| General: The essay: Downloads: Back to the index |
C H A P T E R 3Advantages and disadvantages of the use of telelearning in vocational training
3.1 Introduction In the following paragraphs, we will try to find out in which ways companies can benefit from using telelearning in their vocational training. The need for organisational changes within the company will be viewed. We will have a brief look at what will be taken into consideration from the costs of introducing telelearning (equipment) in vocational training. Acceptance and capabilities of learners, trainers and the management is seen as a serious factor for successfully realising and implementing telelearning strategies. We will consider the differences between small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) as well as large corporations operating on a global scale.  3.2 Organisational changes required ? To see how telelearning can be implemented in today's organisational structures of companies, we will have to look at the way people learn and work and their possibilities to acquire new knowledge.
This is the traditional way of organising vocational training in companies. They work at their PCs in the firm; and they are being send away for training or conferences to learn new methods, software programmes, using special technical equipment or to study languages. One problem is that, when an employee is looking for a way to solve a problem during his current work, he has only the possibility to ask colleagues or find something in stored information (traditionally printed material). When telelearning is instantly applied, e.g. by scanning intranet material or sending an e-mail to a specific newsgroup directly at the same PC, a solution can be found in a very short time without leaving the workplace. When learning and work is seen separately, the offered trainings may not be self-motivated from the employee's point of view, as he is assigned to take part in a training at that point of time. A second problem is how people look at acquiring new knowledge: For some of the staff members, training or learning will be viewed as not knowing or not being capable of doing the job, especially between different hierarchy levels. So the company or management has to build up a climate that defines on-going learning as a tool for generating competence, new ideas and thus bringing the company ahead of other competitors. But as a consequence, the management has to allow everyone to gain knowledge throughout his or her working life. A third problem is finding the right criteria for ranking the effects of learning by telelearning during normal work and in little "pieces". How can the personal advance of knowledge be measured ? Can access time to information media be used ? Traditionally maybe again on a basis of hours attended on trainings or conferences. But with a growing use of telelearning tools directly at work, the firms and managers will spend less on sending away their staff. The organisational changes required for implementing telelearning often go together with the changes occurring because of general restructuring of companies. Again, we are looking at traditionally organised firms and managers with centralised control and top-down structures. For McCann [18] , the first ones to be send away for trainings are traditionally staff specialists with narrow knowledge who later"... provide expertise and education on demand to the generalist in the organisation". But with companies becoming decentralised and work more team-oriented project work , the knowledge must be provided to an increasingly amount of people. Also, you have people leaving the organisation and new ones entering it thus creating a continued demand for "education on demand" [18]. Time problems may occur, when people from a team want to leave the firm for a long-term educational program. Altogether we have a reduced ability for individuals at companies to attend longer education programs on the one hand but on the other hand we have a rapidly changing and growing demand for continued education on an on-going basis. 3.3 Building a bridge between theory and practice with telelearning This is the point where telelearning enters the game: As telelearning can integrate the acquisition and application of knowledge without leaving the workplace, employees can try to learn in little, self-defined doses - even during their lunch breaks or during their work. With instant access to knowledge databases (internal ones or via the WWW), specific information, once owned by only one person, can be spread and used by a nearly unlimited amount of people at the same time. What is learned at the workplace can easily be transferred to the specific problem or task ("Right now I have that problem - and I want to solve it now !"). As an example for already integrated interactive help programmes, we have Microsoft's help functions or electronic assistances that are directly linked to ones' problems; Microsoft calls this "Information at Your Fingertips". The learner is making an interactive connection to an information source with the help of modern technology. If you cannot get help from stored information, you can send e-mails around the company's network for a fast feedback to get the answer to your problems. Especially for global organisations and consulting companies where knowledge is the most important "asset", the internal replication and spreading of information through the use of (e.g. Lotus Notes based) knowledge databases is of major interest. But also smaller companies where internal networks are already installed, can make use of such databases and enrich their information sources through an internet connection. An interesting point is that employees trained via telelearning, not only get practised on the trained subjects but also get accustomed to modern internet soft- and hardware; this is of importance as companies want to introduce more services via the WWW, e.g. marketing with customers, an intranet with their suppliers or -especially for smaller firms - to start a joint venture as a virtual corporation. 3.4 Professional learning tailored to personal demands IAn interesting aspect of telelearning in vocational training is that the concept of gaining knowledge can be tailored to ones' specific needs not only in a respect of theory and practice. When you look at the professional background and different ways of acquiring knowledge you can especially see in organisations that they greatly differ from each other as you have people of different ages, educational background, specific work-related knowledge and various personal skills (e.g. basic technical / computer knowledge). To satisfy those specific needs with the help of telelearning tools, the systems used for TL must be flexible and open. IBM's [18] Corporate Education Department defined the following attributes for internal education in the year 2000: Table 2: Attributes of IBM's education systems Source: MCCann, J.M. (1995), in: Collis,B. (1995). These attributes define the major advantages of telelearning tools. Education at the workplace must be self-directed and accessible on demand. This is important for acceptance and motivation. In general, telelearning tools used for immediate help should address single skills, in contrast to course programs which address multiple skills and consist of several modules. To meet on-work requirements, there should not be a fixed sequence of modules but a hyperlink-like system that enables the learner to "browse" through pieces of information and to actively select the relevant parts for himself. Another advantage of a modular structure is that one session can be repeated to be completely understood or left out because of existing knowledge or not enough time. To make use of short brakes or periods where employees do not have lots of work and therefore want to learn something, the learning sessions should be interruptible so that the employee can start and stop easily and continue later on. The portability of the information source can be an advantage especially for larger corporations if they offer on-desk network access for everyone in the company (through internet or intranet access) and have separate study rooms (with extra equipment for video-conferencing systems, large screens, etc.). This way, people can access the company's knowledge and their own material anytime and anyplace. With portable systems, even small and medium-sized companies can move the equipment to other plants or offices and save costs for letting a tutor come directly to the company. When multi-media elements are used for presenting the information, the learner will use more senses and therefore learn more effectively. 3.5 The costs of using telelearning From the companies' point of view, the costs of education are increasing enormously and is bringing strong pressure to reduce these costs; one way to do it is to increase the efficiency of educational delivery. As prices for hardware needed for telelearning are falling steadily as well as communication costs, and new technology is becoming available to a broad range of people (e.g. video-conferencing), the costs of using tools for telelearning are dropping, too. And most of the time, the basic equipment, which consists of "upgraded" multi-media PCs and a internal network and maybe an internet connection, is already being used at the workplace - even in smaller companies. The more technical specifications will be discussed later. But as a start, the infrastructure already is there. Companies still have to decide how telelearning is organised internally. 3.5.1 Where and how can telelearning equipment be accessed ?3.5.2 Contribution of telelearning to costs, finance and price Greville Rumble [9] saw already in 1992 two major ways in which distance education (in the sense of telelearning) can contribute to costs: Related to the input substitution are economies of scale, especially for globally operating corporations like Daimler-Benz [10]: As a result, one training session can be delivered to a large amount of employees in a very short time. The fixed costs of the material, development of courses and the production can be spread over a large number of professional learners. For Rumble [9] , the "extend to which distance education is cheaper than alternative methods then depends upon the average fixed costs and the actual marginal costs of delivery of the systems under consideration". When companies depend on very expensive machinery (e.g. robots or planes), training of the people can be done by using software simulations instead of buying the machinery. This is already being done by all large airlines as simulations are much cheaper and less dangerous as using a real plane. Also, the costs of a possible failure can be saved. 3.6 Conclusion A major disadvantage are high costs of communication, which will definitely drop with a wider deregulation of the telecommunication markets, and enormous costs for special equipment related to video conferences. But as most companies already have internal networks and get connected to the internet for getting in touch with customers, telelearning will become available to even smaller companies who want their employees to become professional life-long learners. |
