| "Good out of the can"
by Dawn Williams
PrimeManager, online, 2001, 24 hrs., PrimeLearning.com®
(917-210-8173, www.PrimeLearning.com®), $525 per user
per year; $10,800 per 100 users per year. Other resources:
mentoring, discussion boards, chats.
How can companies assist their employees to become
better managers? One way is to offer training on key
management skills and concepts. PrimeManager offers
a curriculum of 14 management courses covering content
areas of assertiveness, delegation, conflict resolution,
problem solving, coaching and evaluation. All courses
follow a similar flow and are made up of mostly text
and graphics with an audio introduction and conclusion.
They incorporate true-false, multiple choice, and matching
questions throughout the lesson to either introduce
or reinforce key concepts.
The courses introduce key concepts for each topic
and also include a lot of lists, the "Seven sources
of…." and the "Four benefits of …." The courses try
to bring the content to the application level by including
workplace examples that illustrate their teaching points,
for example, a conflict scenario between two employees
and a manager trying to resolve it.
The course fleshes out these examples with photos
and audio conversation, an effective way to maintain
student interest and engagement. However, I found it
distracting to have the exact text on the screen while
the audio was playing since I could read it much faster
than it was spoken. Some courses also include a case
study in which students are asked to make choices about
how to handle a situation and take a slightly different
path through the case depending on their answers.
A nice feature is the pre-assessment test that creates
a recommended curriculum based on the student's performance.
Each course also has a graded self-check to assess how
well you've learned the material. My one beef with this
is that although you get feedback after you're finished,
there's no place for you to view the results again.
PrimeLearning.com® offers these courses within a learning
environment that includes chat, asynchronous discussion
boards, and virtual classes using Centra Symposium.
However, the virtual classes require an extra charge.
These tools offer companies the opportunity to make
the self-paced online courses much more powerful and
effective by incorporating collaboration and dialogue
among students and facilitators as well as allow companies
to customize learning activities. Students are also
provided access to an online mentor for specific questions,
and the three questions that I sent were answered promptly
(within hours).
Recommendation
While online content doesn't allow students to truly
practice management skills, it does allow them to become
familiar with important concepts, ideas, strategies,
and techniques. PrimeManager offers solid canned content
with opportunities to make it more relevant, practical,
and meaningful to employees in need of management skills.
Dawn Williams (dwilliams@enforme.com) is an independent
consultant, located in Towson, MD, who specializes in
eLearning strategy and instructional design for corporate
and government clients. She has been designing training
for the past five years with emphasis in computer and
web-based training and performance support.
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