Friday, January 25, 2008

Management Training Program

Now that the tide towards eLearning has turned I am getting ready to begin the biggest eLearning project I’ve worked on. It’s actually two projects for the same course. This would be small beans for experienced Instructional designers but I am new to the party and I am still trying to find my way so I am looking forward to getting started.

The first project is to revamp our current “Manager Training Program” aka “MTP” certification course. Prior to becoming a manager we require that the employee is certified through the Management Training Program which is currently a 5 day, 100% instructor led course. We are looking to drop this to 3 days by converting select topics to eLearning modules that they can take during slow times at the store. There are several topics that would be ideal for eLearning but the entire course cannot be converted because some of the topics are much more effectively covered through instructor led training.

The second part of the project is to develop a MTP re certification course that will be 100% eLearning with a follow up day in the classroom to bring it all together. We require that managers get re certified in the course every 2 years and up until now we put them back through the same 5 day course that new managers go through. This is a hassle for experienced managers because it’s old hat and they want to learn something new as well as brush up on some of the important aspects of the course. The veteran managers will love this and it will be a big money saver because we will drastically reduce the amount of days we are paying them to sit in a classroom.

Now comes the hard part! Executing these plans and receiving better results than we do in the current ILT courses. We are in the preliminary stages of planning so everything I have described is very flexible. I am starting out my research by going through the current version of the course as a participant next week. It’s been years since I have taught or been a part of it so I need to refresh my memory. With everything I have learned over the past couple of years I am sure I will see the course in a whole new light.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Joe,

Sounds like exciting times for you! keep us posted on how the project moves along - my company is in the early stages of a blended approach so i am eager to hear and learn from your experience!
Cheers,
Deb Gallo

Joe Deegan said...

Exciting and a little stressful :) I will be sure to keep you updated and please let me know if there is anything I can learn from your experiences.

Thanks Deb!