First blog

Assignment 3- Additional Work- Option 1. 

Review the short course and compare the experience to their current workplace context, including recommendations for improvement or adaptation. 

E-learning is becoming the new buzz word in today’s corporate society. Organisations are looking beyond the traditional teaching grounds and expanding their facilities to online electronic databases to train and develop their employees. According to Snell and Norman (1994) “the need for literate employees will increase, forcing companies to develop educational courses”. As a professional educator effective e-leaning courses need to be identified and implemented in the class room. The two short courses which will be reviewed are: Sexual Harassment, and Turkish Frontline Customer Service. From a professional educators perspective the two courses will be compared to the experience of current workplace context. The advantages and disadvantages of e-learning courses within an organisational context will also be discussed along with recommendations on how these two courses can be implemented, or not and the possible improvements on the two e-learning courses, in order to provide an enhanced learning environment.  

Argument: 

As a professional educator I was once a learner and have experienced learning in two contexts, which include: the traditional classroom and a virtual classroom. The traditional classroom requires a teacher to physically be present in the room to facilitate the learning experience of the student. The virtual classroom according to Derek Stockley (2007) is “the delivery of a learning, training or education program by electronic means. E-learning involves the use of a computer or electronic device (e.g. a mobile phone) in some way to provide training, educational or learning material” (Derek Stockley, 2007, para.1).  From my experience in teaching in both learning contexts, feedback has been provided on the learning preferences of students. These learning preferences were based on two online training courses, which are Equal Opportunity/ Sexual Harassment and Turkish Frontline Customer Service Skills. As a professional educator, I believe there are many advantages and disadvantages associated with online learning for both the learner and the organisation. Optus Prepaid Services has recently incorporated the Sexual Harassment Online Course, which I have done myself, and believe that it will be the first and last time this type of course will be provided for the employees of the company. From a professional educators perspective the advantage of any short e-learning course for the organisation is the “fast transfer of knowledge, learning… transpire[s students] in short burst within the context of the actual workflow, and that learning professionals need to develop learning experiences quickly—and at a lower cost to the organization” (Karrer, 2007, para. 3). Another reason why our organisation has integrated virtual learning in the workplace according to Kruse (2004) is because it “increases retention and application to the job, averages an increase of 25 percent over traditional methods”, and “expert knowledge is communicated, but more importantly captured, with good e-learning and knowledge management systems” (Kruse, 2004, para. 7).

Unfortunately for Prepaid Services, the Equal Employment Opportunity/ Sexual Harassment Online training was cost effective, but not the best means of teaching/training for their staff. The course was too informative and for most of the employees including myself it became boring and irritable, hence the learning experience was hindered. With Prepaid Services there are many different employees with different levels of education, which this course highlighted and segregated. At the end of the short course there was a final examination which required employees to gain 100%, and senior management or employees that have furthered their studies comfortably completed this, as oppose to frontline customer service staff, who struggled to complete the course, and even terminated the course failing to complete it because of the final section. I was one of the employees who gave up towards the end of the course because it became ridiculous to complete as I felt confused and even cheated by the process (Pallof et al. 2001). According to Sheinberg (2001) “gathering information about the intended audience before designing and developing a course can greatly improve its chance for success” (Sheinberg, 2001, para. 1). As a professional educator I believe that the Equal Opportunity/ Sexual Harassment course was fundamental information in which all employees at all levels needed to be enlightened, but was disappointed to see the learning process hindered through the rigid structure of the online course.

In contrast, the Turkish Frontline Customer Service short e-learning course was a separate experience, which differed from the previous course. The course was used at an optimum level in the International Calling Card Department. The customer service representatives in the Turkish department found the short online course useful as it provided them with techniques about how to deal with customers and effective listening skills. The structure of this course was very effective as it engaged the learners with an audio voice and supplied the students with animated situations, which allowed them to be “active, creative, and engaged in the learning process” (Palloff et al. 2001, para.1). This was a very useful course in this department as it was structured and aimed at the specific audience (being young bilingual speakers).

Recommendations:

As a professional educator I would like to put forward some of my recommendations for the short e-learning courses for Prepaid Services. I believe that all management in all the departments should be trained on how to use the short e-learning courses. This would facilitate the learners if or when they are having technical difficulty, or have any questions about the structure or the content of the information. At Prepaid Services when these two courses were being held there was only one workstation available, where employees can access the training. I also recommend that in my workplace context there needs to be more technology infrastructure available to facilitate a smooth learning process. At the moment only one person can use the short course database and for all employees to complete the short course took many days. If this new structure is implemented than I believe the learning experience will become efficient and effective, as there will be larger amounts of people gaining knowledge at a paster pace, subsequently becoming a knowledge rich organisation.  

Improvements:

I believe that short e-learning courses should not take more than 2 hours, as I know from my own experience long e-learning courses hinder a learning atmosphere as the students attention span may reduce. In the context of the Equal Opportunity/Sexual Harassment course I recommend that the structure and the criteria of the course meet all the objectives for every intended user. For example, the final section of the Sexual Harassment course required 100% to successfully complete the training. As a professional educator I recognise that this is an impossible task, and that the structure of the course needs to be flexible. Furthermore, the Frontline Turkish Customer Service course was very animated and caught the attention of the learner. The Sexual Harassment course needs to become more animated and engage the audience’s attention, as oppose to only delivering information. The improvements I recommend for the customer service course is possible an English thesaurus and dictionary tool available whilst the course is on. Learners provided feedback that even though they spoke Turkish, the standard of the language in the course was of a very high level, and some of the employees struggled to understand at times what the course was trying to communicate.

Conclusion:

Prepaid Services have implemented these two courses in the organisation recently. Because it is a new structure and system within the organisation, I as a professional educator believe that there still needs to be many more improvements in both the course context and the organisations technology infrastructure. Without these recommendations and improvements in place I do not believe that the employees/learners will have an optimum learning atmosphere to benefit themselves and the organisation.  

Karrer, T. 2007, Understanding E-Learning 2.0, Learning Circuits, viewed 13/11/07, <http://www.learningcircuits.org/2007/0707karrer.html>. 

Kruse, K. 2004, The Benefits and Drawbacks of e-learning, E-Learning Guru.com, viewed 12/11/07, <http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_3.htm> 

Palloff et al. 2001, Working with the virtual student in Lessons from Cyberspace, Jossey- Bass, viewed 14/11/07, <http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/17282/013966_palloffworking.pdf>

Sheinberg, M. 2001, Know Thy Learner: The Importance of Context in E-Learn Design, ASTD Learning Circuits, viewed 12/11/07, <http://www.learningcircuits.org/2001/oct2001/elearn.html> 

Snell.Norman, W. (1994), ‘Virtual HR: Meeting new world realities’, Compensation and Benefits Review, vol. 26, Iss. 6, pp. 35- 44. 

Stockley, D. 2007, E- learning Solutions: E- Learning definition ( E-Learning, Online Training, Online Learning), Derek Stockley, viewed 13/11/07, <http://derekstockley.com.au/elearning-definition.html>.