In This Issue
	Who We Are Special Offer on Blended Learning - through July 1 Hot Tip: Reduce Development Time with Flash Objects Novell Breaks the Bottleneck with SMEs

Special Offer on Blended Learning - through July 1

Bersin & Associates, in collaboration with IDC, just completed the largest ever study of blended learning programs in corporate applications. The study demonstrates the best practices, costs, and infrastructure needed to deliver high impact blended learning programs in a variety of industries. The study identifies "winning methodologies" in several key areas of blended learning, including content development, deployment, and measuring ROI. "[This] study is one of the most important and useful research works in e-learning. It is a 'must read' for people embarking on blended learning programs." - Dane DeQuina, Curriculum Manager, Intel Corporation. What will you learn from this study? Learn best-practice methodologies for selecting media mix Understand what works to drive high acceptance in deployment Compare your costs for content development and infrastructure with other companies Identify application areas where blended learning has the highest impact Understand roles of LMS and other infrastructures See what partners and solutions providers are providing best results From now until July 1, you can purchase the study at a special price of $295. So hurry - this offer is only available for a limited time! Click here for an Executive Overview of this study... »

Hot Tip: Reduce Development Time with Flash Objects

Northwest Airline's 23-person training department provides training on flight operations and procedures for pilots and other crew members. The majority of on-line courses are over two hours in length and many take over six months to build. With too many projects and too few resources, Northwest has looked for ways to reduce development time - and has found a solution using Flash objects. Learning objects built in Flash are used extensively so that course modules or components can be reused across different projects. Using Flash objects has reduced development time dramatically by enabling developers to create and insert objects into the courseware without any prior Flash knowledge. In fact, Neil Cramer, Manager of Instructional Systems at Northwest, calculated that using Flash objects cut the development time by six months on a recent 18-month project. "That's why we love Flash!" The team has also learned to save time by using a well defined scripting template and training subject matter experts (SMEs) to use the template so that they can submit material in an appropriate format, without any rewriting by course developers. Training SMEs to understand what can be done in Flash also has helped to unlock the full power and potential of Flash for richer courses. For more tips & techniques... »

Novell Breaks the Bottleneck with SMEs

One of the biggest bottlenecks in developing content is getting information from the subject matter expert's (SME's) head into your learning program. Subject matter experts are busy -- and they are unconsciously knowledgable. They are also probably very proud of their knowledge, and would like to share it -- but do not have the time. Your challenge as an e-learning developer or manager is to "unleash" this information in a form that can be used to train others. Novell has found a solution to this problem which is elegant, simple, and easy to use. Novell developed a model which enables SME's to author this content rapidly by themselves. Here is how it works: Using Instructional Templates Novell provides instructionally-designed templates in PowerPoint. These templates walk the SME through the precise information needed to train channel partners. The focus of these templates is to make sure that the SME provides the information needed for training -- not information on the product itself. The SME then is also required to add notes to each slide, describing the information in each slide as much detail as possible. Professional Narration Adds "Zing" Then the Novell reseller organization takes these slides, reviews them for clarity, and hires a professional audio firm to record a high quality narration. The Novell Channel Marketing group makes sure that the slide notes are clear, and then turns them over to the audio firm. The narration process costs $1500-2500 per course (each course is 15-25 pages long) - but is well worth it. Click here for an example of these instructional templates... »