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Trends
and opportunties for ETV in by
Ken
Freed Part 2 of
2 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. [CONTINUED FROM PART 1] ORGANIZATIONAL
ETV TRENDS & OPPORTUNITIES What
trends and patterns in organization training need
to enter the awareness of anyone considering an
investment in this lucrative business activity?
Many areas have been mentioned, but two more topics
merit special attention here. Organizational
Communication Research Staff training and
development reflects the business management
theories in the latest bestsellers, yet there is a
curious anomaly here. Bestselling business
management books are based on the research of
communication scholars into organizational cultural
and behavior. However, executives of the world's
top two providers of television-based training,
Video Arts in the UK and AMI in the USA, revealed
in interviews with the author that neither of them
tracked the academic organizational communication
research, nor were they familiar with the world's
foremost publisher of communication research, Sage
(offices in Newbury Park CA, London and New Delhi),
whose books stock the shelves of any graduate
student in the communication disciplines. So,
communication research is reaching organizational
trainers indirectly through the business hot
management books, but the good news is that the
research is reaching them. Need evidence that that
wisdom acquired through communications research is
finding its way into organizational training
programmes? Video Arts has duly won accolades for
making serious training messages quite digestible
through wit and imagination, letting humor carry
the point, bypassing the defenses of the most
insecure egos. American Media Inc. (AMI) also has
found that telling an entertaining story to make
the learning point is the most effective means of
maintaining learner's attention and interest. AMI
president Art Bauer says his two most improtant
missions are to help managers (1) devleop and
comunicate goal and expectations, and (2) give and
accept feedback in a way that benefits everyone
involved. This expresses the fundamental learning
theory developed by organizational communication
researchers, and to create their content, the best
television training operations apply research from
media psychology and educational communication
fields. Communication is the central process in all
organized human behavior. So, as we enter the
Communication Age, it makes sense to apply
communication theory to the process of
sense-making. Old lessons from the
Hawthorn Studies in the Thirties have at last
penetrated the corporate boardroom. Where once all
workers were viewed as replaceable spare parts in
some Newtonian machine, now employees are viewed as
human beings with their own personal rights and
responsibilities quite apart from the organization.
And where, more recently, workers were seen as
components in an integrated system, now the staff
is seen as the essential heart of a living and
evolving community, an "organizational culture."
The metaphors we work by have change from a machine
to a computer to a tribe, and along the way, the
job of training people inside our organizations has
been forever transformed. No longer are
organizations managed by "Theory X," a belief that
workers are inherently lazy cheats motivated by
money and fear who must be coerced into labor by
rewards and punishments. The modern understanding
is that most workers are motivated by a need for
"self actualization" and a desire to make a
meaningful contribution to their organizations and
to the world as a whole. No more do workers
willingly slave for 40 years toward retirement with
a gold watch. In a society where corporate
restructuring has wiped out the feelings of
loyalty, good work must be inspired. self-motivated
learners want to perform at their peak. They want
to learn how to achieve their "personal best." When
people in organizations choose to learn (a
self-directed act of will rather than an
other-directed act of compliance), learner's
ability to absorb and integrate knowledge becomes
boundless. The only limits are those fixed by the
amount of hours in the day or the physical ability
of the senses to import content for "the little
grey cells" to process. The learning technology
how-to is secondary. Therefore, any company
wishing to engage in the delivery of organizational
training product or services, to be blunt, would be
foolish not to get acquainted with Sage
publications and such researchers as Michael
Pacanowski, William Gudykunst, Stella Ting-Toomey,
Carl Larson, and other luminaries in the field of
organizational culture, management communication
and team building. For those seeking to invest in
organizational training ventures, try to ascertain
if the company's principals are familiar with this
research, if only second-hand through the business
management books based upon communication
studies. Growth in Seminar
Training Another significant trend
important to any prospective investor in
educational video is the accelerating growth in the
training seminar industry, especially in the areas
of professional development. Professionals have
disposable income to spend on these seminars, and
often these professional-level learners are wholly
or partially reimbursed by their
organizations. The usage of television in
these seminars is gaining the most solid foothold
in fields where technical expertise is essential
and where continuing education's is required for
accreditation. Continuing medical education, for
instance, lends itself nicely to video training
over private cable or satellite networks. One such
effort is Eurotransmed, satellite broadcasts funded
by big pharmaceuticals like Merk. Covering a
different topic every week, encrypted so the
content is not received by anyone without medical
accreditation, the free lunch-time satcasts today
reach 250 hospitals across Europe. Costs are
recovered in product sales. Similar programs are being
developed for the legal and law enforcement fields
plus professions like engineering, geology, even
television production itself. While promoters of
free televised seminars often are commercial
operations seeking market points or else trade
associations providing services to their
dues-paying members, more pay-for-learning ventures
are appearing that will welcome development capital
and perhaps more active participation. Also, organizations
already involved in producing video content for
their own training purposes are realizing that they
can market their video products to other ventures
with similar interests. Naturally, proprietary
information needs to be removed, but "repurposing"
of content is a way to recover production costs and
perhaps evolve profit centers that creating new
opportunties. This trend represents yet another
venue for investing in educational
television. And one other global trend
needs to be identified. Just as the hottest
products and services for educational institutions
are those teaching the teachers how to use new
educational technologies, so the hottest products
and services in the organizational training market
are the ones training the trainers in the most
advanced training technologies. Opportunities in
this area are worth exploring. PROFITABILITY
ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONAL ETV What
issues must the prospective investor consider
before placing any capital into organizational
training products or services. Ask if the training
venture is limited to only one language or only one
type of organizational culture. The more universal
a product or service, naturally, the wider will be
the market for that product or service. And just as
an "evergreen" title has the most enduing shelf
life in the school market, so the products that
won't soon become obsolete will endure in the
organizational training market. In addition, check
on the copyright of the contents to be sure that
distribution will not engender an unwanted lawsuits
for rights infringement; sound advice for any
educational media product delivered within any
market segment. Is the product is being
distributed in the most cost-effective and
appropriate manner possible? Why risk the high
costs of satellite distribution, for example, if
the audience would be perfectly content to receive
the videotape by mail? In the same way, why suffer
the expense of producing a multimedia CD-ROM if the
target market would be just as happy to receive the
content through an HTML hypermedia page sent over
the company intranet? The temptations in companies
with advanced technology budgets is to develop the
most advanced technology possible. This is great
fun for technophiles, but does not guarantee bottom
line profitability. Always use the most appropriate
technology. One final yet crucial
point. Organizations are expending vast sums on
training programs designed by experts schooled in
the most sophisticated methods of producing
knowledge in people's minds. After the training
programs are over, however, organizations tend to
ignore the lessons and continue with practices and
procedures that the training was intended to
correct. Whether the training method minvolves a
boring lecture or the most exciting television
production conceivable, if an organization refuses
to do the critical follow-up required to maximize
the benefits of their training programs, what's the
point? The savvy investor stays clear of
organizations wasting their money on lip service.
(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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