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Trends
and opportunties for ETV in by
Ken
Freed Part 1 of
2 Many
of the same market principles for educational
television within schools also apply to educational
television market within organizations, especially
the elements related to upgrading the communication
infrastructure and making the learning experience
as interactive as possible. Yet there are important
differences, and these make all the difference in
the world. The schools, colleges and
universities are charged with educating the youth
to become whole individuals who can function
responsibly within society, who can achieve
successes within their chosen careers, benefiting
themselves and the world. Organizational training
and development programmes, on the other hand, have
a responsibility to the organization first and the
learner second. Another important
difference is that young students generally need
some kind of educational subsidy, typically from
the government or a foundation grant, but adult
learners within organizations usually do have the
resources to pay for learning, either from their
own pocket or from organizational coffers. Further,
organizations tend to be more willing to invest in
the technologies needed for distance learning. The
return on educational technology investments are
more measurable in terms of worker productivity and
effectiveness where as school can only measure the
benefits in terms of student grades. Further,
companies that invest in learning infrastructure
development can use that infrastructure for other
forms of business communication. Installation of a
teleconferencing system also provides the facility
for face-to-face business meetings without the
expense of travel, a substantial cost savings for
any international organization. On the similarity side,
organizations tend to share the preference of
schools for using the Internet rather than
television, given the economics involved. And most
organizations still prefer a live teacher over a
remote or recorder teacher, just like schools. The
exceptions to this rule are top-name corporate
speakers like sales motivator Zig Ziegler or
organizational change wizard Tom Peters, whose fees
for a single personal appearance are equivalent to
building an in-house intranet. If any
organizational can get a speaker like Ziegler to
Peters online where costs are distributed among
many organizations, they are thrilled, but for many
organizations, the best they can do is buy the
video for the staff to replay at their own pace as
their schedules permits. After all the downsizing,
restructuring and "re-engineering" of organizations
since the early Nineties, the difficult challenges
facing those working within organizations are
greater than ever. Educational television can
perform a vital function in helping all
organization members to survive and
prosper. DESCRIPTION
OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL ETV MARKET Unlike
in schools where the emphasis is learning for the
pure sake of learning, perhaps with some particular
career goal in mind, in organizations, all learning
is specifically focused on the performance of
career responsibilities. That is, the emphasis is
doing one's job better and advancing within one's
career. The developments of job-related skills and
abilities is foremost, and these range from how to
produce a widget to methods of managing the widget
producers. According to the
Benchmarking Forum of the American Society for
Training and Development, consisting of training
professionals in the USA and Europe, the average
for-profit and nonprofit organization spent on
training about $1,525 per employee in 1996, up from
slightly less than $1,400 in 1996. Slightly more
than half of training expenditures go for internal
training from in-house organizational trainers and
the rest for external training programmes where the
employees leave the workplace or else an outside
trainer is brought in to provide the training
on-site. The use of contract trainers has risen
from 15 percent in 1994 to 24 percent in 1996,
mirroring a trend for organizations to rely
increasingly on outside contract staff for diverse
operational functions. ASTD Benchmarking Forum
may be the West's most reliable source of data
about organizational training and development
expenses. Reliable benchmark information, a
critical planning tool for all areas of operational
management and training, requires the annual
collection of comparative information on the
programmes and finances covering all aspects of
training. To collect their data, member companies
in the ASTD Benchmarking Forum in Europe and the
United States agree to complete an annual survey
conducted over 2-4 weeks, duration depending on the
information management systems in place. Member
companies agree to provide data on at least one
training organization within the company, but all
training organizations with member companies tend
to be surveyed, if only for "bragging rights" when
senior-level company executives convene for the
required bi-annual Forum meetings. ASTD does not release its
membership numbers, but unofficial estimates place
the organization's representation at about 80
percent of the major corporations in the USA, about
65 percent of the major corporations in Europe,
plus a solid contingent from medium-sized
for-profits and nonprofits within both regions.
Participation runs $8,500 annually for the first
two years, then $5,000 per year. So, ASTD findings
have sufficient relevance and scope for our use
here. Purpose of
Training ASTD benchmarking accounts
for all training activities and expenditures for
the three kinds of training organizations typically
found in modern companies. First is the
"comprehensive" training group that performs
virtually all internal training at a company, their
target market comprised of all employees eligible
for training services. Second is the "sub-unit"
organization providing training services to all
eligible employees in a particular business
division. Third is the "specialized" training
organization that provided particular forms of
training, like executive management development or
sales training, courses taught across the entire
company and major-sub-units. (See Table
6.1) ASTD's categories for
their benchmarked training typify the focus of
training programmes within organizations, whether
profit or nonprofit: New Employee
Orientation: Programmes giving all new
employees uniform information about the company and
its organization, mission, functions and policies,
compensation, benefits, services, work
requirements, standards, safe work habits, and
desired employee-management relations. (Here are
the rules, yet learning the ropes and the roles
varies with the organizational culture.)
Basic Skills:
General remedial training in literacy, reading
comprehension, writing, math, English as a second
language, and also "learning how to
learn." Technical Skills:
Job-specific training in expected procedures and
practices as applied to such areas as how to use
the technology or machinery, creating products,
delivering services, or engaging in any other
skilled task. Computer Applications
Training: How to use off-the-shelf applications
such as word processing, spreadsheets, databases,
graphics, and communications, and webcrafting. Also
includes training in proprietary software
applications. (Advanced courses in computer
programming qualify as "professional
skills.") Professional Skills:
Advanced training to develop or improve
competencies in such professions as accounting,
engineering, computer science, electronics,
mechanics, chemistry, physics, legal, medical,
financial services, banking, and consulting. This
training includes any continuing education for
re-certification. Customer Service:
Classes about how to improve customer
relations, which includes interactions on the phone
and in-person relating to company products and
services. (Amen for a skilled, friendly customer
service representative!) Sales Training:
Instructing and motivating the sales force, dealers
or perhaps franchisees about the company products
and services they market and sell. Covers how to
demonstrate products and services; but mostly helps
sales and marketing staff to develop the attitudes,
skills and habits of personality needed to
influence the purchasing decisions of prospects and
customers. Enabling Skills:
Covers "organizational culture" initiatives in
interpersonal communication, teamwork, diversity
workshops, personality awareness, and time
management. (These are "soft skills" making company
life worthwhile.) Management &
Supervision: Skills: Programmes to improve the
effectiveness of managers and supervisors in
motivating the best performance from the staff.
Topics covered may include human resource
management, project and process management,
logistical planning, and budgeting. Executive
Development: Programmes to develop the
leadership and vision of current and potential
senior executives. Focused on the responsibilities
and challenges in leading company-wide initiatives
leading company divisions, the skills taught
include strategic planning, policy-making and goal
setting. Mandatory Compliance or
Regulatory Training: Instruction provided to
meet environmental, health or safety regulations,
equal employment opportunity or affirmative action
requirements, right-to-know or any freedom of
information rules, and all government-mandated
training. Quality Control,
Competition and Business Practices: Such
training covers all variations on Total Quality
Management (TQM) courses, organizational
"re-engineering," benchmarking, resource planning,
team building, and other fundamentals under the
modern theory of global business
competition. Any given organizational
training programme will address one or more of the
above interests and concerns. Notice the
distinction between "soft skills" and "hard
skills." Increasingly, a knowledge of effective
communication translates into personal and
professional advancement both on the job and in
life. Training Delivery
Systems The use of television and
other instructional technologies (IT) has
significantly altered the way training is given
with organizations. The images of factory workers
crowded on benches to watch a black-and-white
training film are as dead and buried as the
obsolete products they were trained to manufacture.
The modern means of delivering training, says ASTD,
takes these forms: Traditional
Classroom: Here's the old model of the
instructor in front of the class delivering the
content by lectures, demonstrations or group
discussions. Advanced-Interactive
classroom: While still an instructor-led
format, now the classroom offers a degree of
automation with a student-response capacity using
an electronic system, such as a computer or even a
keypad on each desk. Televised Distance
Learning: Any video for education broadcast by
satellite, cable, microwave, telephone line, or
other means, either one-way or two-way. The
category encompasses video teleconferencing,
including slow-scan video. Computer-Based
Training: The computer is an integral part of
instructional system, with the learner performing
real-time interactions with the computer. (This
category does not include computer-based training
over a network.) Internet Distance
Learning: Computer-based training via the
public switched network or an in-house Intranet.
May be one-way, but it's usually
two-way. Interactive
Multimedia: Computer-based training combining
two or more modes of instructional media, such as
text, graphics, audio, and video on CD-ROM or DVD.
Interactive multimedia programmes also are
learner-controlled. On-Demand Training:
Properly known as "electronic performance support
systems (EPSS), these are integrated computer
programmes that use hypertext, animation, and
hypermedia for on-demand delivery of training
materials with little or no help or intervention by
others. Often focused on skill development.
Other Self-Paced
Instruction: Any learning method that does not
rely upon advanced technology where the learner
controls the rate of instruction, such as
paper-based textbooks or training manuals,
audiotapes or videotapes. The same systems for
delivering educational content, of course, also are
used within schools, colleges and universities.
Just as more advanced technologies are found at the
educational institutions with the best funding,
predictably, the most advanced learning
technologies tend to be found within the
organizations having the best funding; i.e.
for-profits rather than nonprofits have best
tools. Usage of Training
Delivery Systems As may be expected, the
use of educational TV/comprises only a portion of
all training methods within an organization. The
1994 -1996 ASTD benchmark studies of training
systems reveal some notable trends. (See Table
6.2) Please observe that for
1996, all training documented within the ASTD study
took place within some kind of dedicated classroom
space, yet the percentage of training sessions
taking place in classrooms equipped with advanced
media technology has fluctuated over the three
years, actually dipping to slightly less than half
in 1996. The fluctuations may be anomalous,
however, given steady increases in the amount of
media-assisted training being reported. A jump in the use of
computer-based interactive multimedia and the
Internet parallels the increasing popularity of
those media in the general marketplace, yet the
increased use of the television cannot be explained
as easily. A likely explanation is the rising
number of training course available on videotape
and by private cable or satellite networks. Observe
that self-paced training through print materials
and audio tapes rose sharply and yet now has
leveled out. The final category, which
also has held steady, includes one-on-one
training, which tends to stay minimal in
organizations because of low cost-efficiency when a
trainer works solo with an employee, this despite
how much or how well that employee may learn
thought such individualized attention. The amount of training
time that staff spends in various learning
modalities also provides valuable insights. (See
Table 6.3) The amount of learning time being spent
in a typical lecture-style classroom has gone down
about the same amount as the amount of time being
spent in advanced classrooms has gone up. The most
gains are in the amount of time spent at a TV or PC
screen or with other self-paced learning, such as
listening to an audiotape. The inroads of mediated
learning remain small in comparison to the amount
of time spent watching some instructor lecture in
front of the classroom, but the shift is
measurable. And when one gathers these modest
percentage increases and spreads them out over of
hundreds of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit
organizations, the shift represents very real
growth in opportunities for those who provide
mediated learning products and services. Remember that the
television has the largest installed base of all
mass media with the exception of the telephone. The
computer has less penetration, for its use has been
limited to those who can afford the technology. As
the TV and PC platforms converge, as digital
interactivity becomes routine an any screen
regardless the box containing that screen, e will
see increases in interactive learning that will
continue to erode the prevalence of lecture-based
classroom instruction in favor or small group and
individualized educational models.
(c)
1998-2005
by
Ken
Freed.
Based on the book, Financial
Opportunities in Educational
Television, by Judah Ken Freed. . New
in the CASTING
THE NET OVER GLOBAL
LEARNING An
comprehensive overview of critical advances in k-12
and higher education along with corporate training
and lifelong learning.
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