Hello there.
This week I had the pleasure of attending Citrix Systems’ annual analyst event. If the name does not immediately ring a bell for you, I am fairly certain you know their products, including GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC. And, as you may also know, earlier this year they added a virtual classroom product, GoToTraining.
In light of this trip and our own virtual classroom study – set to be released a little later this year – this week’s theme is the virtual classroom.
Learning leaders have to be concerned about keeping pace in a rapidly-changing business environment, navigating a swirl of challenges brought on by rapid innovation in technology, changes in workforce demographics, and a challenging economic environment. Their credibility and relevancy is increasingly based more on timeliness (their ability to meet time-critical needs), rather than simply the instructional craft of their content.
In light of these challenges, the virtual classroom represents an ideal technology solution for modern high-impact learning organizations. These platforms can support both rapid delivery AND creation of high quality content, are usable by non-specialist end-users, and yet support high-interactivity, high-fidelity content if needed. And they provide an ideal, on-demand environment for employee collaboration.
Although computer-mediated distance education has been around since the 1960s, the first Internet-based virtual classrooms weren’t marketed to the enterprise until the 1990s. Since then, the virtual classroom has been primarily used to approximate face-to-face instruction and often serves as a replacement or enhancement for face-to-face, instructor-led training and asynchronous learning. For these reasons, it is commonly viewed as a special instance of face-to-face classroom training.
More recently, however, the convergence of rapid content development tools and social software has many companies using these systems in very different ways. So, here are five reflections for this week – each using today’s leading providers as examples of the evolution of these platforms:
Reflect 1: Citrix GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining: Simplicity leads to ubiquitous adoption which leads to_____?
You have to give Citrix credit. By several measures, they’ve likely reached #2 in the web conferencing market with GoToTraining – in a very short amount of time. Their tools are simple, easy to use and easy to implement. Combine that simplicity with a low price point, and we are starting to hear more and more organizations tell us that there is pressure (both bottom up and top down) to put access to these environments in the hands of almost everyone in the company (not just a select few). And in these companies where this ubiquitous usage is becoming a reality, employees now see these environments as an indispensable part of their workspace (just as much as the conference room down the hall, if not more so). They are a place for everyday collaboration and for continuous learning. The fact that recording activity in these spaces and then sharing those recordings is now trivial also makes them powerful enablers of knowledge sharing, which leads us to…
Reflect 2: Adobe Connect Pro: Is your virtual classroom platform actually a better rapid content development tool than the desktop options?
Adobe is well known to the learning industry for two families of products: one virtual classroom (Adobe Connect Pro) and one of the market leaders in desktop e-learning development: Adobe Captivate.
Like most of the other leading platforms today, Connect Pro supports easy and efficient creation and delivery of live, synchronous learning events. And – like most – it also provides for easy recording and distribution of content as well. This recording has proven so easy, in fact, that Adobe has noticed an intriguing trend with many of its customers: Adobe Connect Pro used explicitly as a rapid self-paced e-learning development platform. And why not? In many organizations today, SME’s develop rapid e-learning. Logging into the virtual classroom, delivering a presentation (something most SME’s can do), and then distributing the recording as a turn-key self-paced course is a compelling low-cost, low-overhead option for content development.
Does this option hurt Captivate at all? I doubt it. In fact, Adobe has done an admirable job integrating both of these products. Captivate interactions – for demonstration, practice, and assessment – can be used in the virtual space, adding powerful depth to the learning experiences supported there. And these interactions work even in the recorded presentations, meaning Connect Pro enabled courses, synchronous or asynchronous, do not have to be simply flat presentations. Blending live, recorded, and self-directed can happen all within the online platform, which leads us to…
Reflect 3: Harvard Leadership Direct: Effective blended learning does not necessarily require the classroom anymore…
Last week, I had the chance to visit the folks as Harvard Business Publishing. One of the products they introduced to us was Leadership Direct, a seamless integration of innovative program content and technology platform designed to develop emerging leaders’ critical leadership capabilities and management skills in a real time, collaborative environment. Participants in the program engage in online discussions, case studies, virtual workshops, and action-learning projects; and can access additional resources such as e-Learning courses, case studies, research studies, videos, articles and other tools – all within the virtual space. Webinars and online virtual classroom events are presented by Harvard Business School faculty, well-known authors, leading practitioners, and other experts.
The offering has been highly successful. Feedback from participants has been very positive and overall results have been high. In short, the physical classroom is no longer a requirement; the best of blended learning experiences can happen entirely online – AND on-the-go, which leads us to…Reflect 4: Blackboard Mobile: The virtual un-classroom…
As part of our recent research into both mobile learning and virtual classroom platforms, we saw many places where these two topics are converging. One impressive example is Blackboard’s Blackboard Mobile offering, available on platforms such as the Apple iPad. Not simply an ‘app’ for playing on-demand presentations or accessing performance support (like some many other examples of m-learning today), Blackboard Mobile provides access to an entire blended learning experience. Learners can access learning content, assignments, news, alerts, social and collaborative learning activities, and integrated virtual classroom spaces. BTW - Blackboard recently bought two of the leading virtual classroom providers in the education space, Elluminate and Wimba.
Like most of Blackboard’s offerings, the aesthetic for Blackboard Mobile is decidedly academic. It feels like taking a college course online. But, as we’ve noted in past case studies such the amazing work being done at Westinghouse Electric, the higher-ed model for distance learning is a remarkably effective strategy for blending social learning with formal learning in the corporate world. Most corporate employees are quite familiar with what it means to take a course over time: to meet in regularly recurring sessions, to have one-on-ones with the teacher, to have ongoing assignments, and to engage with fellow students in discussions and in project work. Blackboard Mobile brings the best of the physical classroom experience to the learner wherever they are. Social learning, mlearning, and the virtual classroom are colliding. The resulting on-demand access to all learning – content and experts, formal and informal, anywhere and everywhere –is what will make mlearning mainstream; and it brings us to…
Reflect 5: Saba Collaboration Suite: Putting it altogether – is instant live interaction anywhere a better option for social learning than social software?
A few years ago, leading learning and talent management system provider, Saba, purchased Centra, adding a web conferencing and virtual classroom platform to its suite of products. Just as the lms and virtual classroom spaces have evolved since then, Saba has as well. And Centra’s place in their product family has also changed. At first, Centra was positioned as simply a place for meetings and synchronous training events, completely integrated with the lms. Today, the Centra platform has been transformed, merging with Saba Live (Saba’s new best-of-breed enterprise social software platform) into the Saba Collaboration Suite. The role of this new platform within organizations is now far more profound. Feature and function-wise, Saba Collaboration Suite is an enterprise business networking solution that includes all of the usual web 2.0 social tools integrated with presence, IM, and integrated, real-time meetings and virtual classroom experiences. Used in conjunction with the rich set of employee profile information and sophisticated talent management process support naturally part of an enterprise talent management suite such as Saba, and suddenly the result is instant business community, both an ongoing enabler of and a ever growing representation of organizational learning agility, collaboration, and – ultimately – innovation. The Saba Collaboration Suite incorporates all of the trends covered in this post so far, and it turns talent management back into people management. And, that said, I have a sense that some of its best uses are still to be invented by its users. We’ll see.
We’ve known for some time that both mature and emerging synchronous learning tools can provide benefits that foster productivity and reduce the cost of training. Virtual classrooms, video conferencing, and telepresence technologies can provide benefits not found in the face-to-face classroom with a greater return on investment. That’s because virtual classroom brings the learning experience directly to employees’ desktops or, in some cases, their mobile device.
Yet, as I’ve catalogued here today, many of today’s virtual classroom systems are now also helping to bridge the gap between self-paced e-learning and face-to-face ILT as well as provide powerful support for informal learning – be it social, on-demand, and embedded.
How do you use your virtual classroom?
Thoughts and comments welcome.
Happy Friday.
-David
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