Just an article to illustrate how large e-learning will be(in its infancy in North America)! Now compound this in China with OZ!!! Let's start with the teachers and grow from there.
Business Week: January 10, 2000
Industry Outlook 2000 -- Services
Log On for Company Training
Training has long been a nightmare for General Motors Corp. With 175,000 employees at more than 7,500 dealerships, GM has spent a fortune bringing employees to hotel rooms for training on new car models, for instance. ``It can take three to four months to reach everyone,' says Jacques Pasquier, who oversees training for GM's dealerships.
But soon, Pasquier brags, he'll have the power to reach all 175,000 employees in less than a week, using interactive distance learning (IDL) technology now being installed at every dealer. IDL will let employees view a live course beamed in by satellite and ask questions of the instructor, without leaving their dealerships. That will slash travel time and costs and improve quality, because GM can now select its best instructors to teach each course.
Throughout Corporate America, as at GM, old-style courses taught in classrooms are rapidly giving way to e-learning delivered over the Internet or by satellite. International Data Corp. figures the corporate e-learning market in 1998 was just $550 million. By 2002, IDC predicts, e-learning will explode to $7.1 billion.
Even the U.S. Army is jumping on the bandwagon. It recently began offering all 479,000 enlisted personnel, plus thousands of additional civilian employees, more than 1,000 different courses in information technology provided over the Internet by SmartForce.
But e-learning isn't limited to tech courses. Shoney's Restaurants has begun training new waiters, cooks, and other employees using a novel satellite-delivered computer program--developed by a unit of Provant--that teaches recruits such basics as how to clock in for work and how to take an order.
Classroom-based courses are not going away for many manufacturers. At some point, says GM's Pasquier, ``you still need to touch the vehicle' to teach employees about servicing a new car. Still, GM expects eventually to deliver half its dealership training via IDL. E-learning is changing corporate training forever. |
