The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint?

The Four Categories of E-Learning

When should you use PowerPoint and Macromedia Breeze?

Bersin & Associates July, 2003 Version 1.0

Is PowerPoint an E-Learning of 5 Tool? Is R Bersin & Associates 1

The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint?

The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint or Macromedia Breeze?
Now that you're thinking about using PowerPoint for courseware, when should you use it? Think "Informational" - not "Instructional" Breeze is a fantastic new product. But where does it fit? The first question you should ask is: What kind of e-learning application do you really need? The Four Categories of E-Learning Applications We have found through our research and work with many clients that learning applications fall into four major categories. Take a look and see which category your problem falls into:

Category

Example

What the Learner will Do

Read

Tracking Needed
None

Tools you should Use

Email, PowerPoint, Breeze

1. Broadcast of New Information

2. Important Knowledge Transfer 3. Developing New Skills

4. Creating Certified Competencies

"There is a new pricing model being announced and here it is." "Here is the new pricing model, how it works, and how it differs from the previous model." "Learn how to price complex products so you can become a pricing guru." "Become a certified pricing expert in the regional sales office, with authority to give discounts."

Read, listen, and answer some questions.

Who took this? Did they get it?

Breeze

Read, listen, and try out new skills.

Did they really learn? What score did they get?

Breeze or Courseware

Read, Listen, try new skills, and become certified.

Did they pass? Are they certified?

Courseware with assessments or certification exam.

Figure 1: The Four Categories of E-Learning - Bersin & Associates

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The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint?

Imagine the problem we have a new price schedule and need to train everyone about it. As you can see from this table, depending on your business need, the problem of disseminating a new price schedule may be solved using one or more of these four models. In most companies, all four of the models exist together for different audiences. If you are just informing people, the first two models work fine. If you really need to make sure everyone understands the new pricing (because it will impact sales revenue or profitability), you can cost justify the third or fourth category. The Issues of Cost and Time These four categories of e-learning differ in several ways. They use different media, have different tracking, and achieve different results. But the biggest difference between the four models is the cost and time needed to build content. Typical costs per instructional hour are as follows:

Media / Tool

Cost to Develop (Per instructional hour)

$50 - $500 $100 - $1,000 $1,000 - $35,000 $20,000 - $75,000

Time Required to Develop

Hours Few days Months Many Months

PowerPoint Alone Breeze Courseware Simulations

Figure 2: The Costs of Different Instructional Media What this table tells you is that different problems justify different solutions. We believe that in most corporations, 50% or more of the learning problems can be met with rapid e-learning solutions like Macromedia Breeze. The main issue is time. Many corporate training problems have content which is out of date within 3-6 months. If, for example, your pricing changes every few months, you should not build a course which takes several months to complete, since the time required to build a "course" just cannot keep up with the timeliness of the information. If you can develop instructional content faster, you can better meet the needs of more rapidly changing information. The second problem is cost. Traditional courseware costs $1000-35,000 per instructional hour to build - and requires a highly trained instructional designer and web developer. Most companies do not have those resources available -- and the budget to outsource a "fast course" is not available. PowerPoint is the most widely used authoring tool in the world - and virtually anyone who uses a computer can use PowerPoint. Enter Breeze: for all those "informational" applications (types 1, 2, and some 3 above) Breeze is a breakthrough.

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The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint?

What are some of the examples of problems that are perfect for Breeze?
Sales: New product introductions - where features, pricing, and configuration information must be well understood.

Channel Training: Need to inform and train the channel in products and pricing, but not on basic selling skills. Rapid turnaround is key, as is an easy way to distribute anytime/anywhere. Customer Service: Changes in pricing, delivery, or other ways of doing business -where representatives must know the changes, but do not require new skills. HR: New processes and procedures - how to fill out a time card, how to submit expense reports, how to submit suggestions and why... but not necessarily how to be a better manager. Corporate-Wide: Company initiatives, CEO and management changes. A new manager, a new leader, a new strategy -- the message, the importance, the voice can be portrayed easily with Breeze -- and is scalable beyond a conference call.

The Era of "Rapid E-Learning": Enabling New Applications We believe that Breeze ushers in a whole new paradigm for e-learning - the "Rapid ELearning" paradigm. Now you can build trackable courseware in a few days -- which means that the "rapid turnaround" problems which you could not address before in elearning can now be resolved. Plus you have the ability to re-use and leverage the thousands if not millions of PowerPoint slides already existing in your organization. The examples above could never be deployed in a trackable form before -- now you can create informational courses and track deployment for informational applications (type 1, 2 above). Think: What is my learning application? What business problem am I solving? Whenever you start thinking about a new learning problem, take a look at the table at the top of this paper. Is this a problem of imparting information? Making sure people "get it"? Then Breeze may be the perfect fit. Is this a problem of developing new skills and competencies? Then you may be justified in developing or purchasing courseware. Is the information you are producing going to go out of date in 6-9 months? Then Breeze may be the perfect fit. Is this information something you will have for many years in your corporate library? Then courseware may make sense. Do you have access to instructional designers, web-developers, and an IT staff with an LMS? If not, again you should look at Breeze.

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The Four Categories of E-Learning: When should you use PowerPoint?

About Bersin & Associates:

Bersin & Associates is a leading provider of corporate and vendor consulting services in e-learning technology and implementation. With more than 20 years of experience in elearning, training, and enterprise technology, Bersin & Associates provides a wide range of services including product development, product marketing, industry research, corporate workshops, corporate implementation plans, and sales and marketing programs. Some of Bersin & Associates innovations include a complete methodology for LMS selection and application usage, an end-to-end architecture and solution for elearning analytics, and one of the industrys largest research studies on blended learning implementations. Bersin & Associates can be reached at http://www.bersin.com or at (510) 654-8500.

About Macromedia:
Experience matters. Macromedia, Inc. is motivated by the belief that great experiences build great businesses. Our software empowers millions of business users, developers, and designers to create and deliver effective, compelling, and memorable experiences-on the Internet, on fixed media, on wireless, and on digital devices.

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