Monday, December 26, 2005

Industry Wrestles with a Befuddled Group of Projects Managers

By Asim Choudhury
As e-learning ventures crop up at every conceivable place in India, driving business goals appears to be difficult and painful. As the rush for offering e-learning services increase, international clients remain innoculated against well-worded sales pitches and tall promises. Most companies fail to adhere to the standards they commit largely because of major flaws in project management. No wonder, the craggy Indian e-learning industry cannot get back to some acceptable shape unless they begin looking for professional project management. This article addresses the oft-neglected realm of professional project management and enlists reasons that make for inefficacious Project Managers in Indian e-learning industry.

As 2005 wraps up, the aspirations of the Indian e-learning industry is soaring to greater heights. The plans are set and all believe that mission 2006 will help them register greater profits and faster growth. This belief is largely driven by the action in the global e-learning theatre where players are voicing a great future for the industry. With such a global e-learning revolution in the offing, it makes sense for Indian companies to rejoice.


But there ought to be a limit to one's aspirations, and mainly when the Indian industry harps on professionals who are semi-skilled, project managers who are less capable and a blurred vision. Add to it the plight resulting from lack of standards and regulation, the Indian scenario is not so rosy as one might think. As organizations grapple with sleek brochures and jazzy flash animations, the scenario remains mired in confusion.

The Ferment

That's the situation! Amidst the plethora of jargons and talk on processes and quality, the management of e-learning companies setup umpteen ‘meetings’ and ‘brainstorming sessions’ to find the actual flaw in their system. Once the long-drawn meetings get over, organizations fall back on some fanciful ideas. The core issue gets mired in confusion and they are all back to square one. The actual answer to their failures, largely overlooked, remains clearly written all over the wall -- incompetent Project Management.

Most project managers in the industry are ill-equipped to tackle the pressures of meeting organizational goals. The reason lies in their breeding and their candid and open negligence of skills. The position of an Indian project manager is more of hype than actual action.

So here’s the crux, realize it or not. A myopic management has never been able to shed their preoccupation with confusion and address the real question of professional Project Management: an issue that stands squashed under the boots of ROI-hungry Indian entrepreneurs.

What’s in a PM’s Role?
There goes a popular modern saying, “never buy a car from a salesman who does not know how to drive.” Arguing in the same sense a project manager is supposed to be an expert in handling e-learning challenges – be it at the stage of client interaction, storyboarding or development. In short he or she should necessarily be a multi-tasker and problem-solver.

For instance, any project manager without through understanding of storyboarding techniques will obviously fail to add value or distinguish between good or bad storyboards (SBs). At best, they can indulge in the now fairly common Indian technique of allocating the job to someone else – a scenario very common in Indian e-learning companies.

Going by existing practices, it is fairly understood that Project Managers in e-learning companies are responsible for the success of e-learning teams and also for contributing to organizational profitability and competitiveness. It is also clear that such endeavours requires PMs to be committed to processes and goals, apart from scheduling, staffing and budgeting, and monitoring and controlling teams efficiently.

Some Pertinent Questions
Given the current state of affairs, some questions remain. Let’s look into these here, albeit briefly.

Role Vs Action
Most Indian e-learning ventures are a confusing salmagundi. And that’s largely because of conflicting roles. Instructional Designers who are recruited to script story boards find themselves helping the PM drafting a ‘sleek’ mail to the client and undertaking ‘budgeting’ efforts. The Project Managers can be seen running around listening to the dictats of the management: their sole existence is based on keeping the management pleased. Such confusion of roles often sets discontentment within development teams resulting in high attritions. On an average most e-learning companies face an attrition rate of more than 35%, although companies claim that the attrition rate is hardly above 5%.

Lack of Basic Education
Most project managers in the e-learning industry are bereft of any basic education. They are at most a graduate or a post-graduate with no formal training. A study of about 200 project managers undertaken by the author in Delhi in January 2005 reveals that as many as 85% of PMs have not secured 60% or higher grades in their graduate or post-graduate examinations. And most have climbed up the ladder to position themselves as Project Managers on the basis of the “years of experience.”

Study has also revealed that e-learning companies often recruit PMs on the brand value of the previous company he or she has worked for. So a NIIT or a GE tag fetches them plum jobs.

Managing Sans Certification
The study by this author also revealed that a majority of project managers (about 98%) in the e-learning industry are not certified Project Managers. And while the PMs argue that they do not have the time to write a course, a comparative study of their academic records shows that most cannot simply get through a certification program owing to their abysmally poor academic caliber.

From the perspective of the employers this also makes sense in the way that these PMs can be employed at any salary and lack of a global certification makes them susceptible to employer dictates: that could be anything from handling odd assignments to undertaking business develop work.

The Fall-outs: Unstoppable
The early signs of discontentment are already visible round the corner. Big international clients have now woken up to the hard reality that they are indeed being taken for a ride by Indian e-learning vendors, largely by the North Indian ventures. The discontent has reached such alarming proportions that global clients are now giving a fresh look at their e-learning programs and the feasibility of getting them done in India. Some have been smart enough and have setup their own in-house e-learning teams. The costs for their ventures, they realize, is a part of what they paid Indian e-learning vendors.

Another trend that has been observed is that more and more e-learning professionals are now packing their bags and heading for different career paths. This is very rational. In a situation where processes and performance shows up for few boot-licking people, it is better to save their professional competence for other career paths. IT companies are now employing IDs by the dozens for Technical Writing and Documentation. This trend is most likely to increase over time as efficient resources are drained by other industries and the ones left are loosely trained people who cannot scale up beyond a certain level of competence.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Training in the Oil and Gas Sector: a Direct ROI


By Asim Choudhury

E-learning in the Oil and Gas sector in India is in its infancy. Given the fact that India is one of the fastest growing Oil economies in the world where billions of dollars are being invested in the upstream, midstream and the downstream sectors, cutting-edge training has been grossly neglected. The reasons for this are several -- perhaps there are few or no e-learning players who can take up the challenge or perhaps the Oil and Gas companies are ignorant of emerging technologies and the benefits therein. Its high time for things to change: either by a strong will of the companies or by the e-learning industry that is all too happy without nerve-shattering challenges. This article takes a look into the possibilities of what may be termed as a 'goldmine'.

The oil and gas industry is a global, highly competitive, and knowledge-intensive business with high demand for e-learning. However, most oil companies in India are not au courant with cutting-edge learning technologies like e-learning. Even if they are aware, they remain aporetic to its power and reach. While both Indian e-learning developers remain unlettered of the vast business prospects of e-learning business in Oil and Gas in India, global companies are adding more and more clients to their existing repertoire.

Even while the Indian e-learning service providers ignore e-learning in Oil and Gas, the Oil and Gas companies based in India too appear ignorant of the tremendous possibilities of e-learning. These Oil and Gas companies are yet to open their eyes to the tremendous potential of e-learning in helping them reduce training costs and building a knowledge-based workplace.

In a classic case of training ignorance in India one can only point out the example of Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC). So far, ONGC has evaded the idea of incorporating e-learning in their organization. Perhaps the real benefits are unknown to its policy makers or because of lack of credible and ‘qualified’ Indian vendors. ONGC is entering e-learning in a small scale, by securing some training licenses for technical courses from international e-learning companies on a license basis. However, the training institutes of ONGC largely remain unmoved by e-learning.

Why E-learning for the Oil and Gas Sector?
Companies in the oil and gas sector are rapidly embracing e-learning as an integral part of their training initiatives. The reason for this lies in the benefit it offers to their staff and their bottom line. Considering the issues faced by oil and gas companies in working offshore and meeting the demands of health and safety, e-learning benefits are pertinent to meeting their critical organizational needs.

However, there are still several small oil and gas companies who remain unaware of the larger benefits of e-learning. The fear then is that these companies may miss out on the benefits accrued through structured learning and eventually fail to face competition.

Developing a highly-skilled and adaptable workforce in a flexible way remains the priority of the leaders in the oil and gas sector. E-learning includes the use of a variety of media and techniques for learning, including text, sound, graphics, photography, animation, video, e-mail, discussion forums, chat rooms, virtual meetings or tutorials, and simulations.


Simulation-based E-learning
Simulation-based e-learning remains a potential tool for e-learning in Oil and Gas. Simulations can take learning beyond the possible – into realms that can never be accessed through regular training. For example, when technical trainees are taken to a drilling rig for onsite training, they may never get to see inside a pipeline when it pulls-up crude oil or how the robotic arms move beneath the surface and shoots bullets to gauge the potential of crude or gas. At best, it can be visualized in an instructor led classroom-based training setting. E-learning, however, can show the animated action of the robotic arms and all such activities that are beyond the reach of the learner.

Some Noteworthy Global e-learning Initiatives
Across the world several e-learning giants have woken up to this reality. In 2004, PETRONAS (Petroliam Nasional Berhad), Malaysia’s Oil and Gas giant, tied up with Thompson NETg to develop a comprehensive training system to drive its employees to a higher learning path, thereby enabling them to take up more responsibility and assume bigger roles in a globalized business environment. The initiative is part of the Malaysian Government’s Vision 2020, wherein the Government wants to create knowledge-based workers to be able to serve as the foundation for the nation to acquire a developed status.

Known as the “PETRONAS eLearning” programme, it aims to bring eLearning opportunities, information and communications technology (ICT) to staff, partners and on a latter part to the public locally and worldwide. PETRONAS selected Thomson NETg to provide IT courses, on-going support and valuable industry experience. The training solutions would be blended e-learning and would help train a workforce of 25,000 employees working in 35 countries.

Statoil, another Norwegian oil and gas company has setup a SAP-based Learning System that seeks to address the learning needs of its 17,000 employees working in 28 countries. The SAP Learning Solution is used to manage over 1,100 courses of all delivery types (classroom instructions, WBTs and CBTs). The system has proved to be an easy-to-use tool that gives employees and managers the ability to plan and track competency-development activities. Statoil has also replaced several legacy systems and increased its usage of e-learning by offering better visibility of available courses across the enterprise. Statoil primary training initiatives focus on exploration and production, drilling operations and maintenance, safety and environmental concerns, technical skills for engineering and geology professionals.

Petrobras, another major Oil and Gas player is now using the services of e-leaning companies to increase employee productivity, ensure safety compliance, and enhance its competitive position. Petrobras has almost 40,000 employees and nearly 80,000 contractors working throughout 11 countries, including Brazil and the U.S., and in locations such as offshore drilling facilities and remote offices in the Amazon.


Learning on Demand (LoD)
Oil and Gas companies across the world are increasingly subscribing to the concept of Learning on Demand (LoD). Learning on Demand refers to ‘situated learning’ in a working context which occurs at the user's discretion, often triggered by a breakdown. In large information stores, such as high-functionality computer systems, where users only have a partial knowledge, learning on demand is the only viable strategy. Learning on Demand applies a wide lens to learning and includes the broad range of ad hoc or informal learning activities that takes place everyday in organizations.

Employees of Oil and Gas companies have a tremendous need for learning. Unlike other organizations, the employees of Oil and Gas companies require a large amount of learning material. This learning cannot be defined within the narrow parameters of a few courses. They have to be wide and should encompass a wide range of professional and personal development.

Consider a scenario to understand the concept better. Oil and Gas employees are typically situated in several levels of the hierarchy. When a General Manager wants to learn about the nuances of making an effective presentation, he/she has a dilemma. He/she cannot go to a presentation expert in the Public Relations department and seek his/her help as this would entail a ‘loss of professional competence.’ This General Manager can then go to a secure system and demand a learning course on ‘making presentations’ – in complete confidentiality.

Global e-learning Solutions Providers
There are several competent e-learning solutions providers in the World. NETg and Accenture appear to lead the front. While NETg has bagged several prestigious clients like Petronas, Malaysia, Accenture operates across 20 countries and has over 90 clients that include major international, independent and national oil companies. In the upstream segment, Accenture has several well-known brands as clients from across the world, including those in the United States, Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Accenture’s e-learning initiatives focus on reducing operating costs, decreasing cycle time for key operational processes, focusing key personnel on core value-added activities, providing real-time, accurate information to facilitate decision-making, providing flexible, high-quality support services at low cost, and increasing operational outcome probability while decreasing risk.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

E-learning: The Deadly Traps


By Asim Choudhury

Even while the Indian e-learning industry remains awed with captive technological tools and snazzy graphics, the actual elements of learning are being ignored, much to the dismay of serious e-learning players. And amidst such hullabaloo, international clients are slowly waking up to what can be termed as ‘e-learning garbage’ emanating out of India – all in the name of cost-effectiveness. Today, the industry, more than ever before, is witnessing an increasing demand for the actual dishes in e-learning – Content, competent SMEs and powerful Learning Strategies.

“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.” Helen Keller

The Indian e-learning industry is laden with issues – the most notable being the innoxiousness of a large section of e-learning professionals in India on what actually constitutes e-learning. The definition is different for different people. Some buy the idea that e-learning is mere chunking of content with graphics with a few questions strewn here and there. Some think that it’s all about flash animations – the more snazzy the better. Yet others think that e-learning means quick money. For the so-called brain truster, e-learning offers to serve as a platform for positioning their intellectual skills.

The Glitter of the Interface
Most e-learning entrepreneurs in the e-learning industry in India are people who get awed with the glitter and jazz in e-learning courses. They forget that what they see is simply one small part of the whole picture.

Globally, e-learning clients are no longer ignorant bunch of people who can be enamored by silly logic. Clients today have several levels of training experts onboard their training teams who are acquainted with the subtle nuances of e-learning. And, impressing them with captive raillery doesn’t make sense.

Indian e-learning professionals are now face-to-face with the harsh realities. They are now forced to forego their fancy ‘intellectual skins’ and deliver substantial quality. A rough estimate reveals that globally clients have lost several billions of dollars in buying what may be best called ‘e-learning junk’ from Indian vendors. The colours of the e-learning interface no more lure clients. At best they impress the nescient ones who are new to e-learning.

Plagiarism is Passe
Some time back a group of professionals were debating on what would happen if the Internet were to disappear from out lives. Amidst the viewpoints that were tables, one was particularly interesting – that the worst hit organizations would be Indian e-learning companies. The reason for this was simple. Most e-learning companies in India today vouch their supremacy n the basis of plagiarized content culled from the Internet.

Several e-learning vendors in India are now running for cover as more and more international clients are pointing to the use of plagiarized content and graphics. With such harsh comments from clients, most e-learning vendors have shed their garb of farce intellectualism and are getting their acts firmed up to contain plagiarism. But, is there any noticeable change ?

To understand the issue of plagiarism one needs to understand the actual reasons for it. Most companies select writers and Instructional Designers without proper evaluation. This again is driven by the fact that IDs are paid way below the standards and so companies do not want to loose on a ‘cheap resource.’ Once employed the IDs are instructed to browse the Net, download content and rewrite them. The content is then plugged-in onto e-learning frames to look like, what they push before the client as BRILLIANT e-learning course. But the client isn't impressed!

Vendors also need to distinguish between learning content and informational content. Learning content is to the point, carries a lot of meat, and is detailed. Informational content is generic, contains lots of preaching and is intended to awe the user – which is simply not wanted.

SMEs are the Real Heroes
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the actual spices that add flavour, aroma and taste to e-learning. Unfortunately, Indian e-learning ventures are nascent – they are yet to realize the essence of SMEs for e-learning. Some companies do have onboard SMEs but that’s come about over a long-drawn trial and error process. The others are just hanging around the industry with few odd projects that is helping them sustain their costs.

The average e-learning company in India shares ‘weird’ processes and concepts about e-learning. And since the e-learning industry is not as systematic as the software development ventures, every Tom, Dick and Harry has an IDEA that is neither bought nor refuted. For instance, there were instances where some e-learning companies in Delhi had written off the role of a SME with the argument that they are fancy resources and are also very ‘expensive.’ No wonder, e-learning gurus in Indian e-learning ventures still believe that the role of a SME and ID are one and the same. Ignorance is bliss.

Good SMEs in India are found in top-notch institutions like IITs and IIMs and other research organizations. In the absence of an industry-academic interface such competent SMEs remain largely ignored. Although there are instances wherein some e-learning companies had attempted to hire these top-notch experts for content validation, the association has been mostly effete. After all, too longer an association with the resources from the intellectual realm is neither ‘safe’ nor ‘healthy’ for the odd bunch of self-proclaimed e-learning gurus in India.

In their own interest and the interest of their serious learners, it’s high time that clients start questioning the veracity of e-learning vendors in India. Its time that clients do some tough talk and force Indian vendors to sign a legitimate contract spelling out penalty clauses for serving the courses with ‘unwanted content’ and ‘styles’. They should make it mandatory for all e-learning solutions provider to spell out the competence level of the SMEs to be employed for a particular course.

Getting the Right Strategy
Disorganized people cannot think of strategy. In a scenario where much of the resources in Indian e-learning industry remain untrained and are ill-bred, learning strategies are difficult to come by.

Successful e-learning necessitates a powerful strategy. And it is pertinent that all e-learning strategies be grounded in strong research. Just the way a teacher would adopt a different style of teaching in a classroom setting for different groups of students, e-learning too essentially requires a good strategy that sets the platform for optimum learning.

Working on the strategy brings us to the realm of RESEARCH – a realm of the intellectuals. Where most resources in the Indian e-learning industry have a foreboding academic stint, one could help but wonder on whether these individuals can bear the onus of setting a good strategy for learning.

Getting the strategy for effective learning requires a deeper understanding of the audience profile, the technological ‘comfort level’ of the users and also their ‘attitudes’ towards learning. Studies on these aspects should be done at a micro-level.

Most e-learning professionals are not even aware that e-learning is Mass Communication – a communication that is very powerful when compared to the mass media. While the news products available in the mass media have a short shelf life, the shelf life of an e-learning course could span months, or several years.

Most e-learning companies in India do little or no research before involving in courseware designs. All they are aware of Bloom, Merrill et al – thanks to the Internet. Fortunately, so far most e-learning courses that have Indian companies were entrusted to develop were predefined by their clients and there were only a handful of cases where Indian companies ever got the opportunity to develop end-to-end e-learning solutions. Even with that the mess is all too much to describe.

Today, any attempt to seek the services of Indian e-learning companies should be well-researched and well-thought. A slight indecisiveness could land clients into the hands of ‘e-learning rogues’ who are teeming in India.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Research-Based E-learning: The Pertinent Need in Modern Organizations


By Asim Choudhury
E-learning has come of age. The euphoria, promted by a rapid march towards technology and graphics, has subsided and the glamour has fizzled out. Organizations around the world have woken up to the real learning and to the co-related fact that it can bring in a tangible change in workplace culture and performance. This paper analyses the impending need for research in developing e-learning courses for the global corporate industry.

Introduction
In simple terms, e-learning is a process that enables learning to be an effective process. While the nuances of this procedure remain similar to the traditional instructor-led classroom settings, the effectiveness comes in the form of rapid delivery of learning to a global learner base and an ability to assess the learners effectively. Technologies play a proactive role and facilitates this process.


After the realization of the global Internet medium when e-learning emerged as a concept, the learning was based on mere powerpoint slides or documents. With the emergence of technologies like ASP, XML, learning management system (LMS), content management system (CMS) and learning content management system (LCMS), the Sack Du process saw tremendous a makeover in terms of effective delivery and tracking. And now, with the emergence of applications like Flash and streaming video, learning has morphed into an environment never experienced before.
However, amidst all this amalgamation of technology and delivery means, learning called for a broader treatment. Today, learning is no longer understood as the domain of the learners studying only in schools and universities but even in smaller setups and organizations. Corporate training has thus emerged as a specialized area of learning that calls for as much innovative skills and competence.

Being successful in tomorrow’s e-learning marketplace will involve following research-based learning principles; using e-learning’s unique capability to connect with learners over time; assessing a program’s design before it is deployed; analyzing the appropriateness of the implementation scheme; and evaluating learning outcomes using simulated real-world scenarios.

Corporate Courses: A Different Ball Game
Developing corporate courses are a different ball game; quite unconventional and performance centric. Unlike the learning that takes place in universities and schools, corporate learning does not deal much with theories. Instead, this type of learning deals with the current needs. It deals with not the possibilities but with practicable skill-based learning that can be immediately applied to the job.

Corporate courses different from one organization to another. So, for example, a corporate learning courseware for an oil and gas company would be quite different from the courses that is being delivered to IT companies. Though all corporate courses address the needs of the workforce, the nuances differ because of a great deal of difference between workplace settings, technical background, and skillsets.

Thus, corporate training courses should cater to the following essential nuances:

  • Research on the workforce skillsets
  • Research on the organizational setup and structure
  • Research on the career path of individual employees
  • Research on the organizational goals
  • Research on individuals (psychological, behavioural)
  • Research on individual learner’s objective

Understand the Business Impact
E-learning courses in business environments need to focus on the business impact. The actual value proposition of e-learning courseware developers is to create real business impact. Business impact comes from learning that is based on real work projects.

Tomorrow’s e-learning customers will not only demand business results, they’ll ask specific questions. Is e-learning the right tool for the issues we face? Does our e-learning follow proven research-based design principles? Can we improve our e-learning implementation scheme? How can we measure our performance results?Developers of e-learning for organizations will look to different types of people as the market ups its demands. Experts on learning will be needed to ensure that e-learning in organizations support the human learning system instead of working against it.

Analysing learning readiness
Also known as learners’ prerequisites, the learning state or condition of an individual makes it possible for him or her to engage profitably in a given learning activity. The learning readiness depends on such factors as past experiences, cognitive development, affective factors, and motivation. It also depends on the instructional methods and materials to be used. Knowledge, achievements, or other characteristics or circumstances required before proceeding on a given course of action.

The e-learning marketplace makes for interesting display. While new learning technologies typically generate considerable euphoria, the courses are usually followed by failure then effectiveness. Continued success in e-learning therefore will come to only those who update their offerings to keep pace with the changing expectations of buyers and learners. For this constant pace with market needs, research is indispensable.

Today’s e-learning market is predominantly dominated by ROI calculations. This is an impediment as well as a boon. The impediment factor comes from increased commercialization of learning at the cost of its essence and long-term benefits. The boon comes from a focused parameter to the knowledge industry.

Therefore unlike the formative years of e-learning, today’s success does not depend on cost cutting; rather, it depends on high-quality learning and on-the-job performance results. Several successful organizations today seem to be headed in that direction. Organizations no longer decide on e-learning courses on the basis of costs; rather, they do so on the basis of the outcomes.

Avoiding tailor-made courses
Tailor-made courses are ineffective. E-learning courses for the corporate world that are churned out in rapid numbers resemble the rush for commodities during the industrial revolution in Europe: it was much about quantity and less of quality. E-learning has dragged on so long with this with little or no success. Organizations that were awed with the new process forgot to realise that actual learning was a different game altogether. The macro-level approach followed by e-learning vendors were largely ineffective and made little difference to the learning curve amongst the workforce. This is simply because of the fact that organizations vary in degrees from one another in terms of learning needs. Even within organizations there was a wide variation between the departments. This then calls for a micro-level analysis and a granular understanding of the learning needs.

The micro-level approach is the key to organizational learning. Recent years have seen too much of run-of-the-mill type training courses in organizations that have greatly reduced the learning effectiveness and have developed a negative mindset towards e-learning. This is partly due to the incompetence of the e-learning courseware developers and partly due to the lack of understanding of training managers in organizations.

It has been quite a disaster for organizations to focus on the costs rather than the effectiveness of the vendors. The cut-throat competition between e-learning vendors was primarily responsible for this parochial cost-centric perspective of e-learning courses. Today, however, the e-learning industry seems to have matured; the result of which is witnessed in the large number of effective and innovative courseware available for organizations. At the other end the training managers in organizations are to be equally blamed. With little or no understanding on e-learning, the training managers had outsourced their training courses to almost anyone, without worrying even a wee bit about the profile and competence of the courseware developers. This is now changing as training managers mature and focus more on quality and are not affected by mere word play.

Research on the Instructional Design Strategies
Instructional Strategic Design (ISD) forms the basic framework for constructing an e-learning course. ISD may be thought of as similar to the architecture prepared by an architect prior to constructing a building. At a superficial level the architecture seems independent and obvious, but at the micro-level one observes several other factors that come into play. For example, for an architectural design of a building, apart from the aesthetics, the architecture should also cater to the finer nuances like direction, ventilation, utility and the ability to repurpose it for other unusual needs. The same principle applies to ISDs. Merely framing an ISD for the obvious learning and not considering the granular nuances is fraught with dangers. When implemented in improperly designed ISD will not only lead to loss of precious development time but will result in huge cost expenditures, thereby making the whole exercise futile.

ISDs based on thorough granular level research would enable developers to meet the exigencies that may creep in. The research-based ISD provides alternate paths to assessments, graphics, reinforcements, style of presentation and an ability to quickly repurpose it to changing needs.
The well-researched ISD would also consider information of human information processing of the learners and the effective instruction for maximum learning. Almost all ISDs today are incomplete in the sense that they contain very little though on the several techniques of learning that are specific to individual learners. Learner-sensitive ISDs are robust and possessed with logic for every single element suggested therein. Any move that cannot be logically srgued and supported is scrap and serve as the loopholes to effective learning.

Research also suggests that ISDs should stear clear of unwanted “noise,” that emanates from the inclusion of unthought graphic and functional elements. Most e-learning course developers feel that adding unusual elements to the courses would make it look different. While a graphic-intensive ISD might appeal to the novice training managers, for the serious and foccused one, they are chaotic. These elements erode the sheen out of the learning activity making them just another format of glitz and glamour. This however, does not mean that glitz and glamour is to be completely avoided. The real essence lies in a balanced use of these elements so that they enhance learning and do not serve as distractors in the learning process.

E-learning courses, to be effective, should be grounded in time-tested learning theories and not on the subjective decisions of a few people. The focus should shift from “what we think” to “what learners need.” This is true even in the traditional model of classroom learning where the efficient teacher rarely concentrates on what he or she thinks is right to what is actually required. The science of instruction calls for a thorough understanding of how instruction works, how it is encoded and consequently decoded by the learners. Human Information Processing – Encoding, Transfer, and Metacognition – all should be adequately addressed by developers while developing learning courses. There is a lot of maturity now both within the domain of the teachers as well as within the domain of the taught.

10 Learning Principles
Organizational learning needs to focus on 10 learning principles. These learning principles provide a mechanism to work out the basics of an effective human learning system. The principles are as follows:

1. Make learning context similar to performance context
2. Provide retrieval practice and testing
3. Provide feedback on practice and testing
4. Provide interactivity to engage the learner
5. Provide repetition of learning and practice
6. Space learning and practice over time
7. Present learning material innovatively
8. Prepare a psychologically powerful learning environment (interface)
9. Utilize relevant information only
10. Help learners focus on the most important information

Thursday, December 01, 2005

E-learning or E-burning: The life of an Indian ID


By Asim Choudhury

The Role of an Instructional Designer is often exaggerated in India. For the amount of brainwashing and rumour doing the rounds in e-learning companies, one can’t help but believe that IDs are the ‘kings’ in the world of writing. The real fact: they are like tissue papers – get momentary pleasure by being placated the one moment and then get thrown out when the job is done.

Days back I found myself in the company of an Instructional Designer (ID) working in an Indian e-learning company. Young and full of gait, the chap threw the airs of a king: possibly induced by his newly acquired status and the monetary benefits. He was casual and remained serious. A little time in some silly talk, I settled for the killer question: “what do you think is your future in e-learning?” He fancied my question, paused, gave a weird smile and took a long drag from his Malboro before coming out with a loosely crafted response, “Well dear, see, now I am here…cool job… 3 years and I hop somewhere as a Project Manager and then…shoooo…I am off… off to the US or some foreign country.”

I digested the essence of his chimerical response and stared at him for sometime before throwing the next query: “Do you think some good learning is happening here in your present role as an ID”? “Learning?” he quipped smartly, “what learning?”… “Hey cool it man…we gotta work out the present and not strain our brains on what’s what.”

The answer said it all…and he said it pretty clear. Though the interaction appeared simple, the essence was thought-provoking. The answer revealed desperation and a possible ‘professional suicide.’

Most e-learning companies in India boast of a talented ID resource. In reality, all they have to pride is a fragmented ID workforce consisting of simple graduates who find themselves in in e-learning by a waft of fate than by will. Any observation will reveal that Indian vendors are least interested in analysing ID skills because of reasons whatsoever, and any wayward dummy with some knowledge of hinglish can hop in. Credentials are passe and cost factors are important. Afterall, at the end of the day, costs have to be justified.

A closer look at the academic background of most IDs in the industry, a select few can boast of a post-graduate degree. A majority are graduates and lack sound academic knowledge. One can only magine the value they bring to the workplace. Even by the standards of an average layman, it would be difficult to understand as to how could someone with shoddy education create powerful instructional designs.

E-learning companies today frequently advertise for IDs keeping the simple criteria of “a minimum of 1 year experience.” Thereby applications are screened by the dozens and consequently selected. Training, they say, can happen on the job. Unfortunately that training never comes by. Apart from a few companies like NIIT, Inforpro and Accenture, most organizations in India offer no ID training whatsoever.

Talking of remuneration, the scale of an ID appears tempting for most middle-class Indians with a penchant for quick money. The long-term prospects, however, appear bleak, as is evident from several instances in the Indian e-learning industry. While industry honchos vouch that IDs can notch up a package of anything between Rs 20k to 1 lakh a month, reality is something else. IDs in India have a saturation point beyond which they turn into a liability for the organization. A few years of increments lands the ID into a position that is a dead end. Neither can organizations afford them, nor can they justify their package to prospective clients. This is the time when organizations dump them like a fly from a bowl of soup. The result: IDs have to start analyzing their skill-sets and eyeing opportunities in related fields like technical writing and journalism. Wonder do they really stand a chance there!

Identity-wise, IDs are rather unknown creatures – all they have is a name lost in heaps of HR files in the database. Poor chaps, the best they can do is to fill their CVs with tall claims of having done some great piece of work for some XYZ GREAT MNC. The actual glory is reaped by Project Managers and the top management from clients.

As an ID one tends to burn-out the knowledge they have accumulated over the years after almost 25 years of education. This is since, theories apart, IDs do not get the opportunity to learn on the job. And all they leverage on during their stint as an ID is the knowledge they have learnt over the years. Unfortunately, their work is just like another clerk, bereft of learning opportunities. As an individual the ID tends to become a virtual recluse – cutting out from regular social interactions and knowledge exchange. The ID work gobbles up the fun and excitement from their lives: too much work pressure and very little rest.

One opinion in the industry is that the role of an ID hones one’s skills and helps them become better writers – partly true and partly false. True that ID develops the skills of objectivity and rationality but in the process, they kill the creative writer within. The final result is that they hang around like a misfit – quite like the washerman’s dog, neither at home nor on the river banks (Ghar ka nag hat ka). They neither make good journalists nor do they fit into a creative role.

Recent years have seen a large number of frustrated IDs in India hopping from one organization to another in the vain hope of having something different. But its all the same everywhere. There are ample instances of IDs who have pulled out of the nerve-wracking role of IDs from companies as small as Magic to big giants like NIIT. Wonder what beckons them!

The repository of learning knowledge is as vast as one imagination and cannot be simply captured within the framework of a few cognitive or constructivist learning theories by Bloom et al. What the industry respects and perhaps looks forward to are innovative people capable of developing top-of-the-line courseware, not clerks who mug-up a couple of tailor-made theories and set for the kill.

Instructional Designing by virtue is very limiting. Its not always that the IDs in the Indian industry cannot think of innovative strategy for designing e-learning courses. They do have some up their sleeves but most remain constrained with whatever the client dictates: another rationale for comparing the work to that of a clerk’s. Strategy is the client’s call and IDs are not allowed to think. The situation can be compared to that in the Defence forces where a soldier is not supposed to exercise his thoughts; he is simply supposed to act on the orders. The result is a mind that is bereft of creativity; or more precisely programmed not to think creatively. Unless IDs are allowed to treat into the creative domain of e-learning solutions, the work would continue to remain drab.

The programmed thought in IDs contains very few items: suggest a graphic with a few lines of text in a frame and then follow them intermittently with reinforcements in the form of drag and drop, multiple choice or fill-in the blanks. The visualization also is a problem area. Working under stringent timelines, graphic designers always ask for simpler graphics which they can work on very fast. A creatively visualized flash graphic can send the whole project awry as the developer will have to put in extra effort which time never permits him.


It's time Indian IDs forego their slumber and get onto doing some real analysis. They need to make up their minds -- whether they want to hang around the lively world doing unyielding and unsatisfying work or get into a cutting-edge area. And this analysis has to come fast, before they burn out the last remains of their intelligence and creativity.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

E-learning: Mad Rush of Willy-nilly Entrepreneurs in India


By Asim Choudhury

The current e-learning boom in India has added to the existing woes. Standards apart, the industry hangs on the edge where processes and players are dubious. Much of this blame can be put on the Indian government’s inability to put together a regulatory body. Unregulated and unstructured, the e-learning industry in India is likely to wreck havoc for the global e-learning industry as small vendors pile up huge "learning garbage" for clients worldwide.

E-learning in India has come of age. Two decades and the nation already cherishes several global e-learning players on its soil. This can be attributed to some basic reasons like cheap human resources, a large pool of English-speaking workforce and ‘business discounts’ offered by the central and state governments. Although exact figures of the size of the industry is not available, a conservative estimate shows the offshore e-learning industry at about $150 million in 2004-05, up almost by 200 percent in the last two years.

Inspite such impressive figures, the e-learning industry in India remains mired with a plethora of issues. Some of these issues include lack of uniform e-learning standards and workplace practices, and the lack of adequate human resources to power the spiraling upward growth. These concerns apart, government apathy has also bolstered fly-by-night e-learning entrepreneurs who eye quick bucks and increasingly deliver ‘learning garbage’ to a global clientele.

Smaller vendors in India have setup e-learning business houses with paltry investments of a few thousand dollars – in the hope of getting a sizeable pie of the global e-learning business. Most of these short-term vendors run their shows from North India – from places in and around the National Capital Region of Delhi. A sizeable segment of these street-smart vendors eye the US e-learning market – given the current explosion in e-learning expenditure in the US. According to the International Data Corp., in 2004, U.S. companies spent $14.5 billion training employees on the Web and through CBT.

The modus operandi for these vendors is simple. They rent in a couple of rooms in an urban area and advertise for resources in job websites and newspapers. Writers, designers and technology professionals – mostly unskilled – are hired by the dozens. The average salary of the employees ranges anything between $100 to $400 and the working hours stretch well over 72 hours per week. Next, these companies setup small sales calling teams to call up international clients asking for work. The sales pitch is often exaggerated and boasts of a few “big names”. To show their experience, these vendors cull-out a few odd CBTs from other companies or ‘steal’ courses through their contacts.

The basic quality that behooves a standard e-learning company is absent in these companies. Proprietors remain ignorant of even the most basic information that is essential to run the show. A Java programmer, for example, is asked to hone his skills in C++ or any other program since he is responsible for all ‘programming’ needs. Almost anyone who walks in for the position of writers is employed as an ‘instructional designer’, primarily because they can be asked to work for lesser salaries on the pretext that they lack instructional designing experience. Vendors also rely on these writers to validate the learning content for authenticity even when content validation remains the domain of the expert, the Subject Matter Expert (SME). The writers and designers are instructed to download content from Internet websites and ‘rewrite’ them before using it. A basic ignorance of the Internet medium on the part of the owners means that the writers are often confused with the content because no single idea or information on the Internet appears consistent.

E-learning processes are virtually absent in these companies. All that offers a direct benefit to the proprietor becomes part of the practiced processes. A Project Manager, for example, may be required to recruit people, review e-learning courses, undertake marketing activities, and do just anything that catches the fancy of the owner. In some companies, it was observed that programmers were asked to work as typists. The motto: no resource should sit idle. Employees who work for more than 9 hours a day are neither paid additional remuneration nor are given facilities like cabs and food for their late stay and long hours of work. As an e-learning professional once remarked, “employees in these fly-by-night ventures reminds one of the rampant practice of human slavery in Africa and Arabian countries a few centuries back. Professional torture apart, these employees are also subjected to extremely inhuman conditions of work – congested workplace, outdated computers, stinking toilets, and the same paltry salary year after year. Employees in these companies too appear to have resigned to their fates – partly because their poor education that doesn’t stand them in good stead for jobs in big e-learning MNCs and also because most do not have a professional competence in English language.

This phenomenon is rarely reported by any section of the Indian media, perhaps due to ignorance or for fear of antagonizing the international fraternity. The abysmal condition and the unplanned e-learning sector, however, have both a positive and a negative side to it. The positive side is that these e-learning ventures help to reinforce the fact that there is no alternate to quality, and quality comes from the big guys, not the fly-by-night operators. The flipside is that the employees in tiny Indian e-learning ventures rarely get the exposure to standard work processes and world-class e-learning products thereby subjecting themselves to professional impairment.

Unfortunate for the Indian e-learning industry, at an era of globalization and information revolution, Indian laws too have failed to contain these IT hawks. While the existing labour laws do have provisions against inhuman practices in the private workplace, in practice they remain a mirage. Most of the employees neither have the financial resources to chase a litigation nor are they willing to ‘waste’ their time.

The Southern part of India presents a striking contrast to the North. Recent years have seen a rapid and strategic development of global e-learning companies in the South, in places like Bangalore and Chennai. Several global players have also setup their centers in Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Not surprising, the South has become a favourite e-learning destinations for serious e-learning players because of the absence of the mayhem so ramphant in the Northern part of the country. Although the same Indian laws apply to all states across India, security and infrastructure is usually better in the Southern states than in the North.

Consequently, most of these global giants are reluctant to setup their operations in the North for obvious reasons: lax security, incompetent e-learning resources, and rampant corruption. However of all the paraphernalia, one primary reason that dissuades the big names in e-learning from setting bases in North India is the abysmally poor skill-sets of the workforce here. In an era of cut-throat competition, generalized skills fetch little or paltry returns. In the past companies like Tata Interactive Services, Brainvisa, Sify e-learning and Accenture have all failed to locate substantial trained workforce from the North for its setups in the South.

Amidst all the rigmarole, smaller global clients seeking ‘cheap’ e-learning courses remain unconcerned about the operatives of these vile businessmen. The only thing that seemingly matters for them is ‘cheaper products’, even if it comes in poor quality or if the employees who developed them are subjected to inhuman practices. Its time that global clients shed their ignorance and act responsibly by seeking detailed credentials from smaller e-learning vendors in India on their HR processes, employee welfare schemes and workforce competence. Failing to do this will not result in the development of shabby e-learning courses.

The state of e-learning in India, particularly the frenzy in North India, remains a serious concern for the industry. Either the law of the land has to haul-up the desperados or wait till the hawks eat up the industry for the worse. A regulatory authority is essential now, if the industry is to survive and prosper. Money-eyed hawks can’t be allowed to have a field day. If they hang around for long, the death of the industry in India is imminent.