Cisco E-Learning FAQ

August 2001

General Questions About E-Learning

What is E-Learning? E- learning is not just e-training. E- learning is the overarching umbrella that encompasses education, information, communication, training, knowledge management, and performance management. It is the web-enabled system that makes information and knowledge accessible to those who need it, when they need it anytime, anywhere. How does e -learning benefit the business? E- learning addresses business issues. It provides a superior learning and communication model that reduces costs, increases access to learning, and provides clear accountability for all participants. More importantly, e- learning equips employees with the knowledge and information needed to help increase customer satisfaction, expand revenue and sales, and accelerate technology adoption. In short, e-learning enables companies to prepare their workforces to turn change into an advantage in an increasingly competitive world marketplace. What are the opportunities? E- learning is the great equalizer of next century. By eliminating barriers of time, distance, and socio-economic status, individuals can now take charge of their own lifelong learning. In the information age, learning opportunities truly span a lifetimefrom childhood through adulthood. Skills and knowledge need to be continually updated and refreshed to keep up with today's fast-paced culture. New content technologies and trends in e-learning will help countries and organizations adapt to the demands of the Internet economy by educating their citizens and training their workers. What are the challenges of e-learning? From the learners perspective, the challenge is to simply change the mindset of how learning typically takes place. E- learning replaces the limitations of traditional classroom training and learners must understand that continual, lifelong learning must become part of the normal workday, just as e- mail and voice mail did. From the content providers perspective, the challenge is to make the learning more interactive and engaging. From the implementation side, tagging all learning objects can be challenging if a company already has many existing chunks of knowledge. Once objects are tagged, however, learners can retrieve the information they need, whenever they need it, from a learning management system that can track an individuals usage and progress.

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Is e-learning as effective as classroom training? Statistics on classroom training are sketchy. We do know that e- learning students are better informed, waste less time finding information, and spend more time with customers and family instead of traveling to training classes. Traditional training organizations offering classroom training were measured on success by metrics like: How many students did you train? What is your occupancy rate? What was the ROI of that class? Almost no one in the industry has done level 3 or 4 evaluations. The industry doesn't even do regular testing (which is one of the only ways colleges measure effectiveness). How does technology help the process of training? By making knowledge available 24x7, when the learner needs it or wants it, not when it happens to be scheduled, which is often not related to student or project needs. One of the criticisms of e-learning is the lack of interaction. How do you build interaction and community online? Interaction and community online are created by the learner's interactions with each other during and after they've completed a blended e- learning course or a virtual class. Rather than relying on an intermediary, a coach, or a teacher, the learners through the system will be able to continue to learn from each other and provide a closed- loop knowledge management system where everyone is contributing knowledge and receiving it back. In the future, e- learning will include more simulations and games as another avenue to foster interaction. How does e -learning make training and development more strategic? E- learning should be aligned with specific business goals and address specific business issues. Cisco uses the same tools and technologies to make a John Chambers meeting available to 35,000 people as we do to offer a 'class' or a technology update, or technical documentation. It's all content that people need to do their jobs better, to have a positive impact on customers and the business, to make a difference, and to sustain a corporate culture that is strong, positive and consistent across the cultures and borders of an entire planet. What are the opportunity costs of not embracing e-learning? The primary risk is that your company will not be able to keep its employees' skills current enough to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace. A second risk, particularly in a slower economy, is that essential training may postponed due to the huge expense of instructor- led training.

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Cisco's E-Learning Implementation

How did Cisco determine that a new learning process was needed? It was obvious that classroom training was flawed by its inability to scale. How does a company get 10,000 sales people, 150,000 partners, and 200,000 students into a class 610 times a year to keep up with technology and their job skills? Unless a company wants to employ professional students, the answer is: e- learning. How does Cisco encourage employees to use available e-learning and make them comfortable learning during working hours? Cisco considers e- learning as a horizontal foundation building block that helps cultural and social transformation take place. Once people experience e- learning, they will recognize that this is the fastest, easiest way to get the information that they need to be successful with their customers. Cisco encourages employees to use e- learning by: Making e- learning "non-threatening" with an anonymous testing and scoring process that focuses on helping people improve rather than penalizing those who fail Giving those who fail the tests precision learning targets (modules, exercises, or written materials) to help them pass and remove the fear associated with testing Providing the ability for people to track, manage and ensure employee development, competency change, and ultimately performance change. Offering additional incentives and rewards such as stock grants, promotions, bonuses, and CAP awards to employees who pursue specialization, certification, and qualifications earned with the help of e- learning Adding e- learning as a strategic top-down metric for Cisco executives that are measured on their deployment of it Making e- learning a mandatory part of employees jobs, easily accessible via the Web Since Cisco has already implemented e-learning, what advice can you give on vendor selection to a company in the early stages of implementing e-learning? The criteria for selecting the best vendor for Cisco is based on technical specifications, network requirements, and the audience needs, taking Cisco's culture into consideration as well. Cisco's E-Learning Solution Architecture helps define the functional possibilities of an e-learning solution and maps those functional possibilities to what the company is trying to do. Cisco has a vendor database with a filtering mechanism on the front end that tells Cisco what a particular vendor can do and then records our history and satisfaction rating with that vendor. E- learning is evolving so rapidly in terms of technology, products, tool sets, and functionality, however, that its difficult to provide specific vendor recommendations. The best vendor for Cisco today may not be the best vendor for any company or even for Cisco six months from today. Our experience in general has been to find a few vendors and work deeply with them rather than recruiting a large number of vendors. Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), a no- fee consulting entity from Cisco, works -3-

with large Cisco customers and several good technology partners in e-learning. Cisco's ELearning Centers for Excellence around the world will offer companies a wide range of solutions from quick and cheap to outsourced, home- grown solutions to accelerate customer deployment of e-learning via Ciscos streamlined roadmap. For companies just starting out, consider these questions in search of a vendor: What business problem are you trying to solve? What are the most effective ways to reach your audience via e- learning? Will you build or buy the e- learning solution? Which vendors can provide the e- learning services you are looking for? Is their product real and complete, and if so, can you see a demo? What will it cost and how much support do they offer? Would it benefit you and the vendor to partner and develop the product together? Can you outline with some detail some of the most significant Cisco E-Learning program results, i.e., the ROI? How do you document ROI? This year, Cisco converted a popular 4.5-day, instructor- led training (ILT) course on Ciscos signature IOS technologies into a blended e- learning solution that combined both live and self-paced components. The goal was to develop the skills and knowledge to teach seasoned systems engineers (SEs) how to sell, install, configure, and maintain those key IOS technologies to more people than the 25 employees that the ILT course could hold. The ROI looked like this:

These activities took 155 person hours. At a loaded one-time cost of $150,000, this works out to be a $12,400 labor cost to develop the blended course. The course saved each SE (1) productivity day and 20 percent of the travel and lodging cost of a one-week training course in San Jose. Estimating $750 for the travel/lodging and $450 for productivity, the savings total $1200 per SE. Seventeen SEs attended the pilot for a total savings of $20,400. Cisco recovered the development costs in this first pilot and saved $8,000 over and above the development cost recovery. By early March, the IOS Learning Services team will be able to deliver two classes of 40 SEs per month. At that rate, Cisco will save $1,152,000 net for just this one course within 12 months.

What is Cisco's Reusable Learning Object Strategy? Ciscos Reusable Learning Object (RLO) Strategy focuses on database-driven learning objects that can be reused, searched, and modified independent of their delivery media as part of a blended learning solution. This replaces Cisco's previous training model of creating and delivering inflexible, 4-5 day instructor led training courses. Our key to success has been an open standard that is tool independent, allowing us to plug in any training management system, authoring tool, or assessment tool without affecting the other parts. For example, both internal and external authors create learning

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objects reused at Cisco. In both cases, authors have had to go through some level of training to learn how to separate their information into objects. By using the RLO strategy in ILSG we have enabled the development of over 75 elearning courses, 443 chapters, 1437 RLOs (lessons), and 9207 RIOs (re- usable sections in lessons)- with thousands more to come with the release of the certification and service provider courses.

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