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Backgrounder | The relevance of an IDL platform | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Benefits for the corporate entity | How does the network function? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What makes Train-need different? | Options to consider | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Many uses for Train-need© | Opportunities in content development | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
More about Interactive Distance Learning | Costs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BackgrounderThe
shortage of good trainers and terachers, the high cost of training, and
the need for continuous upgradation of skills, have made the traditional
classroom and learning systems very limited, and extremely expensive,
in their approach. Technology has allowed training to go beyond the classroom
and has provided unprecedented access to quality training regardless of
the location of the student.
The use of such Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) platforms and the use of broadband VSATs have permitted the best of content to be made available to almost everyone – at any time and at any place -- and have thus made the concept of high-quality and individualised lifelong learning a reality. It thus offers anytime, anywhere learning. E-convergence Technologies Limited (ETL) decided to opt for the Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) platform because of several reasons:
It saw how it is being used
to train the entire workforce of The Royal Bank of Scotland across all
its 1,200 centres and branches. The training platform is used to upgrade
the skills of the bank’s support staff, educate middle level managers
and executives to learn of new banking concepts, practices and processes.
And it is used to multicast the talks of any visiting specialist across
the centres thus making a valuable resource and knowledge available
to those authorised to access the same, also saving on time and
costs at the same time. The same is done by Nokia as well across all
its centres globally.
In the US, the platform is used by Echostar to train over a million students every year. The same is the case with centres in Korea, Italy and a host of other countries. What makes Train-need different? ETL believes that there are many features that an Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) Platform requires for a market like India. Cultural differences between India and many developed countries require the slides to be a lot more animated and the interaction to be a great deal more personalised. There is a great need in India to ensure that evaluation too talkes places in such a manner that the potential for forgery and fraud gets minimised (ETL has potented processes to ensure this). The manner in which voice and text chats take place also needs to be modified. Most important, bandwidth costs must be minimised as far as possible. Thus, ETL kept three objectives in mind while developing its own IDL
Effective use of bandwidth
Personalized interaction Price – most IDL platforms are far too expensive for a country like India
After almost two years of development,
it introduced its own Interactive Distance Learning platform Train-need®
in order to cater to the needs of business and the corporate sector in
India far more effectively and economically.
Some of ETL's strengths are:
ETL has tied up with TataNet
(a part of the Tata Group of companies)
as its service provider, and as its Interactive Distance
Learning platform associate for offerings to the corporate sector.
It has already tied up through TataNet with P&G for enabling the latter to launch its products to its dealer network across the country. It has been short listed by many corporates for making its training centre go national using Train-need® Options for using ETL's Train-need© and Studio facilities
Notes: * The studio may be the one owned by ETL or others owned by Tata Indicom/VSNL in eight major Indian cities. ** ETL is in the process of creating franchised outlets which may be used by the corporate for conducting exams, or offering its generic, non-confidential, training courses to the public. What can Train-need® be used for? Corporate Training: This can be offered by the corporate for training fresh recruits who need to go through an induction programme. It can also be used for exisiting staff in order to upgrade their skills or to ensure that they are updated on market developments. Unlike other recorded media, the IDL allows the HR department to actually ascertain if the candidate has understood what has been communicated to him. The HR head knows when
the candidate went through the course
the candidate's comprehension levels -- on a time series basis a list of all other courses that the candidate has been exposed to questions answered right, wrong and those not attempted all. number of times the candidate had to go through the course before achieving the scores. Recruitment
and evaluation:
ETL’s Interactive Distance Learning platform can also be used for Evaluating
the performance of candidates who seek recruitment. This automatically
allows the corporate to reduce the time taken to filter out those who
meet the minimum benchmark standards laid down by the company.
Alternatively, this platform can be used by organisations to evaluate the performance of its workforce, especially of those who occupy positions at junior to middle levels in the organizational hierarchy. This would allow for round the year evaluation using standardized tools, thus saving on time, costs and (not unusual) charges of bias on the part of a manager while assessing the performance of a colleague. In
case the corporate wants to offer the facility of examinations to people
seeking recruitment, or to its existing staff as part of an across-the-board
evaluation process which could be a precondition to promotions, the corporate
can avail of the same from ETL’s servers even through the Internet.
ETL will ensure that security norms are observed at all times, and also
ensure that the evaluation scores are available to the top management
whenever it requires the same.
Product Launches While this was not the original intent behind the introduction of Train-need®at least one FMCG company has selected this platform as a means to launch its newest products by addressing all its dealers across the country from ETL's studio. Opportunities in content development: The ETL Team has tremendous experience in content development. ETL can support the corporate in several ways:
It
can help in training the people in the company on making training content
suited to the needs of the candidates, the medium which has its own
peculiarities and opportunities, and the corporate's
own objectives which must never be forgotten.
It can help the corporate identify the right resource people for developing content for a variety of topics that the corporate might need from time to time. If the course is generic in nature, ETL could work out ways with the corporate to make the same course available to other corporate clients as well, thus converting the cost of training into an income stream for the company. If the course is one that every employee needs to go through once he is recruited, the company could actually brand this course for the markets and offer the same to the general masses with the stipulation that only candidates scoring more than the minimum prescribed marks -- say 75% -- would be considered for interviews with the HR team. This way the corporate could actually lend its brand to the market for such skills, and could also convert a cost into an income stream. Most importantly, it could thus ensure a better quality of personnel at the recruitment stage itself. It could make use of the content ETL has itself created, or courses that have already been created by some of its content partners and for which ETL has the distribution rights. Most of these courses relate to: By adopting ETL’s solutions, the corporate benefits in several ways:
Why corporate training? With product cycles getting shorter, business environments getting more unpredictable, and competition getting fiercer, there is an urgent need for constant learning -- especially in fields relating to new products launched, marketing, finance, IT security and communication. Learning is required at all levels
-- the secretary who needs to
know of better ways to address customers/clients over the telephone, All this can be managed from within the confines of the office itself through Interactive Distance Learning, which has been explained below. The teacher, faculty, subject-matter-expert, or a visiting resource person, sits in the studio and the multicasting centre at ETL (it can be recreated at the corporate centre as well). Of course, before this is done, a lesson plan must be prepared, which involves the creation of slides, charts and the questions that form part of the quiz and the evaluation process. In case the course requires polls to be conducted and the results of the same to be captured on the Train-need®database, the corporate will have to inform ETL of the same.The multicast stream is then sent to the TataNet VSAT hub, Network Operations Centre (NOC) at Mahape near Mumbai from where it is multicast to any centre to which the course may have to be sent. The courses the corporate needs can either be multicast from ETL's centre
Advantages for Individuals
Benefits for Corporates
Cost
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Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.....chinese proverb.
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2003 e-Convergence Technologies Ltd.
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