Recently Lee Graham posted “The ‘magic sauce’ to increase student enrollment”, a very good article on a simple concept which works brilliantly to increase enrollments. Basically, the article was about offering relevant and timely courses. What is relevant and timely? In a time when there is high unemployment, finding the skills and career courses that will lead to stable employment and even growth opportunities is very relevant. In other words, students will take courses that, not only resonate with their personality and goals, but also support a sustainable career path far into the future. Therefore, now is the time to add classes with the secret sauce – courses that will be relevant for a very long time. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘online training’
A Historical Perspective and Look Forward at the e-Learning Industry
Written by: Stephen Gatlin
E-learning is one of the fastest growing fields, and it has been a dynamic process that has dramatically changed traditional teaching by eliminating many challenges. The evolution of the Internet has brought simplicity to education providers by creating a virtual learning environment that allows us to standardize quality and implement superior training methodologies- all while reaching a world of students simultaneously. With the development of e-learning, education is now more convenient than ever, leaving countless online education opportunities for the future.
When I started in higher education, I provided career training to adults in a classroom setting as the Internet had not yet been adopted as a learning platform. There are special challenges unique to providing education through brick-and-mortar schools that have been eliminated by the development of the Internet. The logistics, specifically finding and reserving a location, hiring good instructors, and negotiating facility costs all translated to wasted time and lower profit margins due to duplication of efforts. Another challenge was that the target audience for adult career training is part of a social network that finds the ability to meet in traditional classrooms at specific times difficult if not impossible. This demographic might include stay-at-home mothers who want to get back into the workforce, homebound job-seekers with disabilities, or working professionals who want to make a career switch but can’t find the time due to their current positions. In the early 1990s, the Internet presented itself as an opportunity to reach these groups with the career training they needed, at the time and place of their own choosing.
It was very evident to me that I could eliminate time-consuming and costly duplication of efforts while eliminating the variance in the quality of instruction if I made the transition to the Internet. In 1995, I took our travel agent training program that was being taught in colleges and universities and developed it for online distribution. The course became successful due to its quality and simplicity, and it made me aware of the countless advantages of providing education online. E-learning made a student’s home his or her personal classroom, providing state-of-the-art curriculum, the necessary course materials, and the best professional instructors at the touch of a button. Through Web-based delivery, all students receive the same information of the same quality across the globe, and there is no difference in teaching styles, as is the case when hiring local faculty for classroom education. In this way, distance education allows us to provide the best instructors to all students worldwide, ensuring that all parts of the curriculum are covered with the same emphasis and value. Before distance e-learning, students in rural education districts were often at a great disadvantage when it came to subjects being offered because smaller colleges don’t always have the resources to attract teachers who are in high demand. Now, instead of having multiple instructors with varying quality, all students get a high standard of instruction no matter their location. As this educational equality is possible through general distance learning, there is a key advantage offered exclusively by e-learning: the student-mentor relationship. With e-learning, mentors can interact with students via e-mail, live chat, and discussion boards- something that is essential to a student’s grasp of course information, which had been a missing component of correspondence learning.
It’s safe to say that around 70% of the world’s population is comfortable learning online, and this is made increasingly evident each year as more and more adults are completing their education on the Internet. The need for effective and quality programs is not only being noticed in higher educational institutions but in corporate training departments as well, and we will see e-learning solutions more and more for MBA and doctorate-level degrees. As an early adopter and industry old-time, I saw a need to have a one-stop solution for online career training and have partnered my company with content providers, corporations, governments, and colleges and universities worldwide to provide options for adults to improve their education and career development skills. We created TheeLearningCenter.com, a worldwide initiative to provide the largest and most comprehensive collection of online continuing education programs, where students in Naples, Los Angeles or Beijing can begin learning with a few clicks of a mouse. With over 7,000 courses from many of the world’s top authors and companies, The eLearning Center has become, in 2 short years, the largest single marketplace for online courses. It has concentrated on continuing education in fields as diverse as finance, healthcare, and automotive repair with course prices as low as $12.00.
Yet, there is so much more to be achieved with e-learning, and the tools to provide a state-of-the-art education are available for us. Soon, the entire learning spectrum will be revolutionized, and e-learning will be available for every type of education, from the prekindergarten level through grade school and MBA degree levels, even making it possible to obtain a doctorate through online education. On the international level, the industry will continue as practitioners expand their worldwide efforts. Advanced countries such as the United States with greater income and Internet progression will see the most e-learning growth because of the acceptance of its structure. This is the single greatest factor today in the sales and distribution of content to adult populations. As the individuals responsible for driving the industry to new heights, we must keep improving on our e-learning products and concepts, as they are wide and varying, and students now look online for the support, convenience, and the most cutting-edge learning content available to improve every aspect of their lives from personal to professional skills.
Innovative and emerging communication technologies have brought pivotal changes to the educational landscape, transforming both the depth and range of learning in the past decade. The adoption of e-learning is most advanced in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe but is growing in all parts of the world, allowing great development in the higher education and corporate development sectors. Our industry is an indispensable resource for individuals to access education on demand, and it will continue to grow in the future.
Distance Learning Volume 5 Issue 1 March 15, 2008.
Island Off Taiwan Bets on Casino Boom
This article from Daily Yomiuri Online says Penghu Island will soon become a casino resort location in an effort to attract tourism. Adding casinos will create hundreds of jobs for locals, meaning casino training will be necessary to learn skills for many positions including Casino Poker Dealer.
Expectations are high on a small island off Taiwan that it could soon host casino resorts.
By building casinos on the island, which has no particular industry other than cobia farming and tourism, Taiwan’s Penghu County is seeking to create local jobs and discourage local residents from leaving to find work. Also, the county wants to revitalize the island by attracting more tourists from China as its relations with Taiwan are becoming warmer.
However, this get-rich-quick dream might not come easy, as a project of this magnitude requires large improvements in accommodations for tourists, roads and other infrastructure. Also, some people doubt whether the planned casinos would be enough to attract tourists away from long-established gambling hot spots such as Macao.
“If casinos are introduced, we’ll have more job opportunities and won’t have to leave this island to look for work,” said Chen Xiu-feng, a 51-year-old housewife living in a fishing village. “I’m all for it.”
The island, about 50 kilometers west of Taiwan, has a population of about 92,000. Many people go to Taiwan in search of jobs. About 13,000 people, more than 30 percent of the island’s working population, is employed off the island. Among Taiwan municipalities, it has the highest ratio of residents who do not actually work in the town where they live.
The Penghu County government is hoping casinos can improve this situation. Though casinos are illegal in Taiwan, a bill to revise a related ordinance passed three months ago to promote remote islands’ development, allowing casinos on the islands. The county government, which wants to set up Taiwan’s first casinos, plans to conduct a referendum on building casinos in August.
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, as part of promoting closer ties with China, lifted a ban on Chinese tourists in July. China and Taiwan also have expanded private charter flights.
About 95,000 Chinese tourists visited Penghu Island last year. The county government for now envisions two casinos on the island to attract tourists from the rest of Taiwan, China and also from Japan and South Korea. About 500,000 tourists visit the island mainly from other places in Taiwan, many to sample the island’s famed seafood. The county government is aiming for 5 million tourists each year. The county government expects casinos would boost tax revenue by about 2.25 billion New Taiwan dollars (about 6.7 billion yen) and create 10,000 jobs.
According to Taiwan media, three leisure companies from Taiwan and Macao have announced interest in building casinos.
“The island will be reborn as a casino resort in three or four years,” said Hong Dong-lin, chief of the county government’s tourism bureau.
However, the island’s current accommodation capacity is only for 8,000 people. Also, tourists coming from Japan and South Korea have to transit via Taipei if they use passenger planes. It is essential to expand and upgrade hotels, airport and port facilities, but it is yet unclear how profitable the casino business will be or how such developments can be financed.
“Tourists who want to enjoy casinos can go to Macao,” said Lin Chang-sing, 59, representative of a 100-member group opposing casino development on the island. “If casinos are set up, public morals will deteriorate. The authorities should work more on measures to promote tourism focusing on the island’s natural environment.”
However, many residents still seem very keen to have the casinos.
“Many residents have huge expectations for the economic effect [of casinos], and only a small number of people oppose it,” a reporter stationed on the island said.