resource professionals, it was found that almost two-thirds (62 percent) believe online learning will form the single, largest part of their organizations' future training delivery. Employees agree. Eighty-one percent also believe they will be doing the majority of their learning online in the future.

"There's a trend toward decentralization, and remote access will certainly continue as will the deployment of online learning. It is likely to become the way that a majority of training will be delivered," says Hal Christensen, co-founder, Christensen/Roberts Solutions, a Woodbridge, Conn. company that provides expertise and tools for design, development and delivery of solutions that ensure business performance through human performance. Christensen is an expert on corporate training and effective employee learning methods and is recognized for his eLearning and Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPPS) design for large organizations. "It will certainly become easier to access knowledge, tools, and people remotely," he adds.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between education programs, such as online degree programs that focus more on general background, conceptual understanding, and discipline-related skills, and corporate training programs, which are designed to improve employees' performance in specific jobs and responsibilities in order to meet the specific business goals of an organization.

Christensen says that online collaboration and action learning activities will become much more common than they are today. The use of the Web as a resource will increase as well. "More and more knowledge will come from the Web, much of it informal, 'just-in-time,'" he notes. Just-in-time training is just that because it may be requested when you need it; just before your employees perform those critical tasks, he explains.

For the Operating Engineers Training Institute of Ontario (OETIO), the training arm of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 793, headquartered in Washington state, online training was developed to educate workers about integral theoretical components of the job.

"There are a lot of people out there with little or no knowledge or understanding of cranes," explains Larry Sharon, curriculum design project manager. That's why the OETIO put together a distance learning package of essential skills for the operation of this machinery so essential to the engineering trade, which includes terminology that needs to be learned prior to starting the regular, in-school portion of apprentice training.

"What we deliver on the Internet course is one week of the theoretical training of a six-week initial course, so workers only spend five weeks in school. It's so they understand what we're trying to teach. It makes for a little more homogenous group from the beginning," he says.

Peter Gumny, an OETIO apprentice from Barrie, Ontario who took the mobile crane pre-course online, agrees that the head start helped. "It gave me a general guideline of what was going to happen in the course," he says. "Staying at home made it more affordable and cost-friendly," he notes.

Online Training vs. Classroom-Based Learning
One of the problems with traditional corporate training programs is the conflict it causes in conjunction with running a business. "How can you schedule large numbers of employees to be away from their duties at the same time?" asks Dr. Phillip R. Ash, dean of American Sentinel University's business school in Englewood, Colo. Dr. Ash is also a change management, strategy, and globalization expert and founder of eLearning and Development, where he has developed more than 50 online courses for distance learning universities.

"It's much better to let each individual employee make his or her own schedule for training and development in order to minimize any disruptive effect on normal business operations," he states.

Online training can deliver one-click access from the workplace to learning and support that is immediately relevant and applicable. "In particular, it can deliver tools that employees can use immediately to help them perform the work they are being trained to perform," adds Christensen.

Dr. Ash agrees. "An important dimension to the timing/scheduling issue presents learning opportunities to employees when the subject matter is timely. We learn best when we can immediately put to use that which we are learning," he says. The best time to offer a course on performance management, for instance, is when a manager is having a problem improving the performance of workers within his/her team. "Just-in-time learning is effective and minimizes the impact of time away from day-to-day work activities," he notes.

Abbott Laboratories, a global, broad-based health care company devoted to discovering new medicines, technologies, and ways to manage health, also extracts an important element of its workforce learning curriculum electronically. Its ethics and compliance training is delivered via an online format, and provides employees with an overview of the company's obligations under applicable laws and regulations and on the related Abbott policies and procedures. Abbott's training is facilitated through a variety of methods, such as interactive computer-based programs and live sessions with subject-matter experts. "It's called a LERN Module, which all employees are expected to complete, going through case studies and different scenarios that they're quizzed on," explains Julie Herlocker, public affairs.

"The processing power of the computer permits sophisticated levels of work simulation that exceed what can be done in a classroom or non-computer mediated environments," adds Dr. Ash. Online learning can also provide better management of training activities, more extensive evaluation of learning, and greater precision of feedback, he says.

Better Positioned to Succeed?
An online training program provides learners with tools for success as well as information. The learners are engaged in using the resources of the Internet, the new "library of knowledge," which classroom training cannot as easily provide, say advocates of the emerging educational method.

So who benefits most? Companies with multiple branches that need to provide consistent and timely training to its employees, as well as companies with constant employee turnover that have been relying on training methods that are no longer effective, efficient, or productive.

"There will be wider acceptance of eLearning as a valid way of learning, but acceptance will depend on the quality of the programs provided and the graduates produced," Christensen stresses. The success of any kind of learning must be measured by the quantity and quality of work done as a result of it, he adds. Learning that can be directly applied to the work that needs to be done and the business goals that need to be achieved will be the most successful.

"The flexibility of online learning, particularly its ability to be delivered closer to the time and place that the work is being done, will have advantages over training delivered away from that work," Christensen concludes.