A Corporate Vision for Electronic Meetings and eLearning

A Client with Vision!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to be a spectator at my 12 year old son’s basketball tournament in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His team happened to be playing a team from Tulsa, Oklahoma and one of the young men is a son of a client of ours who recently installed two-way videoconferencing to 10 locations throughout the United States.

This particular company has been on a phenomenal growth path. And there are probably a lot of reasons for this growth, high quality of product, integrity and they're very competitive. They have decided in order to meet the needs of their customers and to continue their growth each one of their employees must become much more efficient in the use of their time and talents.

We have been working with this company over the past two or three years demonstrating various aspects of electronic interconnection for key personnel and outside contractors throughout the United States. After much discussion and demonstrations they decided to install 10 two-way video locations. These were installed at their key locations in some conference rooms and private offices.

In watching this week's basketball tournament our client's son’s team won the first game and really sent a message to my son’s team. And the message was very clear if you're going to be successful you need to step up your game, because you can't add any more people each team member must show improvement and efficiency.

That's what our client is in the process of doing by establishing synchronous two-way video communications systems to their strategic business partners. Stepping up their game without adding additional manpower to meet their ever increasing need to service their customers.

eLearning Innovations, Inc. has developed distance learning strategies that help organizations implement their visions of increasing productivity and efficiency without losing quality.

Take a look on our Learning Collaboration Suite and we’re looking forward to demonstrating various features of the essential services for successful distance learning activities.

Thanks, Lorne Parker, PhD
President, eLearning Innovations, Inc.

Distance Learning Content Development is a Teamwork Process

You can tell a great Christmas gift if it keeps on giving day-after-day. My wife, Alice, gave me such a gift this past Christmas in the form of a book written by Dr. Scout Cloud Lee who has become well known for her recent adventures on the CBS television series, “Survivor.” She was a competitor on Survivor – Vanuatu, and you might recall Scout had just an artificial orthopedic knee. She still managed to finish in the top three finalists and left memorable impressions on millions of viewers.

It's not Dr. Lee's appearance on Survivor that I'm impressed with or even want to continue about in any depth. The series and results speak for themselves and Scout’s success was fabulous.

We have known and worked with Scout Cloud Lee and her colleague Dr. Carol Anne Washburn for the past 15 years in working with our clients to develop as a team and to create distance learning programs. During these years, there have been hundreds of people who have been involved with this team building learning process.

One of the many successes that stand out in my mind is the Oklahoma State agency that is known as WIC Services -- Women, Infants and Children nutritional program. This agency is a federal program that operates in each state and normally is administered by the local state Department of Health.

We have had the opportunity to work with Oklahoma WIC Services under the leadership of Traci Lundy, Director of Nutrition Education and Training. Traci and her colleagues have been part of a distance learning training initiative the past 10 years. Her colleagues have invested significant amounts of time in understanding the content development process for programs that can be delivered throughout the state to nutritional consultants who can basically have information on demand.

You may wonder, what's this got to do with Scout Cloud Lee and Annie Washburn? As far as curriculum development, we feel it was very important to build in a process that emphasizes team building. Most of the WIC content specialists are not located in the same facilities. Consequently, if they are preparing informational materials that are to be shared using distance learning technologies, it is important for them to understand the dynamics of teams.

No better than demonstrating this team process is Scout Cloud Lee and Annie Washburn using various forms of challenges that are organized on a Ranch outside Stillwater, Oklahoma. The process was fun but more importanly it truly emphasized that to be successful individuals we must learn to work together no matter how difficult that might be.

This team-building challenge always ended with an activity called the “Pamper Pole” in which individuals, donned with protective gear and tethered with safety lines, climbed a 45 foot pole and stood on the top of it, only to jump and hold onto a trapeze. Without a doubt, this is an individual feat, however, it is also supported by all the team members making sure that the individual is successful in achieving the goal of climbing and jumping from a 45 foot pole!

I am not saying that climbing the 45 foot pole and participating in team building challenges are the only ingredients for success in preparing and delivering content for diverse clientele, but it certainly has helped. Oklahoma WIC has been very successful in using various distance learning technologies (from two-way video to asynchronous technologies) to deliver their nutrition information and training to case workers throughout Oklahoma. They keenly understand the role of a team in developing and delivering first-rate training materials.

Distance learning requires us to take advantage of building unique teams; developing content for distance delivery is not necessarily the work of one individual. That is why we have always incorporated Scout Cloud Lee’s group and team dynamics into our training for distance educators.

For further information on the overall process that was used for Oklahoma WIC Services, please take a look at our Learning Collaboration Suite.

Remember, great gifts continue on giving and I'm happy to share this wonderful gift that was given to me.

I'm looking forward to your comments and experiences in developing content for Distance Learning.

Call me

Lorne A. Parker PhD
Ph: 405-743-3463