Eric Parks, Ph.D, President & CEO, ASK International

One of the hottest features of web-based learning is collaboration. Web-based training designers have an expansive range of choices in designing collaboration into their training programs. It might seem easy to implement these features into your training, but there are many challenges.

E-mail

Although it is rarely viewed as collaboration, e-mail can be an easy way to facilitate communication between instructor and students. Its disadvantage is a lack of timeliness from the user's point of view. However, it requires little or no active management by the instructor or organization and is extremely easy to use and build into a course. It accommodates very large audiences.

Chat

Text-based chat is where the instructor and student can simultaneously communicate using their keyboards. It requires specialized software to implement and sometimes an end-user plug-in depending on the user's browser version. I have many friends with teenage children and have found that they can type faster than I can talk. Generally, real time typewritten communication is effective with a highly skilled typist but not effective at all for hunt and peck typists like me.

Another disadvantage of this approach is the difficulty in managing domineering class members. One person can hog the whole session, leaving little time or input from others. Chat also only accommodates small groups. I like to limit the size to seven or less and the time to thirty minutes.

Threaded Discussion

One of my favorite forms of collaboration is threaded discussion. This is where the learner responds to various topics posted on a bulletin board. Discussion participants are given the opportunity to read the board and post their responses. The instructor must encourage 'threads' of discussion by making appropriate comments and asking appropriate questions. Most of these applications have topical search capabilities, allowing users to search and review posted information at their convenience.

The major benefit of threaded discussion is that participants can learn from each other. Front Page and other popular web-management applications have discussion functions that are ready for installation into your website or web-based training programs. On the down side, it takes a lot of support and maintenance to make threaded discussion work. An instructor and editor must be assigned to carefully monitor and read posted material. Inappropriate material must be quickly removed, while meaningful comments need to be archived.

POTS

Not the green leafy stuff, but the plain old telephone system. Yes, one of the greatest collaboration techniques is to integrate teleconferencing into your web- based training. We are preparing a two-hour web-based training course for GE Capital Mortgage Corporation. After completing an on-line course, learners will participate quarterly in smaller distance learning discussion groups (10 people or less). They will receive a case study and discussion questions to download and essentially talk over the phones.

Proprietary Systems

Several vendors sell proprietary systems designed to facilitate collaboration. These are stand-alone applications that are not easily integrated into your web-based training.

Popular systems include Placeware's Auditorium (www.placeware.com) and DataBeam's Learning Server (www.databeam.com). Look for a system that supports all the collaboration features you need. For example, Databeam's technology allows you to demonstrate software applications then pass control to participants, where most other systems do not. Placeware has a great small group feature that allows the instructor to break the group into small teams like you might do in classroom training.

All of the systems will generally provide you with the basics: voice, image control, a white board and instructor feedback. I do not feel that motion visuals are necessary to communicate between participants so steer away from products that push sizzle over substance. Again, my experience indicates that most of the time participants turn off the motion and focus on the content of the communications when using these systems.

To jump or not to jump?

Collaboration is an important component for successful WBT… but remember, it can come with a high cost. You need to carefully assess what level of collaboration your training department can support before jumping to include this in your training.

Dr. Eric Parks, President & CEO of ASK International, Fair Oaks, CA can be e-mailed at eric.parks@askintl.com