E-Learning -An Integrated Approach: A Case Study in Hong Kong

The Management Development Centre (MDC) of Hong Kong, an IFTDO member, plays a key role in helping to meet the Hong Kong's government's goal to develop, promote and extend managerial effectiveness through the introduction and expansion of e-learning in Hong Kong. The government was interested in promoting life-long learning, introduce best practices, support small and medium enterprises, promote e-business culture and improve learning effectiveness. As a result of MDC's work, the popularity of e-Learning is gaining pace in Hong Kong. This is particularly evident with the increasing number of large corporations utilizing this new learning methodology as well as many leading professional institutions endorsing the use of e-Learning to their professional members. The e-Learning Expo held in Hong Kong in late August highlighted a number of world leading content and infrastructure service providers starting to launch a wide range of new learning tools to Hong Kong in an aggressive manner.

This basically is a big change compared to two years ago when e-Learning was just starting in Hong Kong. At the time, there was still a lot of skepticism about the effectiveness of e-Learning. This skepticism seems to have largely gone and what practitioners are now looking for are better ways to apply this technology more effectively in their organizations. The availability of products is becoming more extensive. Practitioners are more concerned that their choice of vendor or solution partner is going to provide the best long-term benefits they are seeking.

Like any major change initiative, there needs to be a number of favorable success factors taking place if implementation of e-Learning is to be successful. Most implementation did not take off successfully because of the lack of senior management commitment. This may sound a bit cliche. How many times have you heard "The senior executive is not fully aware of what is happening and the lack of commitment turns out that this new initiative becomes another 'nice to have' rather than an important 'driving force' within the organization"?

MDC undertook a comprehensive and carefully planned approach to developing and implementing an e-learning effort. It sought to understand customer needs, acquire in-house expertise, leverage existing capabilities, create awareness, foster strategic partnerships and establish a leadership position. In understanding customer needs, it worked to identify the current status, the key driving forces, ways to implement, and the key concerns. MDC learned that four major benefits were perceived by business organisations: flexible learning, culture change, enhanced effectiveness and great variety. However, companies had a number of concerns such as its high investment, lack of expertise, technical issues, both mangers and employees were not convinced of value. lack of staff support. The key challenges were how to establish credibility, overcome misconceptions and develop an e-learning culture.

So what did MDC do to meet the challenges? It recruited professionals, initiated team projects and pioneered web-based courses. It opened a resource center, did extensive networking with professional and trade bodies and strengthened its capacity to provide consulting expertise. It offered seminars, workshops, exhibition and conferences to expand awareness. It fostered strategic partners with leading providers and introduced world-class content providers and provided courses in Chinese. MDC worked to obtain recognition from professional bodies. As a result the MDC have had over 40,000 learners in the first six months of its programme. MDC will continue to handle the challenges and advance e-Learning.

So what happened at the corporation level. An example of successful implementation of e-Learning comes to mind. In its approach, a company carefully surveyed the individual needs of its different segment of employees and devised appropriate training plans to the different groups. It also used e-Learning to help its employees attain a higher skill level. A plan was implemented offering innovative incentive both at the individual and departmental level. With the help of senior management support and internal promotion, the plan was launched with commendable results. How different is this approach when compared with another company that just installed the web based content and announced in a half hearted manner broadcasting it on the e-mail that such learning facilities are available: hoping everyone within the organisation will enthusiastically uses this new learning tool.

Increasingly, the use of 'blended' approach--using both e-learning and classroom training-- seems to be gaining popularity. The concept is basically to use the best of both worlds to gain higher efficiency and effectiveness from the training investment. In a recent example, one company applied it to improve the service quality of front line staff. The participants were asked to undertake a series of assessment tools and e-Learning courses prior to attending a workshop. Each individual's profile was assessed and feedback evaluation provided prior to attendance at a 'face to face' training session. The focus of the workshop primarily concentrated on role-play, experience sharing and discussion rather than spending much time on basic information transfer. Employees subsequently developed action plans and each participant's supervisors will be responsible to gauge the progress of the individuals after the training. Coaching and mentoring will be incorporated to ensure knowledge is transferred and applied to the workplace. Although the actual results of this pilot have not yet been fully quantified, the initial feedback of this methodology is that both training time and learning effectiveness have been enhanced substantially.

While most people will relate e-Learning to mainly web-based and on-line training courses, increasingly there are more options available to e-Learning. For learning to be effective, we need to be aware that different people learn differently. One type of learning that appeals to one could be completely unsuitable for another person. The choice of what to use, therefore, needs to be increased in order to fit the needs of different individuals. With the advance in broad band technology, video based on-line presentation is also becoming popular; say the use of on-line seminars, interviews and focus group discussions. These presentations can be further fine tuned using appropriate text and interactive questionnaires to extend understanding. If you are information retrieval inclined, you might like to access the latest gurus' views on specific topics of your choice through selected idea database. This database is a unique, just-in-time research and learning tool that provides knowledge workers instant access to ideas, principles, theories and methodologies. These choices are rapidly becoming available if you are willing and eager to assess them. In essence, many people would like their learning on a 'just in time' basis.

The above are some of the many choices that are becoming available and it is also easy to see how too many good things can become spoiled for choices. There is really no easy answer as to how you can appropriately choose other than the use of basic sound business principle of understanding your business and knowing what is best for your organization. Having worked in a variety of organizations with different cultures, it has become evident to me the importance of using different approaches in different environments.

One final area related to implementing e-Learning is that it cannot become a fully integrated process unless a comprehensive tracking and monitoring system is employed. You do need an overall picture of where you are and where you want to be. If you need to measure your return on investment, you need to have the ability to track it. There are many Learner Management Systems (LMS) available on the market and this new tool will help you gain a macro view of the learning progress within your organization. Critical questions like - "What are the critical skills areas your company needs in the next two to three years?" "Where are you now?" "What plan have you in place to ensure it is happening?" - will need to be answered if your training initiative is to become a strategic integration of your company.

The recent advancement of e-Learning has come a long way and its expansion will only accelerate at a faster pace. If you are presently in the training and learning field, it is about time that you be involved into this area now so as not to miss the boat.

Robin Wong, Director, Management Development Center, Hong Kong.