MANY COMPANIES TODAY are faced with the challenge of providing business-critical information and training to their geographically dispersed work forces. Traditional classroom training has been known to disrupt schedules, causing losses in productivity and incurring additional travel and lodging costs. In reaction, many companies have chosen to increase their ROI by internally creating and hosting their own training content using an e-learning solution.

Companies with dispersed work forces will benefit from an internal e-learning solution, such as Mentergy LearnLinc 5.0, Beta, that provides real-time access to product and service training information for their field engineers, customers service representatives, and sales forces.

Mentergy LearnLinc is a virtual classroom environment that allows companies to offer their employees a variety of courses via the Internet, corporate intranet, or WAN. LearnLinc is best-suited for companies that offer a wealth of internal training, such as human resources or product training courses. Although we looked at a Beta version, we were impressed with LearnLinc's virtual classroom controls for both instructors and students, the variety of training content it supports, and the quality of its end-user tools.

As they do in a real-world training session, students and instructors meet in a virtual classroom at a scheduled time. The session can be heard and viewed using audio-and videoconferencing and can include content such as PowerPoint slides, Web-based materials, streaming video, shared whiteboards, and shared software applications. Classes can also be designed to be taken on an on-demand basis, if schedules are too tight to round up all the students at the same time.

LearnLinc software is divided into two main components: the LearnLinc server and the LearnLinc classroom, which acts as a client. The server and classroom software work together using a client/server architecture. LearnLinc is sold for Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers, for roughly $1,000 per student, and uses a concurrent-user pricing scheme. There is no fee for the LearnLinc client, which may be freely distributed, but the license does limit the number of students that can be logged in at the same time.

Before implementing LearnLinc, it is important to decide who will assist with the rollout. Smaller organizations can use LearnLinc right out of the box. Larger organizations may want to assemble a team, including a project manager, IS support person, LearnLinc administrator, content author, and instructors. To fulfill these roles, all of these individuals should participate in the training Mentergy provides.

When everything was installed, we were able to create instructor, author, and administrator accounts using the virtual classroom tools. As content creators, we were given the option of using numerous tools to develop materials, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Office (Word and Excel), HTML editors (FrontPage and Dreamweaver), graphics editors (Paint Shop Pro, CorelDraw, and so on), and computer-based training development tools (ToolBook, Authorware, Director, and so on).

We chose to create a basic course using a PowerPoint presentation. Unlike many of the other content-conversion options, our PowerPoint presentation required no additional coding or modifications to synchronize it in a LearnLinc class. It simply was converted to HTML when I uploaded the presentation to the LearnLinc server.

To make sure students are participating, administrators can use the classroom log file to track the server, classroom, and student activity, including class duration and student attendance.

But not all companies will benefit from running an internal e-learning solution. For starters, companies must have dedicated staffers to support the training solution. IT administrators, instructors, content creators, and employees will need to be trained, sapping valuable resources. Companies considering an e-learning solution need to evaluate their current and future training strategies. They may find that having their training services hosted by an outsourcer will better fit their needs.

Although virtual classroom environments may not be what employees prefer, the convenience of taking a class from the office or at home without interrupting daily schedules may win them over. Mentergy offers a promising solution that provides convenience for employees and cost savings for corporations.

» posted by abennett

InfoWorld

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