SlideShare a Scribd company logo
1 of 6
Download to read offline
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!



How e-learning in the process industries can improve employee skills and
meet organizational goals

Executive Summary

Today’s process industries depend heavily on employees who are trained in the
right skills that they need to run the process plants and facilities. It is not for
nothing that an ideal organization is also called The Learning Organization. With
shortage of staff due to competitive pressures like downsizing and outsourcing, it is
highly critical for any industry, to ensure that all of its employees are trained
regularly. This is especially so, for businesses like the process industry (chemical
processing, oil & gas production, refining, etc) who are heavily involved in
engineering and technology, because of the rapid changes and advancements (and
equally rapid obsolescence) in technology today. Training employees and other
stakeholders in your industry, regularly, is a daunting task- if attempted to do with
the traditional instructor led training.

In this White Paper, we examine the issues involved and see how e-learning can
offer a better solution.

The challenge of learning in the traditional way

In current times, in the process industries, there are several problems and issues
related to learning in the traditional way. By traditional way, we mean attending a
live class, or training workshop, or information seminar, where the expert teacher
or instructor teaches a group of learners on the subject matter.

The problems and issues include the following:

• Not all employees can be spared for such training at the same time.

• Costs of travel and stay, if learners are coming from different locations to study.

• Different employees may have different levels of grasping, hence even after
undergoing the same course, each learner’s level of understanding will be different.

• Pressure on the Instructor to complete the course in shortest possible time.

• No scope for learners to revise the course concepts or re-take the course again
and again, unless the company has a policy of regular refresher training. However,
typically this is done only for essential training like mandatory safety training, fire-
fighting, etc.

        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 1
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!



• Learning is a continuous process, but instructor led training makes it a one shot
event.

Let us see now how this situation can be improved.

The case for e-learning

Hence all over the world businesses, big or small, local or global are turning to e-
learning as a means of imparting effective learning. The advantages of e-learning
are:

• No need to spare all employees at the same time. The employee can choose time
and place of learning.

• It will be self paced and if need be can be run again and again till employee is
confidently well versed in the subject.

• No time constraints. Learning can be in bite sized chunks or all at once-totally as
per the learner’s need-rather than the instructor’s comfort.

• A large number of courses can be managed through suitable LMS (Learning
Management Systems) by a very small number of training administrators. The LMS
can also document and log number of courses taken, test scores, time taken, etc
for each learner which can provide intelligent data for developing your employee’s
skills.

• It results in measurable learning. Due to score tracking, progress tracking and
time tracking, the performance of each employee undergoing the training becomes
measurable. In earlier days with traditional training, this was typically not done.

• Flexible course deployment---either through stand alone CD ROMs, Internet or a
companywide Intranet. Hence no travel and stay expenses, which can be a
substantial cost today.

Geography is history. Learning can be anywhere, anytime at your
convenience.




        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 2
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!



The types of solutions

An e- learning solution can be either off the shelf courses or a custom designed
course.

Off the shelf courses

You can find several excellently designed off-the-shelf courses in several topic areas
all over the world. These include a variety of topics like Hazardous Area
Instrumentation, Safety Instrumented Systems, Gas Monitors and RFID.

Custom Designed courses

A custom designed course has to be designed keeping in mind the audience, goals
of the course, time allotted to the course and testing requirements. You should
ensure that a custom designed course provider can provide to you all these
resources at competitive costs. Generally a custom designed course will be much
more expensive than an off the shelf course.

Customized Off the Shelf courses

In the case of some e-learning providers, it may also be possible to take one of
their standard, off the shelf courses and customize it (fine tune it) to meet the
special needs of your own organization. Check whether your e-learning course
provider can offer this option (by the way, Abhisam Software can offer this option).

Use the right tools

There are two ways to produce an e-learning course. One way (the older way) is
make a course which is a hard-coded in software which typically runs like a movie.
Once produced it is difficult (and expensive) to make changes or to upgrade a
course.

The second way is to use an authoring tool for production of the course. Usage of
authoring tools makes it easier to make changes and modifications in the course
with the passage of time (to produce better or newer versions of same course).
Ensure that your custom e-learning service provider uses the right authoring tools.




        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 3
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!



Going beyond traditional courses-Electronic Learning Manuals ( Not just e-
books!)

One should think of going beyond just traditional courses and putting all of your
company’s user manuals, procedures, maintenance manuals and installation guides
into e-learning modules. This is especially useful for companies who sell capital
equipment and need to train their customers thoroughly. Instead of supplying a
staid user manual (with perhaps a three day course thrown in for good measure), it
would be a better option to convert all this knowledge into an e- learning module
which can then be used teach everybody who needs to know it anytime.

Please note that we are not talking here of e-books or e-manuals, which are
nothing but soft copies of the same dull manuals! A full fledged e-learning course
would have animations, simulations and interactive exercises that help the learner
grasp complex subjects very easily.

Example 1: Say, your company makes an oil fired heater and needs to train the
customers in its operation. What better way to train them, than do it through an e-
learning course, which through the right combination of text matter, graphics ,
animation and sound can create quite a lasting impact. This kind of audio-visual
training has better retention amongst plant operators than going through a dull
manual.

Example 2: An engineering company wants to train its engineers and designers in
hazardous area instrumentation, including area classification, designing intrinsically
safe instrument loops and so on. Rather than sending a few of them to a training
institute, it can simply download the Hazardous Area Instrumentation course and
ask employees to take it. After the course the employees simply login to a web
based system, take an online test and get certified. The records are available for
archiving purposes to the company.

Deployment on a Learning Management System

Ideally courses which are organization-specific should be able to be deployed
immediately in a cost effective manner. The easiest way to do this is to host the
course (say a ‘Sales Force training’ course) on your e-learning service providers
Learning Management System and all your salesmen (who are generally on the
move) to view it through an Internet connection, in a simple browser like Internet
Explorer. Thus no new software need be installed at your branch locations or on
your salesmen’s laptops. A browser is generally always present on any machine.

        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 4
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!


Thus your course need not require any special “player”, which needs to be installed
on client machines.

Similarly, say you are an engineering consultancy organization with a large pool of
engineers that you would like to train. Then, a course hosted on your e-learning
service providers Learning Management System, can be taken by all your engineers
in all your locations, on their desktops, laptops, PDAs, all over the globe , in
different time zones, at their convenience. Can you compare any traditionally
delivered course with this flexibility at a fraction of the cost?

At the end of a period (say every day, week or month), your e-learning service
provider can give you the details of all employee activity on the Learning
Management System. This includes data like employee name, courses taken,
number of hours spent on a particular course or module, scores on the test and
certifications attained. All this data can be archived for furnishing to higher
management, or external auditors from regulatory agencies or ISO 9002
certification auditors.

Software as a Service (SAAS)

This is the new concept that is fast gaining acceptance. Previously companies used
to spend a great deal of time, money, effort and staffing on building up their own
proprietary Learning Management System (LMS), that used to host courses and
track learner activity and performance. But why pay hundreds of thousands of
dollars on such systems, when e-learning service providers can offer you the same
LMS as a hosted service? This will completely free you from all the server and
software upgrades, backups and maintenance headaches of “owning” such a
system.

You can either ask your e-learning provider to deploy the courses that you need as
an individual download (that resides on your learner’s PC) or to host it themselves
on an LMS externally. This saves you hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs
every year and lets you do your main job peacefully.

For example, Abhisam Software can offer their courses as downloads or as a SAAS,
leaving you free of any headaches.




        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 5
Abhisam Software Whitepapers

www.abhisam.com
                                                       Discover the power of e-learning!


Conclusion

e-learning is a technology whose time has arrived and companies, especially those
in the Process Industries now have compelling reasons to adopt it, which was not
the case a few years back.

If you are not considering e-learning for your organization, then you are losing an
excellent opportunity to sharpen skills, increase productivity and thus increase the
general skill level of your organization, at a fraction of the cost of traditional
learning.

If you have any comments or questions, or you would like to know something more
about how e-learning can help you train your employees better, or meet your
organizational goals, please send us an email to mail@abhisam.com

We will be glad to assist you!

For more free White Papers like this one, please visit http://www.abhisam.com




        ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved.                  Page 6

More Related Content

How e learning in the process industries can improve employee skills and meet organizational goals

  • 1. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! How e-learning in the process industries can improve employee skills and meet organizational goals Executive Summary Today’s process industries depend heavily on employees who are trained in the right skills that they need to run the process plants and facilities. It is not for nothing that an ideal organization is also called The Learning Organization. With shortage of staff due to competitive pressures like downsizing and outsourcing, it is highly critical for any industry, to ensure that all of its employees are trained regularly. This is especially so, for businesses like the process industry (chemical processing, oil & gas production, refining, etc) who are heavily involved in engineering and technology, because of the rapid changes and advancements (and equally rapid obsolescence) in technology today. Training employees and other stakeholders in your industry, regularly, is a daunting task- if attempted to do with the traditional instructor led training. In this White Paper, we examine the issues involved and see how e-learning can offer a better solution. The challenge of learning in the traditional way In current times, in the process industries, there are several problems and issues related to learning in the traditional way. By traditional way, we mean attending a live class, or training workshop, or information seminar, where the expert teacher or instructor teaches a group of learners on the subject matter. The problems and issues include the following: • Not all employees can be spared for such training at the same time. • Costs of travel and stay, if learners are coming from different locations to study. • Different employees may have different levels of grasping, hence even after undergoing the same course, each learner’s level of understanding will be different. • Pressure on the Instructor to complete the course in shortest possible time. • No scope for learners to revise the course concepts or re-take the course again and again, unless the company has a policy of regular refresher training. However, typically this is done only for essential training like mandatory safety training, fire- fighting, etc. ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 1
  • 2. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! • Learning is a continuous process, but instructor led training makes it a one shot event. Let us see now how this situation can be improved. The case for e-learning Hence all over the world businesses, big or small, local or global are turning to e- learning as a means of imparting effective learning. The advantages of e-learning are: • No need to spare all employees at the same time. The employee can choose time and place of learning. • It will be self paced and if need be can be run again and again till employee is confidently well versed in the subject. • No time constraints. Learning can be in bite sized chunks or all at once-totally as per the learner’s need-rather than the instructor’s comfort. • A large number of courses can be managed through suitable LMS (Learning Management Systems) by a very small number of training administrators. The LMS can also document and log number of courses taken, test scores, time taken, etc for each learner which can provide intelligent data for developing your employee’s skills. • It results in measurable learning. Due to score tracking, progress tracking and time tracking, the performance of each employee undergoing the training becomes measurable. In earlier days with traditional training, this was typically not done. • Flexible course deployment---either through stand alone CD ROMs, Internet or a companywide Intranet. Hence no travel and stay expenses, which can be a substantial cost today. Geography is history. Learning can be anywhere, anytime at your convenience. ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 2
  • 3. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! The types of solutions An e- learning solution can be either off the shelf courses or a custom designed course. Off the shelf courses You can find several excellently designed off-the-shelf courses in several topic areas all over the world. These include a variety of topics like Hazardous Area Instrumentation, Safety Instrumented Systems, Gas Monitors and RFID. Custom Designed courses A custom designed course has to be designed keeping in mind the audience, goals of the course, time allotted to the course and testing requirements. You should ensure that a custom designed course provider can provide to you all these resources at competitive costs. Generally a custom designed course will be much more expensive than an off the shelf course. Customized Off the Shelf courses In the case of some e-learning providers, it may also be possible to take one of their standard, off the shelf courses and customize it (fine tune it) to meet the special needs of your own organization. Check whether your e-learning course provider can offer this option (by the way, Abhisam Software can offer this option). Use the right tools There are two ways to produce an e-learning course. One way (the older way) is make a course which is a hard-coded in software which typically runs like a movie. Once produced it is difficult (and expensive) to make changes or to upgrade a course. The second way is to use an authoring tool for production of the course. Usage of authoring tools makes it easier to make changes and modifications in the course with the passage of time (to produce better or newer versions of same course). Ensure that your custom e-learning service provider uses the right authoring tools. ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 3
  • 4. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! Going beyond traditional courses-Electronic Learning Manuals ( Not just e- books!) One should think of going beyond just traditional courses and putting all of your company’s user manuals, procedures, maintenance manuals and installation guides into e-learning modules. This is especially useful for companies who sell capital equipment and need to train their customers thoroughly. Instead of supplying a staid user manual (with perhaps a three day course thrown in for good measure), it would be a better option to convert all this knowledge into an e- learning module which can then be used teach everybody who needs to know it anytime. Please note that we are not talking here of e-books or e-manuals, which are nothing but soft copies of the same dull manuals! A full fledged e-learning course would have animations, simulations and interactive exercises that help the learner grasp complex subjects very easily. Example 1: Say, your company makes an oil fired heater and needs to train the customers in its operation. What better way to train them, than do it through an e- learning course, which through the right combination of text matter, graphics , animation and sound can create quite a lasting impact. This kind of audio-visual training has better retention amongst plant operators than going through a dull manual. Example 2: An engineering company wants to train its engineers and designers in hazardous area instrumentation, including area classification, designing intrinsically safe instrument loops and so on. Rather than sending a few of them to a training institute, it can simply download the Hazardous Area Instrumentation course and ask employees to take it. After the course the employees simply login to a web based system, take an online test and get certified. The records are available for archiving purposes to the company. Deployment on a Learning Management System Ideally courses which are organization-specific should be able to be deployed immediately in a cost effective manner. The easiest way to do this is to host the course (say a ‘Sales Force training’ course) on your e-learning service providers Learning Management System and all your salesmen (who are generally on the move) to view it through an Internet connection, in a simple browser like Internet Explorer. Thus no new software need be installed at your branch locations or on your salesmen’s laptops. A browser is generally always present on any machine. ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 4
  • 5. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! Thus your course need not require any special “player”, which needs to be installed on client machines. Similarly, say you are an engineering consultancy organization with a large pool of engineers that you would like to train. Then, a course hosted on your e-learning service providers Learning Management System, can be taken by all your engineers in all your locations, on their desktops, laptops, PDAs, all over the globe , in different time zones, at their convenience. Can you compare any traditionally delivered course with this flexibility at a fraction of the cost? At the end of a period (say every day, week or month), your e-learning service provider can give you the details of all employee activity on the Learning Management System. This includes data like employee name, courses taken, number of hours spent on a particular course or module, scores on the test and certifications attained. All this data can be archived for furnishing to higher management, or external auditors from regulatory agencies or ISO 9002 certification auditors. Software as a Service (SAAS) This is the new concept that is fast gaining acceptance. Previously companies used to spend a great deal of time, money, effort and staffing on building up their own proprietary Learning Management System (LMS), that used to host courses and track learner activity and performance. But why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on such systems, when e-learning service providers can offer you the same LMS as a hosted service? This will completely free you from all the server and software upgrades, backups and maintenance headaches of “owning” such a system. You can either ask your e-learning provider to deploy the courses that you need as an individual download (that resides on your learner’s PC) or to host it themselves on an LMS externally. This saves you hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs every year and lets you do your main job peacefully. For example, Abhisam Software can offer their courses as downloads or as a SAAS, leaving you free of any headaches. ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 5
  • 6. Abhisam Software Whitepapers www.abhisam.com Discover the power of e-learning! Conclusion e-learning is a technology whose time has arrived and companies, especially those in the Process Industries now have compelling reasons to adopt it, which was not the case a few years back. If you are not considering e-learning for your organization, then you are losing an excellent opportunity to sharpen skills, increase productivity and thus increase the general skill level of your organization, at a fraction of the cost of traditional learning. If you have any comments or questions, or you would like to know something more about how e-learning can help you train your employees better, or meet your organizational goals, please send us an email to mail@abhisam.com We will be glad to assist you! For more free White Papers like this one, please visit http://www.abhisam.com ©Copyright 2010. Abhisam Software. All rights reserved. Page 6