The Boggs e-Learning Chronicle

Training Mistakes.......

Its been said that for every one negative, you should try to mention several positives with it to soften the blow.....but for those training professionals who are not faint of heart........Elliot Massie has posted the results of one of his surveys on training mistakes....... Mistakes.

Many of these so called 'mistakes' can happen in even the best run companies.  To avoid these mistakes, check out our e-Learning Best Practices white paper.  The whitepaper is chalk full of  proven e-learning / learning management systems implementation tactics that will help guide you through a successful e-learning program launch.

David Boggs
SyberWorks

Metrics Other than ROI to evaluate the effectiveness of e-Learning

Godfrey Parkin has an article , "Meaningful Metrics Beyond ROI" that makes a good case for looking at other metrics, in addition to ROI [return on investment] when evaluating the impact of an e-Learning program.

This article's approach on metrics is similar to the approach discussed in our e-Learning Best Practices document.  An excerpt on e-learning business metrics from the white-paper is below:

Use business metrics to help evaluate and validate learning priorities:

Use numbers and statistics that make sense to most managers when building a case for your e-Learning initiative and learning priorities. For example, your department analysis tells you that you currently have a 35% failure rate for every new sales person that starts at your company.  You know that it costs you approximately $15,000 (probably even more when you figure in hidden labor costs, opportunity costs, etc) to bring a qualified sales person on board.  If you start an average of 2 sales people a month, your company has lost $126,000 over the year.  If in the first year you reduce the failure rate just 5% you have saved your company $18,000 or 15% and even more if you start looking at other metrics that are impacted by your LMS initiative like lost production time, etc. If you reduce the failure rate to 20%, you have saved your company $54,000.

Dave Boggs,  SyberWorks

Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led Training Vs. e-Learning

Good article up on the ASTD site  about a mathematical model constructed by Caterpillar University to examine instructor-led training vs. e-Learning from a cost perspective.

Excerpt from the introduction:

"To help its managers better understand the relationship between cost and delivery methodology, Caterpillar University constructed a mathematical model to better calculate the key cost components. Its key finding: even when similar programs are compared, e-learning is less expensive to deliver almost regardless of learner population. For example, in all cases where there is a learner population larger than 100, e-learning has a clear cost advantage. As the population increases, this difference becomes more pronounced. Even with a population as small as 100 and a class as short as one hour, e-learning was still more than 40 percent less expensive than instructor-led training ($9,500 vs. $17,062 or $76/learner). When large populations are modeled (40,000+), the cost advantage of online learning is even greater, with savings as high as 78 percent ($1.1 million vs. $5 million or $99/learner)."

Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led vs e-Learning, by Paul Walliker of Caterpillar University

The challenge with these types of calculations is that every organization is different and has a different set of constructs and variables associated with its training program, so it is difficult to say these exact financial outcomes will apply in every situation.  The business case really needs to be constructed from within the organization itself to get a better look at what the savings will be for their training program.

With that said, similiar studies done by Federal Express, IBM, and Xerox have also seen a 40% reduction in cost when using e-Learning.

Here is our own whitepaper on the subject, E-Learning Benefits and ROI Comparison of E-Learning vs. Traditional Training

Dave Boggs, SyberWorks