Elearning! August - September

2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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Cisco: Creating the E-learning Culture Cisco represents the best of e-learning, and — as such — is a repeat Learning! 100 honoree. Last year, it was honored for its collaboration community, the Cisco Learning Network. Tis year, it's being honored for advancing the practices of virtual leadership. Cisco has been a driving force in elearning since the 1990's. Tom Kelly, former CEO, Cisco believed the value of e-learning is refected in business results. "Te real measures of success here at Cisco do not involve training issues; they involve business issues. If customer satisfaction goes up because we have a more knowledgeable sales force, that's not esoteric. If technology adoption occurs faster because the sales force is better-trained, we have real business impact that's measurable. Tat's the real beneft of e-learning, and that's what we have to measure." Kelly's approach has rubbed of on the entire Cisco e-learning staf, including senior director of Technical Support Drew Rosen, who says that success is indeed measured based on customer satisfaction scores delivered at the end of training programs. Learners rate the courses using the skills they've learned — along with how the instructors perform. "Our virtual instructors get the same or better scores as with ILT," Rosen says. "Customers are appreciative, because, one, they get to go home to their families; and, two, they can consume the education diferently. Tey don't have to sit in a classroom for six hours a day, but instead can take classes broken up into two-hour chunks, giving them fexibility in their schedules. "Our customers appreciate this type of learning. When it's done correctly, they actually stay quite engaged, and they get just as much out of the education as if they were in a classroom." Corporate oferings are constantly evolving to better suit customers, with revisions, refreshes and introductions. Cisco's Leading Virtual Classroom Instruction (LVCI) course is just one way that the company is remaining on the industry's cutting edge. Te course, which is used to "train the trainer" both internally and externally, teaches participants how to prepare and manage a virtual classroom, efectively deliver material online, and use collaboration tools to maximize student participation and comprehension. "Because we were struggling with virtual instruction," Rosen admits, "we realized that our customers would struggle as well. We actually built the LVCI so folks in other industries can leverage it as a way to understand how to adapt classroom materials for this kind of modality and how to hone instructor skills. "We wanted to provide access to traditional instructor-led training in a virtual way so students [learners and trainees] would get the same experience as being next to an instructor — without the travel," Rosen observes. "So we started to experiment with our own programs and realized that some of our highest-quality instructors in live classroom settings didn't perform well in the virtual environment." Tis and other corporate oferings are all constantly evolving to better serve customers. So Cisco is indeed the epitome of a successful e-learning company: always advancing, always questioning, and always driving technology-enabled learning. Cisco is a three-time Learning! 100 honoree. AREA OF INNOVATION EXCELLENCE Elearning! August / September 2013 29

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