Curriculum Update: Converting Instructor-led Classes to a Blended Learning Solution

Training professionals around the world have been asked in recent years to convert existing training materials into e-Learning modules. The benefits that come from this type of conversion can be many, including decreasing training time and allowing students to move through system simulations at their own pace. There are also pitfalls that need to be addressed. One company, Sterling Commerce of Dublin, Ohio, took on an e-Learning conversion process that required over a year to complete. This is their story...

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In order to improve training for new employees, Sterling Commerce’s Customer Support Training department converted a six-week classroom curriculum into a blended learning solution, including technical simulation e-Learning modules. The Customer Support training department was challenged: few resources, small budget, decreasing class size, complex technical training materials, the need for very high retention, and immediate application of learned skills after training.

Sterling Commerce has a mission to deliver Multi-Enterprise Collaboration solutions that enable real-time visibility for business trading communities. Sterling Commerce products and services — multiple software products and an electronic trading network — help companies make better decisions by automating business processes, reduce time-to-market by reacting quickly to market changes, and increase revenues through effective collaboration with business partners. Sterling Commerce has approximately 1600 employees around the world and the headquarters are located in Dublin, Ohio.

The challenge

Because of Sterling Commerce’s global footprint, training is decentralized. The Organizational Development department, an arm of Human Resources, is responsible for major all-employee training and education offerings. They offer classes in skills that can be used by people across the organization, such as stress management, sexual harassment and business writing. Each department, however, is responsible for any technical and business skills necessary for the employees to perform their jobs efficiently. For example, Customer Support has historically had one person dedicated to instructional design and training. That trainer designed, developed and delivered classroom and e-Learning course materials for all skills related to supporting the electronic data network known as Sterling Information Broker (SIB).

Existing training situation

In the mid-1990s, the customer support department was growing rapidly and hiring approximately 10 to 15 new technical support specialists each quarter. The new employees who were going to support SIB and PC-based software products attended six to eight weeks of classroom training to learn the basic skills to resolve customer interactions. These training classes covered not only the Sterling Commerce products, but also general information about electronic data interchange (EDI), customer support softskills, and support center tools. New hires came from multiple locations within the United States and Europe. International distributors also sent support employees to Ohio to attend this classroom curriculum.

The six-week new hire curriculum included classes covering large amounts of technical information across multiple products, tools and platforms. Specific sections of the class covered topics such as:

• Customer Support soft-skills
• Call tracking system skills
• Telephone system skills
• Features and functionality of up to six Sterling Commerce software products
• Features and functionality for SIB
• Troubleshooting and problem-solving skills
• Electronic Data Interchange basics, including reading raw business data languages

In the early 2000s, the hiring pace in customer support slowed dramatically, as was the case for many businesses across the US at that time. Instead of 10 to 15 new employees a quarter for these classes, the need was reduced to only two or three new employees per quarter. Sometimes these new employees were not able to start work in the same week, which meant the trainer had the additional challenge of covering the same instructor-led materials with students on differing schedules.

A project was initiated in early 2003 to rebuild this training program to better match the current business situation at Sterling Commerce. (See the Sidebar for details on the project plan.)

Resource challenges

The challenge early on was a resource issue. It was impossible to develop new coursework for the continuing education of existing employees while the only assigned trainer was delivering long, instructor-led sessions for new hires. When the trainer was unavailable because she was teaching in a classroom for six weeks, very little design or development of other materials was possible. Virtually no continuing education in new products or releases was developed for the SIB Customer Support staff. All other projects came to a halt until the new employees were up to speed and acting as functioning members of their call center teams. Sometimes the product development staff stepped in to fill the gap and provided informal knowledge transfers to help disseminate information, but formal training was needed and no further training resources were available.

Logistics challenges

New hires needed to become productive as quickly as possible. The six-week classroom sessions were a luxury Customer Support could no longer afford. In addition, it no longer made business sense for the single trainer to spend weeks teaching support center skills one-on-one for each new employee, while the rest of the staff went without the training they needed for new products and services.

It was also becoming more important for new employees at remote locations to have access to quality training materials. After the terrorist attacks in the United States in September, 2001, travel was no longer acceptable or easy to arrange for Support employees. International Sterling Commerce and distributor sites preferred to gain the skills they needed without traveling to the US and staying at corporate headquarters for weeks at a time.

Managers at all locations wanted new employees actively solving customer calls and answering telephone and e-mail contacts as soon as possible. The skills needed were highly technical and specialized.

Now, when a hiring request was granted, the manager not only wanted the new employee as a fully active team member quickly, but the manager needed to know that the new employee had the skills to resolve customer queries on the first call. In other words, management wanted training time decreased, but wanted proof that the trainee had learned skills necessary for the job.

The support employees for the SIB Customer Support team directly handle electronic customer data for thousands of businesses. They manage customer accounts and monitor the flow of data through SIB, one of the world’s largest electronic data networks. It was important to Sterling to make sure the employees with access to the SIB network were well trained and capable of adding, changing and deleting customer records while maintaining uninterrupted data flow for every customer. Management needed confidence that new employees were capable of navigating the complex network environment.

Evaluation challenges

The existing classroom curriculum provided specific feedback for management on each student. The trainer would administer written tests and individual or small group activities regularly to check for comprehension. She would then speak to each hiring manager periodically throughout the six weeks to report on the new employee’s performance. If the trainer had concerns about the new employee’s skills, performance or even about the employee’s attitude, she would discuss these with the manager. Sometimes intervention activities were planned during the training period, including additional one-on-one mentoring for students who were struggling with specific skills or tasks. Managers would expect this type of feedback from the new version of the training curriculum as well. This posed one of the biggest challenges of the project.

The plan

The existing classroom materials were well established. They had been used and maintained for over five years. Updates were made each quarter to reflect any changes to the SIB network. Students had provided useful feedback to improve the materials, and had tested the classroom activities and exercises thoroughly.

To begin planning for the conversion project, the first step was to determine the media for each section of the class. The body of material was large and the learning objectives were numerous. It was immediately apparent that a single medium would not be the most effective solution. The Customer Support instructional designer intended, from the very beginning of the project, to blend the learning objectives and materials in different forms of media — using the most appropriate form depending on objectives, tools and past experience with the classroom environment. With limited resources, including lack of designated development budget and only one person dedicated to the project, the options were limited. Any material development would have to be fast and inexpensive; it was imperative to leverage existing materials wherever possible.

Media choices

In the six-week program, approximately half of the time was devoted to training employees to use support tools for SIB. Many of the tools were stable and the processes were well established. Although the audience was not large, it was diverse and included students from various physical locations — other cities, states and countries. The Customer Support instructional designer had some experience in developing e-Learning, so she decided to break this part of the training down further and examine content for the best pieces to convert to self-paced e-Learning modules. This was an expensive option, but it was the best way to simulate the support environment. The designer planned to find ways to shorten development time, and knew she would have to talk to experts in the field to make this part of the project work.

In one particular mainframe system, there were many tasks the students needed to master. This mainframe system did not offer a viable training environment, so new hires were generally trained in the live, production environment. e-Learning modules for many of these tasks would increase security for the production environment and provide a safe place for the students to learn basic skills. As a result, realistic simulations

for many of these mainframe tasks would be the best alternative to instructor-led classroom sessions. e-Learning modules for these topics could also be reused by employees in other departments who touched the mainframe screens occasionally or who needed to understand how to manage customer accounts on SIB. In this way, the training could be leveraged “just in time” across multiple business departments, helping employees in other areas of the company acquire skills quickly in a secure environment.

Not all of the material could be converted to self-paced online modules. Support for the SIB network involved many variables on the customers’ sites and numerous variations of customer configurations on Sterling Commerce’s systems. The e-Learning modules would have to be accompanied by other training media to facilitate knowledge transfer and problem solving for complex combinations of services. The curriculum would still need some sort of instructor-led, classroom interaction for the best learning experience. Live classroom events, such as question and answer sessions with experts in the SIB environment, would be valuable for the learner. The training designer would determine the best combination of media for an effective blended learning solution.

Blended learning

The Customer Support training program had historically included monitoring experiences for new employees, which set the stage for a comprehensive mentoring program. In the old class schedule, students spent a few days out of the six-week curriculum sitting with an experienced Support Specialist listening to live customer calls and watching the Specialist use the tools to do their job. The new mentoring program would assign each student to a Senior Support Specialist on his new team for the duration of the training period. The student would not only use the mentor as a resource for questions throughout their training experience, but would also work on some assignments and monitor real customer phone calls with their mentor. The goal was to establish solid working relationships with team members early on — and not to delay those relationships until after the student sat in a classroom for the first six weeks of their employment. They would immediately be made an integral part of their team.

The training designer knew she would have to develop self-study activities and reading materials to help transfer additional knowledge. Sterling Commerce has an Information Development (technical writing) department separate from any training group. The training designer would leverage their documentation on the SIB platform — assigning reading and creating corresponding activities, worksheets or tasks to check for comprehension. Existing documentation did not contain all of the topics or skills, so training workbooks would have to be written in order to formalize some of what had been taught in classroom lecture. This material would complement the existing Information Development documentation about the SIB network.

Combining the mentoring program and self-study workbooks to replace a portion of the classroom training meant that specific materials would have to be developed for the mentors themselves. Senior or high-performing support specialists would act as mentors while still handling their normal job duties. Most of the mentors had no history or experience with teaching, and they would need support to succeed in this new role. Instructor versions of the workbooks — including expected or correct answers to all of the exercises and questions — were necessary for the success of the learning experience. The training department would teach the mentors how to use the materials, reassuring hiring managers that the students would acquire the same skills as if they had been taught in a more formal classroom environment.

Based on the needs of the Customer Support department and the history of the training curriculum, the training designer chose these blended learning options:

• e-Learning modules
• Instructor-led classroom sessions
• Mentoring or one-on-one training
• Self-study exercises
• Reading and study materials

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