CPL Training’s annual awards night takes place at the Christmas Ball and rewards voted employees for all their hard work with a trophy and bottle of bubbly.

The e-learning department has always done well, but 2011 was an especially good year with the table stacked with empty champagne bottles by the end of the night!

The team stood out in areas including best newcomer, rising star and innovations. So, who exactly were the lucky winners?

Newcomer’s of the Year - Martin Bailey

Martin has made an incredible impact since joining CPL in 2011. In the short time he has been with us he has helped develop multiple e-learning courses, making them come alive with his animations.

Rising Star Award - Tom Hannigan and Daniel Clark

Both programmers have shown their ability and skill by programming some of our best selling courses, ensuring they work perfectly first time!

Innovation Award - CPL Online Team

I’m proud to say that my team have won this award for the second year running, continuing to break the mould when it comes to online training. Having secured a contract with Stonegate Pubs and several other large corporate organisations the team continues to push itself to ensure our e-learning courses are the best around.

Directors Award - Sara Yates

The only award not to be decided on votes, the Director’s Award went to our very own in-house graphic designer, who has exceeded expectations by working incredibly hard and always going that extra mile to ensure the job gets done on time and extremely well. Sara has impressed not just directors, but colleagues and clients with her enthusiasm and can do attitude.

With the best and most dedicated team around it’s no wonder our e-learning courses and bespoke consoles keep going down well.

2011 ended on a high with contract wins from well known corporate companies, which you'll find out about later this year, great feedback from our growing client list and a number of wins at our Annual Christmas Awards dinner.

So, what have we got planned for 2012? It's obviously going to have to be bigger and better than last year, but with our range of new courses I think it's going to be a great year!

Already we have started developing several new courses in association with Venner's and Cask Marque for the licensed retail sector as well as various front/back of house courses and courses developed specifically for the health and social care sector.

Working with various partners we have developed our e-learning portfolio to accommodate for learners across sectors, at all levels. The courses coming in 2012 include:

• Conflict Management
• Time Management
• Staff Appraisal Skills
• Interview Skills
• Venner's Stock Management
• Cask Marque's Cellar Management

Care courses:

• Safeguarding of Vulnerable Adults
• Emergency First Aid
• Dementia Awareness
• Documentation & Record Keeping
• Communication
• COSHH
• Infection Prevention & Control
• Equality & Diversity
• Common Induction Standards

So, watch out for our new courses and for our contract win announcements – it's definitely worth getting excited about!

That's the message I'm giving to companies!

To reflect the Bribery Act 2010, which came into effect in July this year, we have developed an online Bribery Act Awareness course for those responsible for negotiating and signing contracts and tender documents.

As the new legislation affects individuals now as well as companies the course explains how to create and implement an anti-bribery policy and risk assessment.

The e-learning course details the four new offences under the Act, which are:

1. Paying bribes.
2. Receiving bribes.
3. Bribing a foreign public official.
4. Failure of commercial organisations to prevent bribery.

The Bribery Act Awareness course uses a ‘character’ avatar to guide learners through their training and graphics, 3D animations, voice-overs and Microsoft Silverlight technology to ensure training is interactive, high quality and the fastest way to up skill learners in what constitutes as a bribe and how to prevent it changing hands.

However, just because the acceptance of luxury cruises and wads of cash, which are quite obviously bribes, are illegal and cannot be accepted, does not mean that simple hospitality and other business expenditure is.

The key message that businesses need to understand is that any business expenditure must be reasonable and proportionate.

Avoid falling foul of the law. Visit http://www.cple-learning.co.uk/courses/briberyawareness.aspx

OK, so although e-learning may still seem relatively new it has been around now for quite some time. Therefore, you have probably come across it many times and may have heard it described in such terms as ‘the future of training’ and so on.

Although they promote the advancement of technology, these terms fail to tell you what e-learning actually is and instead leave you scratching your head.

So e-learning, what is it?

Well, let me first take you back to 1728 where an advert in the Boston Gazette announced that Caleb Phillipps could provide short hand classes to not just the Boston area, but to all Americans! He proposed that all lessons could be posted out weekly and learners could study in their own time without the presence of a teacher or need for a classroom.

What has 1728, letters and an advert got to do with e-learning I hear you cry? Well, although e-learning refers to electronic learning it is also a form of distance learning, which this Caleb fellow was clearly trying to achieve and his efforts were the first recorded learning of this type.

But, back to the present and electronic learning...e-learning is now mostly Internet based, where learners can access information at anytime and almost anywhere as well as being able to share their thoughts, information and resources with one another.

Although nowadays e-learning is widely considered to mean online learning, it can also refer to learning via a standalone computer or across a network. However, it is safe to say that almost all e-learning courses today use the Internet for ease of information sharing and access.

This popular and relatively new concept of learning has been developed across industries including universities as well as the corporate sector, where it can be used to unify all training or as a flexible alternative to traditional classroom-based learning.

The basic everyday benefits are simple; learning online overcomes time, attendance and travel difficulties and is a more cost-effective way to train. So, no more commuting to head office for half a day of training!

The history lesson aside I hope I’ve answered the question and you are now confident about e-learning; what it is and the reason it is becoming more and more popular.

To find out more about the e-learning we can offer you and our branded features, please visit www.cple-learning.co.uk

In the times when e-learning is striving forward in terms of technology and popularity are e-learning developers failing organisations with their inability to measure and evaluate learnability; the ease of use of their e-learning platforms?

Don Norman’s opinion, as given above, is supported by Michael Feldstein’s, CEO of Feldstein & Associates, quote:

“Despite the huge and growing numbers of dollars being spent on e-learning, nobody is really checking to see whether the courses being developed are usable and therefore useful. In fact, we don't seem to even have a way to talk about usability in the context of e-learning.”
(eLearn Magazine, 2002)

However, I am inclined to disagree. What is actually being discussed is not the user’s ability to learn and understand the course content. It is suggesting that the way e-learning courses are programmed is difficult for learners to understand how to use them. It is therefore with this point that I disagree.

There is a solid model in place, designed specifically to evaluate the usability and subsequent learnability of software programmes, including e-learning.

The evaluation model we base our software solutions on is the ISO9126 (International Organisation for Standardisation). Set up to facilitate international trade, co-ordination and unification of industrial standards by providing a single set of principles, the ISO9126 looks at the functionality, reliability and efficiency of software packages to ensure areas including usability and learnability are sufficiently met.

However, the model in place is not perfect. Chua and Dyson argue that usability would be better measured if more specific factors were looked at including “consistency, simplicity, legibility and use of colour” (Chua and Dyson, 2004: p.189).

However, I believe that organisations, developing e-learning, are in fact now looking at these additional contributing factors, which is why e-learning platforms are becoming more integral to businesses in the training and development of their staff and indeed the preferred training method as it saves time, expense and the system is easy to use.

Taking our e-learning platform as an example, we only require Silverlight for our software to work, which is installed in the majority of computers as standard. For those which haven’t got the software, it is a case of a minute-long download process, where all users have to do is click a button; so hardly rocket science. And that is pretty much it. Once Silverlight is installed and we have issued you with your log in details you are ready to go. Navigation through courses is also easy and self explanatory by the use of clearly marked and visible buttons.

Usability and learnability co-exist; you cannot have one without the other. As Matt Fuller of E-Cul-De-Sac states:

“It’s not enough to make something easy to learn, if it’s not then easy and efficient to use.” (Fuller, M, 1996-2011).

Therefore, with emphasis being placed on making e-learning the forerunner of simple, easy-to-use and fast training, organisations cannot afford to ignore usability and learnability. If they do it will be glaringly obvious in their over-complicated, incomprehensible e-learning platform.

I recently read an article by The eLearning coach (The eLearning Coach, 2010), which posed the question “Should employee learning be controlled and tracked when much of workplace learning occurs through informal channels?”

Naturally this got me thinking of whether learning should be controlled and measured and how this affects e-learning.

The majority of workplace learning occurs whilst actually doing the job, but this is only true of job-specific tasks. So although experience is a great learning tool, official training is needed in order to:

• Meet compliance
• Show due diligence
• Ensure staff understand and recognise correct policies and procedures i.e., when it comes to Health & Safety
• Up skilling employees

Moving on now to whether this type of official learning should be controlled, I think undoubtedly yes, but only in terms of course content as certain information and regulations must be acknowledged in employee learning and need to be understood by employees themselves.

Controlled doesn’t necessarily mean a controlled environment i.e., a classroom. Self-controlled learning is a skill we often overlook in learners.

Self-controlled learning requires learners to rely upon them self. There is no trainer or other learners to interact with. Therefore, e-learning courses have been developed to ensure learners have the resources and tools needed to learn and succeed.

However, according to Michael F. Beaudoin (2002, p.148), former Professor of Education at New England University; studies over the last 30 years have demonstrated that an increase in student interaction improves achievement.

Although true that e-learning cannot offer group discussions, except through online forums, it does offer other forms of interaction that learners can use to fuel their achievements. These interactive tools include games, voice-overs and exercises.

Exercises lead on nicely to the issue of tracking. I say issue, but it’s not at all, as what is the point in spending hundreds, even thousands of pounds on training your workforce when you aren’t able to see the results?

Essentially tracking:

• Allows progress to be measured
• Creates the opportunity to recognise areas where learners are less confident, resulting in their need for extra support being met

E-learning provides accurate, automatic tracking; measuring performance- telling employers what they need to know i.e., when employees have passed their course.

Employee learning does not have to be rigidly structured to be valuable and other methods of learning are available to organisations, such as e-learning, requiring minimal downtime for training.

However, I do feel that all learning, whether conducted on an office laptop or in a classroom, should be both controlled and tracked in order to ensure learners are receiving high quality information and that courses can be measured to determine their success rate.

References

The eLearning Coach, 2010. Learning Technology Trends To Watch in 2011. [online] Available at < http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/2011-learning-technology-trends > [Accessed 31 May 2011].

Beaudoin, M.F., 2002. Learning or lurking? Tracking the ‘‘invisible’’ online student. The Internet and Higher Education 5 (2002), pp.147-155).

With so many organisations offering e-learning and an abundance of information on the Internet about it how do you know what’s real and what’s not? Can e-learning make your organisation compliant? Can it increase your bottom line? Will it make you smarter?

OK, so this week I was thinking to myself “What shall I blog about this week?” And found myself hitting my head against a brick wall. I’ve blogged about contract wins, the different elements that make up our e-learning platform and much more about us.

So, with this in mind I thought it would be a good idea to open the floor up to yourselves and find out what you want to know about e-learning, the hot topics as it were. Are you thinking about trying it out, but have some reservations and need to know the real benefits of using an online learning method? Or perhaps you’ve had a bad experience with an e-learning course? Maybe you’re more interested in the tech-based side such as how different e-learning technologies are combined for training purposes?

Whatever the reason I’d be glad to dedicate the next few blogs to answering your queries and really exploring the world of e-learning with you.

Oh and in answer to the earlier questions...Certain e-learning courses ensure you meet compliance, whereas others will just show your due diligence. It can help towards an increase in your bottom line as your employees will become more experienced, up-skilled and motivated. And, well, that is the question- it really depends on how well you understand and retain information- so I guess it can make you smarter, it all depends on the individual!

*Please leave a comment if you have any e-learning topics you’d like discussing further.

Having just secured several new contract wins, which has allowed us to diversify into the retail and distribution sectors, and with the upcoming nuptials of Will and Kate to follow shortly, I thought it would be a good idea to mark our own celebrations...royal style.

So, where to start? OK so we may not be St Paul’s Cathedral but being Wirral-based has certainly put us on a firm footing. We’ve sourced local talent to help develop our e-learning platform and have been far from disappointed by the results.

Our online courses, of unparalleled quality, have secured us several new contracts with national companies allowing us and our parent company, CPL Training, to explore new sectors.

We’ll be developing bespoke e-learning platforms for Secured Mail, one of the UK’s largest private mail distribution organisations, Musgrave Retail Partners, food retail entrepreneurs and bar and restaurant group Living Ventures.

Our bespoke options will give each client something unique to them and their brand. It will carry a lot of significance as we can include avatar characters in their uniform and incorporate their induction training into the platform as well as a host of other options.

We’re looking forward to working with our latest clients in developing their training so until then I guess we’ll have our cake and eat it, whether it’s made of rich tea biscuits or not!

Being the IT department, the division behind e-learning, we keep up-to-date with new and developing technology. That is why we have begun trialling Microsoft’s Cloud Computing. Using their CRM system we have focussed our department, have a clear market outlook and have maximised on every opportunity that has presented itself. We’re now introducing it across the company!

Developing our marketing strategies, the CRM has enabled us to identify market-specific sales opportunities, which for us is vital as we deal with several different markets from hospitality to food production.

We can also use the CRM to measure our performance. If we miss an opportunity we are now able to find out at exactly what stage we missed it, which enables us to rectify this phase of the development, ensuring we minimise the chance of it occurring again.

We are renowned for our high levels of customer service. Our friendly staff are available from the initial enquiry, through the booking stage and right the way through the training process. However, we can use this new system to identify areas our clients can benefit from, introducing a thorough support to their training needs.

Some of our clients, such as J.W. Lees independent brewery organisation, have hundreds of staff across multiple sites, who need to be trained in a variety of areas from health & safety to manual handling. They use both our e-learning and face-to-face learning solutions to fulfil their training needs. The CRM system allows our department to see what stage the corporate team are in with them and vice versa, ensuring they are not inundated with the same communications.

“It creates an open door policy across the company from the sales team at the beginning of the business-client relationship, to the trainers delivering the courses and the developers designing the e-learning platform.” Daniel Davies, Chief Executive CPL Training

We have many aspirations for e-learning in 2011-2012, which our CRM system will help us achieve through structuring our databases and communication between clients and ourselves, enabling us to deliver a more efficient and effective service.

It may have been cold, wet and miserable throughout February, but it was a scorcher of a month for e-learning!

We’re coming up to the end of our first year as an online training provider and since April of last year we have not stopped in our determination to continue to be innovative in the development of our e-learning platform.

We have and are creating new courses including an online NCPLH course, Appraisal Skills and Customer Service as well as starting to translate our courses ensuring there is no barrier to learners.

Due to our innovative, determined and highly skilled team, February saw us almost double our average monthly takings as we added some prestigious clients to our ever-growing list. We are proud to now be training Stonegate Pub Company, Secured Mail, Musgrave Retail Partners and a host of other local and national companies alike.

Due to the number and size of contracts we are now winning it is inevitable that we grow our own team as well. As you know, we have already taken on a number of talented individuals to support the development of courses. However, it has now become clear that we need to expand our team even further to exceed the expectations of us over the next year. As such we will shortly be recruiting for another two animators to help transform our e-learning platform. So, watch this space!

Who says winter has to be dull? It certainly wasn’t for us!