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The State of the Sectorwritten by Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele
ASSOCIATION E-LEARNINGM
arc
h 2
009
published by Tagoras
www.tagoras.com
800.867.2046
2!COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
© 2009 Tagoras, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
*****
Purchase of Association E-learning 2009: State of the Sector entitles the purchaser to use of a single copy of this document. If the purchaser is an organization, Tagoras authorizes the reproduction of no more than five copies of this document, including electronically transmitting such copies, for use solely by employees of the purchaser.
Quoting from this report on a limited basis for the purposes of creating articles, blog posts, and other publications is considered within the realm of “fair use.”
Other than as provided for above, no portion of the material copyrighted herein may be reprinted or published in any form without the prior written consent of Tagoras, Inc. To purchase additional copies of this document, please visit http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/association-e-learning-2009.html.
*****
The contents of this document are based on data gathered from a variety of sources. While we deem these sources,
including subjective estimates and opinions of the report authors, to be reliable, Tagoras does not guarantee the
accuracy of the document’s contents and expressly disclaims any liability by reason of inaccurate source materials.
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Copyright and DisclaimerThe Fine Print
3!TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary | 6
Introduction to Association E-learning 2009 | 9
The Overview | 11
! Participant Demographics 11
! ! Interviews 12
! Purpose, Benefits, and Barriers 13
! Satisfaction with E-learning 16
! ! Satisfaction in Specific Areas 17
The Operational Perspective | 19
! Products: What’s Offered 19
! ! E-learning Products and Services 19
! ! The Appeal of Webinars 20
! ! Vignettes and Videos 21
! ! Process Examples 22
! Personnel and Tools: Who Gets It Done and How 23
! ! Job Titles 23
! ! Adequacy of Resources 24
! ! Where to Turn for Help 25
! ! Departments Responsible for E-learning 28
! ! Prevalence of Outsourcing 28
! ! The Cost of Expertise 30
! ! Authoring Tools 31
! ! Instructional Designers 31
! Summary 34
! Trends and Predictions 34
! Questions to Consider 35
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Table of ContentsAssociation E-learning 2009: State of the Sector
4!TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Business Perspective | 37
! The Revenue Imperative 37
! Strategy 38
! Return on Investment 39
! The Impact of the Economy 40
! Product 41
! ! Continuing Education and Certification 43
! Pricing 46
! ! Pricing Across Industries 46
! ! Pricing and Formats 46
! ! Pricing and Age of Program 49
! ! Pricing Strategy and Models 50
! ! Discounts 51
! Distribution 53
! ! Market Penetration 53
! Promotion 54
! ! Relationship with Marketing Department 56
! Summary 58
! Trends and Predictions 58
! Questions to Consider 59
The Technology Perspective | 60
! End User Concerns 60
! Webinar Platforms 61
! Learning Management Systems 63
! ! LMS and LCMS Packages 65
! ! Gray Areas 65
! E-learning and AMSes 66
! ! LMS/AMS Integration 67
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5!TABLE OF CONTENTS
! E-learning Guidelines and Standards 68
! ! Key E-learning Standards in Brief 69
! Social Media and E-learning 70
! ! Social Media Tools 72
! ! Associations Speak About Social Media 73
! ! Providers Speak About Social Media 74
! Summary 75
! Trends and Predictions 75
! Questions to Consider 75
The State of the Section | 77
Appendix A: Participating Organizations | 84
Appendix B: Survey Data | 85
Appendix C: Survey Methodology | 100
Appendix D: About Tagoras | 102
Case Studies
! Building Internal Capacity—and Interest: Community Associations Institute 27
! Cultivating Success: Southern Building Material Association 36
! More Demand for “Fresher,” Shorter Topics: International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans 45
! Certification Creates Demand; E-learning Assists: National Air Duct Cleaners Association 52
! Creating New Value—Globally: SSPC: The Society for Protective Coatings 62
! Simple Satisfies (Association of Cable Communicators Chats) 71
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6!EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Association E-learning 2009: State of the Sector represents a major effort to assess the state of e-learning in the association market and provide insight into how the role of e-learning in the sector may evolve in the coming months and years.
At the core of the report is a survey of associations conducted at the end of 2008. Nearly 500 organizations responded to the survey, providing extensive data about how they are using e-learning, what tools and technologies they employ to create and deliver e-learning, and the business practices that support their e-learning initiatives. To supplement this data, the report authors conducted in-depth interviews with 20 associations and 12 e-learning technology and service providers to the sector.
The OverviewOut of 488 responses to the survey, 61.1 percent were from individuals who indicated their organizations are currently using e-learning. An additional 26.2 percent indicated they plan to start using e-learning within the coming 6 to 12 months, and 12.7 percent indicated that they have no plans to start using e-learning in the coming 12 months.
Not surprisingly, associations use e-learning mainly to deliver professional development to members, and cost-effectiveness, convenience, and the ability to reach more learners were among the biggest benefits identified by survey respondents. Overall, organizations report that they are more satisfied (78.8 percent) than not (21.6 percent) with their e-learning initiatives. The only specific area in which these organizations report being somewhat more dissatisfied (35.5 percent) than satisfied (33.5 percent) is in revenue generation from their offerings.
While the survey data indicate that there is a somewhat greater tendency for larger associations already to have embraced e-learning, there is clearly significant e-learning activity among smaller organizations. Additionally, it appears that smaller organizations may lead the growth in new programs in the sector for the coming year. Among
respondents who indicated that their organizations will begin using e-learning in the coming six months, 75.5 percent are from organizations with annual budgets under $5 million, and 32.7 percent are from organizations with budgets of less than $500,000. The largest cluster of these respondents (36 percent) also come from organizations with fewer than 5 staff.
The Operational PerspectiveMost of the associations surveyed or interviewed for this report use a combination of in-house and contract resources to produce their e-learning offerings, and the majority of those offerings take the form of live Webinars. Nearly 70 percent of survey respondents who currently use e-learning reported live Webinars as one of their delivery formats. Recorded Webinars (56 percent) and self-paced online courses (54.5 percent) followed in relatively distant second and third places. No other formats were nearly as popular, but a significant number of associations—40.4 percent of survey respondents—do make use of member-only discussion boards.
With respect to developing e-learning, organizations that currently have programs are about evenly split on whether they do (43.5 percent) or do not (45.9 percent) make use of professional instructional designers. Among the tools that organizations use to develop e-learning, Microsoft PowerPoint tops the list—not surprising since it is often the basis for Webinar presentations as well as on-demand courses.
In most cases, association e-learning initiatives are managed by an education department (which, at small organizations, may mean a single person who wears many hats). Interviews conducted for this
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Executive SummaryAssociation E-learning 2009: State of the Sector
This report represents a major effort to assess the state of e-learning in the association market.
7!EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
report suggest, however, that the individuals who wind up with responsibility for e-learning programs often do not come from an education background. Moreover, there was a general sense among interviewees that opportunities for networking and knowledge-sharing among peers in the sector is lacking.
The Technology PerspectiveAmong the Webinar platforms used by organizations, WebEx (27 percent) and GoToMeeting (23 percent) lead the pack with Microsoft Live Meeting (14 percent) a distant third.
Just under half (49.1 percent) of the respondents that currently offer e-learning report using a learning management system (LMS) or are planning to within the next 12 months. Among those organizations, the majority (71.1 percent) report that they either have integrated or plan to integrate the LMS with their association management system (AMS).
Knowledge of and adherence to common e-learning guidelines and standards appears to be quite low in the sector. Adherence to the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), the most common set of e-learning standards, was considered very important or absolutely necessary by only 27 percent of survey respondents currently using e-learning.
Social media is attracting some interest in the association e-learning community but leaves much room for growth. The dominant social tool in both current (32.7 percent) and planned (45 percent) e-learning initiatives is discussion forums. Among the tools that many associate most closely with the social
Web, social networks (25 percent, combining public and private sites) came out on top, followed by blogs (16.5 percent) and wikis (10.1 percent). All three tools—but particularly social networks (32.1 percent) and blogs (25.7 percent)—show stronger interest among respondents planning to implement e-learning.
The Business PerspectiveMost of the organizations interviewed for this report along with the vast majority of survey respondents currently using e-learning (86 percent) or planning to use e-learning (77.4 percent) charge or plan to charge for some or all of their offerings. The average price per content hour for organizations currently offering e-learning is US$56.79 while the most common level of discount for member course purchases was from 10 to 19 percent.
Interviews conducted for this report as well as a brief follow-on survey among the original survey participants suggest that most organizations do not have a formal e-learning strategy in place or a formal approach to pricing their offerings. Only 30.9 percent of respondents to the follow-on survey reported having a formal, documented e-learning strategy, and only 20 percent indicated that their organizations have a formal, documented process for setting prices.
On average, organizations using e-learning reach approximately 18 percent of their membership base with their offerings. Most organizations provide some form of credit—for example, continuing education units or a certificate—to their learners.
With respect to marketing methods, e-mail marketing and word of mouth lead the pack by a significant margin. Among organizations currently offering e-learning, 93 percent report e-mail as either very important or absolutely necessary, and 83.8 percent report word of mouth as very important or absolutely necessary. The next closest contender is banner ads on the organizations’ own Web sites, which 49.8 percent report as very important or absolutely necessary. Notably, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and promotional Webcasts—all mainstays of current Internet marketing practices—do not appear to have
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On average, organizations using e-learning reach 18 percent of their membership base with their offerings.
8!EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
much of a place in current association marketing strategies for e-learning.
The State of the SectorE-learning has arrived in the association sector but remains immature. A range of factors—from the current state of the economy to technology advances to the rise of new generations—point to growth and to a clear opportunity for e-learning to transition into a more significant, more strategic part of the mix of services associations provide to members. As this transition occurs, it is likely to be accompanied by the following:
• Growth in implementation of learning management systems and integration of these with association management systems
• An increase in the amount of on-demand educational content offered by organizations
• An increased focus on instructional design along with development of in-house instructional design capabilities or use of contractors
• Relatively slow adoption of social media for e-learning purposes until organizations develop strategies and business models for products that integrate social media with more traditional content
• An increase in competition that will, in turn, be a significant factor in the adoption of more sophisticated marketing practices
New, relevant resources and a more cohesive professional network for e-learning in the sector may be the most valuable byproducts of these changes in association e-learning.
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9!INTRODUCTION
To the best of our knowledge, Association E-learning
2009: State of the Sector, represents the first major effort to assess the state of e-learning in the association market and provide insight into how the role of e-learning in the sector may evolve in the coming years.†
Our hope is that the information here will be useful in providing points of reference and perspective to organizations planning for e-learning initiatives or hoping to grow their current initiatives. We view it as a starting point for continuing, in-depth research about e-learning in the sector that we plan to conduct over the coming years.
At the core of the report is a survey of associations conducted from November 20, 2008, to December 19, 2008. We received 488 responses to this survey. Out of these responses, 61.1 percent were from individuals who indicated that their organization is currently using e-learning. An additional 26.2 percent indicated they plan to start using e-learning within the coming 6 to 12 months, while 12.7 percent indicated they have no plans to start using e-learning in the coming 12 months.
It is important to note that we were purposely broad in defining e-learning. In our experience, a significant number of organizations limit the term e-
learning to self-paced online courses and do not use it for Webinars, Webcasts, or other forms of educational content delivery online. In an attempt to ensure that survey participants took into account all forms of online education, the following definition was presented prior to asking organizations whether they use e-learning to deliver education:
E-learning, also known as computer-based
training or online distance education, refers to
computer-enabled learning carried out by
individuals or groups outside of a physical
classroom, either over the Internet or an internal
network. There are many methods of e-learning
such as Webcasts, self-paced tutorials, podcasts,
facilitated discussions, etc., but for the purpose of
this survey, any activity in which a user receives
instruction via a computer counts as e-learning.
To add to the data collected through the survey, we also conducted phone or e-mail interviews with 20 associations and 12 providers of e-learning technologies and services to the sector. These interviews were conducted with the promise of anonymity so that interviewees could feel comfortable speaking as openly as possible. Only in
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12.7%
12.7%
13.5% 61.1% Currently deliver e-learningPlanning to deliver e-learning in next 6 monthsPlanning to deliver e-learning in next 12 monthsNo plans for e-learning for at least next 12 months
Does your organization currently using e-learning to deliver education?
Over 60 percent of organizations surveyed currently use e-learning.
Introduction to Association E-learning 2009About This Report
† We conducted surveys focusing on e-learning in the broader nonprofit sector, including associations, from 2004 through 2006.
The current report represents a continuation of those earlier efforts in many ways, but is also much more comprehensive. The 2004
through 2006 survey results are available, free of charge, at www.jeffthomascobb.com/writing.
10!INTRODUCTION
few limited instances, and with the permission of the interviewee, are the sources of quotations or other information revealed in the report. Our frequent use of quotations from the interviews is purposeful—we heard from many interviewees that they do not have sense of what their peers are doing or where to go to find out what other organizations are doing. Our hope is that the extensive use of quotations will help a voice for e-learning in the sector emerge.
In addition to quoting frequently from the interviews, we have also crafted brief case studies to highlight the efforts of some of the organizations we interviewed. These were done with the organizations’ permission, and we tried to be as diverse as possible in selecting the organizations. The case studies span a range of industries and feature associations of varying size and geographic focus. Our intention is to continue to mine case studies from the more than 300 pages of interview transcripts we have collected as well as from our ongoing conversation with organizations and to share these, as they become available, with purchasers of the report.
Finally, the two authors of this report have each worked in e-learning for more than a decade and have worked specifically with associations for the better part of that time. Throughout the report we provide our own analysis of the information collected through the survey and the interviews, and we draw on our own experience to offer perspectives that may not be readily apparent from the data. Our approach to doing this is relatively conservative, based on the limitations naturally imposed by a non-probability survey (see the chapter “Methodology”), but even more importantly, on our sense that we are still in the early stages of e-learning in the association sector—a sector that is, by its nature, quite diverse and fragmented—and that broad conclusions must be put forward cautiously.
The report is structured into 10 sections:
1.The executive summary
2.This introduction
3.An overview that discusses demographic data, the purposes of association e-learning, the barriers to
and benefits of e-learning, and satisfaction with e-learning
4.A chapter on operations and e-learning that looks at what’s produced, who produces it, using what
process, and with what tools
5.A chapter that takes the business perspective, looking at the strategy that drives e-learning initiatives,
expenses and income, marketing, and competition
6.A chapter on e-learning technology, including the end user point of view and the organizational
standpoint
7.The state of e-learning in the association sector based on our analysis of the survey data and
interviews
8.A discussion of the methodology used for collecting the data that is the basis of this report
9.A series of appendices that provide a list of participating organizations, the raw online survey data
(parts of which are cited throughout the report), the survey methodology, and information about
Tagoras (publisher of this report) and Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele (authors of this report)
Our sincere hope is this report proves useful to associations as they assess their e-learning initiatives or contemplate throwing their hats in the e-learning ring.
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Partial data from the online survey is included throughout this report. See Appendix B for the raw survey results.
The chapters on the operational, business, and technology perspectives end with a summary of trends and a list of questions for organizations to ask themselves.
11!THE OVERVIEW
This section provides demographic data, discusses the purposes for which associations undertake e-learning, looks at the perceived benefits of and barriers to e-learning, and analyzes associations’ satisfaction with e-learning initiatives.
Participant DemographicsAs the demographic data provided at the end of this document indicate, responses to the survey were distributed across a broad range of organizations—from those with a very small staff and relatively small membership base to those with more than 250 staff members and budgets greater than $50 million per year.
The largest clusters of survey respondents in the overall range were nationally focused organizations (39.7 percent),
organizations with annual budgets between $1 million and $5 million (37.2 percent), and organizations with staff of between 1 and 5 individuals (26.7 percent). The most common membership size was between 1,000 and 5,000 individuals.
Out of the group of respondents that indicated current use of e-learning, the largest cluster was also nationally focused (48.8 percent), had budgets between $1 million and $5 million (39.4 percent), and had staff of between 6 and 10 individuals (17.2 percent). The most common membership size was 1,000 or less.
Overall, organizations indicating they are currently using e-learning were more likely than the group as whole to be nationally or internationally focused (75.7 percent versus 66.6 percent) as opposed to focused on a
Which best
describes the
geographic focus
of your
organization (i.e.,
which best
indicates the areas
in which you
actively solicit
membership)?Organizations with a national focus were the biggest group.
The OverviewDemographics, Purpose, Benefits, Barriers, and Satisfaction
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
26.8%
39.8%
4.3%
19.8%
7.8%
1.8%
Single community or municipality focusMultiple community focus in one stateSingle state or province focusMulti-state or multi-province focusNational focusInternational focus
What is your
organization’s
annual budget?Most organizations had budgets between $1 million and $5 million.
0.5%5.3%
5.0%
10.3%
11.9%
37.2%
11.9%
14.5%
3.4%
Less than $100,000 $100,001-$500,000
$500,001-$1,000,000 $1,000,001-$5,000,000
$5,000,001-$10,000,000 $10,000,001-$25,000,000
$25,000,001-$50,000,000 $50,000,001-$100,000,000
More than $100,000,000
12!THE OVERVIEW
region, state, or locality. They were also more likely to have annual budgets greater than $5 million (42.5 percent versus 33 percent); have more than 10,000 individual members (50.2 percent versus 41.5 percent); and have more than 10 staff (67.6 percent versus 55 percent).
While there is a somewhat greater tendency for larger associations already to have embraced e-learning, there is clearly significant e-learning activity among smaller organizations. It appears that small organizations may lead the growth in new programs in the
sector for the coming year. Among respondents who indicated that their organization will begin using e-learning in the coming six months, 75.5 percent are from organizations with annual budgets under $5 million, and 32.7 percent are from organizations with budgets of less than $500,000. The largest cluster of these respondents (36 percent) also came from organizations with fewer than five staff.
Similarly, 82.3 percent of the respondents who indicated their organization will start using e-learning within 12 months come from organizations with annual budgets of less than $5 million, and 43.4 percent of respondents report fewer than five staff members. Finally, 17 out of the 42 association management company representatives who responded to the survey indicated that they will
begin using e-learning within either 6 or 12 months. These groups tend to manage smaller associations, and thus their movement into e-learning tends to support the idea we will see significant growth in new initiatives by small organizations.
The great majority of survey respondents indicated that their organization has been using e-learning to deliver education for more than a year (83.7 percent). A relatively small but still notable number (15.6 percent) of respondents reported using e-learning for more than five years. Most (64.6 percent) of the respondents currently offering e-learning indicated that they do offer some form of credit for e-learning. (See the chapter “The Business Perspective” for discussion of credit and e-learning.)
INTERVIEWS
The organizations we interviewed in follow-up to the online survey were less diverse from the standpoint of geographic focus. All but one regional association serving four states were nationally or internationally focused. Nonetheless the group was quite diverse in terms of industries served, size of staff, size and type (i.e., individuals versus organizations) of membership base, and experience with e-learning.
The providers we interviewed were also quite diverse, ranging from Webinar service providers, like KRM, CommPartners, and Boston Conferencing, to high-end custom course producers like Enspire Learning, to learning management system providers like LearnSomething, Certilearn, and Results Direct. Each of the providers was able to offer a unique perspective based on their approach to e-learning and the types of clients served.
The largest groups of survey respondents were from nationally focused organizations with annual budgets between $1 million and $5 million, 1 to 5 staff people, and 1,000 to 5,000 individual members.
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Less than 1 year 1 to 2 years2 to 5 years More than 5 years
15.6%
32.9% 35.3%
16.3%
How long has your organization been using e-learning?
The majority of respondents were from organizations that had been using e-learning for one to five years.
13!THE OVERVIEW
Purpose, Benefits, and BarriersAs part of our survey, we asked respondents to provide input on their organization’s purposes for using e-learning as well as some of the benefits and barriers they experienced.
Not surprisingly, most respondents using or planning to use e-learning indicated professional development for members and non-members as their primary and secondary purposes. A much smaller portion use e-learning for staff training, though this may be less a comment on e-learning than on the amount of training available to association staff in general.
We also asked organizations to indicate whether they used e-learning for training chapters or volunteers or as a tool for advocacy and issue education. Given that an organization may or may not have chapters, make extensive use of volunteers, or engage in advocacy, we found it interesting that a relatively sizable group of respondents indicated that they use or plan to use e-
learning for advocacy and issue education. Respondents in this group were more likely to be from associations with a large membership base—40.8 percent were from organizations with more than 10,000 members as opposed to only 24.9 percent of the all respondents being from an organization with more than 10,000 members.
Cost-effectiveness, convenience, and the ability to reach more learners were among the biggest benefits respondents associated with e-learning—among both our survey participants and our interviewees. More than 70 percent of survey respondents who are using or planning to use e-learning indicated each of these benefits. (See the chart on the following page.)
Somewhat surprisingly, in our opinion, the ability to generate revenue ranked significantly lower. It was selected by just over 30 percent of those already using e-learning and by just under 30 percent of those planning to use e-learning in the coming 12 months. It is possible that a significant number of
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Professional development for members
Professional development for non-members
Training for staff
Advocacy and issue education
Training for volunteers
Training for affiliated organizations or chapters
Other7.9%
27.0%
26.2%
26.2%
20.6%
44.4%
86.5%
8.4%
19.9%
20.3%
30.7%
35.5%
64.2%
92.6%
For what
purposes does
your
organization
use or plan to
use e-learning?
Check all that
apply.
Most respondents indicated professional development for members and non-members as their primary and secondary purposes.Current e-learning
Planned e-learning
14!THE OVERVIEW
respondents equated the combination of convenience and the ability to reach more learners with more revenue, and thus did not single this out as a top-three benefit. Another explanation may be that, while most organization do need to break even on their e-learning initiatives, e-learning is not envisioned as a significant overall revenue contributor to the organization.
It is also noteworthy that neither risk reduction nor ease of tracking continuing education were rated as
a top-three benefit by many respondents. We expect to see risk reduction become more commonly recognized as a strategic benefit of e-learning over the coming year, particularly given the current economic environment. Additionally, as organizations become more sophisticated in their management of e-learning—and learning management systems gain more traction in the market—we also expect to see increased recognition of tracking as a significant operational benefit of implementing e-learning.
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For your organization, what are the three key benefits associated with e-learning? Please check only the three that your organization
considers most important.
Cost-effectiveness, convenience, and the ability to reach more learners were among the biggest benefits respondents associated with e-learning.
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
15!THE OVERVIEW
Concern about return on financial investment (41.6 percent) as well as about the technology skills of end users (45.5 percent) were among the major barriers to pursuing e-learning among respondents with programs already in place. Notably, there seems to be significantly less concern about technology skills among those who plan to offer e-learning (35.3 percent), perhaps reflecting an overall sense that end users are becoming more comfortable with both the Web and with e-learning. Concern about financial return is only slightly lower (39.5 percent), but clearly this group is concerned about the amount of staff resources that will be required to develop e-learning (57.1 percent).
We intended for organizations not currently using e-learning to answer this question about perceived barriers, but, unfortunately, responses were not collected owing to a technical glitch. It seems reasonable to assume that these organizations would perceive the same types of barriers, though it is also likely that more respondents from this group would indicate no perceived need for e-learning.
We explore the question of staff resources more in the chapter “The Operational Perspective” and discuss the issue of end user technology skills in “The Technology Perspective.”
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ck
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ert
ise
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e-l
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ck
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e-l
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Oth
er
4.2%5.0%
24.4
%
3.4%4.2%
46.2
%
33.6
%
57.1
%
35.3
%
17.6
%
40.3
%
7.6%
39.5
%
6.5%
5.7%
33.0
%
8.2%
6.5%
33.3
%
26.2
%
38.7
%45.5
%
21.5
%
20.4
%
7.5%
41.6
%
What are the three biggest barriers your organization has encountered or expects to encounter while developing e-learning initiatives? Please check
only the three that your organization considers most important.
Concern about return on financial investment and the technology skills of end users were among the major barriers to pursuing e-learning among respondents with
programs already in place.
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
16!THE OVERVIEW
Satisfaction with E-learning
We asked respondents from organizations who have implemented e-learning to indicate their level of satisfaction. On the whole, experiences with e-learning seem to be much more positive than negative. Most associations report that they are either somewhat satisfied (56.8 percent) or very satisfied with their e-learning initiatives. Only a small portion (5.6 percent) reported being very dissatisfied.
Through further analysis of the data, we were able to identify ways in which organizations that are very satisfied with their e-learning initiatives most differ from the group that is very dissatisfied.
Very satisfied organizations had the largest percentage of respondents who indicated that their association had been using e-learning for more than five years. These organizations were significantly more likely than their dissatisfied counterparts to offer some form of credit for e-learning, to charge for all of their e-learning offerings, and to indicate ease of tracking as a benefit of e-learning.
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Have used e-learning for more than 5 years
Indicate ease of tracking as benefit
E-learning does not have to be self-sustaining
Use self-paced courses
Charge for all e-learning
No credit offered for e-learning
Use discussion forums
Use LMS
14.3%
7.7%
57.1%
35.7%
35.7%
7.1%
0%
14.3%
46.3%
42.3%
35.3%
53.7%
66.7%
18.5%
16.7%
25.9%
34.4%
32.7%
35.4%
42.3%
54.5%
16.1%
8.3%
15.6%
How satisfied
or dissatisfied
are you with
your current e-
learning
initiatives in
terms of these
specific items?
Very satisfied organizations were more likely than their dissatisfied counterparts to offer some form of credit for e-learning, to charge for all of their e-learning offerings, and to indicate ease of tracking as a benefit of e-learning.
All respondentsVery satisfiedVery dissatisfied
Overall, how satisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives?Most associations reported they are either somewhat satisfied or very satisfied.
Very satisfied overall
Somewhat satisfied overall
Somewhat dissatisfied overall
Very dissatisfied overal
5.6%
16.0%
56.8%
21.6%
17!THE OVERVIEW
Very satisfied organizations were also much more likely than very dissatisfied organizations to use a learning management system (LMS)—the very dissatisfied group had the lowest percentage of LMS users out of any of the satisfaction groupings. The very satisfied organizations are much more likely to make use of discussion boards in their e-learning, and their use of self-paced courses is significantly higher than that of very dissatisfied organizations as well as the total pool of respondents. Use of self-paced courses by very satisfied organizations is on par with their use of Webinars (66.7 percent for each). Very dissatisfied organizations, on the other hand, report the lowest percentage of self-paced course usage (35.7 percent) and the highest percentage of real-time Webinar usage (78.6 percent).
Very satisfied organizations show a high amount of concern about end user technology skills. While 45.5 percent of the total respondent pool indicated this as one of their top three barriers encountered while implementing e-learning, 52.8 percent of very satisfied respondents indicated it, and only 35.7
percent of very dissatisfied respondents indicated it. The very dissatisfied group was most concerned that costs for e-learning would exceed financial return.
In general, the very satisfied organizations appear to be more mature in their e-learning. They have been at it longer (more than five years in many instances), they have implemented more sophisticated technology (an LMS), and embraced a more diverse range of offerings (self-paced courses and discussion boards along with Webinars). Finally, they tend to charge for their e-learning and offer credit much more than their very dissatisfied counterparts.
SATISFACTION IN SPECIFIC AREAS
We also asked survey respondents to indicate their levels of satisfactions with respect to specific to specific aspects of their e-learning initiatives.
The only specific area in which overall dissatisfaction (35.5 percent) seems to outweigh overall satisfaction (33.5 percent) is revenue
How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with
your current e-learning initiatives in terms
of these specific items?
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Very
Satisfied
Somewhat
Satisfied
Neutral Somewhat
Dissatisfied
Very
Dissatisfied
Not
Applicable
Usage (e.g., number of course
enrollments)
13.2% 33.3% 10.7% 27.2% 13.6% 2.5%
Revenue (e.g., from course sales) 7.9% 25.6% 16.9% 24.8% 10.7% 14.5%
The financial cost of creating the
initiatives
12.9% 28.8% 27.9% 17.5% 8.8% 4.6%
The financial cost of supporting and
maintaining the initiatives
14.6% 27.1% 27.1% 18.8% 8.3% 4.6%
The staff time required to develop the
initiatives
7.4% 33.9% 24.4% 24% 7.4% 3.3%
The staff time required to maintain the
initiatives
9.2% 32.9% 29.2% 19.6% 6.3% 3.3%
Feedback from participants in the
initiatives
23.8% 38.1% 17.6% 14.6% 3.3% 2.9%
18!THE OVERVIEW
generation. Very satisfied organizations indicate higher than average levels of satisfaction with revenue—64.1 percent report being either somewhat or very satisfied in comparison to 33.5 percent for the total pool of respondents. None of the very dissatisfied respondents reported being either somewhat or very satisfied with revenue, but 71.4 percent reported being either somewhat or very dissatisfied. This group also indicated high levels of dissatisfaction with the level of staff time and the financial costs associated with maintaining e-learning initiatives.
It is also worth noting that organizations that report being very satisfied with their e-learning initiatives indicate usage (49.1 percent) and feedback from participants (51.9 percent) as their two highest areas of satisfaction. These organizations are reaching their users and hearing positive things from them about e-learning.
Having looked at the demographics of the survey respondents and the purposes and benefits of, barriers to, and satisfaction with e-learning, we’ll now delve into deeper discussion of the operational, business, and technology aspects of association e-learning.
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Real-time Webinars
Recorded Webinars
Self-paced courses
Member-only discussion boards
Audio or video podcasts
CD-ROMs and DVDs
“Off-the-shelf” courses
Facilitated online courses
Electronic study guides
Blended learning
Offline with online assessments
Educational simulations or games
Other 4.3%
4.3%
7.0%
14.8%
13.9%
18.3%
16.5%
10.4%
34.8%
40.0%
47.8%
47.0%
55.7%
2.9%
3.6%
14.8%
15.5%
15.5%
19.1%
20.6%
34.3%
35.4%
40.4%
54.5%
56.0%
67.1%
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
Operations deals with the nuts and bolts of developing an e-learning program: what’s produced, who produces it, using what process, and with what tools. In this section, we draw on the online survey and our interviews to see how associations are developing e-learning today.
Products: What’s Offered
E-LEARNING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
The online survey asked organizations currently involved in e-learning and organizations planning to engage in e-learning in the next 12 months which types of e-learning products and services they offer or plan to offer.
As the chart below illustrates, real-time Webinars came out on top, with recorded Webinars and self-paced courses following next for both groups of respondents.
Organizations indicating they were very satisfied with their current e-learning usage (e.g., enrollments) pursue self-paced offerings and real-time Webinars equally (68.8 percent)—a significant increase in usage for the self-paced category. Among this group, facilitated online courses (which excludes Webinars) dropped to 6.3 percent (from 19.1 percent), and use of member-only discussion boards declined to 28.1 percent (from 40.4 percent).
The Operational PerspectiveProducts, Personnel, Process, and Tools
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
Which of the following e-learning products and services does your association currently
provide or will your organization add in the next 12 months? Check all that apply.
Real-time Webinars came out on top.
20!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
For organizations indicating they were very satisfied with their current e-learning revenue, facilitated online courses went down to 10.5 percent (from 19.1 percent), and recorded Webinars dipped to 42.1 percent (from 56 percent). In line with the overall data, this very-satisfied-with-revenue group reported real-time Webinars as the most popular offering (63.2 percent).
Compared to the very satisfied, organizations reporting to be very dissatisfied overall with their e-learning are:
• Less likely to offer self-paced courses (35.7 percent versus 66.7 percent)
• Less likely to offer electronic study guides and blended learning (0 percent versus 18.5 percent for both)
• Less likely to use third-party, “off the shelf” online courses (7.1 percent versus 18.5 percent)
• More likely to offer recorded Webinars (71.4 percent versus 50 percent)
One interviewee attested to the popularity of live Webinars over recorded ones: “We do see that our events are so much more successful as live events rather than after-the-fact, and I’ve been surprised by that. Our numbers for the live event are great; our numbers for the recordings are pathetic.”
THE APPEAL OF WEBINARS
Most organizations surveyed offer real-time Webinars. Why? Webinars are seen as a safe starting place—not too expensive or too time-consuming:
All of these Webinars that have been done to date
are volunteer members who speak for us for free
and have a presentation that they’ve either
developed for some other audience or something
like that, so we’re not putting an awful lot of
overhead on them either. It was a quick way to
ramp up and start the service.... It’s the crawl-
before-you-walk thing. Eventually we intend to be
doing everything, but right now we are an
association...so there is not a hell of a lot of
budget, and this [set of Webinars] is something
that is tangible that we can start with. But, for
sure, everything else is on the big master plan.
This is a five-year strategy, and the Webinars are
just the beginning of it.
Another advantage is that it’s possible to do a lot with a little in the Webinar world. At one of the organizations where we conducted interviews, a single staffer did 22 Webinars in a three-month period!
Just because Webinars are seen as an entry point to e-learning doesn’t mean all organizations start there: “We started online [with 20-25 asynchronous courses] before we did Webinars,” one interviewee commented, “which is really weird.” For others, there is a perceived first-mover advantage to taking a different tack:
[O]ne of the first things they asked me to do was
to actually create a strategy for online learning,
which is an indulgence for many people, but it
was a necessary step for us, and I’m really glad we
took it. And I was quite surprised because actually
the first recommendation I had was to head into
Webinars, and they opted for the other option
instead [developing an asynchronous, stand-
alone, non-instructor-led course], which I thought
was a very high-level risk, and they knew it and
were willing to take it anyway.... They kind of
wanted to be the first in their association circle, if
you will, to head into that territory, and they
were.
One interviewee cautioned against succumbing to pressure to go big initially:
I think associations feel like to do e-learning that
they have to make a big investment, that you have
to have a full catalog right off the bat, and we’ve
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Try a panel format for your Webinars, your online chats, or even your teleconferences.
“[We] pride ourselves on balanced and sound science, so we’ve been using the Webcasts to try and really embody that principle. We’ve had sometimes opposing views where the science is evolving, so you’ll have those two people, and it has been heated at times. We’ll usually have a more experienced moderator from the organizational perspective, so a member who knows that subject matter and who can moderate a balanced conversation and then a third person will vary, but sometimes it’s a consumer researcher or a marketer, someone to bring in an additional outside perspective that relates to the topic at hand....”
21!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
found a lot of success with just sort of putting our
toe in the water and working with a company to
create one course to see how that one course will
do. That allowed us to get a feel for what e-
learning would be like for our organization and
for our membership without having to outlay a lot
of money.... I think everybody thinks that their e-
learning program has to be [like those of the top
associations], and I think e-learning can be
customized for your audience based off your
budget and resources. I think if more associations
knew that, then they would be willing to take a
chance....
A vendor agreed that associations often feel overwhelmed and get stymied:
We’ve had several clients that have decided to
work with us, we’ve gotten started, and we’ve
worked closely with them to help guide them
through the process and who have just basically
stopped dead in their tracks because they are just
so overwhelmed with the whole prospect of doing
it. I think they are scared because they don’t
understand it. In a lot of cases the education folks
are just so stretched that they feel that they don’t
have time to devote to getting things going.... I
think they kind of fear the unknown, the
overwhelming feeling of what it’s going to take to
implement something new.
Given budget and time constraints and the nebulous fear of the unknown, Webinars seem familiar and small enough to feel like a safe start.
VIGNETTES AND VIDEOS
Two offerings not specifically included in the list of online products for our online survey came to our attention during the interviews: videos and vignettes. (We note, though, that Web video was included in a question about social media and that vignettes may be considered a particular type of self-paced tutorial.)
One organization we interviewed began posting short educational videos to its Web site in 2004. These were primarily educational and aimed at the membership—with the occasional promotional video added to the mix. More recently, the organization has rethought its videos as a product line, as an online professional development and
mentoring program: “We post a new video, about five minutes tops, every two to three weeks.” The videos are primarily one-on-one interviews with senior to midlevel industry professionals.
Another organization has been using video for consumer education—and has more planned for the future.
I could spend 15 to
30 minutes with a
consumer who
calls up and has a
question.... I love
that they want to
get informed before
they decide to do this, so they know what they are
buying, and, if they decide not to buy it, that’s
okay, at least they’ll know. I’m all for educated
consumers—I’m a consumer myself...so I can
totally relate to them. We’ve put together
brochures, there’s stuff on our Web site now, we
did a video that ran on public service, but I want
to try and upgrade that. We are doing a series of
videos this year that are going to be three to five
minutes, geared toward consumers....
Another organization whose members may not have e-mail addresses but do have cell phones (“...and they’re not carrying six-year-old Nokias—they have razzle-dazzle cell phones”) is contemplating branching into mobile learning, delivering video to phones.
Along with videos, vignettes popped up in our interviews as a product offering we hadn’t asked about specifically. In entertainment, vignettes are brief scenes—think of a Burt and Ernie sketch on Sesame Street. E-learning borrows the term for short educational pieces.
“The one thing that we’re doing that I think is a little bit unique is that we are doing free resources, little short vignettes on hot topical areas or things more about public awareness or public safety, or, in some cases, aditorials where we get sponsors. And we’ve had some success in people finding us through those—going to the Web site because they want to look at the free resources, and they get there and see our courses listed there and decide to try one out.”
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22!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
One association we spoke with is using free vignettes as a vehicle for driving public awareness and getting visitors to their site.
The American Society of Association Executives has developed a product line of for-fee vignettes (the introductory price is $79.95 per). These 90-minute self-study tutorials address association management topics.
Of note is how well both formats—videos and vignettes—lend themselves to consumer education, or external education, as well as the more traditional, membership-focused training.
PROCESS EXAMPLES
We included a question about the product development process in our brief follow-up survey on e-learning strategy. The vast majority of respondents indicated that their organization does not have a formal product development process for e-learning.
Without a formal process, how are organizations developing e-learning? From the interviews a typical if informal e-learning process emerged.
• A list of e-learning topics is generated through committee or board input, staff knowledge—or intuition—about the topics most relevant to members, or, in limited cases, surveys of the membership base.
• Subject matter experts (SMEs) for the topics are identified based on board, committee, or staff
input. These might be the same people tapped to present at the organization’s in-person conferences or courses.
• The SMEs provide content. Depending on the e-learning format and the association’s resources and culture, review of the provided content runs the gamut from rigorous to nonexistent. The content may be thoroughly reworked and edited for on-screen, instructor-less presentation. Or a SME’s PowerPoint for a Webinar might only be reviewed cursorily—just as a presentation at an annual conference is not put under the microscope by staff, the SME may be relied on to present the content as she sees fit.
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3.6%
65.5%
30.9%
Formal product development processNo formal processNot sure
A product development process typically includes steps for determining which products or services
to produce as well as a detailed process by which products are created and taken to market. Does
your organization have a formal, documented product development process for e-learning?
A little over 30 percent of organizations reported having a formal process.
“You take a PowerPoint that you already use, you make a few tweaks to it...and you publish it as an e-learning program.”
“Our practice team will define the objectives and the learning outcomes. So they will work with the authors, they will submit their lesson plan, we review it, they submit lesson one, we review it.... Our instructional designer also reviews it...for the opportunities to enhance the material. For example, additional links, resources, making it audio, making it puzzles, adding questions, quizzes, more interactive things....”
23!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
• For e-learning where instructors or presenters interact with learners, staff (or their proxy vendors or contractors) train them on how to use the relevant software (e.g., a Web conferencing system or a learning management system).
• As is common with place-based training, e-learners are often asked to evaluate their learning experience after completing it—or, in the case of longer offerings, evaluations may be requested periodically throughout and at the end of the training. In an ideal world, this feedback is mined for ways to improve future offerings.
Personnel and Tools: Who Gets It Done and How
JOB TITLES
For organizations currently engaged in e-learning, 204 responded to the online survey question, “What is the title of the person who holds top-level management responsibility for your e-learning
initiatives?” Director of education—or what we consider the equivalent (e.g., director of professional development)—was the most common, with 62 responses.
C-level job titles or the equivalent (vice president, chief learning officer, etc.) were reported 41 times, and 36 respondents indicated the head of the organization (executive director, CEO, etc.) has responsibility for the e-learning initiatives. Collectively these two groups of responses show that a big chunk put e-learning responsibility right at the top of the organization. Of those reporting the CEO or executive director is responsible, the vast majority (but not all) have annual budgets of less than $5 million and staffs smaller than 30. As would be expected, the larger, more flush associations, tend to delegate responsibility for e-learning, but many larger associations still keep the responsibility very high up.
Interestingly, only two responses included the term e-learning in the responsible person’s title, and only
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Executive director C-levelDirector of education Director of membershipOther director (e.g., of IT or meetings) Manager or coordinator of educationOther
What is the title of the
person who holds top-
level management
responsibility for your
e-learning initiatives?
With 30.4% of the responses, director of education was the most common title.
11.8%
7.4%
6.9%
5.9%
30.4%
20.1%
17.6%
24!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
“It’s almost like anyone can work in education—if you can give a presentation, you’re an educator.”
two included the broader (and older) term distance education.
From the interviews, we learned that, despite the prevalence of the director of education job title, many of those in charge of e-learning at their organizations do not have a formal background in education. We talked with many people who came to e-learning from communications, marketing, public relations, and business. One interviewee noted this phenomena:
My sense is that the vast majority of
staff working in education departments
have come from somewhere else. It may
have been in the membership
department or even from outside the
sector, which is fine—there is nothing
wrong with that—but, if you go into an
accounting department in an
association, you have a CPA.... I think
our area is more fuzzy.... The education
staff are doing a great job, doing the best
they can, but they’re not aware of
resources and tools that are available to
them. It’s almost like they are managing
a product that could be any product.... I
don’t think they’re as perceived as
specialty experts as some of the other
professions are. It’s almost like anyone
can work in education—if you can give
a presentation, you’re an educator.
ADEQUACY OF RESOURCES
From the interviews we learned, not surprisingly, that most organizations—whether large or small—felt they had more to do than they had time or resources:
• “I did capacity planning...and I discovered I was one staff person short. I did make a request, but, of course, I was turned down. But somehow the work gets done.... I don’t believe in throwing more things at people, you just dilute the quality or you exhaust people—it gets frustrating.”
• “We don’t have enough staff resources. All our courses should be updated, but that’s a full-time job for someone. Plus we’re launching new courses, so staff time is a major problem. Resources internally become very difficult to get, like the marketing thing, the IT thing—they all have other jobs, and e-learning is just one more added to their pile.”
• “I think everybody would always like resources. I work for a really small organization [fewer than five staff], so
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you have to really carry your load twice. So, yes, it does take a lot of time, and it takes a lot of finessing and political skills and talking to people forever. Yesterday I had an hour and a half meeting with two presenters [for an upcoming Webinar]. I think that could have been more efficient; it could have been 10 minutes, but that happens. It does help to have a vendor, but we do do a lot of it. We do all the promotion, e-mail promotions, we promote on our Web site, we promote it in our newsletter....”
Even with the bulk of the must-do work getting done, the lack of resources limits organizations’ ability to update their offerings or dabble in new realms like social media and cuts into the time for essential strategic thinking.
• “I’m a bit overloaded with everything that everyone wants to be done and all the research that has to be done. So if we started to run a full-time blog or anything like that, it’s definitely going to require, I think, another person’s workload.”
• “It’s definitely time-consuming by the time you figure out what you are going to do, and you find your speakers, and you put together your PowerPoint, and you promote it. It does take a lot of manpower.... We definitely don’t have the resources to do some kind of strategic planning and thinking about our whole education offering.”
Given the near universal sense that there aren’t enough resources, what are some of the big time sinks? For some, it is the sheer newness of e-learning complicated by simultaneous projects:
It was certainly more than I had expected, but I
also take into consideration that we implemented
an LMS at the same time, so there were many
different projects going on... [F]or me it was the
first time building a full online course—and not
even having to necessarily focus on the content so
much, given that it was already created—it was
certainly a learning process.
For others, customer service and support have demanded a great deal of attention. This can range from handholding—“There is a lot more
handholding behind the scenes, which I’ve heard from a lot of other people that that is real common, and that’s what you need to do to make this stuff succeed”—to technical troubleshooting.
Our end users aren’t very technologically
advanced. It doesn’t seem to be age-based. We had
thousands of students go through one of those
programs, and I got the sense that we needed some
customer support, and I’m happy that it went to
an outside vendor this summer who supports us
with call centers. We had roughly 40 percent of
the people putting in calls, several thousand were
calling. And they may have been calling about
minor things, but the range was unbelievable.
Before outsourcing to the call center, this organization of eight full-time staff swelled its ranks, for a time, to include eight part-timers just to deal with customer service on its e-learning products.
On the flip side, at least one interviewee was able to point out a reduction in staff time as a result of moving to online system for claiming continuing education as part of her organization’s e-learning initiative: “In terms of staff hours spent processing this stuff [credit claims], we’ve gone from about 45 to 50 hours a week of people processing paper to probably about 7 hours max, maybe 5.”
WHERE TO TURN FOR HELP
Since the staff responsible for association e-learning are likely to not come from an e-learning or even education background and since they are strapped for resources, we asked our interviewees where they turn for information and guidance on e-learning. A few sources cropped up regularly:
• American Society of Association Executives (ASAE): http://www.asaecenter.org
• American Society of Training & Development (ASTD): http://www.astd.org
• eLearning Guild: http://www.elearningguild.com
• Internet in general (e.g., Google searches on relevant keywords)
Coupled with that handful of concrete sources for help, though, was a recurring sense that organizations would like to be connecting with
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other associations doing similar things: “Really for myself, I need to do a better job of getting in touch with other folks at my level at other associations.” But that desire is tempered by a sense that there either aren’t great e-learning success stories in the association world—“I have not encountered anybody that is soaring in distance education”—or that the lessons that other associations have learned may not be relevant—“I don’t find that there are a lot of other people like me in the association world, doing the kind of e-learning that I’m doing. They are either doing really grand stuff that I’m never going to do, or they’re not doing anything at all, and they think it’s completely impossible, so they are not interested in it.”
Another interviewee lamented:
We would love to be able to have a network of
associations that are not afraid to talk to each
other, that would share information, and we could
all learn from each other. But some of us are
competitors, and that’s understandable. The for-
profit world is a totally different world, and there
are for-profit entities out there selling e-learning.
That’s not us; we have our own set of issues and
things that we have to deal with. And there’s no
place really to go and have that discussion.
Interviewees mentioned other sources for advice on e-learning but with much less frequency than those noted above. These included:
• Coworkers
• Consultants
• Vendors
• Members
• Board members and committees
In this list of sources, the value of the input varied greatly. For example, while some associations find their committees and boards wonderful sources, one interviewee said, “Our leadership, our board, it’s helpful only in a small way to be honest, so we don’t really look to our board for guidance [on e-learning].” Another said, “We have a corporate board, and they’re supposed to come up with ideas of things that we could turn into e-learning or Webcasts. Nine times out of ten, they’re way off base, unfortunately.”
“I don’t find that there are a lot of other people like me in the association world, doing the kind of e-learning that I’m doing. They are either doing really grand stuff that I’m never going to do, or they’re not doing anything at all, and they think it’s completely impossible, so they are not interested in it.”
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27!CASE STUDY
Dave Jennings at the Community Associations Institute (CAI) is consciously thinking of how to engage the staff—and not just the education staff—in the organization’s e-learning.
“Let’s say, if we have 55 staff here, we’d be getting a team of 7 or 8 staff people who are interested in this, who want to be involved,” Jennings explained. “They may work in any department in the building, whether it’s customer service or accounting, but they might think that this is interesting and fun, they want to learn about it, they want to help.”
The idea is to harness the staff’s enthusiasm and interest to build up internal knowledge and experience. An interested staff member can develop her own idea for a Webinar—or be assigned one—and then she runs with it: contacting the speaker, dealing with contracts, getting the event produced. For Jennings, the advantage is clear: “If we say a year from now, or even 6 months from now, that we are going to do podcasts, the gap between where the staff thinks they are and what they think it will take to produce a podcast right now might be a 100-point gap, but after 6 to 12 months of doing Webinars, that gap could shrink to 20 points. So we get a staff that thinks they could do that—if they want to do it, then they can do it.”
Although CAI is happy to have good vendor relationships that work well now, Jennings likes having the option in the future to do more internally, save time, and be more efficient. Involving all interested staff in the production of CAI Webinars is part of his plan for getting there.
Building Internal Capacity—and InterestCommunity Associations Institute
“[A]fter we’ve done 20 or 30 of these, a major benefit to us will be having a staff that is very comfortable producing Webinars, and I think that will help us create other products more easily.”
Dave Jennings, vice president, education
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28!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
DEPARTMENTS RESPONSIBLE FOR E-LEARNING
Not surprisingly, 75.5 percent of associations currently engaged in e-learning house that function in their education or professional development department. Member services and “other” were the only other substantial groupings, with 10 percent and 9.6 percent respectively.
Analysis of the text responses provided by associations currently doing e-learning and responding “other” to this question reveals that 8 out of 25 said e-learning is the shared responsibility of multiple departments or divisions, and two reported that their organizations are too small to have departments or divisions.
For those planning to do e-learning in the next 12 months and responding “other,” 6 out of 14 are too small to have departments or divisions, which perhaps suggests an uptick in the adoption of e-learning among smaller organizations—of those saying they are too small to have departments and divisions, all reported annual budgets of less than $5 million.
Anecdotally, we learned that even in organizations with an education department, e-learning may be housed elsewhere: “We have a side of the house where I actually did reside at one point; they do all the education—they do face-to-face conferences, courses, everything.” But the organization determined that the target market for e-learning matched the buyers of one of its certifications and moved e-learning to that division instead. “So I went to a place where the market made more sense than my residing where education resided,” the interviewee explained. “And there’s sort of been this imaginary dividing line between the two.”
Another interviewee said, “There’s a whole other educational area—you could think of it as the conference area. They do conferences and high-level Webinars. We do self-study learning, and we do Webinars that are less technically oriented.”
PREVALENCE OF OUTSOURCING
Filtering the data on staff size, budget size, age of e-learning program, and type of e-learning product (e.g., games and simulations) does not yield percentages significantly different from the numbers reported above—the vast majority of organizations, in all circumstances, use a mix of in-house staff and outside vendors.
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9.6%
1.1%1.9%
1.9%
10.0%
75.5%
Education or professional developmentMember servicesMarketingTechnologyDon’t knowOther
Which department or division of your organization holds primary responsibility for e-learning?
Education or professional development, not surprisingly, came in first.
29!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
That said, organizations that charge for none of their e-learning offerings are more likely to develop those offerings completely in-house (29.4 percent versus 17.6 percent of those organizations who charge for all their e-learning offerings), and organizations with staffs larger than 30 are more likely to develop entirely in house (19.4 percent versus 7.5 percent doing it all out of house).
The interviews support the commonsense thinking that the main attraction of using outside vendors is that they make the work easier for the association, and the main downside is that they can be pricey: “We use a third party [for our Webinars]. They make it an easy process for us, but it’s an expense that we are not really recouping, so we are definitely looking at other options.” For some organizations, the staff are excited by the opportunity to learn new things and ready to take on more while saving the organization money—but that decision is not for everyone.
I said to the executive director, we’ve got two key
choices here—we can license the system [Web
conferencing software for Webinars] for a year,
and we can get unlimited use for it, so we can use
it for meetings, we can use it for Web conferences,
we can do all kinds of stuff with it, or we can hire
a company to do it once at the same price, and
when we do the second one, we’ll have to hire that
company again and pay the same amount again.
He told me, whatever I recommend, whatever I am
comfortable with, and I said that I was always up
for a professional development challenge myself,
let’s license it, I’ll learn to do it, and I’ll do the
moderation, which is what we’ve done. And I
think that’s a key in being able to generate revenue
versus struggling to generate revenue from
Webinars.... However I think that there are some
organizations...who couldn’t believe that we do it
ourselves, but clearly they were so nervous about
it that for them hiring an organization to do it for
them was probably their best investment. So for
some people and some organizations that really is
a good fit; for us, it’s been much better to license
the system, leverage it across the whole year, and
the first Webinar paid for it and the rest of the
Webinars help us to hit various revenue marks
that we want to hit.
For organizations that do decide to use outside vendors, many asserted that the choice should take into account the technology and the association’s reality and relationship with the provider.
When I examined all the different vendors who
provide Webinars and teleconferencing, I looked at
the big players and the small players and those in
the middle, and we selected Provider X because
they were well priced, and they didn’t have too
many bells and whistles. Our members are on the
unsophisticated side, technology-wise, so too
many bells and whistles would have thrown them
as well as our staff. I didn’t feel 100 percent
comfortable, and the Provider X system was easy
for me to understand how to operate, and we have
had very few problems with our attendees not
being able to figure it out.
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12.8%
68.9%
18.3%
Entirely in-houseMix of in-house and consultants or vendorsCompletely outside vendors
Are your e-learning offerings developed entirely in-house, using a mixture of in-house
staff and outside vendors, or completely using outside vendors?
The vast majority of associations use a combination of internal and external resources.
30!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
THE COST OF EXPERTISE
We asked the organizations we interviewed if they typically pay the subject matter experts (SMEs) who develop the content for their e-learning offerings. Most don’t, some do, and some use a mixed model that involves paying some SMEs and not others.
For many organizations who don’t pay, it boils down to precedent—they don’t pay presenters for the annual meeting—or the bottom line—they can’t afford to pay. “Free” expertise is a huge boon and not only for e-learning: “[W]e have about 80 instructors, and we don’t pay them a dime to teach two-day classes; we just pay for their trip. They get no honorarium and hardly any recognition. We try but right now the organization doesn’t have a really good structure for recognizing and thanking them like you would think it would, but that saves the organization $200,000 or $300,000 a year, that they’re not paying any honorariums. That’s amazing to me.”
But associations in this free-SME camp realize the drawbacks of a volunteer-only approach: “[This use of members as SMEs] limits us a bit because there are some things that our profession wants to learn about that the professionals within the profession don’t have the subject matter expertise in, so we have not gone down that road yet of finding those outside people and paying them for their subject matter expertise, and that limits the kind of courses that we make available.”
Organizations who do pay SMEs tend to do so because a little payment can go a long way toward improving the experts’ likelihood of hitting deadlines and incorporating feedback or because they’re asking the SMEs for something original rather than recycled content: “I find we have to pay [our SMEs]. If I want to get a finished product out, then the best way to do it is with payment. I think that the industry has changed over the years with that. I see a definite shift towards that. I will get a volunteer to review materials if that review is not too extensive or not too deep and they only have to read a sentence here or there. But if I’m going to do development from scratch then we have to pay.”
Even when financial compensation is given to SMEs, it may be more of a token gesture than a true-market-value estimation of their time and expertise. The figures we heard for a 60- to 90-minute Webinar ranged from $200 to $300. One organization shared that it pays SMEs $2,500 for a one- to two-hour self-paced course and $5,000 for a three- to four-hour course—”so they have some skin in the game too.” It should be noted that this association does have its SMEs sign over intellectual property rights to the self-paced course as part of the agreement.
In summary, you may not have to pay for your subject matter expertise if service and volunteerism are well established in your organization. On the other hand, you may need to pay to get responsiveness and original, more thoughtful content.
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“[W]e have about 80 instructors, and we don’t pay them a dime to teach two-day classes; we just pay for their trip.... [T]hat saves the organization $200,000 or $300,000 a year.... That’s amazing to me.”
31!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
AUTHORING TOOLS
Microsoft PowerPoint is king and queen of e-learning development tools, the only one with greater than 50 percent usage in our online survey of associations currently engaged in e-learning. And PowerPoint remains on top no matter staff size, budget size, or age of e-learning program.
If we look just at organizations that have a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS), then the category for tools provided in the LMS or LCMS goes way up to 58.2 percent from 24.8 percent, finally—but just barely—beating PowerPoint out as the most popular tool (PowerPoint comes in at 57 percent for this group). Despite the increase, it is interesting that use of LMS and LCMS tools is not even higher among these organizations. This could be because the LMS does not offer built-in course development tools or because the organization began its e-learning without an LMS and stuck with the same course development tools even after an LMS was added. It could also be that the LMS or LCMS tools are not as user- or process-friendly as other options: “The authoring part [of our LMS] is not that clear, so we have the authors prepare the content in Word. Then we convert it into the authoring system. I’m in the process of looking at authoring tools, to understand if there could a better route.”
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS
For those currently doing e-learning, organizations are equally split between using professional instructional designers (IDs) and not. But, if you factor in the type of e-learning produced, the split shifts. For organizations offering blended learning, 73 percent use professional instructional designers, and 62.8 percent of associations offering self-paced and 59.2 percent offering facilitated e-learning use professional IDs.
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PowerPoint
LMS or LCMS tools
Adobe Flash
Adobe Dreamweaver
Articulate Presenter
Adobe Captivate
Camtasia Studio
Adobe Connect
Lectora (Trivantis)
Outstart Trainer
Toolbook (SumTotal)
ReadyGo
WebEx
GoToMeeting
Microsoft Live Meeting
Genesys
ReadyTalk
Elluminate
Other
0% 20% 40% 60%
17.1%
0.9%
0.9%
1.8%
13.5%
22.5%
26.6%
0.5%
0.9%
0.9%
1.4%
3.7%
7.2%
8.1%
13.5%
14.9%
24.3%
24.8%
60.4%
Which of
the
following
authoring
tools, if any,
does your
association
use for
creating e-
learning?
Microsoft PowerPoint was the indisputable front-runner.
10.6%
45.9%
43.5%
Use professional IDs Don’t use professional IDs Not sure
Does your organization
make use of professional
instructional designers
(whether on staff or by
contract) when developing
its e-learning offerings?
The responses were almost evenly split.
32!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
As the stakes go up, the use of professional IDs goes up too. For organizations offering continuing education (CE) toward a credential, 50.4 percent use professionals versus 40.5 percent who do not. Compare that to organizations offering CE but not toward a credential—only 33.9 percent use professional IDs, while 53.2 percent do not—and to organizations offering no credit at all—again only 33.9 percent use professionals, while 56.7 percent do not.
Part of this increase may be attributable to the use of assessments in e-learning tied to credentials. When tying content to learning domains and writing questions is key, organizations may see more value in the added vetting a professional ID brings.
The longer the organization has been involved in e-learning, the more likely it is to use professional IDs. For e-learning programs less than a year old, only 35.7 percent use professionals; almost double the number (67.5 percent) of programs older than five years use professionals
The use of professional IDs is also higher among organizations using an LMS—71.3 percent—compared to those without an LMS—23 percent.
From out interviews, we learned that the opinion of instructional designers varies widely. Some interviewees were not even familiar with the term, others didn’t think they added value, others thought they added value but weren’t something their organization could afford or support, and still others believe them indispensable.
• “We tried that [using professional instructional designers], and we didn’t get a lot from the one that we picked. I wasn’t impressed at all.” This association interviewee continued, “I just felt like I could have figured it out myself. It was sort of like, let’s put some video out, and then let’s have a couple of questions, and then let’s put some more video, and then we’ll retest them. And I thought, I already know this. So I don’t know if that’s an expertise as much as common sense. So since then, we haven’t [used professional instructional designers]. I wouldn’t say that I would never do that, but I’d rethink it probably.”
• “[Y]ou need a good instructional designer for online learning,” said one association interviewee, who happens to be an instructional designer. “I do recommend, especially for individuals who may be in a position like mine or have this responsibility in their association and they don’t have an instructional design background or don’t have an instructional design background in online learning, which is different, then they definitely need to make sure that they hire someone to handle that or they are gong to end up with an asynchronous course that’s just not going to be very good.”
• One vendor we interviewed said, “We used to have someone on staff devoted just to that [instructional design], but we couldn’t support that person, and that was back in the late 90s,
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“[A]ssociations are notoriously shortsighted when it comes to [investing in professional instructional design]. Oftentimes they just don’t want to spend the money for it, and unfortunately sometimes the programs suffer for that.”
33!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
early 2000s. We would refer people to an outside instructional designer, and, quite honestly, associations are notoriously shortsighted when it comes to that. Oftentimes they just don’t want to spend the money for it, and unfortunately sometimes the programs suffer for that.”
• “Right now we don’t have the funds or the support [to use professional instructional designers],” said one interviewee who came the association world from ASTD, so you can imagine how sorely he feels the lack.
For organizations that opt to forego professional instructional designers, that may not mean they aren’t thinking about instructional design:
The real advantage with Staff Person X is that we
have so many acronyms of things that go on in
our world, and she understood the terminology.
Rather than trying to explain to an instructional
designer what all this terminology meant, she was
already there, and it was on-the-job learning how
to do instructional design. She’s really very self-
taught and has learned a lot of this stuff herself.
She’s taken us to something that we hadn’t been
able to do before.
Others echo the sentiment that e-learning is not rocket science: “I’ve learned that regardless of what the program is you have to be able to get the information you need from the experts and deliver it in a way that it needs to be delivered, what it is, training program, doesn’t really matter. It’s all the same for me.”
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34!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
SummaryThis chapter focused on operational issues—we looked at the types of e-learning products associations are offering, who’s responsible for leading their e-learning initiatives, and how they’re getting it done, both in terms of tools, like PowerPoint and Flash, and strategies, like outsourcing and whether to pay the price for professional instructional design.
We’ll conclude with some trends and opportunities we see and questions to ask of your organization as you begin to plan or continue to purse an e-learning program.
Trends and PredictionsWe believe in the next year more associations,
including ones with small budgets and small
staffs, will throw their hats in the e-learning ring. Tools have gotten cheaper, better, and easier, and many organizations are finding success with “simpler” e-learning formats, like teleconferences, online chats, and Webinars. Your offerings don’t have to be fancy or expensive to succeed. And with the current economic recession, the travel-savings appeal of e-learning will only ring truer.
PowerPoint is a mainstay of corporate training, and there’s every reason to believe it will remain prevalent in the association world too. We predict the use of tools (like Articulate Presenter or Adobe
Captivate) that make it easy to convert PowerPoint
slides to e-learning will rise. Whether using these tools on their own or working with outside service providers, we also expect to see a surge in the
amount of place-based conference content that
associations convert into on-demand online
learning.
Economic pressures to make the best use of already tight resources are increasing. Associations will handle some e-learning in house to avoid additional invoices, but they’ll also turn to vendors and consultants to draw on expertise and allow limited staff to attend to other priorities—which is to say, outsourcing is likely to remain part of a “healthy” resourcing mix. But we believe the use of e-
learning service providers and consultants will
become more thoughtful as associations build
their own knowledge and experience and see
outsourcing as a strategic choice rather than a
necessary one.
Related to the previous point, as organizations seek to grow their e-learning offerings and create higher-quality products, we believe interest in
instructional design will increase. Organizations will make efforts to build capacity in-house as well as to contract with outside instructional designers.
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“When I came [to the association], there was already one course being sold on the Internet as an e-learning course. It was basically 400 PowerPoint slides from our face-to-face course.... It has sold pretty well despite some of its challenges.”
35!THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Questions to Consider1.What is your process for determining the forms
of e-learning you offer and the topics you
address? Do you have a standardized process
for working with subject matter experts to
create your e-learning products and services?
Have you documented these processes in a
way that they can be shared with those who
need to know them?
2.If you’re considering starting an e-learning
program, which format or formats are right for
your audience, topic, budget, and human
resources (including staff, contractors, and
vendors)? Is your audience tech-savvy and
impressed by bells and whistles, or are they
wary of new technology and need a lot of
handholding? What are you capable of and
comfortable doing internally? As an example,
live Webinars may be more difficult to schedule
for international organizations because time
differences leave a small slice of overlapping
work hours and because different regulations
(and therefore topics) apply, but the extra effort
allows you to connect people who wouldn’t
otherwise get to interact.
3.If you already have an e-learning program, is it
time to branch out into new products, or do
you need to cut back to focus strategically on
the successful offerings? Think about how your
products fit together and fit with the rest of the
association’s work. Can your publications
become sources for e-learning topics, or vice-
versa?
4.Whether you already have an e-learning
program in place or plan to add one, what is
your approach to building capacity for e-
learning in your organization? Do you have a
good understanding internally of adult
learning principles and instructional design as
they relate to e-learning? How will you
leverage the resources of other functional areas
across the organization to deliver, market, and
support your e-learning offerings?
5.How can you use outsourcing strategically for
e-learning to scale and complement your
internal skill set? What is the association’s
overall take on outsourcing? Is outsourcing
used elsewhere in the organization? How? If
you have no Flash programmer, look for that
skill in a service provider; if you have no
professional instructional designer and think
that is important, look for that in a vendor.
6.Are you asking for—and getting!—valuable
input from any outside service providers you
use? Look for vendors who provide more than
just a tool and can help support your overall e-
learning initiative.
7.Has your leadership tried your (or other) e-
learning and provided feedback? Getting your
leadership’s buy-in and participation can be
critical to making your e-learning program
really work.
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36!CASE STUDY
When Cindy Hartley launched a Webinar series for the Southern Building Material Association (SBMA), a group that serves building materials dealers across four states, she knew success was not guaranteed. “My industry does not tend to be the most technologically advanced,” explained Hartley.
“To help make sure that I was successful,” Hartley continued, “I went to our board of directors and urged them to help, ‘Please join us for the first one. I need your input on how this worked, what you think should be changed, what benefits you see in it. You are a member of our board of directors, and I really want your support in developing this.’”
Hartley personally sent the board members registration forms for Webinars and called them to remind them she needed their support and feedback on SBMA’s first foray into e-learning. Hartley said that enlisting the board was a “tremendously helpful” part of getting the program off the ground, but she didn’t stop there.
Hartley also embraced the enthusiasm of SBMA’s sister organizations who contacted her when they saw the Webinar program and asked to participate. “[T]hey asked how we were doing it. When they saw us put out the second and third ones, they asked if they could join in.” So Hartley created a registration form the other organizations could use and brand with their logo.
Now when SBMA delivers a Webinar, the attendees may include members from sister organizations across the country. SBMA bills its sister organizations at cost for the attendees, but Hartley lets them keep the profit. “We get participation,” said Hartley, “not a tremendous amount, but a little bit from all over the place gives you enough to do these kinds of things when you are small.”
Given current economic conditions, the Webinar series has replaced the face-to-face trainings that SBMA used to deliver across the region. Hartley does not expect that to be a permanent situation. Eventually the organization will offer both place-based and online training, but in the meantime, Hartley has found the right partners to ensure success of her current program.
Cultivating SuccessSouthern Building Material Association
Cindy Hartley
Director of member relations at the Southern Building Material Association
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“I called [our board] on the telephone and said, ‘I need you to support this. We will never get started if we can’t get the first [Webinar] done....’”
CIndy Hartley, director of member relations
37!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Which of the following statements describes your financial goals for your current
e-learning offerings?
The vast majority of association e-learning programs must be at a minimum self-sustaining.
Using the data from our online survey and our interviews, we concentrate in this section on the business perspective of e-learning, which encompasses the strategy that drives an e-learning initiative, the expenses and income, the marketing of offerings, and the competition that can shape programs.
The Revenue ImperativeOne of the key ways in which association e-learning differs from online education and training in the commercial corporate sector is that most associations look to e-learning—and to education in general—as a source of non-dues revenue. E-
learning is thus a line of business rather than a cost center for most organizations. At a minimum, it needs to operate on a revenue-neutral basis, bringing in enough income to cover costs. For many organizations, it also need to contribute positive revenue to the bottom line.
As might be expected, our research suggests that the vast majority of association e-learning programs must be at minimum self-sustaining, and most are also charged with generating positive net revenues.
The Business PerspectiveRevenue, Strategy, Promotion, and Competition
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
16.1%
50.2%
33.7%
Must be self-sustaining but profitability not requiredMust be self-sustaining and profitableDoesn’t need to be self-sustaining (costs subsidized)
To meet their goal of financial sustainability, most organizations charge for at least some of their e-learning offerings, and a significant percentage charge for all of their offerings.
14.0%
43.7%
42.3%
Charge for all offeringsCharge for some offeringsDon’t charge for offerings
Does your association charge for its e-learning offerings?
Some 86 percent charge for at least some offerings.
38!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Does your
organization have
a formal,
documented
strategy for e-
learning? Right at 60 percent do not have a formal e-learning strategy.
All the association representatives interviewed for this report indicated a goal of breaking even on the direct costs associated with e-learning. These costs include, for example, technology licensing fees as well as payments to vendors for Webinar or course development services. In most cases, the interviewees also indicated a desire to cover indirect costs, meaning primarily staff time allocated to e-learning, but in many cases the organization did not track these costs closely and thus did not have a clear idea of whether they were being covered or not.
Most of the organizations interviewed depended on revenue generated from sales of e-learning programs to cover costs associated with producing and delivering the programs. In a few instances, however—particularly in fields tied to medicine or public health—organizations had established or were attempting to establish a practice of securing sponsorships or grants from corporations or government entities to underwrite production and delivery costs. In the medical field, it remains to be seen whether future sponsorships will be impacted by recent legislation by Massachusetts and other states to place restrictions on funding of continuing medical education (CME) programs by pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
StrategyIn a 2005 survey of associations by Jennifer
DeVries of BlueStreak Learning, 89 percent of respondents stated that having an e-learning strategy was either critical or very important to their professional success. But only 31 percent of respondents
had put an organizational e-learning strategy in place.
Our conversations with the associations interviewed for this report as well as our own experience in the field for many years suggests that most organizations approach e-learning strategy in an informal, seat-of-the-pants way. As one of our interviewees put it, being given the time and resources to formally develop and document an e-learning strategy is “an indulgence.”
We did not ask about e-learning strategy in our original survey. We did, however, conduct a follow-up survey among organizations that have implemented e-learning programs and asked these organizations whether they have a formal, documented e-learning strategy. Only 30 percent of the respondents said they do.
A comment from one of the respondents to the survey seems typical of how e-learning strategy is handled at many organizations:
We do Webinars as part of our training
for nonprofits. We do budgeting around
it. We talk about it. But there’s not
really anything “documented” beyond
budgets and the workshop descriptions.
It's sad and surely not a best practice,
but we're so busy putting on trainings
that we don't have much time to be very
planful.
Our view is that a number of factors will contribute to e-learning being viewed more strategically in the coming years. Certainly the current state of the economy will be one factor. Organizational leaders will look to cut their own costs (which e-learning may or may not do) and to provide lower cost options for members whose travel budgets have been slashed, or in some cases, cut entirely. The current economy aside, the growth of green thinking, the growing array of cheap and easy e-learning technologies, and the coming of age of a generation that is comfortable doing
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9.1%
60.0%
30.9%
Formal e-learning strategyNo formal strategyNot sure
39!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
almost everything online will generate more demand and tear down remaining barriers. Organizations will have to pursue e-learning more strategically or risk losing learners—and members—to competition that sees the opportunity in offering online educational products.
Return on Investment Whether through sales, sponsorships, or both, the timelines—and the corresponding amount of pressure—that organizations indicated for achieving a positive return on investment varied significantly from organization to organization. As a rule, the organizations with which we spoke expected their Webinars to operate profitably or on a break-even basis either from day one or within less than a year. Among organizations that had invested in more sophisticated on-demand products, many anticipated a two- to three-year horizon before their programs would achieve positive net revenues and indicated that senior management and the board accepted this as a necessary period for producing a return. In other instances, the pressure to operate profitably was much higher. “This department, from the very beginning, has had to show it is a profit center,” a director at one organization said.
[I]t has to show revenue, it has to
show gross revenue.... Whereas some of our other
[educational offerings] were loss leaders, some of
our courses and face-to-face conferences, were
allowed to be loss leaders for two or three years
until they built up an audience, we never once
were able to be a loss leader, and that’s very
difficult.
A tension between the need to generate a return—or at least break even—and the desire to serve learners well was palpable in many of the interviews. Even in cases where programs have been successful from a financial standpoint, interviewees indicated that
convincing organizational leaders of the full benefit can be an uphill battle. One director reported:
We have been able to earn back our investment for
our asynchronous stand-alone course, which is
not inexpensive to do. But I think that a lot of
people tend to look at return on investment in a
very narrowly specific financial way because
that’s the way most people think. I’ve been able to
work with my association to help them
understand that there are a lot of different ways to
look at that, even financially. So for example, we
are able to say that we have earned
back the broad scope of the
investment but what a lot of people
don’t think about is...the investment
that we made in the asynchronous
[e-learning] course was roughly the
same kind of investment we would
make, in terms of expenses, for two
of our dozen or so live, in-person
sessions per year. But the
asynchronous course...is always out
there—and we estimated that it has
at least a three-year shelf life for the
topic—so because of that we can say,
we reached 400 learners and
growing, for the same investment
cost where we might have only hit
57 people for one that was in-person.
That’s when they realized that it’s
not just an upfront investment; it’s
a matter of reach, and it’s a matter of
final per-student, per-learner cost
over time.
One of the providers we interviewed expanded on this line of thinking, suggesting that senior management, and ultimately the board, at many associations tend to think too narrowly about the strategic potential of e-learning:
If I were a forward-thinking association executive
I would think about what this means to the
organization, not in dollars and cents
immediately, but in terms of...member retention,
providing services to members that they are going
to value, especially with what is happening in the
economy and association memberships and
spending are going to be looked at much more
critically, and as an association executive I want
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“[E]-learning is bringing in a lot of people into the organization that normally weren’t participating with the organization previously.”
40!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Is the economic downturn negatively impacting e-learning technology providers?
“The short answer is no. The long answer is no.”
to keep those members, and I want to
keep them engaged, and I think there are
many opportunities to keep them
engaged through e-learning. And e-
learning might take many different
forms; it might be providing services to
them to help them maintain their
certification; it might include some of
the things that incorporate social media
to get members talking to one another
and helping one another. That’s the
approach that I would take, but there are
not a lot of execs who can do that
because they don’t have the support of
their board. A board wants to see money.
The Impact of the EconomyRegardless of its broader strategic potential, it seems likely that current economic conditions will cause many organizational leaders to look more closely at e-learning as an approach to cutting costs and possibly generating new revenues to replace revenues declining in other areas.
As indicated in the initial chapter of this report, respondents to the survey indicated an increase in budgeting for e-learning programs, even as budgets for education in general appear to be flattening out.
Among the associations we interviewed, there was clearly nervousness about the potential for a significant drop in registrations for conferences and face-to-face meetings. For most of the organizations we talked to, it was too soon to tell what impact, if any, the economic downturn would have on these offerings, but some were already beginning to see a negative trend in registrations for their place-based events.
On the other hand, most of the associations and providers we spoke to indicated that the downturn would likely drive growth in e-learning investment. For providers, in particular, this is a positive trend, as the desire to cut risk related to room rentals, meals, travel costs, and other expenses related to place-based education will almost certainly lead to more spending on Web-based solutions for delivering education. In the short term, this spending seems most likely to be directed at Webinars or at services related to capturing and productizing conference content. Significant investment in higher-priced content development as well as learning management systems, on the other hand, seems likely to remain flat or decline.
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41!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Even in cases where organizations do invest more in e-learning products and services, it is unclear at this point whether registrations for Web-based programs will rise at all, much less to a degree necessary to offset the potential decline in revenue from place-based programs. Recent data from the American Society of Association Executives suggests that the trend for registrations may turn downward.
Based on this study, reports of a vast migration
from face-to-face gatherings to online alternatives
appear to overstate the case. Of people who only
attended in-person events last year, only three
percent say there’s a high probability they’ll only
attended virtual events this year. In fact, if there’s
a migration at all, it’s going the other way: Nine
percent of people who only attended virtual
programs last year say they’re likely to attend
only a face-to-face meeting this year.
Another area that is likely to be impacted by the downturn is bulk sales of courses to corporations, government agencies, or other organizations interested in training a large group of employees. Training is traditionally one of the first budget areas cut when times are tight. Associations that sell to training departments will almost certainly see longer sales cycles or decisions by potential purchasers to cut training purchases. One of the organizations we interviewed related how the decline in demand at government agencies had caused them to revamp their entire sales strategy:
[W]e wanted to talk with high-level decision
makers and get them to buy licenses to our course
catalog for a broad distribution within their
agency, particularly because we have a lot of
trainings that are fundamentally required for
licensing reasons...and we felt like that would be a
great way to make a large chunk of change off of
each sale without nickel and diming.
We’ve priced our stuff at anywhere between $20
and $50 per course, which is extraordinarily
reasonable, but we price it that way because we
want the volume, and our plan to achieve volume
was through this license concept, and across the
board training budgets have been cut within
agencies to the level that we talk to agency heads,
and they know that they have a requirement to
provide training for licensing and other things,
but their entire training budget has been
completely cut so they are piece-making different
subject matter expertise within their staff to
provide the training that is required by law, which
we know is not going to ensure the most qualified
and trained staff working in these licensed
programs. We’re totally shifting our sales and
marketing strategy from a high-level decision
maker to sell a large block of courses to a direct-to-
consumer, “in this economy you should be the
most trained and qualified person, and here’s what
we have to provide you” model.
We just recently made that decision.... [R]eally we
didn’t launch, launch full on with a full catalog
until October, and we began making sales calls
after our launch party at our annual meeting, and
at that time directors were still willing to listen to
us, and we were giving out promo codes, and they
wanted to go and look at the stuff and see how it
would fit in. Now that we are making our follow-
up calls to that same batch of people, they are all
telling us that they looked at it, and it’s great, but
they don’t have any money. So the difference
between October and January is huge. We were
kind of banking on [agency purchases], and as a
result we are totally shifting our sales and
marketing strategy.
Finally, along with the possible impact on registrations and large sales, there is a less obvious and potentially longer-lasting change that the downturn could bring. There is already a tendency across the sector to price e-learning lower than similar place-based offerings. In the current economy, many organizations may be inclined to lower prices even further as a show of support for members. Raising prices when conditions improve, however, tends to be more difficult. It is far too soon to tell, but a general deflation of e-learning price points—and a corresponding drop in margins—may turn out to be one of the legacies of the current economy.
ProductAs indicated in the chapter “The Operational Perspective,” associations have embraced a variety of formats for e-learning, with live Webinars being the most popular format by a significant margin.
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42!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Based on our interviews, product format decisions tend to be driven less by formal assessment of member needs and more by internal resource considerations and a general perception of what other associations are doing. In our brief follow up survey on e-learning strategy, the vast majority (65.5 percent) of respondents indicated that their organization does not have a formal product development process for e-learning.
Webinars are seen as requiring a relatively low amount of direct investment. They leverage an educational model already deeply familiar to associations—an expert speaker, most typically a member volunteer, delivering a presentation on a timely or perennially popular topic—and, as several of the associations we interviewed put it, all the other associations are doing, and we need to keep up.
Topics, rather than format, seemed to absorb the greater part of strategic thinking about e-learning products at the associations we interviewed. In general, topic decisions are driven by a combination of committee or board input, staff knowledge—or intuition—about the topics most relevant to members, or in limited cases, surveys of the membership base. Few of the organizations with which we spoke had a formal process in place for determining the size of the potential market for a product, the strength of demand in the market, or the purchasing process in the market.
“Hot” topics were cited by all the organizations we interviewed as one of the main drivers of demand for e-learning. These tend to be topics related to compliance, regulatory, or public “emergency” type issues. A recall of tainted peanut butter, for example, was going on at the time we interviewed representatives for the Institute of Food Technologists. This sort of situation creates instant demand for education. The current economic crises has also created demand for a range of topics related to weathering the storm.
Aside from the topic being timely and relevant to learners, another key demand driver indicated by a
number of interviewees was how “tangible” or “actionable” the content for an e-learning offering is. Here is how one of the providers we interviewed put it:
What we definitely have seen is tangible content,
meaning content they can walk away with and do
something with, those are going to drive more
registrations than the more high-level, executive-
level content. But I think that’s always been the
case; I don’t know that that is necessarily a
reflection of a change in times as much as a
reflection of just people that are most likely to
attend a Webinar. What kind of content are they
going after? If you can provide a Webinar with
very discernible output, you are going to have
better attendance. Let me give you the most basic
example I can think of. For some reason,
regardless of the industry that you are presenting
this to, if you were to promote an Excel Webinar
on how to use Excel to analyze data, it will do
great. It always does. For some reason people
think, “I’m going to go here. I’m going to get 10
cool things I can walk away from related to Excel,
which is a tool that if I don’t use it I think I should
know how to use it.” Very tangible topic.
Finally, perhaps one of the most important demand drivers for e-learning over the long term is whether an organization offers some form of valued credit for successful completion of a learning experience. Credit may take many forms. It may be actual continuing education credit, as discussed in the next section, or it may be a certificate or validation that some form of compliance has been met. The key, however, is less the credit itself and more the value associated with the credit. Industries where certain
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Find hot topics.
“Hot topics will always sell. But other than that, I really don't know.”
Drive demand for your e-learning with key factors.
•Timely or perennially popular topics
•Actionable content
•Required or highly valued credit
The smaller or more competitive your market, the more important these factors become.
43!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
types of compliance are required, where some form of certification is required or highly valued, or where a certain number of continuing education credits must be earned annually tend to have higher demand for all of their educational offerings, and e-learning shares in this demand.
CONTINUING EDUCATION AND CERTIFICATION
Whether to award some form of credit for e-learning is an important decision both operationally and strategically for an organization. From an operational standpoint, there is typically a significant amount of footwork to be done simply to be accredited for providing continuing education credits—even for a certification or credential maintained by the association itself—and usually there are reporting requirements to be followed
once accreditation is established. Even relatively simple certificate programs that do not offer continuing education credit can generate a significant amount of operational overhead.
As a matter of strategy, however, common sense suggests that, all else being equal, a learner will choose an educational experience that offers some form of credit over one that does not. For the most part, associations appear inclined to place strategic considerations ahead of whatever operational burdens the awarding of credit may create. Among the respondents to our survey, the majority of organizations that offer or plan to offer e-learning also award or plan to award some form of credit.
Among the organizations we interviewed, most award some form of credit—most commonly
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No credit
Continuing education (CE or CEU)
Continuing medical education (CME)
Continuing legal education (CLE)
Continuing professional education (CPE)
Certificate of successful completion
Credit towards a credential
Credit towards a degree
Other5.3%
1.8%
25.4%
32.5%
10.5%
5.3%
13.2%
41.2%
33.3%
5.4%
4.3%
31.8%
31.8%
8.3%
1.8%
10.1%
43.0%
35.4%
Which type of credit does your organization currently offer or plan to offer for e-learning? Check all that apply.The majority of organizations offering or planning to offer e-learning also award or plan to award some form of credit.
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
44!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
continuing education (CE) or continuing education units (CEU)—for some or all of their e-learning. While most of the organizations and all the providers interviewed agreed that credit is a key demand driver for e-learning, offering credit comes with its challenges.
One organization we interviewed has chosen so far not to offer credit because of the operational challenges noted above. A representative from an organization that does offer credit noted internal challenges in putting credit in place for e-learning.
[Credit] continues to be a challenge. Some of our leadership groups aren’t
sure if they are comfortable with e-learning. They might be okay with it in
addition to the face-to-face, as a supplement or a bonus or an add-on, but
there’s a lot of them who do not want it substituting for a face-to-face class.
So we’ve tried to lay the ground work with some of the committees and
leadership...to get them comfortable. So, at this point some of our stuff counts
but some doesn’t. Some of it’s kind of substitutable for a face-to-face
experience and some of it isn’t. So, we’re trying to get to the point where it
truly is a range of choices that interchange nicely together so people have a
full range of choices and it’s not perceived as compromising quality. Right
now it would be perceived as comprising quality. If we came out and said,
you can take this whole thing to get your certification and never set foot in a
classroom, or not very much, there would be some people that would have a
problem with that so we’re trying to deal with that.
Aside from addressing leadership’s concerns about awarding credit for e-learning, some association educators wrestle with their own concerns about credit as one of the primary motives any educational activity—online or off. One association representative said:
That’s one of our concerns...that some of our enrollment, or a lot of it in some
cases, is driven by people who may not value the learning or don’t want to be
there, but they want the credential. One of our goals is to create programs
that are so good that people will want to be there whether they get credit or
not. But the reality is a lot of the folks are there because there is credit
attached to it, and if there wasn’t, there would be fewer people there.
Credit and certification are double-edged swords. Markets where their importance is already established tend to be more competitive markets. So there may be a large base of prospects, but organizations have to work harder and smarter to convert them into customers. The market for continuing medical education (CME) is perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon. Physicians are required to earn a minimum number of credits per year to maintain credentials in their specialties. This requirement essentially forces high demand for educational offerings, and as a result, has attracted a large number of e-learning suppliers and products into the market. Associations that hope to compete in this market have to offer credit, but credit in itself is not enough to attract purchasers.
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“One of our goals is to create programs that are so good that people will want to be there whether they get credit or not.”
45!CASE STUDY
In the fall of 2008, the International Foundation of Employee Benefits (IFEBP) launched its 60-Minute Power Series, “a collection of nine live Webcasts that are along the lines of practical, how-to information,” described Barbara Swarthout, director of e-learning programs.
Early data shows these 60-minute Webinars sell better than IFEBP’s 90-minute Webinars. What’s the secret? Finding fresh topics that are in demand and marketing them the right way. “These Power Series were very successful...we projected 450 registered sites, and we got 419 registered sites. So in our book, compared to what we’d been doing on the 90-minute side, these were extremely successful.” Swarthout continued, “We think it’s because we bundle them and because there are such different topics—they are more how-to topics; we have real-life scenarios.” Learners can buy three, six, or all nine Webcasts in a Power Series—or individual sessions.
IFEBP works with volunteer subject matter experts (SMEs) for its 90-minute Webinars, which can sometimes be adaptations of presentations the SMEs have already given elsewhere. But when branching out to find unique topics for the Power Series, IFEBP realized that recruiting volunteers to develop a presentation from scratch would be a big task. So they moved to a paid-SME model. “For the 60-minute program we offer [the SMEs] $200 to do it, so I can request things a little bit easier than with our 90-minute programs,” explained Melissa Polito, e-learning instructional designer at IFEBP. “We ask them to put in workplace scenarios that people can work through, practical examples of the material during the presentation. I also ask them for a quick reference guide that we put together on the topic, so that the attendees can have that before the event.”
Although paying the SMEs clearly adds to the cost of the Power Series, if the early popularity continues, this is the kind of expense it’s easy to afford.
More Demand for “Fresher,” Shorter TopicsInternational Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
Barbara Swarthout (left) and Melissa Polito
Director of e-learning programs (left) and e-learning instructional designer at the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
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“[T]hese were extremely successful. We think it’s because we bundle them and because there are such different topics—they are more how-to topics; we have real-life scenarios.”
Barbara Swarthout, director of e-learning programs
46!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
PricingGiven the wide range of industries that associations serve as well as the variability in product offerings from organization to organization, any generalizations about pricing in the sector have to be taken with a sizable grain of salt. To attempt to establish some benchmarks for average and median pricing levels across the sector, we asked survey participants to think about their e-learning offerings in terms of a dollar amount per hour of content or per credit unit delivered. While this approach has limitations, particularly with respect to organizations that sell access to their e-learning libraries on a subscription basis, our experience suggests that it represents the most common way that associations tend to think about content pricing for e-learning.
PRICING ACROSS INDUSTRIES
Determining how pricing breaks down across various industries is challenging because there is not, to our knowledge, a uniform way in which association identify the industry they serve. Additionally, associations may serve multiple industries or focus on an issue rather than an
industry. In attempting to establish the industry of survey respondents, we used an abbreviated and somewhat modified version of the North American Industry Classification
System categories. The chart on the following page contains data from industries where at least five respondents provided pricing information for current e-learning offerings. The number of organizations that provided pricing information in a particular industry is indicated in parentheses beside the industry name.
PRICING AND FORMATS
Based on our experience and the interviews conducted for this report, our sense is that the average pricing for Webinars is probably a good bit higher than the averages that encompass pricing for all types of e-learning. One provider indicated that $125 for a 90-minute sessions is the lowest price charged by any of his company’s clients for a Webinar; another indicated an average price of $230. The lower-end of this range—which breaks down to approximately $83 per content hour—is in line with what we heard from most of the organizations we interviewed. Not surprisingly, the organizations we interviewed that used a third party to manage their Webinars tended to charge more for them.
In distinguishing between Webinars and other formats, however, it is important to realize that Webinars are often purchased on a per-site basis, rather than on a per-person basis. In other words, an organization may purchase a Webinar and then have several people gather in a room to log in to the Webinar and participate. Conversations with vendors in the Webinar market suggest that an
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Average per content hour Median per content hour Average per credit hour Median per credit hour
$30.00
$53.80
$40.00
$52.24
$39.00
$73.97
$40.00
$56.79
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
Break down the
pricing for your
e-learning
offerings
(excluding any
free offerings).
On average,
how much (in
U.S. dollars)
does your
organization
charge or plan
to charge
members per
hour of content
and per hour of
credit for an e-
learning
offering?
47!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
average of four people attend a Webinar at any given site. So, on a per-course or per-credit-hour and per-person basis, pricing for Webinars may well be on par with, or even quite a bit lower than, for other types of content.
On the other hand, a provider well versed in pricing for on-demand product offerings felt that the $56.79 average pricing for a content hour suggested by survey results sounded “about right.“ This number also jibes with our experience in working with organizations that offer on-demand e-learning products.
In general, the market seems to assign a pricing premium to content that is facilitated, whether in real time or asynchronously. The following table shows pricing levels when a particular type of content is included in the associations product mix. When real-time Webcasts and Webinars, facilitated courses, and member-only discussion boards are present, pricing levels per content hour are above the sector average. Conversely, on-demand content tends to drive pricing levels below the sector average. (See the chart on the following page.)
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Health care: physicians (10)
Health care: non-physicians (29)
Construction (10)
Manufacturing (8)
Legal and financial services (16)
Education (25)
Real estate (7)
$10.00
$80.00
$32.50
$55.00
$57.00
$25.00
$23.00
$12.60
$140.75
$36.50
$55.00
$52.63
$45.89
$29.70
$15.00
$77.50
$39.50
$42.50
$57.00
$25.00
$21.25
$15.43
$83.70
$48.63
$46.25
$51.00
$45.89
$22.25
Average and median costs per content hour and per credit, grouped by industry.In most, but not all, industries, pricing per credit hour is slightly higher than pricing per content hour.
Average per content hourMedian per content hourAverage per credit hourMedian per credit hour
48!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
It should be noted that these numbers say nothing about the overall financial performance of programs containing a particular content type. Underlying costs and potential volume can vary dramatically from one format to the next. A low-priced on-demand offering, for example, may become a cash cow for an organization after the initial investment for producing it is recouped because the ongoing incremental costs for supporting are so low. What these numbers imply, however, is that a perception persists in the market that facilitated experiences are more valuable. We can only speculate why this is, but common sense suggests that facilitated formats feel more familiar both to providers and participants and that people tend to assume that learning is more effective when human-to-human interaction is involved.
While facilitated formats may command higher pricing, it appears that the presence of a certification program and continuing education
credit may have the opposite effect. Organizations with a certification program in place report an average price per hour of content of $46.89 as opposed to $62.05 for organizations that do not offer any form of certification. Similarly, organizations that offer credit towards a certification or other credential report an average price per hour of $47.66 while those that do not offer such credit report an average price of $68.45.
While these figures may seem counterintuitive, the explanation is most likely that markets where certification exists, or where securing the ability to offer continuing education credit is seen as worthwhile, are likely to be more competitive markets where both demand and the corresponding supply of content are higher. Particularly in the early stages of such a market, a glut of competing suppliers tends to drive prices down.
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Real-time Webinars
Facilitated online courses
Member-only discussion boards
“Off-the-shelf” courses
CD-ROMs and DVDs
Self-paced courses
Offline with online assessments
Blended learning
Electronic study guides
Recorded Webinars
Educational simulations or games
Audio or video podcasts $32.98
$33.89
$34.43
$38.29
$46.98
$48.03
$49.26
$52.03
$53.20
$61.19
$61.28
$65.81 Pricing levels
when a particular
type of content is
included in the
associations
product mix.
When real-time Webinars, facilitated courses, and member-only discussion boards are present, pricing levels per content hour are above the sector average. Conversely, on-demand content tends to drive pricing levels below the sector average.
49!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
PRICING AND AGE OF PROGRAM
The survey data shows a roller-coaster pattern for pricing over the course of building an e-learning program. Pricing is higher in year one, drops in year two, rises again in years three to five, and then drops back down again.
We’re not inclined to make too much of these numbers until we see how they change over time. There are logical reasons, however, for why such a pattern might emerge. Typically, when an organizations starts an e-learning program, there is a certain amount of low-hanging fruit—areas of clear need that are likely a significant part of the
reason for starting the program initially. As the organization attempts to move beyond its initial offerings, finding the right model can be difficult. We have seen, in our own experience, a tendency for organizations to start cutting prices when initial demand falters.
By years three to five, a program has typically either found its footing or has retrenched or shut down. The possibility for bolstering pricing emerges. Finally, by the time an organization has hit the five-year mark, on-demand A
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
formats tend to be a more significant part of the product mix than in the earlier years in which live Webinars tend to dominate. Among survey respondents, 79.1 percent of organizations that have been using e-learning for more than five years report offering self-paced online courses and tutorials, and 76.7 report offerings on-demand Webinars. Among the same group, 67.4 percent indicate that they offer live Webinars. As noted above, on-demand products tend to come with lower price points. An increase in the percentage of these products in the overall mix would thus logically lead to decline in prices over all.
Again, it is premature to make too much of these numbers, but it will be interesting to return to them in future years to see if this pattern persists.
Less than 1 year 1 to 2 years 3 to 5 years More than 5 years
$48.11
$65.68
$49.26
$62.09
Average price per content hour, by age of the e-learning program.The survey data shows a roller-coaster pattern.
“We priced them pretty steeply at first; they were $295 originally, when we came out with a course three years ago. We have continued to drop the price, so now...one e-learning hour costs $40 for a member and $50 for a non-member. So if it’s a three-hour course, you pay $120 if you’re a member....”
50!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
PRICING STRATEGY AND MODELS
How are associations determining prices for their products? Our interviews suggest that, at this point, pricing tends to be based on a combination of intuition and a general sense of what other associations are charging. Providers also have significant influence. While most of the providers we talked with said that they are not directly involved in setting the pricing, all of them indicated that they are typically asked about pricing by associations and that they do provide pricing advice.
As with the product development process, our follow-up survey of organizations that currently offer e-learning indicated that most do not have a formal, document process for setting prices for their e-learning.
Along with an informal process for setting prices initially, our conversations with associations also suggest that organizations tend to be highly reactive to the market environment as they start to role out their products.
I will tell you that we ended up
finding out pretty quickly that we
needed to think of pricing in several
different ways because we have, as I
said before, such a variety of
memberships. So we ended up with
an institutional membership and an
industry membership; we ended up
with group memberships, so in other
words it starts to scale. You can get an individual
access to the course or you can sign up in groups,
and then the groups break out in various ways.
But then we also have a potential audience within
students at...schools who might be interested in
this particular content, so then we came up with
an education package. [We have a] page on our
Web site that shows you the 50 different ways that
you can pay for this course. And all of that came
out of...asking, “Who are the various possible
students for this course, and what makes sense?”
Two strategies that we have seen gain ground over the years as some organizations have built out a library of online offerings are bundled course offerings—grouping a set of related courses together as a single product—and subscription
pricing—giving a user or organization unlimited access to a library of educational content over a designated period. One association representative told us:
I think the most expensive single
course we have is $55. Then we will
also...do a bundle on safety, or we
can do a bundle on
basic...techniques, group those
together, and the guiding principle
we have there is those packages the
courses are about $10 to $12 a
course. When we did the math, we
figured that if you bought an annual
subscription the price point ended
up being roughly $5 to $6 a course.
That’s a pretty good bargain. But
subscribers are 80 percent of our
business, so that is what we really
try to drive....the guiding principles
are to get that person the best value.
People renewing that year after year,
that’s the growth for us.
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How do you set prices for your e-learning offerings?
“I really don’t have a good answer, and it’s somewhat embarrassing.”
3.6%5.5%
70.9%
20.0%
Formal pricing process No formal process Not sureDon’t charge for e-learning
If your organization sells e-learning products or services, do you have a formal, documented process for
setting prices?
Only 20 percent have a formal pricing process.
51!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
$1 Learning
“Last year we did $99 for a 90-minute session. Right now we are doing $59 for a 60-minute session, and then a bundled price if they do the entire series. Right now we have three series, two of which are nine sessions total, and one of them is four sessions. We were looking at it like $1 per minute.”
“I don’t think we did it this way on purpose, but it usually ends up being $1 per slide.”
No member discount1% to 9% discount10% to 19% discount20% to 29% discount30% to 39% discount40% to 49% discount50% or greater discountOther discount
Do members of
your association
receive a
discount on e-
learning
products and
services?
The most common level of discount for member purchases among organizations currently using e-learning is from 10 to 19 percent.
As e-learning matures in the sector, we expect to see much more course bundling, subscriptions sales, and deep discounting on bulk sales to large purchasers. In general, however, pricing currently seems to be an area in which there is significant opportunity for improving e-learning program performance. Perhaps more than any other factor, pricing tends to serve as a barometer for the perceived value of a program or individual offering—both by the potential learner and by the association itself. One of the providers we interviewed commented that programs priced at more than $200 tend to sell better than lower-priced programs. It is beyond the scope of our survey data or this report to fully explore the role of pricing in association e-learning markets, but our general sense is that in many instances associations can and should be pricing their e-learning at a higher level that is more in line with the actual value delivered.
DISCOUNTS
Discounts are a standard part of association e-learning. Most offer lower pricing for members than for non-members. Many also offer discounts to students or residents (in the case of medical associations), though we did not ask organizations to provide information about these discounts in the survey.
The most common level of discount for member purchases among organizations currently using e-learning is from 10 to 19 percent (24.9 percent). This was also the most common range selected by organizations planning an e-learning initiative (26.1 percent), though many (27.3 percent) indicated they do not yet know what level discount they will offer.
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12.7%
13.1%
3.5%
10.5%
14.8%
24.9%
2.6%
17.9%
52!CASE STUDY
In 1995, the National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA) introduced the air systems cleaning specialist (ASCS) certification, which could be earned through a rigorous, 150-question, multiple-choice examination. To help candidates prepare for the exam, NADCA developed a one-day, place-based prep class. Although the certification took off, NADCA soon realized that its approach to training wasn’t working for all members, as John Schulte, executive director, shared: “What we heard from our members, the owners of the companies (really, that’s our primary audience), they said, look, I’d love to get my guy trained through your ASCS course, but I have to send him down to Florida. I’m on the West Coast, and there’s a travel expense. I can’t really afford to train all of my guys that way.” That type of feedback combined with the fact NADCA has members in 30 countries led the organization to explore e-learning.
The association began with a full-day live Webinar for a flat fee of $795 (meaning companies attending could train more than one staff person from the same site), and now it’s moving to an e-learning library of resources so NADCA doesn’t have to deal with the hassles of scheduling an
instructor for every offering—or the costs of paying an instructor every time—and learners get on-demand convenience.
To be a member of NADCA, at least one person on staff has to be an ASCS, and NADCA membership is a common requirement for winners of six-figure jobs awarded through formal bidding processes. Add to these requirements the convenience of e-learning, and NADCA training is in demand. “Our certification and our standard and therefore our membership have all been well adopted by end users in our market.” Schulte elaborated, “So that all ties together—one drives the other basically.”
Certification, or credit towards a certification—whether it’s your organization’s or not—is a powerful driver of demand, as true for e-learning and as other types of training.
John Schulte Executive director of the National Air Duct Cleaners Association
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Certification Creates Demand; E-learning AssistsNational Air Duct Cleaners Association
“It was a no-brainer for us to figure out if we could deliver this better [than place-based training].”
John Schulte, executive director
53!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
DistributionE-learning is largely associated with the Web at this point in its evolution, and for the most part, associations that offer e-learning distribute it via the Web through some form of e-commerce transaction. Nonetheless, other forms of distribution continue to be popular. As indicated in the chapter “The Operational Perspective,” a significant number of associations still use CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs for distributing educational offerings. Additionally, while not covered by our survey, anecdotal evidence suggests that teleseminars remain a popular option.
A form of delivery which we did not formally address in our survey or in interviews with associations and providers is learning via handheld devices such as mobile phones, MP3 players, or portable video devices. Only one of the associations we interviewed indicated learning delivery via handheld devices is something it already offers. One other organization indicated that it may introduce some form of handheld learning in the future. We expect to see growth in this area over the coming year, however, particularly among
organizations that serve members who are highly mobile in their day-to-day work and tend not to spend much or any time at a desk.
Another channel of distribution that surfaced in interviews was the possibility of delivering of e-learning via a corporate or
government purchaser’s learning management system. Many organizations that wish to purchase e-learning from an association already have a learning management system in place and prefer to track all of their online learning through that system. To accommodate this need, associations either have to be prepared to hand over content files to the purchasing organization or host the files on their own servers in a way that they can be accessed and tracked by an outside system.
Either of these scenarios is significantly easier to accommodate if the association has developed its content according to major e-learning industry standards. As suggested in the chapter “The Technology Perspective,” it appears that associations are either unfamiliar with or do not place much importance on these standards. Our sense at this point is that relatively few organizations are thinking about distribution of their content through outside systems. As e-learning in the sector continues to mature, we expect more organizations to recognize this opportunity and for there to be a corresponding growth in adherence to e-learning industry standards for content packaging and distribution.
MARKET PENETRATION
One of the interviewees caveated, “There’s a whole lot of, as you know, asterisks around this one,” but, as with pricing, we sought through the survey to establish an initial benchmark for the level of penetration that organizations appear to be achieving with their e-learning programs. To help limit the number of asterisks somewhat we focused our question on the percentage of members served.
The average penetration numbers did not vary significantly based on the age of the program. Older programs indicated penetration numbers slightly above the group average—19.4 percent for
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What
percentage of
your
membership
base would you
estimate
participates in
at least one e-
learning
offering from
your
organization
annually?
Average Median
10.0%
18.2%
54!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
programs three to five years old and 18.8 percent for programs more than five years old. The penetration rate for programs less than a year old was 17.8 percent, and for those one to two years old, it was 16.6 percent. It is interesting that penetration averages follow a roller coaster pattern similar to that noted for pricing. The median across all groups was 10 percent except for programs three to five years old, for which the median was 15 percent.
Naturally, penetration numbers can vary greatly based on industries, formats, topics, and other factors. In our interviews, organizations indicated penetration ranges from 2 percent to 80 percent. Nonetheless our own experience as well as the overall input from the associations and providers we interviewed suggest that the 18.2 percent average and 10 percent median are not far from
reality for most organizations. At a minimum, these numbers may serve as a starting benchmark, along with the average pricing figures above, in establishing the level of revenue that might be expected from an e-learning product offering.
PromotionWhen we asked during our interviews in what area associations tend to fall short in achieving their e-learning goals, marketing was by far the most common response from both associations and providers. In nearly all instances, what is really meant is a specific aspect of marketing: promotion. The chart below suggests which forms of promotion tend to be most popular among associations with e-learning programs.
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E-mail marketing
Word of mouth
Banner ads on own Web site
Search engine optimization
Print mailings
Press releases
Conference exhibits
Promotional Webcasts
Banner ads on other Web sites
Pay-per-click advertising
TV ads
Radio ads95.6%
95.7%
72.6%
59.0%
63.1%
35.5%
37.2%
29.0%
41.8%
23.3%
1.6%
2.3%
4.0%
3.5%
17.8%
25.2%
21.6%
37.2%
32.6%
36.3%
21.1%
26.9%
14.6%
4.7%
0.4%
0.9%
7.0%
13.2%
12.3%
19.4%
21.3%
24.2%
22.8%
34.3%
40.9%
28.7%
0%
0%
2.6%
2.6%
3.0%
7.9%
8.8%
10.5%
14.2%
15.5%
42.9%
64.3%
How important are
each of the following
methods for
promoting or
marketing your e-
learning offerings?
Absolutely necessaryVery importantSlightly importantNot at all important
55!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
The prevalence of e-mail marketing is not surprising—nearly any seasoned Internet marketer will put e-mail at the top of the list of effective marketing tools for Web commerce. In conversations with associations and providers, however, it was clear that using e-mail effectively is something of a challenge.
In many cases, e-learning programs are competing with any number of other offerings for access to the organization’s e-mail list and for “mind share” within e-mails that are sent out. Associations are increasingly concerned about sending too much e-mail to members. To avoid sending e-mail too frequently, organizations often load up the e-mails that do go out with multiple promotions, thus reducing the likelihood that a promotion for a particular e-learning product or event will be noticed.
While most associations seem to understand the value of segmenting lists, our interviews suggest that actual efforts to clearly define market segments for e-learning and then implement segmentation as part of e-mail campaigns are relatively limited.
Another significant part of promoting e-learning is visibility of the available programs on the organization’s Web site. As with e-mail, this is also an area in which e-learning must jockey for position with other parts of the organization. Getting on the home page, above the fold—that is, the part of the page visitors can see without scrolling down—was the prize sought by many of the organizations we interviewed. The comments of one of the education directors summed up the situation: “When our piece on the front page of our Web site is above the fold, we have an uptick in sales. When there is something more important organizationally and that’s above the fold, our sales drop.”
Given the challenges that access to e-mail and Web site real estate present, it is somewhat surprising that pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and promotional Webcasts—each of which is a mainstay of current Internet marketing practices—do not appear to have much of a place in current association marketing strategies for e-learning. SEO fairs the best, with 37 percent of respondents indicating that it is very important or
absolutely necessary. In our conversations with association representatives, most felt that search was an area in which their marketing efforts could be improved, though many noted that search within their own Web sites rather than across the broader Web was the first place that needed attention.
Promotional Webcasts were indicated as a marketing method by only one of the organizations we interviewed and were seen as very important or important by only 15.3 percent of survey respondents. While pay-per-click advertising beat out television and radio in the survey, it was seen as very important or absolutely necessary by only 9.6 percent of respondents—the only Web-based marketing tactic to fall below 10 percent. Only one of the associations we interviewed indicated current or planned use of pay-per click advertising approaches like Google AdWords.
Over time, it seems likely that e-learning programs will need to learn to take better advantage of approaches other than e-mail to market their
offerings. Aside from the already-mentioned competition with other parts of the organization for use of e-mail lists, grabbing a prospect’s attention with an e-mail will continue to grow more challenging over time. Learning to leverage search as well as to use social media approaches for bolstering word of mouth will need to be part of the marketing mix of programs that hope to grow.
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“I don’t think we are very good and effective in our marketing. That’s one of the areas that I want to have a better understanding of, because they [the staff in the marketing department] use my dollars. I put in a budget, and I give them money.”
56!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
RELATIONSHIP WITH MARKETING DEPARTMENT
While many association e-learning programs—particularly those at small associations—do not have the luxury of access to a marketing department for help with promoting e-learning, our interviews revealed some tension between e-learning and marketing at organizations with a marketing department.
There was a sense that association marketing departments do not have a good understanding of how to position and promote online educational products—or, in some cases, any products. “Our marketing department has never marketed products at all,” said one education director. “They have considered themselves strictly a communications arm, so they would maybe communicate that there was a course but they didn’t really do any marketing, except for the annual [meeting]. There were no postcards or brochures or design or anything.”
In some cases, the organizational representatives we interviewed wanted responsibility for marketing. “Quite honestly we would like to own more of the marketing, we really would,” said one education director. “We understand the product, we understand how it works...They [the staff in marketing] are trying to market something that they don’t know a whole lot about, and that’s not their problem, but we think we could do it a little bit better.”
A representative from another organization concurred:
I would say the biggest issue that we’ve had is
marketing. We’re a very traditional association in
the kind of services that we offer, kind of
membership affinity programs, your standard
destination school or conference. We found that
our marketing team didn’t really understand how
to approach this from a different perspective, so
we’ve had a lot of trouble getting the word out
and communicating about this in a new, fresh
way. It’s a new, fresh thing, and some of our own
internal limitations have hurt us there.
In other cases, interviewees indicated that would welcome more engagement and help with marketing so they could concentrate more on education:
For my situation I could literally
spend 100 percent of my time in
marketing—that would be easy
to do. There is so much work to
be done. It’s never ending, and
that’s true for other people too.
So how do we carve out
appropriate time for the
education stuff? If the education
staff are spending all of their
time on marketing and
promotions and chapter
relations, who is spending time
managing the product,
improving the product, creating
new products, insuring the
integrity of the education and all
that stuff?
There is, of course, little to be gained by an adversarial relationship with the marketing department or from stretching your resources too thin in an attempt to wear all the hats that go with successfully marketing an educational product or service. Our hope is that as e-learning continues to establish its place in the sector, more strategic coordination between marketing and education will emerge.
CompetitionMany of the organizations we interviewed were aware of significant competition that already exists in their market. Others saw relatively little competition at present but were aware that the situation could change, as one interviewee explained:
I think there are a number of associations, that if
they don’t do it then they will have competitors
who will do it and will take the initiative and
maybe carve out a significant niche. I think it
poses a fairly large risk for some associations if
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Your “membership directory is no longer a big secret—it’s not hard to gather large numbers of people in the industry together.”
57!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
they wait too long because an intense competitor
who knows the industry and who can develop
things rapidly could literally get things going
really quickly and inexpensively and the
associations have lost some of the things that used
to make them exclusive. Their membership
directory is no longer a big secret—it’s not hard to
gather large numbers of people in the industry
together. So I just think that as part of an
environmental scan or competitiveness analysis
every association needs to at least ask the
question, should we be doing this? If we don’t
who else is already doing it? I bet that in many
cases somebody is already doing it even if the
association is not aware of it.
Several interviewees saw e-learning as something that helps to make their organization more competitive. “I think most associations either have competitors or they will,” said one association representative, “and they may not even be aware of them. [E-learning] kind of puts a stake in the ground that other competitors will see, and they can decide how they respond to that or deal with it.”
An education director at another association told us that “for the time being we are pretty much it, if somebody wants to play in this territory, then this is where you want to be” but also noted that “we’re seeing an increasing competition from proprietary groups who sort of go, ‘Look, they are the only ones out there, and I bet that there is market space for
us,’ which is going to continue to be a challenge for us and be in an increasing challenge for us.”
One of the providers we interviewed also noted the increasing entrance of proprietary training groups into the association e-learning market. These groups—which may often even include people who are association members and have traditionally been subject matter experts for the association—are now able to take advantage of rapid, low-cost methods for producing and distributing educational content that may compete directly with what associations are offering. “It’s a growing threat,” said one provider. “It has been growing for the last five years.”
Related to the entrance of proprietary providers into their markets, another area in which association e-learning programs may face a threat is in the sale of Webinars. In the corporate world, Webinars are increasingly seen as a tool for lead generation and brand expansion. As a result, it is common to see them offered for free. As businesses become more sophisticated in their Webinar marketing efforts, they are coming to understand that the most effective Webinars offer high educational value paired with a low-key sales pitch.
Additionally, a sort of commodity market is developing for freelance teachers seeking to earn extra income or possibly even transform their teaching into an online business. A number of new platforms make this transformation quite easy. To maintain the ability to charge sustainable prices for their Webinar offerings, it will be increasingly important for associations to clearly articulate their unique value in the markets where they operate.
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“We charge $129 for our Webinars, and there are free Webinars everywhere.”
58!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
SummaryIn this chapter we considered some of the issues important to managing e-learning as a line of business, including the status of e-learning as a strategic part of services provided by associations. We looked at how associations price their e-learning offerings, how they promote them, and what impact the current economy is having.
We’ll conclude this section with some trends and opportunities we see and questions to ask of your organization as you begin to plan or continue to purse an e-learning program.
Trends and PredictionsWe believe Webinar use will continue to grow, but downward price pressure on Webinars also seems
likely. Many commercial business are already well-versed in using free Webinars for lead generation, and platforms like WiZiQ are making it easy for anyone with something to teach to jump in the game.
Related to the above point, but also to online learning in general, an association’s brand in its
niche and its ability to articulate a clear value
proposition for its educational offerings will
become increasingly important.
Given factors that tend to restrict effective use of e-mail for marketing association e-learning, the attention paid to marketing tactics other than e-
mail is likely to increase in the coming year. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising, in particular, will become a more important part of the e-learning marketing mix.
Competition for learners will increase. Where it doesn’t exist right now, it will start to appear.
Largely as a result of the current economy, awareness of e-learning as a product-line
diversification and risk-reduction strategy will
increase.
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An association’s brand and ability to articulate a clear value proposition are critical to the success of an e-learning program.
59!THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Questions to Consider1.Do you have a formal strategy for e-learning,
and if so, is it understood broadly across your
organization? How does it contribute to the
overall strategy of the organization, and how is
that contribution measured?
2.Do your current e-learning offerings cover all
direct and indirect costs associated with them?
If not, what number of products, at what price
and volume of sales would cover all costs? Are
there areas where costs need to be cut to
achieve a realistic business model?
3.What are the factors that do or will drive
demand for your e-learning offerings? How
have you aligned your products to meet those
demand factors, and where could you make
improvements?
4.What value does your e-learning program offer
that is different from, or potentially superior to,
the value offered in your face-to-face
educational offerings? Is this value clearly
reflected in your positioning and promotion of
your e-learning offerings?
5.How large is your potential audience for any
given e-learning offering, and what percentage
of this audience can you expect to enroll in the
offering?
6.What are the key segments in your e-learning
audience? How do you know, and how much
do you know about what drives the demand
for e-learning in each of those segments?
7.What is your process for establishing the price
for your e-learning offerings? Have you
documented this process in a way that they it
be shared with those who need to know it?
8.How much do you currently know about your
competition, and when is the last time you
updated your knowledge?
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60!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
Technology is an essential part of e-learning. Learners access the educational experience through a technology-driven interface, and organizations manage the details of providing access, presenting content, and tracking usage through a variety of back-end technology tools and platforms. In this section, we draw on the online survey and our interviews to examine the types of technologies associations are using for e-learning delivery, how those technologies integrate with membership management, and the issues that arise with end users.
End User ConcernsAs noted earlier in this report, concern about end users’ technology skills was the most significant barrier that organizations currently offering e-learning encountered when implementing their initiatives. It was selected by 45.5 percent of survey respondents. Among organizations planning an e-learning initiative, this concern ranked quite a bit lower—only 35.3 percent selected it—but was still significant.
At the core of potential technology issues is the fact that associations as a group serve an incredibly diverse range of end users. Just within the group of organizations that we interviewed for this report the potential learner base ranged from high school dropouts to PhDs, from people in their first job to those already retired and serving as volunteers. And across this range, as one of the providers we interviewed pointed out, there are any number of possible variations in computers, Web browsers, and Internet connections—a level of variation significantly less likely in more tightly controlled corporate training initiatives.
While our interviews suggest that end user technology skills are indeed a very real issue for many organizations, the organizations we talked to seemed to feel capable of addressing them—but only with significant effort in some cases. “It goes with the territory” was the view of most interviewees, and most noted a number of steps
they typically take to ensure as few technology issues as possible for their end users.
[Our] field is a little older, particularly the
decision-maker level, which is typical, and the
lower-level employees don’t always work in a
professional capacity in which they have access to
a computer or know how to use it. We’ve made
some very intentional decisions in regards to
developing e-learning that is pretty flat and isn’t
really fancy because we still have people using
dial-up connections. We’ve added in a lot of FAQs
and tutorials; we do little guided things over the
phone with people. At our conference we had four
terminals set up where people could come and sit
and learn how to use it [our e-learning] and have
the staff teaching them.
The age of the target audience was a factor noted by many interviewees when it came to potential technology issues. “[A]s with any association we have the varying membership types,” said an education manager we interviewed, “the folks that have been in the profession for many, many years, and we have the students and new professionals who are maybe a little more comfortable with technology in an online learning format.” In general, a younger audience was viewed by interviewees as equating to fewer issues, but level of education and general use of computers on the job were also very significant factors.
Organizations that feel their learners are likely encounter technical issues often choose to work with a vendor or vendors that can provide a high level of support to end users. Particularly in the case of live Webinars, where there is less time and room for error in ensuring that a learner can access the educational event, many associations rely heavily on support from another organization. One interviewee described attending a Webinar hosted by a competitor who did not use an outside service provider. “We were happy we were not the presenter, as it was a mess! We determined our student constituents are too IT needy for us to not use a system with support.”
The Technology PerspectiveEnd Users, Systems, Standards, and Social Media
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
61!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
In discussing on-demand offerings, one of the interviewees described the level of end user technology issues she had encountered as “almost nil.”
I think when something is designed really
well...and you provide clear instructions for
people on how they need to get to the course and
how they need to access it, after that it should all
be embedded; it should all be clear. We had made
sure that there was an introductory section
upfront in the course that we told everybody to
start with. It told them all about how to navigate
through the course and what the different things
were for and all that sort of stuff, so we were very
clear with people. We’ve gotten very few calls. The
most common call we get is the same one we get
for our Web site, which is, ‘I forgot my log-in and
password.’ So I think that a well designed course
—definitely you need a good instructional
designer for online learning, to help with that—the system itself, should be easy to use.
Finally, a number of the organizations we spoke to noted the issues that sometimes go with offering e-learning to corporate and government audiences. In many cases, IT departments at these organizations implement firewalls or policies on networked computers that prevent users from accessing a
needed download or running scripts in a browser page. Usually the only solution available in these cases is to work with the organizations where the problems arise to figure out a way to get needed software pre-loaded onto computers or make targeted exceptions to network policy.
Webinar PlatformsIn the survey, Webinar platforms were included in the authoring tool choices (discussed in the chapter “The Operational Perspective”). We’ve separated out the Webinar platforms here, however, for ease of comparison. Among the platforms used by organizations, WebEx (26.6 percent) and GoToMeeting (22.5 percent) lead the pack with
Microsoft Live Meeting (13.5 percent) a distant third.
It should be noted that in many cases, organizations choose to use a service provider to support their Webinars and may identify with the service provider as much or more than the platform itself. In these cases, given that we named platforms rather than service companies, it is possible that respondents simply did not select a Webinar platform when selecting from the available list of tools. Key examples of service providers and the platforms they support are CommPartners (for WebEx and Live Meeting), KRM (for Live Meeting and WebEx), and Boston Conferencing (for Live Meeting).
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“[W]e have had very few problems with our attendees not being able to figure it [how to attend a Webinar] out. We have to really spell it out sometimes. We had some people staring at the computer screen not knowing why they weren’t hearing anything when they weren’t on the phone. So we’ve learned how to communicate the directions a little bit better along the way. They seem to be very comfortable now with all the technology involved. We have glitches but nothing major.”
WebEx
GoToMeeting
Live Meeting
Adobe Connect
Genesys
Elluminate
ReadyTalk
0% 10% 20% 30%
0.9%
0.9%
1.8%
3.7%
13.5%
22.5%
26.6%
WebEx and GoToMeeting are the Webinar platforms most used by survey respondents.
62!CASE STUDY
Based in Pittsburgh, SSPC: The Society for Protective Coatings provides training for the industrial painting sector of the construction industry in the United States and, increasingly, abroad.
Five years ago, the organization started offering a correspondence version of two of its basic classroom programs—an introduction to the industry and a course on planning and specifying projects. Students would download a PDF version of the required text, complete their readings, and then take a proctored exam that was then sent back to SSPC headquarters to be graded.
The correspondence offerings were a success, but as their popularity increased so did the complexity of managing in-person exams—particularly outside the United States. “As our overseas market grew we decided to move to something a little more sophisticated,” said Pamela Groff, technical materials development specialist at SSPC. For SSPC, that meant implementing a learning management system with content management capabilities.
Working from their existing textbooks, SSPC created Web-based courses that included all the content from the correspondences course as well as the examinations that had previously been place-based. “It’s an asynchronous online experience for the students,” explained Groff, “They can do it whenever they want all over the world. And the quizzes and final exam are graded automatically, proving the students with instant feedback.”
The ability to manage the exams online has boosted operational efficiency for SSPC, cutting down on both the labor and the time needed to process grades. This newfound efficiency has, in turn, translated into higher value for many members. “Students are able to begin their career path with us much more quickly than they were before,” noted Groff. “Also we are able to reach the international audiences more readily.” Given that SSPC training of one or more employees is often required for companies to qualify to bid on contracts, greater reach and convenience are significant benefits.
Since taking the initial two courses online, SSPC has added two more offerings—both of which provide initial training toward a certification career path—to its online catalog and expects to bring another nine programs online by the end of 2009. Groff envisions even more growth in the future.
When asked for advice she would give to peers hoping to implement a learning management system, Groff strongly advocates talking with other associations to find out about their experiences. “We talked to about six or seven other associations,” she said.
“Find out what you really need,” Groff continued, “Is it really necessary to spend half a million dollars to develop a really customized LMS? Or is a basic system suitable for your needs? You have to decide what kind of experience you are going to give to the student. Really decide what the tradeoffs are and what’s feasible within your budget.”
As SSPC’s example suggest, the right decision can translate into significant value for both the association and its members.
“Students are able to begin their career path with us much more quickly than they were before. Also we are able to reach the international audiences more readily.”
Pamela Groff, technical materials development specialist at SSPC
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Creating New Value—GloballySSPC: The Society for Protective Coatings
63!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
Does your
organization
currently use a
learning
management
system (LMS) or
learning content
management
system (LCMS)
for delivery and/
or tracking of e-
learning? Just under half report using a learning management system (LMS) or planning to within the next 12 months.
Learning Management SystemsWhile Webinars are often seen as a relatively easy, low-risk way to enter the e-learning market, implementation of a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS) is usually a sign that an organization has made the decision to invest significantly in an e-learning strategy—presumably because it sees the potential for a positive return on that investment. Like other complex software, these systems often come with significant licensing fees, and the time and cost for implementation can be substantial, particularly if integration with other systems is involved.
Even people who are familiar with the term “LMS”—and our past surveys indicate that many still are not—may not really understand what a learning management system does. In its most basic form, an LMS is a type of database software—not unlike, for example, Microsoft Access—that is designed specifically for registering users for course experiences and then tracking and maintaining data related to those course experiences—for example, whether a learner has successfully completed a course.
In the context of e-learning, LMSes have evolved into very sophisticated, powerful systems that can manage Web-based catalogs of courses, present learners with
menus of content tailored specifically for their needs, and track learners’ progress towards acquiring new competencies, credentials, or other career-related goals.
A learning content management system, or LCMS, adds to the capabilities just mentioned by providing ways to author or import learning content objects into the system, edit them, assemble them into learning experiences, and repurpose them into other, different learning experiences. Some vendors distinguish between their LMS and LCMS offerings and charge separately for each. Others blend them into a single, unified platform.
For the purposes of this report, the term LMS should be understood to encompass both LMS and LCMS systems unless otherwise specified.
Just under half (49.1 percent) of the respondents that currently offer e-learning report using a learning management system (LMS) or planning to within the next 12 months. A significant number (33.3 percent) of survey respondents indicated that they do not use an LMS and have no plans to implement an LMS within the next 12 months. The majority (61.5 percent) of organizations planning an e-learning initiative are unsure about whether they will use an LMS.
Not surprisingly, usage is a good bit higher among organizations currently offering
self-paced courses, a form of e-learning that can be greatly enhanced by use of
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17.8%
33.2%14.7%
34.4%
Use LMSDon’t use LMS, but plan to in next 12 monthsDon’t use LMS, and don’t plan to in next 12 monthsNot sure
What’s an LMS?
64!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
“We do want especially to identify people in the membership who have, in the past, taken certain assessments, so we could identify them as possible future volunteer leaders. If there is a way that we can do that without a full-on, yearlong, massively expensive LMS implementation, I’m all for it.”
an LMS. Of these organizations, 65.4 percent report either already using an LMS or planning to within the next 12 months. Organizations that offer continuing education that specifically supports earning a formal certification or license are also more likely (38.9 percent) to have implemented an LMS than organizations that do not (26.4 percent). Finally, organizations that charge for all (38.3 percent) or some (37.4 percent) of their e-learning offerings are more likely to use an LMS than those that report not charging (13.5 percent).
Close to a third of the organizations we interviewed were using a learning management system, and most that were not seemed to have at least a basic knowledge of LMSes. Often an LMS was seen as something the organization aspired to implement but had deferred until it was clear the investment could be justified. One education director explained:
[T]hat’s one of my personal goals, to be able to get
into an LMS. That was actually my goal to do this
year. Part of it is that it wasn’t in the budget, but
part of it as well is that I don’t think the
organization is ready for that just yet. I think we
need to do a little bit more with the Webinars and
gradually get them [our learners] to that point,
where they are ready to do the online learning.
In another case, implementation of an LMS was something to avoid, if possible. “I’m hoping that there is a way that we can do it without a full LMS implementation because that just looks like a huge job,” said one interviewee.
We do intend to capture the data, we do want to
do some talent management stuff, and we want to
identify future leaders. We do want especially to
identify people in the membership who have, in the
past, taken certain assessments, so we could
identify them as possible future volunteer leaders.
If there is a way that we can do that without a full-
on, yearlong, massively expensive LMS
implementation, I’m all for it.
While it has become significantly less costly and time-consuming over the past several years to implement an LMS, our sense is that a certain amount of trepidation about this particular type of software has drifted over from the corporate e-learning world. Many larger corporations have been through multiple LMS implementations at this point, and stories abound of six- and seven-figure budgets accompanied by technical headaches. Most association education staff, already strapped for resources, are not eager to take on this kind of challenge.
Among the organizations we interviewed, those that had made the decision to pursue implementing an LMS generally did so because they could see a clear benefit to being able to more efficiently track and manage data related to e-learning. Over time—and in some cases a very short time—the administrative cost savings the system would make possible would more than compensate for the initial investment. Particularly for organizations that offer continuing education, certificates, and other forms of credit through their e-learning programs, a learning management system can greatly increase efficiency by automating processes or putting them in the hands of the end user.
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LMS AND LCMS PACKAGES
While overall usage of learning management systems across the sector is still relatively low, we were able to collect enough data to give some insight into the specific platforms that associations seem to be using. Among our respondents, the open source platform Moodle proved popular. Among proprietary systems, the Intralearn LMS (whether offered through Intralearn itself or through its partner Certilearn) made the strongest showing—8.2 percent of respondents selected the Intralearn LMS, and an additional 1.2 percent selected LearningServer from Intralearn.
GRAY AREAS
Neither the Webinar platform nor the LMS categories fully capture all the options currently available for e-learning delivery in the association market. For example, a number of respondents indicated use of the iCohere platform, which is positioned as a tool for “creating collaborative learning communities.” The iCohere platform has some of the functionalities typically associated with a learning management system and Webinar capabilities but does not, in our opinion, fit neatly into either category.
Additionally, some of the firms that specialize in capturing conference content and converting it into on-demand e-learning have systems that compare well, on some levels, with traditional LMSes, but are not marketed as products distinct from the firms’ services. It may be that some of these will be added to the LMS list in future surveys.
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Angel LMS
Avilar Web Mentor
Blackboard
Education Director
ForceTen
GeoExpress
GeoMaestro
Intralearn LMS (Certilearn)
Intralearn LMS (Intralern)
Isoph Blue
LearnCenter
LearningServer (Intralearn)
LearnPro Plus
LearningSpan
Moodle
Outstart Evolution
Plateau
Saba
Sakai
TopClass
TotalLMS
Custom or proprietary
Not sure
Other 25.9%
22.4%
5.9%
4.7%
3.5%
0%
1.2%
0%
1.2%
8.2%
2.4%
1.2%
1.2%
1.2%
5.9%
4.7%
3.5%
1.2%
2.4%
0%
2.4%
5.9%
1.2%
0%
Of named LMSes and
LCMSes, Moodle came
out on top at 8. 2 percent.
66!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
E-learning and AMSesAt the heart of nearly every association is a membership database of some sort. In smaller organizations, this may take the form of a simple Excel sheet or a Microsoft Access database. As organizations grow, they often adopt one of the more sophisticated association management systems (AMSes). Data related to educational programs and certification very often finds a home in these systems, thus creating a need for all or parts of data generated in other systems to eventually make its way back to the AMS.
In our survey, we asked organizations using or planning to use e-learning to indicate whether they use an association management system, and if so, which one.
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
Use an AMS Don’t use an AMS Not sure
Does your organization currently use an
association management system (AMS)?The majority of associations surveyed do.
13.6%
31.8%54.5%
Aptify
Association Anywhere
ClearVantage
CRM for Members (ProTech)
iMIS
IRMembership
Members360
netFORUM
Office Manager
Personify (TMA Resources)
TIMSS (TMA Resources)
Wild Apricot
Other 26.7%
0%
8.9%
4.4%
2.2%
17.8%
0%
0%
42.2%
0%
2.2%
2.2%
6.7%
Of named AMSes, iMIS
and netFORUM were
used most frequently.
67!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
Among the organizations we interviewed, nearly all had some form of membership management software in place, and most had a process—whether manual or automated—for pulling data from their e-learning activities into the member database. In the case of Webinars, this most often took the form of manually exporting registration and attendance data from the Webinar system as an Excel workbook or delimited text file and importing it into the membership management system. Organizations that had implemented a learning management system were much more likely to have also implemented some form of automated integration.
LMS/AMS INTEGRATION
In our survey, we asked respondents who indicated that their organization used or planned to use both an LMS and an AMS system whether the two systems were integrated. Most either had already integrated or planned to integrate the two systems.
“Most people have that [integration] as an item on their short list that they need to talk about,” said one of the providers with whom we spoke, “how this is going to communicate with their AMS.” “I'd say that all of our e-learning clients have integrated with their AMSes,” another provider told us.
As a general rule, integration between a learning management system and an association management system happens at three levels:
• Single sign-onA user who is logged into the association’s AMS (usually perceived by the end user as being logged into the organization’s Web site) can navigate to the learning management system and access her courses or other content without having to log in again. This is the most fundamental level and is generally a prerequisite for other types of integration to occur.
• E-commerceA user purchases a course using an e-commerce system that is provided as part of the AMS, or is already integrated with the AMS, and details of the purchase are automatically passed to the LMS. When the user next accesses the LMS, the system knows to present the newly purchased content to the user.
• Learner activity dataAs a learner access courses and other materials in the LMS, the system accumulates a variety of data about the learner’s activities—for example, how much time she spends in a course, what her scores are on assessments, and whether she has completed a course. It is often useful for the AMS to know about some or all of this data—particularly data related to course completion and issuance of continuing education credit or certificates.
Are your learning management systems (LMS) and your association
management system (AMS) integrated? In other words, is log-in
information, data about users, data about course activities, or other types
of data shared or will it be shared between the two systems?Some 46 percent of survey respondents indicated their association’s AMS and LMS are integrated.
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28.9%
24.4%
46.7%
AMS and LMS integratedNo, but plan to integrate them in futureNo, and don’t plan to integrate them
68!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
An important aspect of any type of integration between software systems is that there needs to be a clear understanding of which system’s database will be the authority, or database of record for the types of data to be shared among systems. In general, you don’t want it to be possible to change data in multiple places. If this happens, member records can get out of synch and create a mess that is difficult—sometimes impossible—to clean up. In nearly all cases, it makes most sense for the association management system to serve as the database of record for everything other than data that is generated by the learner’s activity in the LMS system.
One of the providers we spoke to was very insistent that “the AMS needs to be the center of the universe; it has to be the center of everything membership. So whatever they [associations] are using to have people sign up and go to their conferences needs to talk to the AMS. And whatever they are using for e-commerce needs to be part of the AMS or talk to the AMS. And the learning management system component needs to talk to the AMS.”
From this provider’s perspective, the ultimate success of a learning management system as part of an organization’s strategy depends heavily on how it interfaces with the AMS—so much so that his company is reluctant to work with organizations
that don’t agree with and acknowledge this point of view:
I’ve [sometimes] forced the hand and told
[prospective clients] that they need to look at their
AMS as being the center of their universe, and
some people will agree, but some will say that they
hadn’t really thought of it that way. That’s one of
the fundamental pieces of the decision making
process, but, again, I want to hear the potential
association that we’ll be working with say back to
me that the AMS needs to be the center of the
universe because we want to be a part of a
business solution...and the core is that the AMS
has to be the center of the universe, or they are
going to end up creating a scenario for themselves
that doesn’t allow them to continue to grow.
E-learning Guidelines and StandardsKnowledge of and adherence to common e-learning guidelines and standards in the sector appears to be quite low. Adherence to the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was considered very important or absolutely necessary by only 27 percent of respondents currently using e-learning. Adherence to Section 508 guidelines for users with disabilities was selected as very important or absolutely necessary by only 17.3 percent of respondents in this group.
Medbiquitous standards, which apply primarily to healthcare education, faired better than the more
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AICC (Airline Industry CBT Committee)
IMS Global Learning Consortium
Medbiquitous
SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model)
Section 508 (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act)
25.8%
20.2%
27.0%
25.0%
22.3%
5.6%
15.1%
0.9%
0.5%
1.9%
11.7%
11.9%
1.4%
3.3%
3.3%
5.6%
7.8%
3.3%
6.1%
2.3%
51.2%
45.0%
67.3%
65.1%
70.2%
How important is
adherence to
guidelines from
each of the
following sources
for your e-learning
initiatives?
Not at all importantSlightly importantVery importantAbsolutely necessaryDon’t know
69!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
KEY E-LEARNING STANDARDS IN BRIEF
The Airline Industry CBT Committee, more commonly known as AICC,
was one of the first groups to establish standards for how computer-based
training (CBT) should communicate with computer-managed instructions
systems (CMI) designed to track training activities. First established in 1993,
the AICC CMI Guidelines for Interoperability (http://www.aicc.org/pages/
down-docs-index.htm) form the basis for much of the subsequent work that
has been done to ensure that an e-learning course created for use in one
learning management system will also function properly in other systems.
A central focus of the IMS Global Learning Consortium is how learning
content can be tagged so that it can easily be discovered and reused,
whether in a single system or across multiple, disparate systems. The various
IMS specifications (http://www.imsglobal.org/specifications.html) are at the
root of terms like reusable learning object as well as the most current
approaches to interoperability. It should be noted that IMS standards are
based on the extensible markup language, or XML, specification created by
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML is the language used for
tagging learning content objects.
The Shareable Content Object Reference Model, or SCORM, is perhaps
the most widely recognized set of standards in the e-learning world. It unites
standards from AICC, IMS, W3C, and other sources to create a general
model for defining, packaging, and managing learning objects. An LMS that
is SCORM-compliant should provide the ability to import, launch, and track a
lesson or course that has been developed according to the SCORM model.
Additionally, an LCMS, or an LMS that features content management
capabilities, should be able to recognize and manipulate the shareable
content objects, or SCOs, which comprise a piece of learning content.
Medbiquitous (www.medbiq.org) is an organization focused on leveraging
XML to establish a set of interoperable standards exchanging educational
content and tracking learner activities and profiles as part of healthcare
education and competence assessment. We included Medbiquitous as part
of the survey based on our knowledge that many healthcare associations are
already active in e-learning.
Section 508 (http://www.section508.gov) refers the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
and subsequent amendments designed to address the accessibility of
electronic and information technologies, including the Web, by people with
disabilities. Federal agencies are required—with some limited exceptions—to
meet standards defined under Section 508 when purchasing electronic and
information technologies, which means that any entity hoping to sell to the
federal government must ensure that its products comply to the standards.
Requirements aside, many developers and consumers of e-learning feel that
compliance with Section 508 is simply the right thing to do. For additional
information on Section 508 as it relates to e-learning, see http://www.access-
board.gov/sec508/e-learning.htm.
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70!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
general standards. They were selected as either very important (33.3 percent) or absolutely necessary (11.1 percent) by groups that identified themselves as serving physicians.
Among respondents planning e-learning initiatives in the coming 12 months, “don’t know” received the majority of responses for every selection other than the Airline Industry CBT Committee (AICC) standard, which was marked as “not important at all” by 52.2 percent of respondents, which may be a factor of respondents assuming the airline in the acronym makes the standard irrelevant for other industries when in fact AICC is broadly applicable and one of the progenitors of SCORM.
The generally low importance or lack of knowledge of standards is most likely a byproduct of relatively low adoption of LMS systems, which tend to be at the center of e-learning standards, as well as a tendency in the sector not to use professionally trained designers and developers, a group which tends to follow standards in creating e-learning. Not surprisingly, organizations offering self-paced online courses—a group more likely to have a LMS and use professional instructional designers—were significantly more likely to indicate that SCORM was very important or absolutely necessary (40.2 percent).
Social Media and E-learningA report issued by Principled Innovation in January 2009 states, “While association executives’ awareness of social media is high, it is not widely adopted.” The same statement applies to association e-learning initiatives. Social media seems to be attracting some interest in the association e-learning community, but with a lot of room for growth. The dominant social tool in both current (32.7 percent) and planned (45.0 percent) e-learning initiatives is discussion forums. The next most popular tool for both current (25.4 percent) and planned (28.4 percent) programs are podcasts.
Discussion boards, while clearly social in nature, are identified with the “old” Web by many, and much podcast usage is arguably broadcast rather than collaborative in nature—and thus not terribly social. With respect to blogs, social networks, and wikis—arguably the tools that most people most closely associate with the social Web—adoption rates by current programs are relatively low. The chart below shows the adoptions level for these tools across the broader association sector, according to the January 2009 Principled Innovation report, and the adoption levels specifically for e-learning, as indicated by our survey.
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
Social networking Blogs Wikis
10.1%
16.5%
25.0%
14.0%
24.0%
31.0% Sector-wide For e-learning
Use of social
networks,
blogs, and
wikis by
associations.
71!CASE STUDY
You don't have to use cutting-edge technology to deliver valuable online content to your constituents. Simple, affordable solutions can satisfy associations and their members. Every other month, the Association of Cable Communicators (ACC), a three-staff association whose members work in communications, public relations, community relations, and government relations in the cable industry, hosts very successful hour-long online chats using the inexpensive ParaChat software.
“The way that we modeled the online chats were almost like panels,” explained Michelle Butler, associate executive director at ACC, “so I line up three to four experts to market as being a part of this particular topic.” The panelists start the chats by introducing the topic at hand and then invite questions from the participants. Butler reported that the whole event is very interactive: “It’s getting to the point now where other members will share their experiences on the particular topic as well.”
To prepare for the chats, Butler develops a short list of questions to send to the panelists. They prepare responses in advance and have that text to draw on during the chat. Butler, as moderator, chimes in with questions to keep the conversation going if it lags. ACC then posts the cleaned-up transcripts from the chats in its online education portal.
These free chats are marketed to the members, but technically anyone can join—Butler views these sessions as a way to recruit new members and increase the stickiness of the ACC membership. The chats are proving even more popular than ACC’s Webinars. “The chats are in the 30 to 40 range [for attendees], sometimes a little big higher,” Butler reported, “and the Webinars are more in the 20 to 30 range.” Whatever the exact numbers, members find both the online chats and the Webinars valuable benefits.
“The chats are more popular than the Webinars, which was surprising.”
Michelle Butler, associate executive director
Simple SatisfiesAssociation of Cable Communicators Chats
Michelle Butler,
associate executive director of the Association of Cable Communicators, and a screen shot
of one of ACC’s
popular online
chats
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SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS
Among the range of social media tools† currently used in association e-learning initiatives, social networks (25 percent, combining public and private) lead the pack, followed by blogs (16.5 percent) and wikis (10.1 percent). All three tools—but particularly social networks (32.1 percent) and blogs (25.7 percent)—show stronger interest among respondents planning to implement e-learning.
In addition to asking about use of specific types of social media tools, we also asked survey participants for any additional information they were willing to provide about how they monitor social media usage by learners—for example, how comments are handled and whether they have formal rules of engagement for their participants.
Out of the respondents that currently offer some form of social media in their e-learning initiatives, 71 percent indicated that they either review comments before they are published or actively monitor for inappropriate content.
Overall, it was clear in our interviews with both associations and providers that there is a great deal of interest in social media as well as a general desire to figure out what it might mean for the future of e-learning programs. As might be expected, some are already in the process of making plans and taking tentative steps. Others are more reluctant to add a new element to their fledgling e-learning initiatives, and providers, in particular, are wrestling with how social media fits into their business models. What follows are a variety of quotes from individuals interviewed. We feel that these, better than any
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Blog
Discussion forums
Microblogging tools
Photosharing sites
Podcasts
Private social networking site
Public social networking site
Slidesharing sites
Social bookmarking tools
Virtual worlds
Web video sites
Wiki
Don’t use social media tools
Not sure
Other 2.8%
46.8%
8.3%
11.9%
9.2%
3.7%
1.8%
1.8%
9.2%
22.9%
28.4%
5.5%
4.6%
45.0%
25.7%
6.9%
0%
47.6%
10.1%
7.3%
1.2%
0%
2.0%
8.9%
16.1%
25.0%
2.4%
2.4%
32.7%
16.5%
Which of the
following social
media tools does
your organization
currently use or plan
to use as part of
your online learning
offerings? (Please
only indicate tools
that are or will be
explicitly a part of
your e-learning
initiatives. For
example, if your
organization has or
plans to have a wiki,
but does not use it
or plan to use it as
part of its e-learning
offerings, do not
select that item.)
Social networks (25 percent, combining public and private) lead the pack.
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
† For individuals seeking a primer on social media tools and how they can be used in e-learning, we recommend our free e-book,
Learning 2.0 for Associations, available at http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/association-learning20.html.
73!THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
analysis we can offer, help to paint a picture of how social media currently fits into association e-learning.
ASSOCIATIONS SPEAK ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
• “I think our industry is not a Facebook-type industry. One of the interesting things—a lot of industries are probably this way, but I think [our] industry is especially this way—it’s a lot of family-owned businesses. It’s a lot of people that do this for life. So you get to a conference, and 70 percent of the people there you’ve seen every year for 20 years. So something like Facebook or Ning...they are helpful, but that’s just something on top of what you do anyway. I think the challenge for us in that is trying to figure out how the electronic applications fit into something that they are already doing. Some of them have said that if they need to talk to Joe, then they will just e-mail or call Joe. Why do they need anything else?”
• “Across the board within our organization we’re looking at social media. Right now we are working on a new Web site redesign that will hopefully incorporate many different levels of social media. We are certainly looking at wikis. We’ve used wikis a couple of times just within our own department with volunteers. That was received with mixed reviews. For us, it’s making sure that we’re providing a network of communication for our members, something that is going to be easy for us to manage but giving members additional channels to communicate with each other and hopefully with experts that are either on staff or previous volunteer faculty. So that is certainly something that we are looking at, seeing what’s out there and what other organizations are doing.”
• “We’re thinking of podcasts because with Webinars a lot of the people we target are on the go. They’re not at their desks, so we are thinking of maybe podcasting smaller, 10-minute blurbs that they can do on demand, which would fit their schedules better. I’d like to start a blog because we have three
conferences a year, and we go through the annual process of trying to build up interest. They get really engaged during the conference, and about a month later it dwindles off and you have to start the process over again.”
• “We’ve got a new social network site...a Ning site...that was unveiled a couple of months ago. We’ve got about 90 members so far. These past two Webinars and teleconferences we have talked about that and tried to lead people to continue the discussion online. It’s a little bit of a challenge, and we have hired a social media guy to help us better promote the activity. We’re now going to focus on a couple of special
interest groups that are basically younger and more familiar with that. So we’re going to focus on them and get them going and get them into some discussions and have them do regular postings and always have something of interest on there. And then hopefully it will expand to the other types of members that we have. But we definitely are cross-promoting it all the time.”
• “So the plan was...publish it [a handbook for members] as a wiki and see if people changed it enough that we would want to then publish it again with all their changes. So there was an incredible amount of enthusiasm for the idea but when it came to figuring out how to pay for it and actually finding the time to do it, it started to slow down a lot. So much so at this point that I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen with it, if it’s going to get pursued or not.”
• “The very first level thing that we are doing, which is kind of basic, is we’ve created a Ning community for registered users of our courses to continue to network and learn through a user community, and we’re scheduling live chats with SMEs who’ve helped us in the development of the courses, utilizing that to get people’s feedback about courses. Now I say all that—that’s our goal. It’s built, but we haven’t actually hit the send button to invite anyone yet. I don’t know why we haven’t done it yet. I think we are tweaking some things, but that’s the goal.”
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“I think our industry is not a Facebook-type industry.”
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• “We just acquired and installed some social networking software. The initial thrust of its purpose is to promote collegiality between members, try to nurture the neighborhood so to speak. We haven’t really done anything with it from an education standpoint just yet.”
• “E-learning has become a renegade. We’re tired of asking, ‘Please, please can we go out to LinkedIn? Can we go to YouTube?’ We’re just going to do it. We already have two groups...set up in LinkedIn. We’re going to go out to YouTube with a video.... So, we’re going to beg forgiveness if and when that happens, but we feel we need a presence there, and we’re starting to put a presence there.”
PROVIDERS SPEAK ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
• “Associations are still just having a hard time getting their hands around the whole idea. The biggest challenge to online education in any form is, ‘How can I pay for this? How can I make money off of it?’ And people just don’t see how social media is going to make them any money. That’s the big one right now, and I think especially in this economy. I think what they need to do is step back and think about what it’s really about. It’s really about providing services and opportunities to your members that will eventually, down the line, turn into higher retention and higher loyalty to the association, potentially bigger sales in different areas.”
• “I’m one of the people wandering around Rome just looking at all the monuments just wondering where I should go. I’m trying to figure out what’s the social media that has real value to a professional development program. How do you use blogs? Not only how do you use them, but how do I wrap it up and package it?”
• “I would say over the next year we’re not expecting much to happen with social media because of the economy. People are going to focus on the basics. And if they don’t already have those things, if they’re not already part of their mainstream, then they are going to stick to basics. I think we are going to see a year of stagnant growth in those areas, at least in the association world.”
• “E-learning and...communities, the edges are fuzzing on all of that, and they all can be used to build on one another. If you have a community of practice, you want to provide learning from it so you can offer Webinars and courses. Or if you have Webinars and courses, you can take those and ratchet them up one level and start creating ongoing learning communities. So it’s a fluid area that I think is going to move toward an undifferentiated arena where it’s always available learning in both structured and unstructured modes.”
• “Online content seems to be headed in two opposite directions. One of those directions is towards doing more with really immersive learning experiences. People recognize that in many cases that’s the best and most efficient way of training people—highly engaging learning experiences, highly motivated learning experiences. On the other end of the spectrum, particularly as we become more comfortable with different types of social media, people are looking for quick ways of getting information out—through wikis, through quick and dirty Web video. I think that there is a huge trend in that direction. So there’s kind of the fast and cheap direction—and for a lot of things that’s exactly how you should approach training—and then there’s also the really rich direction. A lot of very middle ground kind of informational, interactive PowerPoint type e-learning—I don't see people asking for that nearly as much.”
• “I don’t see [social media] as a logical extension for the LMS. If the AMS is the center of the universe, and your AMS is surrounded by your intranet, you can have a fairly sophisticated social media type component that’s plugged into your AMS, and you can have the LMS plugged into your AMS. I think that’s a better model than asking an LMS vendor to also be an expert at the latest, greatest social media.”
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“I’m trying to figure out what’s the social media that has real value to a professional development program.”
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SummaryTechnology platforms for e-learning were the focus of this chapter. We examined concerns about end user technology skills, looked at the role that learning management systems play in association e-learning initiatives, and discussed how new social media technologies factor into e-learning efforts in the sector.
We’ll conclude this section with some trends and opportunities we see and questions to ask of your organization as you begin to plan or continue to purse an e-learning program.
Trends and PredictionsWhile our survey data suggests lingering concern
about end user technology skills, we expect that this concern will continue to decline and perhaps even drop sharply in the relatively near term. End user comfort with the types of technology used for e-learning is increasing, but our interviews suggest that organizations are increasingly prepared to address the points of discomfort that that remain.
As on-demand content becomes increasingly common and associations realize the operational efficiencies that learning management systems can offer, we expect to see more widespread
implementation LMSes.
While we do not expect to see widespread
adoption of social media for e-learning purposes
in the coming year, a significant amount of
experimentation will occur. In particular, the blending of tools like wikis, blogs, photo-sharing sites (e.g., Flickr), and microblogs (e.g., Twitter) with conference-based education is likely to gain ground. A smaller set of more innovative organizations will fully embrace the possibilities of social media in an effort to transform their Web sites into high-value learning communities for members.
Questions to Consider1.If you already have an e-learning program or
are planning one, how formal an approach do
you have for supporting end users? Have you
developed frequently asked questions (FAQs)
that are readily available to end users? Is there
a clear process for channeling end user issues
and escalating them until they are resolved?
2.How much weight have you placed on
developing your e-learning offerings according
to industry standards? Does your organization
have a clear understanding of the pros and
cons of adhering (or not adhering) to major
standards like SCORM and Section 508
3.How might social media tools enhance the
value of your e-learning offerings? Are there
potentially new pricing models or entirely new
business models that social media could make
possible?
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Don’t expect social media for e-learning purposes to take off in the short term—but do expect to see serious experimentation with wikis, blogs, photo-sharing sites, and blogs as extensions of place-based conferences.
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LMS SELECTION
If your organization is considering implementing an LMS, review these recommendations and questions.
4.Has the LMS been implemented before at an
association? How many times? What were the
issues, and how were they addressed?
Association needs with respect to issues like
handling e-commerce, credit, brandability, and
integrating with membership management
systems are different from those of corporate or
academic LMS users. All else being equal, it
pays to go with a system that has already been
successfully implemented at one or more
associations.
5.Don’t get bogged down in feature lists and
bells and whistles. Make sure you have
thought through and reached internal
agreement around the overall user experience
you are trying to deliver. Literally map it out
on paper, and then ask vendors to describe and
demonstrate clearly how their LMS supports
that experience. And don’t hesitate to ask how
they would improve on the experience—a good
vendor should be a valuable partner in this
process.
6.Make sure you understand how content gets
imported into the system and, if applicable,
how content can be authored in the system. Are
these easy, intuitive processes, or is there a
steep learning curve? Be sure to spend time
going through the steps in detail.
7.Is the system SCORM-conformant? The
Shareable Content Object Reference Model is
the main set of standards that apply to learning
management systems. It is not perfect or
uniformly implemented, but it is nonetheless
important to know about and adhere to. The
main questions it addresses are (a) the ability to
launch and track SCORM-conformant content
in your system, so, if you or a vendor author
courses with a tool that creates SCORM content
and then import this content into the LMS, you
can be reasonably certain that it will “play”
correctly in the system, and(b) the ability to
export any content you create in your system in
a SCORM-conformant way. This matters
greatly if someday you want to change LMSes
and take your content over to a new system.
8.Has the system ever been integrated with an
association management system or, if
applicable, other types of enterprise software
your organization uses)? With your specific
system? How is integration achieved, how
much does it typically cost, and what are the
issues that typically arise? What levels of
integration are available—i.e., single sign-on
between the two systems, e-commerce
integration, passing course completion and
credit data from the LMS to the AMS? Even if
you don’t plan to integrate your AMS and LMS
initially, you should select a system that
provides well for this capability down the road.
9.How are course completion, credit, and
presentation of transcripts and certificates
handled in the system? One of the biggest
benefits an LMS can offer is to make
administration of continuing education easier
for your organization and the end user. If
continuing education or certificates are or will
be part of your online program, dig into this
aspect of the system in great detail.
10.What are the available financial models? Is
there any flexibility around charging based on
your actual use of the system? Is it possible to
pay on a per-enrollment basis? Do fees cap out
at some point, or do they always continue to
grow as more users enroll in courses?
11.How brandable is the end user environment?
Can the LMS environment easily be made to
look and feel just like, or at least very similar
to, your overall Web site environment?
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77!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
Even given the level of statistical error that may be present in a non-probability survey, the evidence the online survey offers, along with input from interviews and our own experience make it quite clear that e-learning has established a strong foothold in the sector.
Common sense provides additional evidence to suggest e-learning will grow substantially over time. Our global economy—a flat economy, as Thomas Friedman has put it—already provides an environment in which the rapid acquisition of new knowledge and skills has become mandatory for many workers and organizations. On top of this, the current recession will force organizations to consider more educational alternatives that do not involve travel and the growth of green thinking will strengthen and sustain this trend.
A growing array of cheap and easy technologies will continue to put sophisticated e-learning development and delivery options in the hands of even the smallest organizations. And last, but certainly not least, the coming of age of a generation that is comfortable doing almost everything online will generate more demand and tear down remaining barriers.
That is the future—and it is coming fast, in our estimation. But where do things stand at present?
Our view is that we are still in the relatively early stages of e-learning growth in the sector. In terms of the bell curve often used to illustrate technology adoption life cycles, we would place e-learning in the lower third of the early majority phase.
At this point, while many organizations have implemented some form of e-learning—and, particularly live Webinars—most have done so in a relatively piecemeal fashion. General strategy development for e-learning as well as approaches to particular aspects of strategy, like product development and pricing, have not yet become part of standard operating practice at most organizations. E-learning does not represent a substantial portion of the revenue mix at most associations, and few seem to view it as part of strategic goals like risk management or as a tool for streamlining operational areas like the administration of continuing education.
In short, e-learning has arrived, but remains immature. As we see it, there is now a clear opportunity for e-learning to transition into more significant, more strategic part of the mix of services associations provide to members. We feel all the factors above will lead more associations to embrace this opportunity—and more vendors to enter or expand their presence in the market. Another
The State of the SectorAn Assessment
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0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
This image is reproduced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiffusionOfInnovation.png under a Creative Commons license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5.
Association E-learning
78!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
important factor will be the increasing pressure many associations are feeling to clearly demonstrate their value to members and potential members. The current economy has contributed to this pressure, but, more importantly, advances on the Web have changed the strategic playing field for associations. With it now dramatically easier for groups to self-organize, communicate, and share knowledge, e-learning becomes one of the tools through which associations can differentiate and establish value.
As e-learning begins to mature in the sector, we expect to see a number of related developments—most already noted in various parts of this document:
MORE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Implementation of learning management systems and integration of these with association management system will rise. Given the current economy, growth in this area will be limited in the coming year, but to realize the full value of offering e-learning, most organizations will benefit from more sophisticated abilities to manage learning in a centralized location, to track e-learning activity, and to feed data back into their membership management system.
MORE ON-DEMAND CONTENT
Publishing of on-demand content will rise, driven by a number of factors. A significant factor is that it has become increasingly easy to mine content from live, place-based events and make it available online. Organizations can do this on their own or work with a growing number of companies that provide this service. Live events aside, production of on-demand content has simply become much easier, and as a result of services like YouTube, members are more and more accustomed to the idea of accessing rich content whenever and wherever they feel like it.
MORE INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
Interest in instructional design will rise. The maturing of e-learning will lead to a higher level of professionalism around the development of online learning experiences. Organizations will make more effort to implement sound instructional design practices for e-learning in-house and use of contract
instructional designers is also likely to rise.
A LITTLE MORE SOCIAL MEDIA
Integration of social media into e-learning will occur at a relatively slow rate. Unlike courses or Webinars, most social media is relatively difficult to monetize on a standalone basis. Until organizations development strategies and business models for products that integrate social media with more traditional content (what we call learning 2.0), social media for educational purposes will remain in the realm of experimentation and one-off projects.
MORE COMPETITION
Competition will increase and will be a significant factor in driving higher levels of marketing sophistication for online learning products. As noted in the chapter “The Business Perspective,” the fact that high-quality e-learning can now be produced relatively easily and at low cost will mean that enterprising individuals and organizations will begin entering into or expanding in all markets where the sale of educational products represents a
viable business. This trend will impact some associations more than others, but all associations will benefit by developing more sophisticated approaches to search marketing and other forms of online promotion.
PROFESSIONAL NETWORK?
A further development that we hope to see over the coming one to two years is the emergence of a more
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It is dramatically easier for groups to self-organize, communicate, and share knowledge today than ever before.
79!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
cohesive professional network for e-learning in the sector. This sort of network has long-since emerged in the corporate and academic sectors, but as many of our interviewees attested, there is no clear place for association e-learning professionals to turn for knowledge, support, and peer networking. This report and all the interactions that helped produce it are, we hope, one step in that direction, but as with nearly all aspects of e-learning in the association sector, there is still much work to be done.
Voices from the Sector
While we certainly have our views, it seems most appropriate to end this report with comments from our interviewees. We asked all of our interviewees to tell us how they view current state of e-learning in the association sector. Here is some of what they told us.
E-LEARNING PROVIDERS ON THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
• “I’d like to find out what it is that is holding [associations] back. Because it’s been 10 years since I went to [a conference session on association e-learning] down in Orlando and at that time we thought we’d better move on this quickly—the corporate world is taking advantage of this, associations are traditionally a couple of years behind, so we had better move on this quickly. And we’re still waiting.”
• “I don’t think we are anywhere near maturity when it comes to e-learning, especially in the association space. I think we are at a real base camp level where there has certainly been a heck of a lot of effort and content that’s just been thrown up against the wall online, just doing stuff online without really having an idea to the effect or whether or not it’s the best way to deliver their resources. So it’s kind of like association have got one foot still in their old ways of doing things, but they’ve got one toe in the online space. Some may have actually put a whole foot in the online space, but I don’t think anybody has really made the leap. I shouldn’t say anybody—of course somebody has—but I don’t think the majority of
organizations have fully made the leap and said, ‘Let’s go for it. Let’s just dig into the online resources.’”
• “I’d say there’s probably some percentage [of associations] that do it [e-learning] exceptionally well and are going to continue to do it exceptionally well. That’s probably a fairly small percentage in my view. I think the vast majority, in my view, are folks that have done it in a scattershot manner and have mixed and matched things to try things out. I think at this point, the ones of that group that are good strategists and good thinkers are going to make this into a long-term online asset. Those that I think have gone through change are not necessarily going through the same critical thinking, are going to continue to take this on in a scattershot manner.”
• “We’re finding that many [associations that] have come to us have already had their initial experience, and now they want to get more
sophisticated in what they are doing.... I would say that it [e-learning in the association space] is definitely maturing, that people have had their initial mini-event, their initial experiences. Now they want to provide a more positive experience; they are getting more particular in the kind of content and how it’s presented.”
• I don’t think they [associations] are doing all they could with it [e-learning]. I think that most of them are pretty much stuck either in the 24/7 mode or just getting into the Webinars but not getting into them along with an LMS. A lot of them do Webinars, and they sell the Webinars through their own Web site, but they don’t have an LMS platform where they are really gathering the information and tracking and recording things.... They are kind of scattered, some of them, even some of the very large ones. And especially now with the new things, podcasting and different things, they are even more scattered than they were before, and they really need to look at coming together and putting it in one place.”
• “We were surprised that a lot of associations have not yet started using Webinars. We were
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“I don’t think we are anywhere near maturity when it comes to e-learning, especially in the association space.”
80!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
really just blown away by that. Those who are using them seem to keep doing them and like them. I think it’s the wave of the future. I think we are going to see it more portable. I think we are going to see it more on PDAs and iPhones and that sort of thing. I think we are going to see more asynchronous events.”
• Even within the corporate training space where people have been doing forms of e-learning for 20 years almost, I think that there’s still so much potential for technology-based training. It’s certainly the direction that people are going.... I don’t see that changing. As long as we can actually create learning experiences that rival or beat what people can get in a classroom then I think that there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.”
• It’s an uneducated audience in understanding how to leverage a learning management system properly and do different things. Associations have [an LMS] for one thing, but they don’t realize that it can do all these other things.”
• “Many associations are doing the e-learning equivalent of building their own Barnes & Noble and then selling only their own books in it. Others are creating all sorts of e-learning product, without sufficiently informed business, technology, marketing, or staffing plans to capitalize fully on their investments. They don’t know how to leverage e-learning to obtain the sort of distribution they need to
succeed wildly, to make the sorts of strategic alliances and partnerships they need, to protect their intellectual property as subject matter experts, authors, and publishers, putting them at risk of being rendered irrelevant or at the service of emerging parties who do. They’re unaware of many emerging competition, threats, and trends. Most associations are running blind in these regards, from a strategic standpoint. They’re missing out left and right on business opportunities and opportunities to make the difference in the world they’re out to make, and quickly losing certain competitive edges on which they’ve been able to rely as more-or-less a given.”
• “It’s a blossoming field. Booming might be overstating it, but it’s growing, and people who are doing it are looking at how they can grow it, and people who aren’t doing it are feeling like they are left behind. So I think it’s a very exciting time to be in this industry, to be where we are. We’re just very excited about where we are.”
• “What’s clear is that there is a huge increase in interest. That there’s no question about. In the last three years there has been a big, big surge in people contacting us, in our client base, so there is definitely a momentum growing where this is something that people are now taking for granted that this is needed and the way in which learning is delivered.... Part of what excites me about it is that there is no end in sight; we are not graying and maturing; there’s energy and growth in this whole domain.”
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“Many associations are doing the e-learning equivalent of building their own Barnes &
Noble and then selling only their own books in it.”
81!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
ASSOCIATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
• “I will start by saying that I think that e-learning, it’s become such a huge world, it encompasses so much that I think we sort of feel lost at times in this huge area called e-learning that we are in the process of entering. I think that has been a challenge. There is a lot out there that is called e-learning.... I don’t think that we are at a place yet that when I or [my colleague] says e-learning and our bosses say e-learning we necessarily mean the same thing—we are still going through that process of narrowing down what it means to us.”
• “My sense is that [associations] are embracing it [e-learning]. People are looking—much like us—for opportunities to do this, but I think it’s still very much in its infancy for the majority of associations. I know that some are doing it and have it mastered and are probably making lots of great money and have a solid infrastructure. My sense is that’s still the minority.... I think a lot of people feel like they are in the same boat, where they just don’t know where to turn, where to start, who’s a good vendor to go to, or this or that.”
• “It kind of depends on what we are comparing it [association e-learning] against. I would say it’s pretty much on par with probably where higher education is, but definitely behind where corporate e-learning is. In some ways. I think that corporate e-learning is behind associations in some ways too. I definitely think that there is more that associations could be doing that they are not, primarily because they are either not aware of certain options that exist and/or they have certain preconceptions about those options that they haven’t overcome yet, for whatever reason. Maybe there is a perception that there are more costs involved then there are or that there are more headaches involved then there are or for whatever reason it may be.”
• “I look around—we have some competing organizations—and I guess my initial thinking is I don’t know why associations wouldn’t offer e-learning. If you are at the point where you are deciding, ‘Should we have e-learning?’ you’re not even in the game. And when I say the game I’m not talking about the e-learning game, you’re not even in the association game. In my mind, most organizations, if they have some kind of training objective, a learning objective, if they see themselves as providing training for their constituents, their audiences, at least their consumers if nothing else, and they don’t have e-learning then they are way behind. If I started working with a group like that tomorrow I would instantly start figuring out how we would do it.”
• “I believe that most organizations are doing more things that might broadly be called e-learning, and I think that’s bound to only increase in the future. Are we taking full advantage of it? I don’t think so. I think a lot of our e-learning programming is taking an old-fashioned lecture and storing it on the Web. We do that a lot, so I’m not saying that we’re better, but I’m saying that that’s not the fullest, best use of the e-learning channel in my opinion.”
“I think e-learning is a scary concept, and I think associations are a little risk-averse, so they keep going back to the same well without considering the possibility of a low-level investment to put their toe in the water of e-learning.”
“I think it [the state of e-learning] really depends on the association.”
82!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
• “I think e-learning is a scary concept, and I think associations are a little risk-averse so they keep going back to the same well without considering the possibility of a low-level investment to put your toe in the water of e-learning. I think the big boys in associations are doing e-learning. All the top 25 I’m sure are doing it. The top 50, they are all doing e-learning, and they are doing something really robust. I think everybody thinks that their e-learning program has to be like that, and I think e-learning can be customized for your audience based off your budget and your resources. I think if more associations knew that, then they would be willing to take a chance, and I don’t think they know that.”
• “I have a lot of friends in the association world. I just went to the annual holiday trade show and conference in December, and I got the feeling that everyone there was doing more of it [e-learning], and they value it highly. So I think it’s only going to increase. It’s on everyone’s radar. If they’re not doing it, they are getting ready to do it, and if they are doing it, they are liking the results.”
• “There is a heavy learning curve to it [e-learning], obviously, and there’s the technical side. So I do think some people are intimated by that side quite a bit. But I do think it is being embraced now. Within [our industry] the nature of our product is a little technical so we
have people who are, I think, maybe a little bit ahead in their online interests—the video, the Web 2.0 stuff, that kind of stuff. There are really strong arguments for cost savings too. It’s not the same as a classroom experience, but when you are a national association, it’s really hard to make those classroom experiences, regional meetings work beyond the once-a-year conference. At least in my experience it is. So, I think that people are really enthused by it.”
• “I think that [our members], by virtue of initially their own training and then subsequently their own independence as they mature into their positions, have not been willing to change their habits. It’s a given that continuing education is essential to a [member’s] success, and given that he or she therefore will be pursuing some form of continuing education, one would think that the sheer convenience of being able to access that education online or via some electronic method that allows them to participate, to learn, broaden and sharpen their knowledge, from the convenience of their home, driving to work or so forth, that they would be very supportive of that. Our [members], many of them, still like tapes. Those that have advanced to a CD player in their cars—that was their big step up.”
• “I think a big difference exists between trade associations whose members are companies and other associations whose members are
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“[E-learning is] on everyone’s radar. If they’re not doing it, they are getting ready to do it, and if they are doing it, they are liking the results.”
“I think a big difference exists between trade associations whose members are companies and other associations whose members are individuals.”
83!THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
individuals. I think the individuals look for that opportunity for continuing growth on a personal level, but when it comes to the management level of a company and industry information, [e-learning is] not where they go. It’s not where they think to look for their information. It’s a strange gap between your personal growth and your company improvements.”
• “I think it [the state of e-learning] really depends on the association. I think so many associations are more developed than others. I think we are really on the new side of it. I think a lot of them are light years ahead of us. Although I’ll talk to some, and they’re not having the success that we’re having on the Webinars. So I think it just really depends on the organization and where they’ve been and where they are planning to go.”
• “I think if we don’t position ourselves and start making our audience, our members, aware of this [e-learning], they’re going to go somewhere else. I think there’s a market out there. We just don’t know how to tap into it or do it effectively.”
• “I think there’s a ton [of e-learning] out there. I think there’s tremendous resources out there. I’m concerned that a lot of people in the association industry aren’t aware of those.”
• “I don’t know that much about other associations. I certainly know a lot of them do
it [e-learning]. I don’t really follow association activity closely enough to know which groups are doing it really well, but I certainly hear about a lot of people doing it. I sort of feel like we are ahead of the curve a little bit.”
• “I think [associations] are kind of in the middle of it; we’re in a learning curve.... I keep telling the others that they’ve got to do this, the generation that is coming is not going to go to seminars, they are not going to be gone from their families for two or three days to go learning while their children are doing other things.... And they are much more knowledgeable, they have grown up with this technology. If associations cannot use it and cannot grow it, then they will die because these people can go to the Internet and get what they need; they will find a way, and if you won’t help them, then they can easily find another way. But associations are going to have to grow and develop in this area or they are not going to survive. I totally believe that.”
• I think it’s much easier to do it [e-learning]. I remember the first time I did one of these things and on the chat on the bottom [of the screen] all the people were saying that they couldn’t get connected. Things like that. The original problems that everyone had with technology, those are basically all gone, so that is a big deal. The costs have come down a lot so you can do these things without having to spend a lot of money and therefore you can provide the service to your members. So I think more membership organizations are embracing it. I also think that more members are embracing it because it’s not so hard—you just click on something, and you go forward.”
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don’t position ourselves and start making our audience, our members, aware of this [e-learning], they’re going to go somewhere else.”
84!APPENDIX A: PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
We are grateful to the hundreds of organizations that took the time to participate in the 2008 Association Sector E-learning Survey. And we are particularly grateful to representatives from the following organizations for making the time either to review survey questions, participate in face-to-face or phone interviews, or provide input by e-mail—and, in some cases, all three.
Associations
• America’s Health Insurance Plans
• American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
• American College of Emergency Physicians
• American Health Information Management Association
• American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• American Nurses Credentialing Center
• American Physical Therapy Association
• American Speech-Hearing-Language Association
• Applied Systems Client Network
• Association Executives of North Carolina
• Association of Cable Communicators
• Community Associations Institute
• Institute of Food Technologists
• International Foodservice Distributors Association
• International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
• National Air Duct Cleaners Association
• National Association of College & University Food Services
• National Association of Counties
• National Fraternal Congress of America
• National Glass Association
• National Recreation and Park Association
• SSPC: The Society for Specialty Coatings
• Southern Building Material Association
• Toastmasters International
Technology and Service Providers
• BlueStreak Learning
• Boston Conferencing
• Certilearn
• CommPartners
• Enspire Learning
• iCohere
• Impact Media Solutions
• KRM
• LearnSomething
• Results Direct
• StreamCenter
• Type A Learning Agency
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Appendix A: Participating OrganizationsWith Thanks and Gratitude
85!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
Please note that whenever data was not collected, the results are marked N/A, or not applicable.
All Respondents
The following questions, in addition to the demographic questions at the end of this appendix, were asked of all respondents.
USE OF E-LEARNING
E-learning, also known as computer-based training or online distance education, refers to computer-enabled learning carried out by individuals or groups outside of a physical classroom, either over the Internet or an internal network. There are many methods of e-learning such as Webcasts, self-paced tutorials, podcasts, facilitated discussions, etc., but for the purpose of this survey, any activity in which a user receives instruction via a computer counts as e-learning. Does your organization currently using e-learning to deliver education? (488 responses)
Yes 61.1%
No, but plan to start in the next 6 months 13.5%
No, but plan to start in the next 12 months 12.7%
No, and do not plan to start in the next 12 months 12.7%
RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR ALL EDUCATION
Do you expect the total resources (monetary and personnel) allocated to all educational initiatives (including but not only e-learning initiatives) at your organization in 2009 to be more, less, or the same as those allocated in 2008? (404 responses)
More than 2008 39.4%
About the same as 2008 48.8%
Less than 2008 11.9%
Currently Using E-learningThe following questions were asked only of organizations currently using e-learning.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR E-LEARNING
Do you expect the total resources (monetary and personnel) allocated to only e-learning initiatives at your organization in 2009 to be more, less, or the same as those allocated in 2008? (351 responses)
More than 2008 48.8%
About the same as 20008 41.1%
Less than 2008 10.1%
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Appendix B: Survey DataResponses for All Questions
86!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
TIME USING E-LEARNING
How long has your organization been using e-learning? (289 responses)
Less than 1 year 16.3%
1 to 2 years 35.3%
2 to 5 years 32.9%
More than 5 years 15.6%
CURRENT PARTICIPATION BY MEMBERSHIP
What percentage of your membership base would you estimate participates in at least one e-learning offering from your organization annually? (211 responses)
Average Median
18.2% 10%
OVERALL SATISFACTION WITH E-LEARNING
Overall, how satisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives? (250 responses)
Very satisfied 21.6%
Somewhat satisfied 56.8%
Somewhat dissatisfied 16.0%
Very dissatisfied 5.6%
SATISFACTION IN SPECIFIC AREAS
How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives in terms of the specific items below? (244 responses)
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Neutral Somewhat Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
Not Applicable
Usage (e.g., number of course enrollments)
13.2% 33.3% 10.7% 27.2% 13.6% 2.5%
Revenue (e.g., from course sales) 7.9% 25.6% 16.9% 24.8% 10.7% 14.5%
The financial cost of creating the initiatives
12.9% 28.8% 27.9% 17.5% 8.8% 4.6%
The financial cost of supporting and maintaining the initiatives
14.6% 27.1% 27.1% 18.8% 8.3% 4.6%
The staff time required to develop the initiatives
7.4% 33.9% 24.4% 24.0% 7.4% 3.3%
The staff time required to maintain the initiatives
9.2% 32.9% 29.2% 19.6% 6.3% 3.3%
Feedback from participants in the initiatives
23.8% 38.1% 17.6% 14.6% 3.3% 2.9%
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87!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
Currently Using E-learning or Planning to Use E-learningThe following questions were asked both of organizations currently using e-learning and those planning to within the next 12 months.
PURPOSE OF E-LEARNING
For what purposes does your organization use or plan to use e-learning? Check all that apply.
Currently Using (296 responses)
Planning to Use (126 responses)
Professional development for members 92.6% 86.5%
Professional development for non-members 64.2% 44.4%
Training for staff 35.5% 20.6%
Training for affiliated organizations or chapters 19.9% 27.0%
Training for volunteers 20.3% 26.2%
Advocacy and issue education 30.7% 26.2%
Other 8.4% 7.9%
KEY BENEFITS
For your organization, what are the three key benefits associated with e-learning? Please check only the three
that your organization considers most important.
Current E-learning (289 responses)
Planned E-learning (124 responses)
Instructional effectiveness versus other modes of training or education 13.5% 17.7%
Cost-effectiveness versus other modes of training or education 74.7% 78.2%
Ability to reach more learners 73.0% 78.2%
Opportunity for learners to direct their own learning 21.5% 23.4%
Convenience for learners 78.9% 72.6%
Ability to generate revenues (e.g. from online product sales) 31.5% 29.0%
Reduction of risk related to educational products by diversifying product line
3.5% 3.2%
Ease of tracking continuing education for learners 8.3% 12.1%
Other 3.1% 3.2%
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88!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
THREE BIGGEST BARRIERS
What are the three biggest barriers your organization has encountered or expects to encounter while developing e-learning initiatives?† Please check only the three that your organization considers most important.
Currently Using (279 responses)
Planning to Use (119 responses)
Concern that costs would exceed financial return 41.6% 39.5%
Concern that costs would exceed non-financial return 7.5% 7.6%
Lack of funding necessary to implement an e-learning initiative 20.4% 40.3%
Concern about the effectiveness of e-learning 21.5% 17.6%
Concern about end users' technology skills 45.5% 35.3%
Staff time required to develop the e-learning offerings 38.7% 57.1%
Staff time required to support e-learning 26.2% 33.6%
Lack of expertise in e-learning 33.3% 46.2%
Lack of management buy-in 6.5% 4.2%
Resistance from current trainers or facilitators 8.2% 3.4%
Fear that stakeholders will not use the e-learning offerings we develop 33.0% 24.4%
No perceived need for e-learning 5.7% 5.0%
Other 6.5% 4.2%
† We intended for organizations not currently using e-learning to answer this question about perceived barriers, but,
unfortunately, responses were not collected owing to a technical glitch.
FINANCIAL GOALS FOR E-LEARNING
Which of the following statements describes your financial goals for your current e-learning offerings or your planned e-learning initiatives?
Current Offerings (279 responses)
Planned Offerings (120 responses)
Must be self-sustaining, but profitability (positive net revenue) is not required
33.7% 38.3%
Must be self-sustaining and profitable (positive net revenue) 50.2% 52.5%
Doesn’t need to be self-sustaining because costs will be subsidized 16.1% 9.2%
CHARGING FOR E-LEARNING
Does your association charge or will it charge for its e-learning offerings?
Currently Charging (279 responses)
Planning to Charge (115 responses)
Yes, we charge/will charge for all of our offerings 42.3% 32.2%
Yes, we charge/will charge for some of our offerings 43.7% 45.2%
No, we do not/will not charge for our offerings 14.0% 8.7%
Not sure N/A 13.9%
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89!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
PRICING OF E-LEARNING: PER HOUR
Assume that you were to break the pricing for your e-learning offerings (excluding any free offerings) down into a price per hour of content delivered. On average, how much (in U.S. dollars) does your organization charge members per hour of content for an e-learning offering? If you do not know the exact
dollar figure, please provide your best estimate.
Currently Charging (264 responses)
Planning to Charge (77 responses)
Average price per hour of content $56.79 $52.24
Median price per hour of content $40.00 $40.00
CREDITS FOR E-LEARNING
Which type of credit does your organization currently offer or plan to offer for e-learning? Check all that apply.
Currently Offered (277 responses)
Planning to Offer (114 responses)
No credit is/will be offered 35.4% 33.3%
Continuing education units (CE or CEU) 43.0% 41.2%
Continuing medical education (CME) 10.1% 13.2%
Continuing legal education (CLE) 1.8% 5.3%
Continuing professional education (CPE) 8.3% 10.5%
Certificate of successful completion 31.8% 32.5%
Credit towards completing or maintaining a certification, licensure, or other credential
31.8% 25.4%
Credit towards a degree at a college or university
4.3% 1.8%
Other 5.4% 5.3%
PRICING OF E-LEARNING: PER CREDIT
Assume that you were to break the pricing for your e-learning offerings (excluding any free offerings) down into a price per unit of available credit. On average, how much (in U.S. dollars) does your organization charge members per credit unit for e-learning? If you do not know the exact dollar figure, please
provide your best estimate.
Currently Charging (225 responses)
Planning to Charge (83 responses)
Average price per hour of content $73.97 $53.80
Median price per hour of content $39.00 $30.00
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90!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
MEMBER DISCOUNTS
Do or will members of your association receive a discount on e-learning products and services?
Current Discounts (229 responses)
Planned Discounts (88 responses)
No, pricing is the same for members and non-members 17.9% 8.0%
Yes, most or all members receive a 1% – 9% discount 2.6% 3.4%
Yes, most or all members receive a 10% – 19% discount 24.9% 26.1%
Yes, most or all members receive a 20% – 29% discount 14.8% 18.2%
Yes, most or all members receive a 30% – 39% discount 10.5% 4.5%
Yes, most or all members receive a 40% – 49% discount 3.5% 2.3%
Yes, most or all members receive a 50% or greater discount 13.1% 6.8%
Don’t know yet N/A 27.3%
Other 12.7% 3.4%
MARKETING
How important are each of the following methods for promoting or marketing your e-learning offerings? (260 responses)
Not Important at All
Slightly Important
Very Important
Absolutely Necessary
E-mail marketing (e.g., e-newsletters) 2.3% 4.7% 28.7% 64.3%
Print mailings (e.g., direct mail) 29.0% 36.3% 24.2% 10.5%
Conference exhibits 35.5% 37.2% 19.4% 7.9%
Banner ads on your own organizational Web site 23.3% 26.9% 34.3% 15.5%
Banner ads on other Web sites 59.0% 25.2% 13.2% 2.6%
Promotional Webcasts 63.1% 21.6% 12.3% 3.0%
Search engine optimization 41.8% 21.1% 22.8% 14.2%
Pay-per-click advertising (e.g., Google AdWords) 72.6% 17.8% 7.0% 2.6%
Word of mouth 1.6% 14.6% 40.9% 42.9%
Press releases 37.2% 32.6% 21.3% 8.8%
Television advertising 95.7% 3.5% 0.9% 0.0%
Radio advertising 95.6% 4.0% 0.4% 0.0%
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91!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNING
Are your e-learning offerings developed or will they be developed entirely in-house, using a mixture of in-house staff and outside vendors, or completely using outside vendors?
Currently Using (257 responses)
Planning to Use (107 responses)
Entirely in-house 18.3% 16.8%
Using a mixture of in-house and consultants or vendors 68.9% 71.0%
Completely using outside vendors 12.8% 12.1%
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS
Does your organization make use or it will it make use of professional instructional designers (whether on staff or by contract) when developing its e-learning offerings?
Currently Using (255 responses)
Planning to Use (109 responses)
Yes 43.5% 31.2%
No 45.9% 17.4%
Not sure 10.6% 51.4%
E-LEARNING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Which of the following e-learning products and services does your association currently provide or will your organization add in the next 12 months? Check all that apply.
Currently Using (277 responses)
Planning to Use (115 responses)
Self-paced online courses, tutorials, or presentations (excluding recorded Webcasts or Webinars)
54.5% 47.8%
Facilitated online courses (excluding Webcasts or Webinars) 19.1% 18.3%
Real-time Webcasts or Webinars 67.1% 55.7%
Recorded or on-demand Webcasts or Webinars 56.0% 47.0%
Audio or video podcasts 35.4% 34.8%
Member-only discussion boards 40.4% 40.0%
Electronic study guides 15.5% 13.9%
E-learning programs combined with classroom-based learning (blended learning)
15.5% 14.8%
Offline formats (e.g., journal articles or classroom-based seminars) with online assessments
14.8% 7.0%
Educational simulations or games 3.6% 4.3%
CD-ROM or DVD-based education 34.3% 10.4%
Third-party “off-the-shelf” courses 20.6% 16.5%
Other 2.9% 4.3%
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92!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
AUTHORING TOOLS
Which of the following authoring tools, if any, does your association use or plan to use for creating e-learning?
Currently Using (222 responses)
Planning to Use (107 responses)
Adobe Captivate 8.1% 4.7%
Adobe Dreamweaver 14.9% 11.2%
Adobe Flash 24.3% 9.3%
Articulate Presenter 13.5% 0.9%
Camtasia Studio 7.2% 4.7%
Lectora (Trivantis) 1.4% 0.9%
Outstart Trainer (Outstart) 0.9% 0.0%
PowerPoint 60.4% 29.9%
ReadyGo 0.5% 0.9%
Toolbook (SumTotal) 0.9% 0.9%
Tools provided in your learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS)
24.8% 10.3%
Other 17.1% 11.2%
Don’t know yet N/A 64.5%
WEBINAR PLATFORMS
In the survey, Webinar platforms were included in the authoring choices above. They have been separated out here, however, for ease of comparison.
Currently Using (222 responses)
Planning to Use (107 responses)
Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze) 3.7% 2.8%
Elluminate 0.9% 0%
Genesys 1.8% 0%
GoToMeeting 22.5% 15.0%
Microsoft LiveMeeting 13.5% 8.4%
ReadyTalk 0.9% 0%
WebEx 26.6% 11.2%
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93!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS
Which of the following social media tools does your organization currently use or plan to use as part of your online learning offerings? (Please only indicate tools that are or will be explicitly a part of your e-
learning initiatives. For example, if your organization has or plans to have a wiki, but does not use it or plan to use it as part of its e-learning offerings, do not select that item.)
Currently Using (248 responses)
Planning to Use (109 responses)
Blog 16.5% 25.7%
Discussion forums 32.7% 45.0%
Microblogging tools (e.g., Twitter or Jaiku) 2.4% 4.6%
Photo-sharing sits (e.g., Flickr 2.4% 5.5%
Podcasts 25.0% 28.4%
Private social networking site (only approved users can join) 16.1% 22.9%
Publicly available social networking site (anyone can register) 8.9% 9.2%
Slide-sharing sites (e.g., Slideshare.net) 2.0% 1.8%
Social bookmarking tools (e.g., Delicious or Diigo) 0.0% 1.8%
Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) 1.2% 3.7%
Web video sites (e.g., YouTube or Blip.tv) 7.3% 9.2%
Wiki 10.1% 11.9%
We do not use/plan to use any social media tools 47.6% 8.3%
Not sure N/A 46.8%
Other 6.9% 2.8%
USE OF A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Does your organization currently use or plan to use a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS) for delivery and/or tracking of e-learning?
Currently Using (259 responses)
Planning to Use (109 responses)
Yes 34.4% 11.0%
No N/A 16.5%
No, but we plan to start in the next 12 months 14.7% N/A
No, and we do not plan to start in the next 12 months 33.2% N/A
Not sure 17.8% 61.5%
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94!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
LMS AND LCMS PACKAGES
Which of the following LMS and/or LCMS packages does your organization currently use or plan to use? Check all that apply.
Currently Using (84 responses)
Planning to Use (23 responses)
Angel LMS (ANGEL Learning) 0% 0%
Avilar Web Mentor 1.2% 0%
Blackboard 5.9% 4.3%
Education Director (Results Director) 2.4% 4.3%
ForceTen (Outstart) 0% 0%
GeoExpress (GeoLearning) 2.4% 0%
GeoMaestro (GeoLearning) 1.2% 0%
Intralearn LMS (Certilearn) 3.5% 4.3%
Intralearn LMS (Intralearn) 4.7% 4.3%
Isoph Blue (LearnSomething) 5.9% 4.3%
LearnCenter (Learn.com) 1.2% 0%
LearningServer (Intralearn) 1.2% 0%
LearnPro Plus (LearnSomething) 1.2% 0%
LearningSpan 2.4% 0%
Moodle 8.2% 8.7%
Outstart Evolution 1.2% 0%
Plateau 0% 0%
Saba 1.2% 0%
Sakai 0% 0%
TopClass (WBT Systems) 3.5% 0%
TotalLMS (SumTotal) 4.7% 0%
Custom/Proprietary 5.9% 4.3%
Not sure 22.4% 60.9%
Other 25.9% 13.0%
USE OF AN ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Does your organization currently use an association management system (AMS)?
Current E-learning (88 responses)
Planned E-learning (24 responses)
Yes 54.5% 50.0%
No 31.8% 37.5%
Not sure 13.6% 12.5%
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95!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
AMS PACKAGES
Which of the following AMS packages does your organization currently use? Check all that apply.
Current E-learning (45 responses)
Planned E-learning (13 responses)
Aptify (Aptify) 6.7% 0%
Association Anywhere (ACGI) 2.2% 0%
ClearVantage (Euclid) 2.2% 0%
CRM for Members (ProTech) 0.0% 0%
IMIS (Advanced Systems International) 42.2% 7.7%
IRMembership (IRM Systems) 0% 0%
Members360 (Affiniscape) 0% 7.7%
netFORUM (Avectra) 17.8% 15.4%
Office Manager (internet4associations) 2.2% 0%
Personify (TMA Resources) 4.4% 0%
TIMSS (TMA Resources) 8.9% 0%
Wild Apricot (Wild Apricot) 0% 0%
Other 26.7% 69.2%
LMS/AMS INTEGRATION
Are your learning management systems (LMS) and your association management system (AMS) integrated, or will they be integrated? In other words, is log-in information, data about users, data about course activities, or other types of data shared or will it be shared between the two systems?
Current E-learning (45 responses)
Planned E-learning (13 responses)
Yes, the two systems are/will be integrated 46.7% 38.5%
No, the two systems are not/will not be integrated, but we plan to integrate them in the future
24.4% 23.1%
No, the two systems are not/will not be integrated, and we have no plans for integration
28.9% 23.1%
Not sure 0.0% 15.4%
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96!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
ADHERENCE TO GUIDELINES AND STANDARDS
How important is adherence to guidelines from each of the following sources for your e-learning initiatives, or how important do you anticipate adherence will be?
Current E-learning Initiatives (223 responses) Not Important at All
Slightly Important
Very Important
Absolutely Necessary
Don’t Know
AICC (Airline Industry CBT Committee) 70.2% 2.3% 3.3% 1.9% 22.3%
IMS Global Learning Consortium 65.1% 6.1% 3.3% 0.5% 25.0%
Medbiquitous 67.3% 3.3% 1.4% 0.9% 27.0%
SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) 45.0% 7.8% 11.9% 15.1% 20.2%
Section 508 (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) 51.2% 5.6% 11.7% 5.6% 25.8%
Planned E-learning Initiatives (92 responses) Not Important at All
Slightly Important
Very Important
Absolutely Necessary
Don’t Know
AICC (Airline Industry CBT Committee) 52.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 47.8%
IMS Global Learning Consortium 33.0% 2.2% 3.3% 0.0% 61.5%
Medbiquitous 34.1% 1.1% 2.2% 0.0% 62.6%
SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) 30.8% 3.3% 4.4% 3.3% 58.2%
Section 508 (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) 28.3% 4.3% 7.6% 1.1% 58.7%
DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR E-LEARNING
Which department or division of your organization holds or will hold primary responsibility for e-learning?
Currently Responsible (261 responses)
Planning to Be Responsible (113 responses)
Education or professional development 75.5% 48.7%
Member services 10.0% 14.2%
Marketing 1.9% 3.5%
Technology 1.9% 1.8%
Don’t know 1.1% 19.5%
Other 9.6% 12.4%
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97!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
Respondent Profile DataThe following questions were asked of all respondents.
GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS
Which best describes the geographic focus of your organization (i.e., which best indicates the areas in which you actively solicit membership)? (400 responses)
Single-community or municipality focus 1.8%
Multiple-community focus within one state 7.8%
Single-state or province focus 19.8%
Multi-state or multi-province focus 4.3%
National focus 39.8%
International focus 26.8%
TYPE OF ORGANIZATION
What type of organization is your association? Please check all that apply. (398 responses)
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization 47.0%
501(c)(4) nonprofit organization 1.5%
501(c)(6) nonprofit organization 35.4%
Trade association 23.4%
Professional society 19.3%
For-profit organization 3.5%
Other 5.5%
ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT COMPANY
Do you work for your association through an association management company? (398 responses)
Yes 10.6%
No 89.4%
CERTIFICATION PROGRAM
Does your organization offer a formal certification program? (399 responses)
Yes 34.8%
No 65.2%
CONTINUING EDUCATION
Does your organization offer continuing education that specifically supports earning a formal certification or license, whether or not the certification or license program is your own? (399 responses)
Yes 52.6%
No 47.4%
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98!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
BUDGET SIZE
What is your organization’s annual budget? (379 responses)
Less than $100,000 3.4%
$100,001 - $500,000 14.5%
$500,001 - $1,000,000 11.9%
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 37.2%
$5,000,001 - $10,000,000 11.9%
$10,000,001 - $25,000,000 10.3%
$25,000,001 - $50,000,000 5.0%
$50,000,001 - $100,000,000 5.3%
More than $100,000,000 0.5%
INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP
How many active individual members does your organization currently have? (391 responses)
1,000 or less 24.0%
1,001 to 5,000 24.3%
5,001 to 10,000 10.2%
10,001 to 25,000 11.3%
25,001 to 50,000 7.2%
50,001 to 100,000 3.8%
More than 100,000 2.6%
We have only organizational members 16.6%
ORGANIZATIONAL MEMBERSHIP
How many active organizational members does your organization currently have? (390 responses)
Less than 100 21.0%
101 to 200 11.5%
201 to 500 11.8%
501 to 1,000 13.8%
1,001 to 5,000 11.8%
More than 5,000 5.4%
We have only individual members 24.6%
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99!APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
CLASSIFICATION
Which of the following classifications most closely aligns with the audience served by your organization? (390 responses)
Accommodation and food services 1.3% Libraries 0.3%
Administrative and support 0.3% Management of companies and enterprises 1.0%
Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 2.1% Manufacturing 4.1%
Arts, entertainment, and recreation 2.1% Mining 0.0%
Construction 4.6% Publishing and broadcasting 1.0%
Education: higher education 4.6% Real estate, rental, and leasing 3.3%
Education: K-12 4.6% Retail trade 2.3%
Education: other 3.1% Social services 2.8%
Finance and insurance 3.8% Telecommunications 1.3%
Health care: physicians 6.7% Transportation and warehousing 1.3%
Health care: nurses 2.1% Utilities 1.0%
Heath care: other 11.3% Waste management and remediation services 0.0%
Human resources 1.3% Wholesale trade 1.0%
Information technology 0.5% Other 32.3%
STAFF
How many paid staff does your organization currently have? (401 responses)
1 to 5 26.7%
6 to 10 18.2%
11 to 15 14.2%
16 to 30 10.7%
31 to 50 8.5%
50 to 100 9.7%
101 to 250 7.7%
251 to 500 3.2%
More than 500 1.0%
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100!APPENDIX C: SURVEY METHODOLOGY
For the 2008 Association E-learning Survey that serves as the basis for much of this report, the population of interest was defined as trade and professional associations as well as other nonprofit organizations that solicit membership. An exact tally of this population was not known since a comprehensive directory could not be located. Accordingly, the trade and professional association portion of the population was estimated at 88,000 based on input from staff of the American Society of Association Executives. This estimate is viewed as conservative as it does not include organizations that view themselves as associations but may not be classified as trade or professional associations in public records.
A major challenge for this survey was compiling a list of informants for each organization. Accordingly, a list of 40,000 individuals maintained by Boston Conferencing (a major Web conferencing provider in the association market) and a list of 162 individuals maintained by Jeff Cobb (the survey team leader) were combined. Other membership bases were considered (for example, the American Society of Association Executives and the Association Forum of Chicagoland), but it was not clear if these membership bases were fully representative of the broader population of interest.
SurveyMonkey.com (a hosted online survey tool) was used to create and publish the questionnaire. Subsequently, invitations were e-mailed to 40,162 potential informants. It should be noted that sending questionnaires, invitations, and follow-ups to postal addresses was not possible in light of budget limitations.
Survey participation was anonymous. To encourage informants to be forthcoming in their responses, we made it clear in our communications that we would not request any identifying information from informants. To encourage participation, we offered potential informants the opportunity to receive a summary report from the survey and to be entered into a random drawing to receive one of two Flip video cameras. Each of these opportunities was entirely optional. Contact information for
informants who wished to enter into the drawing and receive the summary was collected through a Web form connected to a database entirely separate from the survey database and not integrated with it in any way.
The survey was available from November 20, 2008, to December 19, 2008. The total response rate for the survey was 518. Subsequently, 488 responses passed the screening criteria (see section below). Since participation was voluntary, the responses constituted a non-probability sample (that is, informants were neither randomly selected nor randomly assigned to form the sample). Accordingly, the findings are not generalizable (inferable) to the broader association population. We view the findings as a valuable baseline (and catalyst) for continued research on e-learning products, services, and trends.
With regard to the response rate, two factors should be considered. First, potential informants may have been disinclined to respond to an invitation from a Webinar vendor e-mail list. But we felt the potential for bias was very small relative to the potential to reach a large pool of potential respondents. Additionally, it should be noted that the e-mail list was not a customer list. While it no doubt includes a number of Boston Conferencing customers, we felt the size of the list was more than sufficient to ensure that no significant bias towards Webinars or Webcasts as a form of e-learning would be introduced.
Regarding the second factor, the Boston Conferencing list in some cases contained multiple contacts for a single organization. Therefore, multiple informants (duplicates) for an organization were possible, even though only one response was desired. The number of duplicates was unknown; moreover, screening for (and removing) duplicates from the 40,000 item list exceeded project resources. Accordingly, two controls were implemented:
1.Informants were instructed in the e-mails
inviting survey participation as well as on the
home page of the survey itself to ensure that
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Appendix C: Survey MethodologyThe Details
101!APPENDIX C: SURVEY METHODOLOGY
only one person would respond from the
organization.
2.Criteria were developed to identify the most
eligible informant (see section on screening
criteria below).
It should be noted that inviting multiple informants increased the chances of getting at least one response from an organization (which was more desirable than potential overweighting from multiple responses).
If you have questions about this survey and its methodology or are interested in gathering data specific to your potential audience for e-learning, contact Jeff Cobb at [email protected].
Screening CriteriaOne important goal in collecting responses was to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that only one response was received from each participating association. This goal had to be balanced with ensuring participant anonymity to elicit responses that were as candid as possible. All e-mail correspondence related to the survey as well as the survey home page indicated that only one person from an organization should complete the survey. In addition, we captured Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for all responses and then filtered the responses to eliminate duplicate responses from any given IP address. The following criteria, in the following order, were used for elimination:
1.Does the IP address appear to be associated
with an association management company
(based on at least one respondent from the IP
address indicating yes on in response to a
survey question asking the respondent whether
she works for an association management
company)? Because association management
companies typically manage multiple
associations, multiple answers from a single IP
were retained in these instances.
2.Do the responses from the same IP address
have similar identifying characteristics—
particularly industry focus, budget size, and
membership base size? While different
organizations will not typically share an IP
address, it is not out of the question that they
might. If the identifying characteristics in
different responses from the same IP seemed
significantly divergent, both responses were
retained.
Assuming responses were not retained for either of the above reasons, the next series of questions asked were:
• Does the title of person in charge of e-learning match the title of the person filling out the survey? If one or more of the respondents indicated the title of the person in charge of e-learning at an organization, the response of the person with this title was the one retained.
• Is one response significantly less complete than the other? It was clear in the majority of cases that one respondent from an IP address had begun the survey, abandoned it, and then a different respondent from the same IP address completed the survey with a different respondent ID.
• Is e-learning or online learning in the title of the person filling out the survey? If the above criteria did not produce a clear decision, preference was given to responses submitted by someone with e-learning or online learning in their title.
• Is education in the title of the person filling out the survey? In the absence of an online learning or e-learning title, preference was given for respondents with education in their titles. This criterion was based on the fact that the vast majority or respondents to the survey indicated that the education department holds responsibility for e-learning.
• Who has the higher ranking title? In the absence of other clear title indicators, preference was given to the respondent with the highest ranking title.
3.
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102!APPENDIX D: ABOUT TAGORAS
Tagoras is a market research firm and consultancy focused on the design, marketing, and management of digital learning and knowledge. We work with associations, philanthropies, and small-to-mid-sized businesses to help these organizations better understand and leverage the opportunities made possible by the new Web—what we like to call the learning Web. Our emphasis is on what achieves results, not on new gadgets and theories. Association
E-learning 2009: State of the Sector represents the first in a line of research we plan to publish on e-learning in the association sector.
About the AuthorsAll the research and writing for this report was done by Tagoras principals Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele.
JEFF COBB
Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the world of education and technology. After starting his career as a research analyst for the Investor Responsibility Research Center, he first became involved with computer-assisted approaches to learning in the early 1990s as an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In
1997, he joined University Access, a company focused on developing online learning experiences for colleges and universities and ultimately went on to lead the academic division of the company. He became senior vice president of business development when the company merged with IEC, a leading developer of computer-based training for Fortune 500 companies, and re-branded itself as Quisic.
In 2001, Jeff left Quisic to found Isoph with the specific aim of helping nonprofit organizations develop successful online learning initiatives. Serving as Isoph’s chief executive officer, he worked
directly with a wide range of nonprofit clients and developed a deep understanding of the business, technical, and instructional issues that impact nonprofit learning initiatives. In 2005, Isoph was acquired by LearnSomething. Jeff continued on with LearnSomething until the fall of 2008, when he embarked on the research and consulting activities that now form the core of Tagoras.
Jeff is an award-winning teacher, a frequent speaker in the e-learning world, and author of the e-book Learning 2.0 for Associations as well as the popular Mission to Learn blog. He serves on the Professional Development Council of the American Society of Association Executives as well as on the advisory board for Philantech, provider of the PhilanTrack™ online grant proposal, reporting, and management system. He has previously served on the research committee of the eLearning Guild and the editorial board of Innovate, a leading resource for information about technology and education.
CELISA STEELE
Celisa has led the development and deployment of successful online education sites with numerous nonprofit organizations ranging from smaller groups like the Frameworks Institute and the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services to large national and multinational organizations like the American Red Cross, the American College of Radiology, the Society for Human Resource Management, and WebJunction, an initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Celisa is a managing director at Tagoras, and she was a cofounder and chief operating officer of Isoph, one of the leading providers of e-learning services to the nonprofit sector. Prior to Isoph, she worked in creative services at Quisic, a developer of high-end online course content for major universities and Global 2000 companies. Before joining Quisic, Celisa worked in curriculum
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Appendix D: About TagorasPublisher of The Report
103!APPENDIX D: ABOUT TAGORAS
development for the not-for-profit Family and Children’s Resource Program (FCRP), part of the Jordan Institute for Families at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A veteran of the e-learning world, Celisa served on the research committee of the eLearning Guild and has served multiple times as a judge in Brandon Hall’s annual e-learning awards.
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