association learning+technology report
TRANSCRIPT
State of the Sectorwritten by Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele
June
201
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published by [email protected]
800.867.2046
ASSOCIATION LEARNING+ TE
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2COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
© 2011 Tagoras, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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Purchase of Association Learning + Technology 2011: 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-learning-technology.
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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.
Copyright and DisclaimerThe Fine Print
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Declaration of Independence
This report was independently researched and produced by Tagoras. Tagoras does not accept any form of compensation for including specific individuals, organizations, or companies in its research. Nor does Tagoras compensate any individual, organization, or company for contributing to the report, other than providing a complimentary copy of the report to organizations profiled in one of the case studies included in the report.
3TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary | 7
Introduction to Association Learning + Technology | 10
The Overview | 12
Participant Demographics 12
Interviews 13
Purpose, Benefits, and Barriers 14
The Operational Perspective | 19
Products: What’s Offered 19
E-learning Products and Services 19
The Appeal of Webinars 20
Cleaning up the Webinar’s Image 20
Beyond a Narrow Definition of Webinar 22
Newer Products: What’s Emerging 23
Social Learning 23
Mobile Learning 27
Virtual Conferences 29
Process, Personnel and Tools: How It Gets Done 34
Process Examples 34
Adequacy of Resources 35
Where to Turn for Help 37
Departments Responsible for E-learning 38
Prevalence of Outsourcing 38
The Cost of Expertise 40
Authoring Tools 43
Instructional Designers 44
Summary 46
Table of ContentsAssociation Learning + Technology 2011
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4TABLE OF CONTENTS
Trends and Predictions 46
Questions to Consider 47
The Business Perspective | 48
The Revenue Imperative 48
Strategy 49
Return on Investment 53
The Impact of the Economy 54
Product 56
Continuing Education and Certification 57
Pricing 62
Pricing in Trade Associations Versus Professional Societies 62
Pricing and Formats 62
Pricing and Certification 66
Pricing and Age of Program 67
Pricing Strategy and Models 67
Discounts 69
Distribution 69
Market Penetration 70
Promotion 70
Relationship with Marketing Department 72
Competition 73
Summary 75
Trends and Predictions 75
Questions to Consider 76
The Technology Perspective | 79
End User Concerns 79
Webinar Platforms 81
Learning Management Systems 81
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5TABLE OF CONTENTS
LMS and LCMS Packages 85
Gray Areas 86
E-learning and AMSes 87
LMS/AMS Integration 87
E-learning Guidelines and Standards 89
Key E-learning Standards in Brief 90
Summary 91
Trends and Predictions 91
Questions to Consider 91
Satisfaction, Success, and the State of the Sector | 94
Portrait of Success 95
E-learning Providers on Success 96
Summing Up Success 98
Voices from the Sector on the Current State of Learning and Technology 98
E-learning Providers on the State of the Sector 98
Associations on the State of the Sector 99
Appendix A: Participating Organizations | 100
Appendix B: Survey Data | 101
About Tagoras | 121
Case Studies
Buy-In, Flexibility, and Regulation: Keys to the Midwest ENERGY Association’s E-learning Kingdom 17
Extending Value Virtually: American Nurses Credentialing Center 41
E-learning Solves Business Problems: National Air Duct Cleaners Association 51
E-learning to the Rescue: Society for Technical Communication 60
Webinars Get the Organization on the E-learning Map: Restoration Industry Association 77
Education Focus and Proactive Mindset Fuel E-learning Success: Escrow Association of Washington 93
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6ADDITIONAL TAGORAS REPORTS
Association Learning Management Systems is just what you need if you would like to dramatically reduce the time and costs associated with choosing the right learning management system. We’ve narrowed the field of LMS providers down to a small group dedicated to serving associations and experienced in meeting association needs. We asked the providers to respond to an extensive questionnaire and provide a demonstration of their system.
Learn more at http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/association-lms.
The free Learning 2.0 for Associations offers a basic overview of how the rise of the social Web has impacted the way that learning happens and how organizations can begin incorporating social media approaches into their traditional online and offline learning activities.
Learn more at http://www.tagoras.com/learning20.
Additional Tagoras ReportsVirtual Conferences, LMSes, and Learning 2.0
Virtual conferences and trade shows are quickly emerging as one of the most significant new trends in the association sector. Association Virtual Conferences: State of the Sector provides the most comprehensive assessment available of how this important new approach to meetings and education is being used by trade and professional associations. If you are charged with developing a virtual event strategy for your organization, this is a must-have resource.
Learn more at http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/virtual-conferences.
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7EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Association Learning + Technology 2011: State of the Sector represents a major effort to assess the state of technology-enabled learning in the association market and provide insight into how its role in the sector may evolve in the coming months and years. It represents a wholesale update of Association E-learning 2009: State of the Sector, published by Tagoras some 15 months ago.
We renamed the report because many limit the term e-learning to self-paced online courses and do not use it for Webinars, Webcasts, or other forms of educational experiences online, especially the burgeoning areas of informal and social learning, We wanted it to be clear in the title that we think expansively about the role technology does and can play in association learning. However, to avoid wordy constructions throughout the report, we do rely on the term e-learning. When you see it, remember e-learning is used broadly and not relegated to a narrow slice of potential technology-enabled learning.
At the core of the report is a survey of associations conducted at the end of 2010. Some 375 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 learning, and the business practices that support their e-learning initiatives. To supplement this data, we conducted in-depth interviews with 27 associations and 9 learning technology and service providers to the sector.
The OverviewOut of 375 responses to the survey, 77.4 percent were from individuals who indicated their organizations are currently using some form of e-learning. An additional 16.0 percent indicated they plan to start using e-learning within the coming 6 to 12 months, and 6.6 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 (74.3 percent) than not (25.6 percent) with their e-learning initiatives. In three of eight specific areas these organizations report being more dissatisfied than satisfied—and then only marginally: usage, such as course enrollments (44.9 versus 43.5 percent); revenue generation from their offerings (39.7 versus 37.0 percent), and the staff time required to develop the offerings (38.2 versus 38.1 percent).
While there has been a somewhat greater tendency for larger associations to have already embraced e-learning, we have seen this tendency decline over the years. There is clearly significant e-learning activity among smaller organizations. More than half (57.5 percent) of the organizations that reported using e-learning in our 2008 survey had annual budgets of $5 million or less. In the 2010 survey, this number rose to 63.3 percent.
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 Webinars. Real-time Webinars and Webcasts came out on top with organizations currently delivering e-learning while recorded Webinars and Webcasts topped the list for organizations planning to deliver e-learning in the next 12 months.
For organizations currently delivering e-learning, 39.7 percent use professional instructional designers—almost 10 percent fewer than those that do not (49.1 percent).
Executive SummaryAssociation Learning + Technology 2011
This report represents a wholesale update of Association E-learning 2009.
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8EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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). There was a general sense among interviewees that networking and knowledge-sharing among peers in the sector is growing, but opportunities are still rare.
Social media is attracting some interest in the association e-learning community but leaves much room for growth. The dominant social tool for current e-learning initiatives is social networks (44.6 percent, combining public and private networks), followed by discussion forums (36.2 percent). A few tools made marked leaps among associations doing e-learning since the last report. Microblogging (e.g. Twitter) jumped from a mere 2.4 percent to 20.1
percent, public social networking sites rose from 8.9 percent to 24.5 percent, and Web video sites went from 7.3 percent to 17.5 percent. The slice of associations not using social media as part of e-learning dropped from 47.6 percent to 34.9 percent, and only 7.7 percent of associations planning e-learning in the next 12 months say they will not use any social media, though the majority (53.8 percent) simply aren’t yet sure whether social media will play a role.
The Business PerspectiveThe majority (55.5 percent) of survey respondents currently using e-learning charge members for at least some of their e-learning offerings, and another sizable chunk (31.5 percent) charge for all their offerings. The average price per content hour for organizations currently offering e-learning to both members and nonmembers is $57.82 while the most common level of discount for member course purchases is from 20 to 29 percent.
Interviews conducted for this report as well as the survey data suggest that most organizations do not have a formal e-learning strategy in place or a formal approach to pricing their offerings. Only 22.0 percent of survey respondents reported having a formal, documented e-learning strategy, and only 23.9 percent indicated that their organizations have a formal, documented process for setting prices.
On average, organizations using e-learning reach 19.5 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, targeted e-mails dedicated specifically to e-learning rank first. Among organizations currently offering e-learning, 73.9 percent characterized targeted e-mail as absolutely necessary. Notably, pay-per-click advertising—seen as very important or absolutely necessary by only 5.8 percent of respondents—was almost dead last, beating out only faxes.
The Technology PerspectiveAmong survey respondents with current e-learning programs, GoToMeeting (44.2 percent) and WebEx (25.0 percent) lead the pack of Webinar platforms,
On average, organizations using e-learning reach 19.5 percent of their membership
base with their offerings.
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9EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
and Adobe Connect (16.1 percent) and Microsoft Live Meeting (14.3 percent) are the only other two named systems to reach double digits.
Under half (45.9 percent) of the respondents that currently offer e-learning report using a learning management system (LMS) or planning to within the next 12 months. Among those organizations that have both an LMS and an association management system, the majority (76.7 percent) either have already integrated or planned to integrate the two systems.
Knowledge of and adherence to common e-learning guidelines and standards in the sector continues to be quite low. Adherence to the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was considered very important or absolutely necessary by only 22.1 percent of respondents currently using e-learning.
The State of the SectorE-learning has arrived in the association sector but remains far from mature. While most organizations (74.4 percent) indicate general satisfaction with their e-learning initiatives, they are more likely to be dissatisfied than satisfied in specific areas like enrollment levels and revenue generation. Notably, only 15.0 percent characterize their e-learning as very successful. We found that these organizations were significantly more likely than average to do the following:
• View revenue generation as a key benefit.• Make use of professional instructional design.• Have a formal, documented e-learning strategy.• Have a formal, documented product
development process.
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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10INTRODUCTION
Association Learning + Technology: State of the Sector, is a follow-up to our report Association E-learning 2009: State of the Sector, 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.
While the primary focus of this report continues to be traditional online education, the change in title for this edition acknowledges the wide range of ways in which technology has expanded to enhance learning both online and off. As with the previous report, our hope is that the information here will prove useful in providing points of reference and perspective to organizations planning e-learning initiatives or hoping to integrate technology effectively into their general education initiatives.
At the core of the report is a survey of associations conducted from November 18, 2010, to December 23, 2010. We received 375 responses to this survey. Out of these responses, 77.4 percent were from individuals who indicated their organization is currently using e-learning. An additional 16.0 percent indicated they plan to start using e-learning within the coming 6 to 12 months, while 6.6 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 27 associations and 9 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 openly. Only in few limited instances, and with the permission of the interviewee, are the sources of quotations or other
6.6%8.0%
8.0%
77.4%
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Introduction to Association Learning + TechnologyAbout This Report
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? (349 responses)Nearly 78 percent of respondents to the 2010 survey reported currently using e-learning—up from 61.1 percent per the 2008 survey, which was the basis for the Association E-learning 2009 report.
11INTRODUCTION
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 diverse in selecting the organizations. The case studies span a range of industries and feature associations of varying size and geographic focus.
Finally, we (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-statistical survey, but also on an understanding that the association sector is, by its nature, quite diverse and fragmented—and that broad conclusions must be put forward cautiously.
The report is structured into the following sections:
1. The executive summary2. This introduction3. An overview that discusses demographic data, the purposes of association e-learning, and the
barriers to and benefits of e-learning4. A chapter on operations and e-learning that looks at what’s produced and how, including
emerging trends like social learning, virtual conferences, and mobile learning5. A chapter that takes the business perspective, looking at the strategy that drives e-learning
initiatives, expenses and income, marketing, and competition6. A chapter on e-learning technology, including the end user point of view and the organizational
standpoint7. The state of e-learning in the association sector based on our analysis of the survey data and
interviews, including a look at the common characteristics of associations satisfied with and successful in their e-learning initiatives
8. Six case studies of associations engaged in e-learning, distributed throughout the report9. A series of appendices that provide a list of participating organizations, the raw online survey
data (parts of which are cited throughout the report), and information about Tagoras (publisher of this report) and us (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.
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.
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12THE OVERVIEW
This section provides demographic data, discusses the purposes for which associations undertake e-learning and looks at the perceived benefits of and barriers to adopting online education technologies.
Participant DemographicsAs the demographic data provided at the end of this document indicates, 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 overall were nationally focused organizations (40.5 percent), organizations with annual budgets between $1 million and $5 million (36.6 percent), and organizations with staff of between
1 and 5 individuals (23.7 percent). The most common membership size was between 1,001 and 5,000 individuals (24.1 percent).
The clusters were the same for the group of respondents indicating current use of e-learning, though with a slightly larger concentration of organizations with a national focus (45.4 percent). Overall, organizations indicating they are currently using e-learning were more likely than the group as whole to be nationally or internationally focused (73.6 percent versus 67.7 percent) as opposed to focused on a region, state, or locality. They were also somewhat more likely to have more than 10 staff (67.3 percent versus 59.0 percent).
While there has been a somewhat greater tendency for larger associations already to
Which best describes the geographic focus of your organization (i.e., which best indicates the areas in which you actively solicit membership)? (301 responses)Organizations with a national focus were the biggest group.
The OverviewDemographics, Purpose, Benefits, and Barriers
27.2%
40.5%
3.7%
21.6%
5.0%
2.0%
Single community or municipality focusMultiple community focus in one stateSingle state or province focusMultistate or multiprovince focusNational focusInternational focus
What is your organization’s annual budget? (290 responses)Most organizations had budgets between $1 million and $5 million.
3.1%2.4%
5.9%
11.7%
9.7%
36.6%
14.5%
12.8%
3.4%
Less than $100,000 $100,001 to $500,000$500,001 to $1,000,000 $1,000,001 to $5,000,000$5,000,001 to $10,000,000 $10,000,001 to $25,000,000$25,000,001 to $50,000,000 $50,000,001 to $100,000,000More than $100,000,000
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13THE OVERVIEW
How long has your organization been using e-learning? (270 responses)
have embraced e-learning, we have seen this tendency decline over the years. There is clearly significant e-learning activity among smaller organizations. More than half (57.5 percent) of the organizations that reported using e-learning in our 2008 survey had annual budgets of $5 million or less, and 18.1 percent had budgets of $1 million or less. In the 2010 survey, 63.3 percent of organizations that reported using e-learning had budgets of $5 million or less and 24.8 percent had budgets of $1 million or less.
A majority of 2010 survey respondents indicated that their organization has been using e-learning to deliver education for three or more years (61.1 percent), with a growing percentage (22.2 percent in 2010 versus 15.6 percent in 2008) of respondents reporting using e-learning for more than five years. While more professional societies (80.4 percent) are currently delivering e-learning than trade associations (67.9 percent), the trade associations are more likely than professional societies to have been using e-learning for three years or more (65.7
percent compared to 60.0 percent).
Most (70.6 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 a discussion of credit and e-learning.)
INTERVIEWSThe organizations we interviewed in follow-up to the online survey were somewhat less diverse demographically than survey respondents, almost necessarily given the smaller sample size. Nonetheless the group was quite diverse in terms of industries served, geographic focus, size of staff, size and type of membership (i.e., individual versus organizational), and experience with e-learning, although all are currently engaged in e-learning.
The providers we interviewed were also quite diverse, ranging from Webinar service providers like KRM, to learning management system providers like WBT Systems, to individual consultants like Ellen Behrens. Each of the providers offered a unique perspective based on their approach to e-learning and the types of clients served.
Which of the following best characterizes your organization? (300 responses)
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 1,001 to 5,000 individual members.
Less than 1 year 1 to 2 years3 to 5 years More than 5 years
22.2%
38.9%
28.9%
10.0%
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8.3%4.0%
49.3%
35.3%
3.0%
Charitable or philanthropic organizationTrade associationProfessional societyEducational institutionOther
14THE 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.
As in our 2008 survey, most respondents using or planning to use e-learning indicated professional development for members and nonmembers as their primary and secondary purposes. The portion that indicated using e-learning for staff training remained relatively low.
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. These numbers are similar to those reported by 2008
survey participants. Respondents in this group were almost equally likely to be from trade associations (36.1 percent) as from professional societies (34.5 percent).
Among both our survey participants and our interviewees, cost-effectiveness, convenience, and the ability to reach more learners remain the biggest benefits associated with e-learning. More than 70 percent of survey respondents who are using or planning to use e-learning indicated convenience and the ability to reach more learners as benefits. Among those using e-learning, the importance of cost-effectiveness remained about the same between the 2008 and 2010 surveys. For those planning e-learning, however, its importance as a benefit dropped quite a bit—from 78.7 percent to 64.8 percent. It is too early to tell whether this drop reflects a general shift in perceptions of e-learning, but it may be that organizations are realizing that implementing and managing a successful e-learning program often does not cost dramatically less than place-based alternatives.
Professional development for members
Professional development for nonmembers
Training for staff
Advocacy and issue education
Training for volunteers
Training for affiliated organizations or chapters
Other14.5%
27.3%
30.9%
18.2%
16.4%
54.4%
85.5%
7.0%
33.1%
29.4%
22.1%
29.0%
69.5%
95.6%
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 nonmembers as their primary and secondary purposes.
Current e-learning (272 responses)Planned e-learning (55 responses)
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15THE OVERVIEW
Another area in which we saw percentages shift was revenue generation—the potential for e-learning to generate revenue was given more weight by respondents in 2010 than by respondents in 2008. While 31.8 percent of those already using e-learning indicated the ability to generate revenues as an important benefit in 2008, 38.1 precent did so in 2010. Among those planning for e-learning, the percentage jumped from 29.5 to 51.9 percent.
As with the 2008 survey, concern about return on financial investment (41.5 percent), technology skills
of end users (43.4 percent), and staff time required to develop e-learning (40.0 percent) were the top three barriers to e-learning cited by respondents with programs already in place. There continues to be significantly less concern about technology skills among those who plan to offer e-learning (24.1 percent), likely reflecting an overall sense that end users have become much more comfortable with e-learning. Concern about financial return was higher among the group planning to offer e-learning (51.9 percent) as was concern about the amount of staff resources that will be required to develop 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.Convenience, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to reach more learners were among the biggest benefits respondents associated with e-learning.
Current e-learning (270 responses)Planned e-learning (55 responses)
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16THE OVERVIEW
(46.3 percent), though notably the latter has dropped quite a bit from the 2008 level (57.1 percent).
For organizations with no plans for e-learning in the next 12 months, the biggest perceived barriers, were concerns about the staff time required to develop e-learning (60.9 percent), no perceived need for e-learning (47.8 percent), and staff time required to support e-learning (43.5 percent).
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.”
Having looked at the demographics of the survey respondents and the purposes and benefits of, barriers to e-learning, we now delve deeper into the operational, business, and technology aspects of association e-learning.
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s w
oul
d e
xcee
d f
inan
cial
ret
urn
Co
ncer
n th
at c
ost
s w
oul
d e
xcee
d n
on-
finan
cial
ret
urn
Lack
of
fund
ing
nec
essa
ry t
o im
ple
men
t e-
lear
ning
Co
ncer
n ab
out
eff
ecti
vene
ss o
f e-
lear
ning
Co
ncer
n ab
out
end
use
rs’ t
echn
ical
ski
lls
Sta
ff t
ime
req
uire
d t
o d
evel
op
e-l
earn
ing
Sta
ff t
ime
req
uire
d t
o s
upp
ort
e-l
earn
ing
Res
ista
nce
fro
m c
urre
nt t
rain
ers
or
faci
litat
ors
Fear
tha
t st
akeh
old
ers
wo
n’t
use
e-le
arni
ng
Lack
of
exp
erti
se in
e-l
earn
ing
Lack
of
man
agem
ent
buy
-in
No
per
ceiv
ed n
eed
fo
r e-
lear
ning
Oth
er0%
47.8
%
8.7%
13.0
%
26.1
%
4.3%
43.5
%
60.9
%
17.4
%
17.4
%
39.1
%
17.4
%21.7
%
3.7%
0%
7.4%
42.6
%
24.2
%
2.9%
29.6
%
46.3
%
24.1
%
24.1
%
38.9
%
5.6%
51.9
%
5.2%7.
1%
6.7%
25.1
%31.5
%
6.0%
31.5
%
40.4
%
43.1
%
26.6
%
23.2
%
7.1%
41.6
%
What are the three biggest barriers your organization has encountered or expects to encounter while developing e-learning initiatives, or what are the three biggest barriers preventing your organization from developing e-learning initiatives? Please check only the three that your organization considers most important.
Current e-learning (267 responses)Planned e-learning (54 responses)No plans for e-learning (23 responses)
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Emphasis on revenue generation is growing—
38.1 percent of organizations currently delivering
e-learning and 51.9 percent of organizations planning e-learning in the next 12
months indicated revenue generation as a key benefit.
17CASE STUDY
A screen from MEA’s MAKESAFE Leak Investigation series
Asked about her association’s success with e-learning, Stephanie Menning, vice president in charge of gas services for the Midwest ENERGY Association (MEA), sees three primary drivers: buy-in from members, staff, and the board; flexibility in designing and delivering the content; and regulation that creates demand.
Founded in 1905, MEA, a 15-state regional trade association with members ranging from large utilities with thousands of employees to tiny municipalities, has been providing training for a long time. Education goes back to MEA’s origins, as Menning explains: “[O]ur members saw that the cost of creating each of these programs individually would have been extraordinary and exorbitant as opposed to us all developing them together under the umbrella of MEA.” In the mid 1990s MEA started using workbooks and videos for training. “And we literally got our members’ buy-in,” Menning continues, “but we spent every single dime in the organization in order to put that program forth. And that was a huge risk, but it ended up being well worth it.”
Over time, transitions happened naturally—from workbooks and videos to CD-ROMs to online learning—and learners were brought along with each change. “So we had an upfront audience already,” Menning says, “and that was probably part of the key to the kingdom as far as planning our e-learning.”
While member buy-in has been essential, MEA has also staffed itself for e-learning success. Chief learning officer Don Szambelan oversees MEA's e-learning, the association employs a director of sales and marketing, and half the staff design and develop training and provide customer service.
Beyond buy-in, Menning can’t emphasize enough the importance of flexibility—“not only in what you offer, but in how you offer it and in how you deliver it”—and she recognizes the role MEA’s learning technology provider plays in providing that flexibility. “CERTPOINT has the ability not only as an LMS but an LCMS,” Menning explains, “which affords us this massive repository of text and test questions and Flash files, video, all these things that we can piece together.” The systems makes it easy, for example, for an on-the-job-site safety course for gas companies to become one for electric
Buy-In, Flexibility, and RegulationKeys to the Midwest ENERGY Association’s E-learning Kingdom
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18CASE STUDY
companies. Further, members and other customers can adjust the content to their own operations. “If they want to embed a picture of their truck, so their people when they’re doing their modules say, ‘Oh yes, that’s my company truck’ in this module, as opposed to somebody else’s, our system allows for that,” says Menning.
Finding technology that was a good fit was no small undertaking. “It took us 18 months of very intense research into learning management systems and learning content management systems because, there again, flexibility was the key. We have these really large organizations that are multistate operators that have to service folks in remote locations, utilities that have full-blown training centers. And we had to make sure that whatever we offered fit their modus operandi as well as the small municipal with just two people.” Given that wide range of circumstances, MEA lets customers choose where to host the online training—they can use MEA’s CERTPOINT LMS, or they can host the courses on their own internal LMS. MEA’s diligence in the technology selection process paid off—the association has worked with CERTPOINT for almost 10 years now. Menning points out, “We’ve been with them since the beginning, and that’s atypical of any kind of software—I don't care whether it’s a database or whatever.”
Flexibility extends to MEA’s pricing model. The association already had a sliding pay scale (larger companies pay more) in place for its training, but when it embraced e-learning, it went to a change in dues: “If you’re planning on using the e-learning and embedding it within your organization, you’re a Level 2 member instead of a Level 1. Level 1 is just your basic membership that you’ve always had with MEA. Level 2 is now you get the license to the online learning, with a pass-through fee for every log-in, every person that logs in, which is just $30,” Menning explains.
“Another key to the kingdom that’s really different for our e-learning than it would be for most people is that it is regulated. The Department of Transportation has this thing called ‘operator qualification,’ and utilities have to make sure that the folks out there working on the gas pipelines are qualified.” While regulation makes the training a have-to-have rather than a nice-to-have, competition is fierce. MEA differentiates itself on quality, and the caliber of the training has attracted new members—“we’re actually now gaining membership from outside our territory and have been for quite a while”—and new strategic relationships. “Florida Natural Gas Association, the entire association as a group, has purchased MEA’s online training,” says Menning. “And that’s because of the benefit that they found, as far as it’s continually updated. We’ve got a huge cadre of subject matter experts that continually review our modules. In other words, we’re not one or two people that are subject matter experts. We’ve literally got hundreds of people that look at these modules to keep them the best that they possibly can be.”
Although she acknowledges the breadth of MEA’s online offering might seen daunting to others, Menning urges associations to not sell themselves short and to recognize how far we’ve all come: “Look at how much the computer has literally embedded itself within our lives, and especially in these last few years with Facebook and social networking.”
As for the future, Menning believes portability will take off, so content can be played anywhere and not be tied to a particular delivery system: “I truly believe things are going to migrate into these open architectures that will be able to play on anything.” She also sees MEA branching into mobile learning: “As the guys are going out there to perform a weld or repair a meter, boom, they pop up a three-minute iPhone app that reviews the safety issues with whatever task. Imagine how helpful that would be. And really, that’s the ultimate end goal—why we’re doing training and education—to make sure that we protect our workers, the public, and the infrastructure.” She continues, “God knows, in this industry, when things go wrong, a la San Bruno, you sure hear about it, and it’s absolutely spectacular, but nobody really focuses on what we do well.”
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19THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Real-time Webinars
Recorded Webinars
Self-paced courses
Member-only discussion boards
Audio or video podcasts
CD-ROMs and DVDs
Facilitated online courses
Offline with online assessments
“Off the shelf” courses
Blended learning
Electronic study guides
Educational simulations or games
Other 3.8%
3.8%
13.5%
15.4%
13.5%
11.5%
25.0%
9.6%
28.8%
36.5%
28.8%
63.5%
57.7%
2.7%
5.4%
12.0%
13.6%
16.3%
17.1%
22.5%
30.2%
36.0%
42.6%
48.8%
70.9%
82.9%
Current e-learning (258 responses)Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Operations deals with the nuts and bolts of developing an e-learning program: what’s produced, 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.
Real-time Webinars and Webcasts came out on top with organizations currently delivering e-learning while recorded Webinars and Webcasts topped the list for organizations planning to deliver e-learning in the next 12 months. For organizations with more than 5,000 members and currently delivering e-learning, the rate of three offerings showed a sizable jump—self-paced online courses rose to 60.7 percent (from 48.8 percent of all organizations currently offering e-learning), audio and video podcasts went up to 44.6 percent (from 36.0 percent), and offline formats with online assessments up to 27.7 percent (from 17.1 percent).
Real-time Webinars, recorded Webinars, and self-paced courses, in that order, were the top three
The Operational PerspectiveStaid and Emerging Products, Processes, and Tools
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 and recorded Webinars came out on top.
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20THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
products for both trade associations and professional societies currently delivering e-learning, but professional societies are more likely than trade associations to offer recorded Webinars (77.3 percent versus 62.5 percent), self-paced online courses (53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent), audio or video podcasts (40.3 percent versus 29.2 percent), and offline formats with online assessments (25.2 percent versus 11.1 percent). Trade associations are more likely to offer third-party “off the shelf” courses (25.0 percent versus 14.3 percent).
In interviews, we heard several associations and vendors mention a crossbreed product that is part live Webinar and part recorded Webinar. As one provider explained, “These are a live broadcast. So we take the content, and we broadcast it through a live player because we’re trying to help organizations build communication and dialogue around content. So when you run it in a live player, then you’ve got 25, 30, 40, 50 people, and you feel like you’re at an event because there are other people there. You ask questions, you can chat, the whole thing. You never could do that when you clicked on an archive session.... We’re having a lot more engagement when you run it as a live event.”
But true on-demand recordings of Webinars still work best for some audiences, such as health professionals. One association interviewee said of her members, “They love the recording aspect of it because that helps if they get pulled away with patients or have an emergency or for some reason just can’t get on, they know they can always watch the recording and have that available to them.” She continued, “We’ve actually seen our registration numbers go up, but our attendees haven’t because people are beginning to learn that, ‘Oh gosh, you know what? If I can’t make it, I’m just going to get the recording, and then I can watch that, and I can still get my CE.’”
THE APPEAL OF WEBINARSAs in 2008, most organizations surveyed offer Webinars. Why? Webinars continue to be seen as a relatively easy and inexpensive way to test the technology-enabled-learning waters. “The Webinars, for us, have been kind of a starting point,” said one association interviewee. “It’s gotten people more comfortable with the idea of using
their computer to see screens, learn, hear the audio, and interact either by typing in a question or by listening to others ask a question or by e-mailing the instructor later.” The interviewee summed up his point, “[T]he success of the Webinars...helped prepare the organization to do additional things and feel that it would be okay.”
Webinars also typically have a short time to market. Cynthia Hereth at the Restoration Industry Association said she needed to get her association “on the map for some type of online learning or technology, and that’s where the Webinar creation came in.” She was able to roll out a Webinar series quickly while the association worked on developing a longer self-paced online course to help members prep for a certification exam.
Another advantage is that it’s possible to do a lot with a little in the Webinar world—although not necessarily advisable. “We do a Webinar every single week, sometimes more than one a week,” one interviewer shared. “That’s way too much. I would never recommend anybody do that many Webinars. It’s killing us. I basically have one full-time staffer who’s doing all the Webinars.”
CLEANING UP THE WEBINAR’S IMAGEWhile many of the perceived benefits of the Webinar format remain consistent, we heard in interviews for this report new rumblings about the need to make Webinars better—for the associations in terms of revenue or costs and for learners in terms of educational value.
Part of the push to improve Webinars comes from the fact that now virtually any viable market has competition. “If you are not offering at least
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“I think one additional benefit the Webcasts have helped us with is that we’re able to do much more for each one of those segment groups whereas with the face-to-face delivery, where there’s just a lot more ramp-up and development time, we couldn’t always respond to the unique needs of the individual segments.”
21THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Webcasts and/or e-learning courses, someone in your area of expertise is—or will soon be—offering these,” concluded an interviewee.
One association considered scrapping its Webinar series: “We were almost at the end of doing those [Webinars], just really questioning the value. They have not been meeting our expectations. They were always meant to be a revenue generator for the organization.” In the end, the association switched to a paid-sponsor model for financing the Webinars (so members attend for free now rather than paying as they had in the past), and “what was on death’s door, as of about a year and a half ago, two years ago, is really thriving, and for the first time since I’ve been here [at the association], it looks like our e-learning program is going to be in the black, specifically the Webcasts.”
Other interviewees mentioned similar hard looks at their own Webinar offerings: “With the Webinars, we backed off of that because the format that we were using wasn’t working for us. It was costly. We weren’t recouping that, and we weren’t benefitting enough of our membership to warrant spending those dollars.” That association reexamined its costs, found a less expensive technology platform, and plans to relaunch its Webinars this year.
One vendor said, “We also sense movement in the association community to have more interactive and engaging events. Most of the information that’s published addresses small audiences. The organizations that put on larger events—100 to 1,000 attendees—need assistance finding ways to make events more interactive.”
Still others are looking at differentiating not only their offerings from competitors’ but from their own offerings, so members can understand why some are free and some are paid.
We structure our Webcasts as part of what we call the Research in Action series, so they tend to be based on research that’s being conducted by our research department or typically funded by our foundation. Those are audio push only with kind of an online slide deck, and they’re free to members. We do have them sign up so we know who is attending, but it’s really about getting some of the basics about that research and information out to the masses and helping them understand how to use it. And then the Webinars are more of an emerging issue or hot topic. They tend to have more in-depth content. They include job aids, resources that we collect for them, and there is a fee for those. So you get more concentrated time with the presenter and more resources from us, so therefore there’s a fee for that.
Even associations who didn’t begin with Webinars are circling back to the format as they see the unique opportunities it provides, such as delivering content directed at only a slice of membership. “I think one additional benefit the Webcasts have helped us with is that we’re able to do much more for each one of those segment groups,” pointed out one interviewee, “whereas with the face-to-face delivery, where there’s just a lot more ramp-up and development time, we couldn’t always respond to the unique needs of the individual segments.”
Given budget and time constraints and the nebulous fear of the unknown, Webinars seem like a safe place to start. As one association staffer recommended, “[T]ake small steps. It doesn’t have to happen all in one day. Start with Webinars, and then start with a little system where all it does, basically, is collect information. And then, maybe,
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Differentiate your Webinars—not only from your competition’s but from your own.
If your organization charges for some of its Webinars but not all, brand the two (or more) types of offerings to make the differences apparent to would-be purchasers so they can understand why they should be willing to pay. In e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2008), Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer distinguish inform programs that communicate information from perform programs that build specific skills. Their terminology—inform for free and perform for fee—may be useful, or use a naming convention of your invention for the different offerings, as does one of the associations we interviewed.
“[W]e structure our Webcasts as part of what we call the Research in Action series, so they tend to be based on research that’s being conducted by our research department or typically funded by our foundation,” said the interviewee. “Those are audio push only with kind of an online slide deck, and they're free to members.... And then the Webinars are more of an emerging issue or hot topic. They tend to have more in-depth content; they include job aids, resources that we collect for them, and there is a fee for those. You get more concentrated time with the presenter and more resources from us, so therefore there's a fee for that.”
22THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
have an e-commerce module. And then maybe say, ‘You know what? From now on, we can record this live event and then post it on our system as a live WebEx, whatever.’ One step at a time. Small steps.”
BEYOND A NARROW DEFINITION OF WEBINARIn the interviews for this report, we heard about associations using Webinar software for things other than “traditional Webinars” (for want of a better term). These include online study groups, micro-lectures, and committee meetings.
One association we interviewed uses virtual study groups to support candidates seeking certification: “[W]e have offered live online study groups through WebEx for the past year. These have been very successful. We do charge for them ($125) for an entire semester. A vendor said, “We’re starting to see what we call virtual study groups (VSGs) become popular as demand for a more meaningful and collaborative learning experience increases. VSGs take a traditional Webinar and add in social media, attendee profiles, blogs, and different media sources to create a series of educational events, not centered around the Webinar, but focused on the participants. So the idea of decentralized learning is driving a whole different thought process around professional development.”
While we think it’s safe to say the vast majority of Webinars run an hour or two, a representative from a state association of medical professionals told us, her organization has been using GoToWebinar “and the ability to record and store the recordings to do topic advice type things. We call them Patient and Practice Advisories (PPAs), where we get an expert on a topic to do just like a five-minute recording specific to that topic.” The association doesn’t charge for the PPAs but offers them on its Web site as a member perq. “It’s been a good thing for us and for our membership as an added benefit,” the interviewee said, and she characterized the product as “pretty popular.”
Another interviewer explained how her national organization is using its Webinar software for more informal, internal learning. “More of our
committees are using it to replace at least one face-to-face meeting a year.”
In general, we were struck by the fact that organizations who characterize themselves as successful with their e-learning tend to treat technologies, like Webinar platforms, as tools and explore a variety of applications rather than resigning themselves to a narrow, prescribed use for a particular piece of software.
“The easiest thing is a PowerPoint presentation.”
“If I...look at associations and how they define e-learning, they fall into two camps. We’re doing a lot of recorded Webinars—that's one e-learning strategy. Or we’re building out courses in Lectora, or we’re building out courses in Articulate. And there’s nothing in between there.”
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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.)“We don’t know yet” was an answer option only for those planning e-learning, not for those with currently offering e-learning.
Newer Products: What’s EmergingIn the survey for this report, we asked specifically about social media, mobile learning, and virtual conferences. We asked about social media in the 2008 online survey that provided the core data for Association E-learning 2009, but we did not ask specifically about mobile learning or virtual conferences then.
Based on the rumblings we heard two years ago, we added questions about these topics to the core survey this time around. While these offerings are still fringe if we look at actual adoption rates, the association world is clearly interested in social learning, m-learning, and virtual events.
SOCIAL LEARNINGAmong the range of social media tools† currently used in association e-learning initiatives, social networks (44.6 percent, combining public and private) lead the pack, followed by discussion forums (36.2 percent).
A few tools made marked leaps among associations doing e-learning since the last report. Microblogging jumped from a mere 2.4 percent to 20.1 percent (almost certainly Twitter’s doing), public social networking sites rose from 8.9 percent to 24.5 percent (we’re giving LinkedIn and Facebook credit for that), and Web video sites went from 7.3 percent to 17.5 percent (think YouTube).
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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
No social media tools
We don’t know yet.
Other 1.9%
53.8%
7.7%
0%
17.3%
0%
0%
7.7%
11.5%
17.3%
13.5%
1.9%
11.5%
32.7%
13.5%
4.8%
0%
34.9%
7.4%
17.5%
0.9%
0.9%
4.8%
24.5%
20.1%
24.0%
7.0%
20.1%
36.2%
15.7%
† 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.
Current e-learning (229 responses)Planned e-learning (52 responses)
24THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Given those increases, it’s not surprising that the slice of associations not using social media as part of e-learning dropped from 47.6 percent to 34.9 percent, and only 7.7 percent of associations planning e-learning in the next 12 months say they will not use any social media, though the majority (53.8 percent) simply aren’t yet sure whether social media will play a role.
The big four in the social media world—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube—are clearly being used by associations, both staff and members, but many organizations are taking the tack of building a presence on those platforms and then figuring out how to harness it for social learning. “We continue to move forward with LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. We do have some videos on YouTube that have received about 2,000 views. Our LinkedIn group continues to grow—close to 1,000 now—and we have about 600 to 700 followers on Twitter. I have spearheaded discussion as to how we can use these social networks to deliver just-in-time, short blasts of educational information—still working on that.” Another interviewee described a similar situation in her association, “[W]e’re encouraging people to tweet about their experiences in our in-person events, such as our annual convention. We encourage tweeting. We have a blog. We encourage blogs about us. But in terms of incorporating those as formal or official elements of our educational programming, we’re not doing that yet.”
Associations are using the big four to drive participation in and awareness of their own social learning initiatives. One interviewee said her association’s members are active on LinkedIn, so she’s been trying to “use LinkedIn as kind of a billboard on the road to direct” members to the association’s private networking site.
Another association that launched a private social networking site powered by its learning management system is struggling to drive adoption. Staff are planning to reposition the association’s use of social media as a member service, as they believe members will be more comfortable with that characterization: “[W]e’re going to see maybe if we
push the social piece as part of member service, member engagement, member networking as opposed to an educational piece, the education maybe will come because the networking piece seems to feel more familiar to our members than...peer-to-peer learning. [What members do on the social networking site is] almost all knowledge exchange. But, for whatever reason, they consider that networking, so they’re not thinking that it’s a function that you would do within your learning environment.”
Other organizations are taking a more passive, wait-and-see stance. When one interviewee was asked whether his association was doing social learning, he replied, “Planning to do so in the future, but we haven’t really put our arms around it yet.”
Still other associations are using learner feedback—actively requested or unsolicited—to determine their social learning path. As one interviewee put it, “Based on the feedback that we get from people, it’s going to determine a lot of what we build. We’ve recently come back from our midyear training, which was face-to-face training, and a lot of information that we collected from there, was that people are wanting more social learning...so that they can have a collaborative group online and either have a discussion or do more of, like, a Facebook type of thing. So we’re not there, yet.
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Free resource
For an overview of how the social Web is impacting the way that learning happens, download our free Learning 2.0 for Associations resource at http://www.tagoras.com/learning20.
25THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
“[G]enerations like Generation Y were born and grew up with recent technology, with social networks and computers and cell phones and PDAs and everything around them. It’s impossible to think that they won’t be able to use it for professional reasons as well.”
We’re just taking it one step at a time right now.”
A variety of barriers to social learning were mentioned in interviews. Several cited lack of interest or aptitude among their users: “[T]here’s a learning curve, I think, with them [members] wanting to share online, as opposed to networking in person, which is what they’re used to and comfortable with. Transferring that networking in-person to an online format has been a slow process. So that activity [in a member-only social networking site] is not as much as we would hope, but there is spontaneous activity from them. [It’s] not something we’re seeding. So that’s good. We just hope to continue to see that grow.”
There was an awareness among interviewees that this user-wariness about social learning is likely to dissipate. As one association representative put it, “I would say that the more younger generations get into positions of decision making or hired by these organizations, the more it’s inevitable that that’s going to happen.” Another said, “[G]enerations like Generation Y were born and grew up with recent technology, with social networks and computers and cell phones and PDAs and everything around them. It’s
impossible to think that they won’t be able to use it for professional reasons as well.”
Some associations are already actively using social media to appeal to younger members and would-be members.
One thing that has launched is a...social networking blog site, and that’s associated with our regular Web site, but it does have a different format, and its goal is really to appeal to younger professionals, I think you would be able to fairly say.... We found that younger people, what we call young professionals (which I guess would be up to about..20 to 35), that they’re just not joining organizations at the same rate that older people have, and we would like them to continue to. And so, it’s an effort to try and include young professionals and to use social media as one of the ways to show them what’s going on in the organization. And so that’s been very successful....
Another set of barriers to social learning falls into the “internal issues” category—bureaucracy, entrenched processes and products, turf battles, legal concerns, and the like. One interviewee predicted, “[T]o the extent that associations have big
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infrastructures of continuing education requirements, those will be slower to change. They will be slower to recognize these emerging forms [of social learning], and they will be slower to address them in any way.”
Several associations cited legal concerns for not getting into social learning. “[F]or the longest time I’ve been trying to convince our legal department that we should have some sort of forums open to professionals that have achieved a specific designation with us, so they can get in touch with each other,” lamented one interviewee. When asked what her association is doing with social and mobile learning, another interviewee said they were doing nothing because it’s “a copyright issue...we lose all control over our material.”
While legal advisors are a barrier for some associations, the board is for others: “To be honest, our executive board reviewed what we were trying to do with social media, and they really wanted us to back off so much effort in the Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn areas....”
Turf battles—or just confusion—over ownership of social media have stymied some associations. “We’re having to make a lot of decisions strategically about where are the right places for social networking to live within our association—is that a member service, is that a function of education—especially when you’re managing multiple systems and trying to tie them all together,” one interviewee shared.
Another barrier to social learning is an all-too-familiar constraint: time. While a shortage of time is in no way a unique challenge to social learning, it may be exacerbated by the fact that new tools and technologies must be mastered. One interviewee discussed how his association is leveraging the social aspect of social media to ease the time burden: “We’re working on developing group blogs, so that, at the group level for our divisions, they can have that series of content and reply and not have
ownership, necessarily, on one person.... [T]hey can share that responsibility, so it’s not so daunting to our expert member volunteers that don’t really want to have a blog all to themselves.”
While challenges abound, several interviewees attested to a firm commitment to social media and, ultimately, social learning. “That’s still a big goal of ours, to be ahead of the curve in terms of social media,” said one association representative, “and to incorporate that into the services we provide.”
The providers we interviewed were, on the whole, excited about the possibilities of social learning. One said, “The interactivity being added to these courses through communities and social media is significant. It raises the ante for what learners expect from courses. They aren’t happy any more with linear content; they want rich interaction; they want feedback and connections.”
Social media and learning are hot. “As far as the significant emerging trends area, I would have to say social media is sort of the new thing that we’re hearing, where they want that to be merged into their various offerings.” The vendor continued, “Obviously, there’s a number of the educational programs that are sort of ‘for members only’ so there’s that firewall, but integration of social media certainly could generate some attention and help on the recruitment of getting more members or other folks to register and participate on the online program.” Another vendor said, “The continued overlap of social media and learning (social learning) has been among the most important developments.... The ability to effectively combine activities in these areas will help engage a new generation of learners as well as introduce new learning styles and opportunities for more experienced participants.”
Providers seem truly excited about the potential social media has to transform the association learning landscape. “[I]f we can start to move the learning experience to something where we learn from everyone within the group,” said one
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“[T]o the extent that associations have big
infrastructures of continuing education requirements,
those will be slower to change. They will be slower
to recognize these emerging forms [of social learning], and they will be slower to
address them in any way.”
27THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
interviewee, “I think we can really start to change the one-to-many. And I think right now we’re seeing associations willing to say, ‘You know what? We’re going to look at everything. We’re not just looking at what we’ve done in the past.’ And that’s awesome.”
Overall, interviews with both associations and providers make it clear 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. Some associations 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 meaningfully in their products and services—and their business models.
MOBILE LEARNINGUnder 9 percent of associations currently delivering e-learning provide a mobile version of any of their content, and only 3.8 percent of associations planning e-learning say they will offer a mobile version of at least some of their content. The largest segment (58.5 percent) of associations planning e-learning say they’re undecided about offering a mobile version. This indecision may be the product of an appreciation of how powerful m-learning can be dampened by doubts about adoption and questions about how to develop such content.
Among the associations we interviewed, those that have ventured into m-learning are doing it by leveraging existing content. “Our recorded Webcasts are now available as a computer download,” said one interviewee, “and we will shortly be offering the recordings as downloadable to smartphones—an exciting change for us (trying to get out of the CD business).” The same association is also making its conferences mobile. “The software [Lectora] also allows us to put together smartphone apps (actually they are Web sites but appear to be apps on smartphones),” explained the interviewee. “We tried this with one of our meetings; it was very well received. We are now putting together another app for our corporate conference in October and hope to have many things on the app—hotel information, area
“The interactivity being added to these courses through communities and social media is significant. It raises the ante for what learners expect from courses. They aren’t happy any more with linear content; they want rich interaction; they want feedback and connections.”
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attractions, continuing education credit information, program agenda—and we’re still brainstorming.” While the content is not strictly educational, the organization is leveraging its Lectora e-learning software to make the apps for mobile devices, which increase the users’ awareness of the learning and continuing education available at the conference.
Another interviewee mentioned how the association’s move from conference calls to Webinar software allowed her to offer m-learning: “[W]e moved up to having an Adobe Connect site, and now we make little movies, and we try to make them in an m-learning format so that people can take it with them in whatever format they need with whatever technology works best for them.”
Even to many not yet delivering m-learning, the potential value is clear. “[S]ome of the stuff that we’re thinking up to do is quite cool—like, what if we had an iPhone app with safety snippets? As the guys are going out there to perform a weld or repair a meter, boom, they pop up a three-minute iPhone app that just reviews the safety issues with whatever task that is,” enthused Stephanie Menning of the Midwest ENERGY Association. “Imagine how helpful that would be. And really, that’s...why we’re doing training and education—to make sure
that we protect our workers, the public, and the infrastructure.” For another interviewee whose association works with healthcare professionals who may have pockets of downtime during work, m-learning represents a golden learning opportunity, “If we could make it [learning content] in a format that they could actually access or take with them, then that downtime that they would have during the middle of the day wouldn’t be unproductive time. It would be useful time. And then if they can get online somewhere, they can go ahead and take the quiz.”
Some associations know they’re going to get into m-learning; they just haven’t made the plunge yet. “As for the future, I’m pretty sure we’ll do something with mobile, but that will likely have to happen next year,” said one association representative. “I’ll have to get some budget, and I want to think long and hard about what we offer there.... I think we’ll do something, but I want to make sure it has a good focus and isn’t done for the sake of being cool.”
Other associations have looked into m-learning and determined it’s not a good fit for their membership—at least not yet. “In terms of mobile applications, we haven’t gone there,” explained one interviewee. “Not so much because we can’t, but I think, if we were to seriously consider that, we would have to do some market research, and I say that...because of our demographic. Our demographic is not the teens, the 20s, the 30s. It’s very deeply steeped in 40s and 50s.”
One vendor stated that he thinks the demand for m-learning is not being driven by the majority of
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Do you provide or plan to provide a mobile version (i.e., a version specially formatted to be easily viewed and navigated on a mobile phone) for some or all of your e-learning content?“We don’t know yet” was an answer option only for those planning e-learning, not for those with currently offering e-learning.
Current e-learning (257 responses)Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Yes
No
We
do
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37.7
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association members but by a vocal minority: “[L]ike anything, you’ve got 99 people out there, out of a hundred, that are just happy. You’ve got one person out of a hundred that says, ‘Hey, can’t I have this run on my iPad?’ That one person, because they’re emotionally invested, probably communicates more with the association than those other 99 people do together. So it’s not that a hundred people are saying, ‘I need mobile devices.’ It’s just the one person that says, ‘This would be really cool.’ He’s calling the association, and they’re
hearing from him.”
Another provider made the point that associations run a risk if they assume their members aren’t ready for m-learning.“[D]on’t shackle yourself to the past just because it’s a comfort zone. Because those comfort zones are really, really dangerous spaces to be in, especially when your membership is in flux.”
VIRTUAL CONFERENCESWe asked survey respondents to report on their use of or plans for virtual conferences based on the following definition:
A virtual conference is a Web-based event that replicates many aspects of a traditional place-based conference. It features multiple sessions (not just a single Webinar or Webcast) and may include keynote presentations, training and education workshops, discussion areas, social
networking opportunities, exhibit areas for vendors, and various other features. Activities in a virtual conference may take place in real time (synchronously), on demand (asynchronously), or in some combination of the two.
This definition encompasses both standalone conferences—ones that do not include any type of in-person contact—as well as hybrid conferences—ones that are offered in tandem with and as an extension of a place-based event. It also allows for a wide range of delivery technologies and methods—from Webinars to 3D environments to intensive, social media-driven interactions.
Only 11.7 of associations currently delivering e-learning offer a virtual conference, but another 23.7 percent plan to offer a virtual conference in the coming 12 months, which means a full third of associations offering e-learning in 2012 may offer a virtual conference. Among associations planning to offer e-learning in the next 12 months, a mere 3.8 percent have committed to offering a virtual conference, but the 26.4 percent who said they aren’t
Does your organization offer a virtual conference, or does it plan to offer one in the next 12 months?“No, but plan to in the next 6 months,” “No, but plan to in the next 12 months,” and “No, and do not plan to in the next 12 months” were answer options only for those currently delivering e-learning, and “No” and “We don’t know yet” were answer options only for those planning e-learning.
Current e-learning (257 responses)Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Yes
No
, but
pla
n to
in
the
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mo
nths
No
, but
pla
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in
the
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do
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he n
ext
12 m
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We
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kno
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26.4
%
69.8
%
3.8%
64.6
%
17.9
%
5.8%11
.7%
Early adopters will ask for m-learning.
“You’ve got one person out of a hundred that says, ‘Hey, can’t I have this run on my iPad?’”
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hy·brid e·vent noun \ˈhī-brəd i-ˈvent\
: a virtual event offered in tandem with and as an extension of a place-based event
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virtual conference front.
While adoption is nascent among associations, many believe virtual conferences will burgeon soon. “[W]e’re seeing a greater acceptance of [virtual events] in the corporate market than we are in the association market right now, but that’s very typical,” said one provider. “I think it’s just a matter of time, but I think there will be some more adoption on the virtual side.”
This growth is driven by a variety of factors, among them the emergence of lower-cost, easier-to-use platforms; the rapid, widespread adoption of social and gaming technologies; time and cost pressures created by the downturn in the global economy; and the increasingly common expectation, particularly among younger generations, that meaningful collaboration and learning can be done online.
Several providers we spoke with attributed the growing interest in virtual conferences to the decline of the place-based conference, which one interviewee placed on its deathbed: “I see the conference industry dying. I really do. I mean,
exhibits are struggling. Educational sessions are terrible. Why are we going? And the truth of the matter is that associations used to be the only way to gain access to the information. Well, that’s long gone.”
While technology will play a role in changing conferences, it’s not enough: “[D]eveloping the most unbelievably sophisticated systems isn’t necessarily the way you turn your members on. You turn your members on by having them walk away from an event and go, ‘That was great.’ And I don’t think any of them are walking away going, ‘Thank you, Moodle. Thank you, WebEx.’ They’re not. They don’t even know the difference between Flash or Silverlight or any of that.” Non-technology changes are needed to truly transform conferences as educational offerings.
I think the future of a successful conference is offering one-tenth the amount of content, but make sure that what you’re offering is absolutely blockbuster. And then spend most of your time analyzing, discussing, dissecting that blockbuster content.... Having knowledgeable people in the industry as a facilitator is key, and that’s why I
Many virtual conference platforms use graphics from a place-based conference to create the feel of a 3D conference environment.
This screen shot depicts a video introduction to the conference platform, placed against the backdrop of the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, where the 2011 Virtual Edge Summit was held.
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worrying about 200 presenters, but focusing on 12 to 14 and then having them spend the time to understand what are they going to be doing while they’re there, not just showing up. And...maybe you have to pay that speaker for pre-preparation of their event, but it’s so worth it.
The associations we interviewed run the gamut from not having thought about virtual conferences, to contemplating the leap, to having offered a virtual component of a conference, to having held standalone virtual conferences—and some are on their second, third, or higher virtual conference.
One association, having gotten its feet wet with some hybrid offerings, is looking to move into a standalone conference.
We have also done live streaming at several of our larger conferences—no charge to members. The first one was a little rocky, but we now use Mediasite, and they are working perfectly. Our members have truly taken to these. We are careful to choose only two to three plenary sessions so that we do not impact face-to-face registrations. We are now trying to come up with a model to charge for these events—looking at free for members but charging for nonmembers. We are also working on offering a virtual conference for our corporate sector that has been requesting this for the past year and have just now started on the logistics.
Cannibalization is a concern that several interviewees mentioned. “I think that the biggest hurdle for us right now, and everyone seems to be dealing with it, is an organizational concern over cannibalization,” said one. “And I don’t know if whether that happens, or whether it’s true, or a real concern, or a valid concern or not, varies by organization and member type, or if we all need to get over it and move on.”
Getting over it and not letting the specter of cannibalization squelch the possibility of virtual conferences is
likely the best approach, at least for most organizations. Few organizations are able to get more than 20 to 30 percent of their members to their annual conference, which means they’re not reaching 70 to 80 percent of their membership with the conference. With that in mind, it seems reasonable to view virtual conferences as an opportunity rather than a threat—but we understand that toying with something that’s established and known can cause anxiety.
Still, some associations clearly see the opportunity. One interviewee, who is planning to change one of her association’s several place-based conferences to a standalone virtual conference, said, “I think the type of speakers that we use are people from all over the place, and this way we won’t have to fly them anywhere.” Beyond lower speaker costs, she also sees the benefit for attendees.
You look at Montana, and you look at how big the state is, and then you look at how many people are there. They can’t even have an in-state conference without having to travel five and six hours. And when we get into Canada, my God—I mean, one province! I spoke in Ontario, and I went to the airport with a group of people who were from that province, but I was flying from Toronto to
See the Association Virtual Conferences report at http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/virtual-conferences for more on associations’ use of virtual conferences.
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time that it would take me to get to Atlanta, they still wouldn’t have gone nonstop to where they were going inside their own province.... So when you have to fly for eight hours, that means that you have to stop thinking about face-to-face meetings all the time. I’m not saying you don’t need them. You do need them, but you need other things, too. You need other options.
One association that has held multiple virtual conferences has seen great attendance and satisfaction. A representative described the format for the virtual conferences:
It’s time-bound. It’s usually active for about two weeks. It comprises a set of recorded PowerPoint lectures that are available to participants on demand, but around those recorded lectures we offer lots of interactional opportunities. We have scheduled, live chats with presenters. We have discussion threads related to each lecture, where participants and speakers can respond to case studies and ask questions and contribute answers and so forth. And we are finding that participant satisfaction with these events is enormous. It’s off the scale. [For one virtual conference] we attracted more than 800 registrants, which exceeded our plans.... On a five-point Likert scale, five high for overall satisfaction with the event, the average rating across more than 800 participants was something like 4.72. It was huge. And so we were sort of sitting around saying, ‘Wow, that was a really great event. What shall we do next?’ And someone had the brilliant idea, ‘Why don’t we do the whole thing again because the recorded lectures are the recorded lectures? They still exist.’ So we rolled out a second iteration of the same conference. In August, we scheduled a fresh set of chapter presenters so all the discussional and interactive elements were different, but the recorded lectures were the same. And we got more than 600 different people to take the conference when we offered it in August. So we really got excellent leverage out of that event.
Charging approximately $300 per registrant, the association realized over $400,000 gross revenue for the two conferences combined. “And compared to an in-person event of the same scale in terms of
number of participants, our direct costs were way less,” said the association representative. “Much, much less. I would venture that if we measured staff time for the two events, that we would also have less total staff time devoted to the online event than the in person. But that’s just a guess. We don’t have data.”
The association representative credits the format for the huge appeal to registrants:
What they tell us that they love about the format is, compared with an in-person conference, they can get all the content because they can access the recorded lectures anytime.... They don’t have to choose between competing, concurrent sessions. They can get them all. Also, in the online conference, they have, in fact, more access and better access to topic-focused conversations with the presenters than in person. And with the platform we use, participants are encouraged to upload their photos, upload professional bios, enter areas of professional interest and so forth. So it makes it easy for them to identify other participants who have specific interests that coincide with their own. So people just really took off and ran with it.
Another association went the route of securing sponsorships so it could offer its virtual conference for free, primarily as a member benefit—the first year, the conference was free for everyone, but the second year it was free to members only. “[W]e charged nonmembers a nominal fee, and that included, actually, a membership if they paid to access the platform,” explained the association representative. The fact that the organization found sponsorships that covered the costs made it easier for the association to commit to holding the virtual conference—“because we were able to cover our costs on this one and offer it free, we decided to move forward with it.”
The association has gotten “tons and tons of positive comments from participants. Part of that is because it’s a new platform for them. They love the fact that they don’t have to travel. The content that we hosted for the eight live sessions over the two days is just top-notch, cutting-edge. It’s definitely on the minds of members right now that they need information on. And then, of course, free CPE
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representative also said the exhibitors and sponsors were “really happy with the outcomes of the conference.” While she admitted that they would probably rather be at a face-to-face event, she said:
[T]hey do get all the contact information for everybody that attends the conference, including e-mail addresses and live addresses. And they do get the opportunity to connect with folks who didn’t visit their booth. They’ll send an e-mail after the fact saying, ‘Gosh, saw you were in our booth. We’d really like to connect with you and send some of our materials to you.’ I think the other thing is we have...36,000 members, and all of our marketing goes to 110,000 on our prospect list. So the fact that these companies are associated with this, it’s a value-add for them. And then, frankly, with only one annual meeting a year, it’s another touch point each year for them to get in front of our members. So I think those are all the things that they see value in.
Associations that have had a taste of success with virtual conferences are beginning to envision expanding that success by using the technology for ongoing education and training—moving beyond events and into perpetual virtual environments. Their virtual conference environment could evolve into a destination users would return to frequently to access knowledge and engage in ongoing activities. Virtual environments of the future may operate almost like an extension of an
organization’s physical offices—but with no space constraints and a dramatically increased ability to collect data about everyone who enters the environment. As one interviewee described her organization’s vision, “[T]he long range plan for five years would be to build a virtual facility, and in that facility we would have regular continuing education.”
Process, Personnel and Tools: How It Gets Done
PROCESS EXAMPLES
Almost three-quarters 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
“[T]he long range plan for five years would be to build a virtual facility, and in that
facility we would have regular continuing education.”
3.1%
74.0%
22.9%
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? (227 responses)Less than a quarter of organizations reported having a formal process.
Yes No Not sure
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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.
• 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.
ADEQUACY OF RESOURCESNot surprisingly, most associations—large and small—felt they had more to do than they had time or resources for. One consultant summarized the situation as, “[A]ssociation staffers are overworked and under-budgeted.” In her consulting work, she
hears, again and again, the refrain of a “triple constraint”: “Money, people, and time are all at a premium.”
While the triple constraint is seemingly always a factor, the most recent economic downturn has exacerbated the situation. “Our staff are fully busy doing their jobs, and we even downsized a little bit during the economic slowdown, so our education department had to figure out how to do the same work with fewer people,” said one interviewee. “And adding a whole Webinar series and adding e-learning courses and the LMS were new projects plopped on top of the existing work.”
One association we interviewed is comprised of one-and-a-half staff: a full-time executive director and a part-time assistant. Still, the association offers four conferences, four newsletters, and two journals each year. For some associations, the idea of even having staff is a dream: “We’re all unpaid volunteers in this association, so what we’re doing is all on our own time.”
Advances in technology have nonetheless made it possible for organizations to move ahead. Given an unfunded board mandate to start an e-learning program (”The bottom line is that we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have any resources to work with.”), one association staffer still managed to get a Webinar offering rolled out. Another organization leveraged a do-it-yourself course development tool to produce more engaging e-learning—but it wasn’t easy: “[T]he piece that our staff struggled with is how do you leverage that technology in low-budget, cost-effective ways but keep it really interactive? So knowing how to use Articulate...really getting a better sense of those features, so that you can do matching or case studies, really infusing that much more in our online learning.... But trying to do that...just with our limited resources, is a challenge.”
While finding the staff, the time, and the money can all be challenging, no one doubts they’re necessary. As one interviewee phrased it, “For me, with e-learning, you’ve got to put some money into it. You’ve got to put some time into it. Maybe both. But when you’re finished, for an association, you are going to have a program that is going to provide a
The triple constraint persists.
“Money, people, and time are all at a premium.”
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long time.”
A provider echoed the value-versus-investment point, saying he believed associations “struggle with value versus cost.” He argued that, today, costs for e-learning don’t have to be exorbitant or even prohibitive.
[Y]ou don’t have to go into spending a lot of money to do these things. For example, if a licensed platform or software is not the traditional approach that you can do, there are other open source alternatives. Or you can do things with social media that’s free—like on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn—that can give you first exposure before you go into anything else. A GoToMeeting license is under $200 per administrator, so those are relative low-impact entry points for any association. If they're a larger association, I think it’s mostly cultural, and I think it’s psychological, and I think that those are wins that you have to make internally by showing the value proposition.
One association interviewee mentioned the paradoxical boon that can come from too-few resources: “[S]ometimes it seems like the smaller associations do more innovation because it’s just one guy in the education department, or two people, and they’re getting their regular job done, and they’re using these [tools] to make their whole operation more efficient and to deliver more value.”
Even with the bulk of the must-do work getting done, a lack of resources can limit organizations’ ability to update or expand their offerings or dabble in new realms like social media—and a lack of resources can slow everything down.
One interviewee said, “I'm really bogging the process down because I don’t have the time to go out and get new speakers.” Another said, “It’s a real challenge to find the time to do all that I want to do.... That’s been the frustrating part for me, is, if you find this stuff interesting and compelling and even enjoyable, it’s just finding the hours to devote.”
Another spoke of her association’s surprise at the amount of time and money e-learning has required. “I think probably the...challenges are the time it takes to build it into SCORM and how time-consuming (and expensive, depending on who you have doing it) to make updates and changes,” she said. “It’s just not like doing something in Word.” Another interviewee agreed, “Sometimes it just takes longer than you think it will or than it should,” and a third described e-learning design and development as “very time-consuming.”
With resource challenges, organizations are looking for efficiencies. One association said development of an online course historically took them five to seven months. To save on the back and forth between subject matter experts, education staff, and developers, the association changed: “So what we’ve done...as part of looking at how we were going to maintain a quality standard as well as move forward with production, is move to a model where the subject matter expert is scripting the information and then yours truly records it.” The new process “cut at least a month to six weeks off of production time.”
Given the near universal sense that there aren’t enough resources, what are some of the big time sinks? For some, it is the newness of e-learning or technology. Multiple interviewees described a learning management system selection process that took longer than a year to complete—and one mentioned an 18-month-long slog.
For others, customer service and support have demanded a great deal of attention. This can range
Customer support can get out of control.
“[F]or a place-based conference, it would be as if you had to tell people how to maintain their automobiles and drive there, in addition to just worrying about what happened on site.”
37THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
from handholding to technical troubleshooting. “[A] big challenge is user support because it is a new format for almost everyone,” said one interviewee of her association’s virtual conference. “You’ve got to do lots of handholding.... [F]or a place-based conference, it would be as if you had to tell people how to maintain their automobiles and drive there, in addition to just worrying about what happened on site.” And having a good vendor relationship is no silver bullet. She continued, “[O]ur conference provider does an excellent job of basic user support, but there still is a lot that spills over onto staff.”
One association of healthcare professionals had to find additional resources to handle its customer service needs. “[O]ne of the most critical parts of our program is having customer support. And it has to be 24/7 for our demographic,” she said. “So...we pay extra now with our vendor for 24/7 customer support so that there’s an immediate response, even though there may not be an immediate resolution. They’ve also developed tracking and reporting tools that they provide to us on a monthly basis, and we’re actually working with them now to develop a technology support survey, which they’ll send out quarterly at my request.”
As with the association contracting for customer support, other associations reported new hires despite the dire economic times. One association staffer recently added a full-time assistant: “The other really phenomenal thing for me is they let me hire a full-time assistant who is very skilled.... [G]iven the amount of traffic we have and the idea that we’re going to be doing this more, but we want to make sure that we maintain the quality that we have and so forth, the organization let me do this.”
One association interviewee quantified the savings realized by moving to online system for claiming continuing education as part of her organization’s e-learning initiative: “[A] main objective was just to automate the process of awarding CME. And so, the efficiencies we gained there, we save about $40,000 a year on processing of paper for evaluation and claims forms. I don’t know the postage that we save. I’m sure I could figure it out, but it’s significant. And we had an FTE dedicated to just processing the paper, and we don’t have that anymore.” While that’s quite a success story, the
change did create new needs. “Now our resources have shifted, and we do have more time going into customer service in terms of helping people through the site, how do I load this into my portfolio, how do I claim CME for it,” she explained. “But it’s significantly less than what we were experiencing when we had a paper process.”
WHERE TO TURN FOR HELPSince the staff responsible for association e-learning may 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 organizations were cited regularly:
• ASAE: http://www.asaecenter.org• American Society of Training & Development
(ASTD): http://www.astd.org• eLearning Guild: http://
www.elearningguild.com• Tagoras: http://www.tagoras.com
In addition to organizations, some other sources were cited frequently:
• The Internet in general (e.g., Google searches and Google Alerts on relevant keywords)
• Social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs like Tom Kuhlmann’s Rapid E-Learning Blog)
• Vendors, either by directly talking with an account representative or by looking at white papers and resources the companies make available
• Peers, within the organization in larger associations and beyond the association’s walls for organizations of all sizes
Most of these sources were mentioned during the interviews conducted for the Association E-learning 2009 report—although this time our own company’s name cropped up along with other organizations, and social media (especially LinkedIn and, to a lesser extent, Twitter) was recognized as a way to connect with others doing similar work—and grappling with similar challenges.
Coupled with the handful of concrete sources for help, though, we heard recurring wistfulness. Organizations would like to be doing more with the sources. As one interviewee regretted, “I wish I had
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more time.... That’s one of my pain points, is I just don’t have time in my day to even really get there. And I know that they exist. I would look to blogs. I know of certain resources. I just, unfortunately, have not had time to really get to them.”
DEPARTMENTS RESPONSIBLE FOR E-LEARNINGNot surprisingly, 70.3 percent of associations currently engaged in e-learning house that function in their education or professional development department. Some 13.0 percent of associations responding do not have departments of divisions. None of the other options garnered over a 10 percent response.
For those planning to do e-learning in the next 12 months, 20.8 percent do not 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 $5 million or less.
PREVALENCE OF OUTSOURCING
The vast majority (66.8 percent) of organizations currently delivering e-learning use a mix of in-house staff and outside vendors to develop their e-learning—and that holds true regardless of staff size, budget size, age of e-learning program, and type of e-learning product (e.g., games and simulations).
In the data collected for Association E-learning 2009, we saw that organizations that charge for none of their e-learning offerings were more likely to develop those offerings completely in-house (29.4 percent
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Which department or division of your organization holds primary responsibility for e-learning? (239 responses) Education or professional development, not surprisingly, came in first.
7.1%0.4%
13.0%
2.1%1.7%
5.4%
70.3%Education or professional developmentMember servicesMarketingTechnologyNo departments or divisionsNot sureOther
Are your e-learning offerings developed entirely in-house, using a mixture of in-house staff and outside vendors, or completely using outside vendors? (238 responses)The vast majority of associations use a combination of internal and external resources.
11.8%
21.4%
66.8%Mix of in-house and consultants or vendorsEntirely in-houseCompletely outside vendors
39THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
versus 17.6 percent of those organizations who charge for all their e-learning offerings), and organizations with staffs larger than 30 were more likely to develop entirely in house (19.4 percent versus 7.5 percent doing it all out of house). In the data collected for Association Learning + Technology 2011, we see that first phenomenon completely reversed—organizations currently offering e-learning to both members and nonmembers and not charging for any of their e-learning offerings are less likely to develop those offerings completely in-house (15.0 percent versus 28.6 percent of those organizations who charge for all their e-learning offerings). We also see now no difference based on staff size—organizations with staffs larger than 30 and smaller than 30 are equally likely to develop entirely in-house (almost 22 percent in both cases). These two changes may be the result of the growth of affordable do-it-yourself tools.
This fluctuation was mirrored in the comments of one interviewee whose association has been debating and testing the pros and cons of each approach to development.
We’ve gone back and forth between in house and outsource. We were strictly outsourced, but our first LMS was a proprietary software with a proprietary authoring tool, and so we were locked into using the LMS provider for all of our content preparation. When we switched to [a new LMS], we started hiring some freelance people who worked in Articulate or did sort of “off the shelf” kind of authoring. And then we decided if we’re going to be doing some of these longer kind of development projects, it’s not really something we can outsource. And so we went ahead and hired a full-time instructional designer. I will tell you that has not worked out as well as I would have liked either because when I outsourced a project, I usually was outsourcing it to a firm or at least a freelancer who had other people who were helping them. And so there was a team of people working on my project. As opposed to now, I have an in-
person designer, and, yes, she can think of things at the more long-term curriculum planning level. The actual physical developing of stuff, she’s only one person, and so it takes forever to get things done. And so now we’re considering going back to outsourcing with a company who would provide us some of that strategic instructional design but has resources to do the more lower level building of PowerPoints, recording of audio, developing Engage presentations at a much less expensive
and faster rate. We can’t afford to move this slow. There’s got to be a balance between time and money, and this is too slow when you only have one person doing it.
Other interviews support the commonsense thinking that the main attractions of using outside vendors are they lighten the workload for the association staff, they have skills the staff may not have (“We know a lot about escrow. We don’t know a lot about online courses,” said
Jonelle Wheeler of the Escrow Association of Washington.), and they produce more quickly; the main downside is that they can be pricey.
Several interviewees referred to their association’s growing involvement in e-learning as the trigger for moving things in house. As one explained, “[W]e knew eventually we were going to work with 45 new courses to put online constantly, so we decided it was worth the expense to [train] in-house instructional designers, instead of going out and finding expensive ones.” He continued, “So we identified two individuals that we knew were going to be good, with some background in graphics.... We’re putting them through training [and] the appropriate conferences.”
For others, the decision to move to an outside vendor was driven by the product format. “[W]hen we did the conversion to Articulate, we did it in house. Our membership director—she does membership and certification—she actually put the
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“We know a lot about escrow. We don’t know a lot about
online courses.”
40THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
course together. She took the voice recordings and she did the editing to line everything up with the visuals, with the slides.” But the association is now working on a video-driven course, and so they enlisted help: “We have a production company that does the filming with us. They help us with the voice recordings. They hired a professional guy to do the voice recordings.... We wrote the script in house, and then they record it. They do the filming with us. Then we have a guy who just does the final editing, on the side, to put the course together.”
For organizations that do decide to use outside vendors, many asserted that the choice should take into account the technology and the association’s relationship with the provider. As one association representative put it, “I think that’s key...to have it be a true partnership.” When another was asked what advice she’d offer to someone just starting in e-learning, she said simply, “[C]hoose the right vendor.”
THE COST OF EXPERTISEWe 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.
One association we interviewed pays presenters $500 to lead a live Webinar and instructors $2,000 to facilitate weeks-long online courses. “They scoop that up,” he said.
Other associations rely on volunteers, either from their membership or beyond. Many associations have relationships with vendors and consultants who target their industry, and they use the promise of exposure to woo free subject matter experts. “[E]ven though they don’t get paid,” one interviewee explained, “they get the marketing list [of Webinar attendees], and they get the exposure, so it’s a win-win for everybody.”
While getting something for free is appealing and even necessary for some associations, others have realized volunteers can come with a hidden price tag. One association representative who has overseen development of a self-paced online course that’s on the verge of completion said it “has taken two to two-and-a-half years to get to this point, [with] a lot of trauma on my part, because I’m working with volunteers.” This despite the fact that she paid a content specialist approximately $6,000 to develop the baseline content for the course.
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.
For one interviewee, developing a self-paced online course has come with “a lot of trauma” because she’s working with volunteers.
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41CASE STUDY
A key component of the annual National Magnet Conference® held by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) is the poster sessions in which individuals present outcomes of important initiatives at their institutions. In planning for the 2010 Magnet Conference, ANCC wanted to expand the number of poster presentations it offered, but increasing the amount of physical space available was not an option. To achieve its objective, ANCC launched its first virtual poster sessions.
Leveraging its existing abstract submission process, ANCC recruited a total of 30 organizations to present posters in an online environment. Working with virtual events provider Digitell, ANCC created a three-dimensional online exhibit hall where visitors, making use of avatars (three-dimensional simulations of themselves), could move from booth to booth and view the poster presentations. In addition to viewing the posters in the virtual environment, participants could download them and listen to a brief audio presentation prepared by each presenter.
ANCC launched the virtual environment on July 1, 2010, a few months before the actual Magnet Conference was to be held in Phoenix, Arizona. While the virtual poster sessions were designed to be primarily asynchronous, allowing registrants to visit according to their own schedules, ANCC held two real-time sessions on July 27. During these periods, registrants were able to meet and interact with the presenters in each booth through text chat. While the live events attracted only limited participation, more than 500 individuals ultimately registered to access the virtual poster session.
“This first effort was a pilot,” explained Regina Coll, assistant director of ANCC’s Institute for Credentialing Innovation®. “Registration was free, and we viewed it as more of a marketing tool to help drive attendance at the Magnet Conference.” To measure the impact, ANCC included a “How did
Extending Value VirtuallyAmerican Nurses Credentialing Center
Using her avatar, Cynthia Sweeney, director of ANCC’s Institute for Credentialing Innovation, provides a tour of ANCC’s virtual exhibit hall.
“This first effort was a pilot. Registration was free, and we viewed it as more of a marketing tool to help drive attendance at the Magnet Conference.”
Regina Coll, assistant director of ANCC’s Institute for Credentialing Innovation
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42CASE STUDY
you hear about us?” question in its conference registration process. Conference attendees were also asked about the virtual poster session as part of the post-conference evaluation—10 percent of attendees reported having visited it.
A critical aspect of attracting visitors to the virtual environment was to involve key ANCC staff and volunteers. ANCC created a promotional video for the event that featured Cynthia Sweeney, director of ANCC’s Institute for Credentialing Innovation, in avatar form. Additionally, avatars were created for the director of the Magnet Recognition Program® and the chair of the Commission on Magnet Recognition, and the opening session of the conference featured a video of a virtual conversation between the two.
Coll deemed this initial foray into the virtual world a success, and ANCC intends to expand to 60 posters in 2011. Still, as with any new initiative, there were challenges. For example, while the Digitell system offers registrants the ability to communicate with each other using voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), Coll noted that many members of ANCC’s audience were not prepared for that technology. Text chat was a more workable option. Additionally, ANCC is wrestling with what the revenue model for the conference going forward should be. While this first event was free for participants, Coll emphasized that eventually the virtual poster session will need to show a return, even if only indirectly.
Finally, Coll noted that making the virtual experience “stickier” will be one of ANCC’s main goals going forward. Instead of the virtual platform serving as a destination for a one-time event, ANCC hopes to use it to provide ongoing value. “We’re considering a number of approaches to attract people back to the platform on a regular basis,” said Coll. “For example, holding a silent auction in the lobby area.” The goal is to attract registrants back on a monthly basis. “If you don’t do that,” Coll said, “it can just become an expense, something that sits there. And we don’t want that.”
Instead of the virtual platform serving as a destination for a one-time event, ANCC hopes to use it to provide ongoing value.
The Institute for Credentialing Innovation®, Magnet Recognition Program®, Magnet®, and National Magnet Conference® are trademarks of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (“ANCC”). The products and services of Tagoras, Inc. are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC.
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43CASE STUDY
AUTHORING TOOLSThe only tool with greater than 50 percent usage among respondents to the survey currently engaged in e-learning, Microsoft PowerPoint is king and queen of e-learning development tools. PowerPoint remains on top regardless of staff size, budget size, or age of e-learning program, although, among older e-learning programs, PowerPoint’s dominance is diminished, a bit.
The use of PowerPoint declines in neat stair steps as the e-learning program gets older (falling from 88.2 percent for associations with e-learning programs under a year old to, eventually, 61.4 percent for associations with e-learning programs that have been around for more than five years), and the use of Flash (the second most popular authoring tool) and the use LMS/LCMS tools (the third-ranking option) rise commensurately. Flash climbs from 11.8 percent for the youngest e-learning programs to 38.6 percent for the most mature, and while no associations with e-learning programs under a year old reported using LMS/LCMS tools for development, 20.5 percent of those with programs older than five years did.
If we look just at organizations that have an LMS or LCMS, then the category for tools provided in the LMS or LCMS jumps to 44.9 percent from 18.7 percent overall and beats out Flash (37.7 percent) for second place, but PowerPoint still reigns with 71.0 percent usage. Despite the noticeable increase, it is interesting that use of LMS and LCMS tools is not even higher among organizations with these systems. 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.
PowerPoint
Adobe Flash
LMS or LCMS tools
Adobe Dreamweaver
Articulate
Adobe Captivate
Camtasia
Lectora (Trivantis)
ReadyGo
Outstart Trainer
Toolbook (SumTotal)
Other
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
10.8%
0%
0%
0.5%
5.9%
13.3%
15.3%
15.3%
15.8%
18.7%
30.0%
75.4%
Which of the following authoring tools, if any, does your association use for creating e-learning? (203 responses)Microsoft PowerPoint was the indisputable front-runner.
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44CASE STUDY
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERSFor organizations currently doing e-learning, 39.7 percent use professional instructional designers (IDs)—almost 10 percent fewer than those that do not (49.1 percent). Those percentages remain consistent whether the organization offers continuing education credit and whether that CE applies toward a credential.
If you factor in the type of e-learning produced, the split shifts—not dramatically but noticeably. Organizations offering blended learning are the most likely to use professional IDs (58.8 percent), arguably due to the increased complexity and perhaps length of programs that combine e-learning with classroom-based learning.
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 28.6 percent use professionals; 54.9 percent of programs older than five years use professionals.
The use of professional IDs is also higher among organizations using an LMS—68.4 percent—compared to those without an LMS—26.3 percent.
From our interviews, we learned that many organizations continue to struggle with the “right” approach to instructional design. In-house or outsourced? University degree or stripes earned by experience?
One association weighed the amount of work it could foresee and determined bringing the instructional design in house make fiscal sense: “The first two courses that went online, we went to an outside vendor to put them online for us. But we knew eventually we were going to work with 45 new courses to put online constantly, so we decided it was worth the expense to [train] in-house the instructional designers, instead of going out and finding expensive ones.”
Another association applied similar logic to determine it too should bring its ID work in house—but it didn’t foresee all the consequences.
[W]e decided if we’re going to doing some of these longer kind of development projects, it’s not really something we can outsource. And so we went ahead and hired a full-time instructional designer. I will tell you that has not worked out as well as I
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Does your organization make use of professional instructional designers (whether on staff or by contract) when developing its e-learning offerings? (234 responses)
11.1%
49.1%
39.7%
Use professional IDsDon’t use professional IDsNot sure
45CASE STUDY
would have liked either because when I outsourced a project, I usually was outsourcing it to a firm or at least a freelancer who had other people who were helping them. And so there was a team of people working on my project. As opposed to now, I have an in person designer, and yes, she can think of things at the more long-term curriculum planning level. The actual physical developing of stuff, she's only one person, and so it takes forever to get things done.
One interviewee recounted how the instructional design questions became very personal, “[O]nce I got started in trying to develop [training] that people could do online, I became very frustrated. So I went back to school online...and got an IT degree. And then I immediately went from that into a master’s program...in instructional design and technology.”
While associations are coming down on different sides of the debate, the interviews showed us that associations are being thoughtful about how to put out good, useful content for their constituents—and that commitment to quality isn’t really any different for online learning than for place-based learning. As one interviewee discussing her association’s virtual conference commented, the same instructional design challenges confront associations offline and online:
[T]he challenges, from an instructional effectiveness point of view, are very similar to a traditional conference.... [L]ectures are acknowledged not to be the most effective way to create learning, but lectures, by and large, are what we’re stuck with. Lectures, by and large, are what take place at conferences. And lectures, by and large, are what take place in our online learning events at this point. So the challenge, from an instructional design standpoint, is to try to make the lectures better.
While the challenge is the same, she did see particular promise in e-learning: “[I]n the online platform...we are able to build much more discussion opportunities around those lectures, and right there I think it advances the effectiveness.”
“[L]ectures are acknowledged not to be the most effective way to create learning, but lectures, by and large, are what we’re stuck with.”
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46CASE STUDY
SummaryThis chapter focused on operational issues—we looked at the types of e-learning products associations are offering and how they’re getting them developed, 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 prove 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.
We also expect to see more virtual conferences, offered either as hybrids in conjunction with a place-based event or totally on their own, as more associations determine cannibalization is a myth.
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.
Savvy associations will embrace the role of curator and help learners hone in on the relevant in the tide of information inundating them on a daily basis.
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,
“I think there's been a move towards using more affordable tools for developing content, and a lot more associations are developing their own content in house.”
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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.
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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48THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Which of the following statements describes your financial goals for your current e-learning offerings? (265 responses)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 needs to contribute positive revenue to the bottom line.
As might be expected, our research shows 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
0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
16.2%
52.5%
31.3%
Must be self-sustaining but profitability not requiredMust be self-sustaining and profitableDoesn’t need to be self-sustaining
To meet their goal of financial sustainability, most organizations (55.5 percent) charge members for at least some of their e-learning offerings, and a significant number (31.5 percent) charge for all their offerings.
13.0%
55.5%
31.5%
Charge for all offeringsCharge for some offeringsDon’t charge for offerings
Does your association charge members for its e-learning offerings? (254 responses)Some 87 percent charge for at least some offerings.
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Does your organization have a formal, documented strategy for e-learning? (227 responses)Over 72 percent do not have a formal e-learning strategy.
The interviews show a sector divided on the question of whether e-learning—and education in general—should be a member benefit or a source of non-dues revenue.
At one end of the spectrum, the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) eschews the whole notion of non-dues revenue. “[O]ur executive director believes that there’s no such thing as non-dues revenue,” said Lisa Nguyen. “Everything we do becomes a feature of membership.” In line with this philosophy, APNA offers its members bonus points: “They can use these points to purchase content within the eLearning Center. They’ll get 25 bonus points every year when they join APNA or renew. These points (and e-learning in general) become a part of membership and therefore a way of driving new members to the association while retaining the ones we have. Over the past couple of years, our membership numbers have been increasing—so if we see success there, then what we’re doing here must be going right.”
One provider said he sees associations struggling with how to “get a return on the value their events provide their members. I think some are caught up in the ‘it’s on the Internet so it should be free’ kind of thinking.”
While the member-benefit argument doesn’t prevent one association we interviewed from charging members for its e-learning, it does impact pricing. The staffer put it, “I guess I could make a case for us to charge more, but we want to keep
it a member benefit.”
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. As one association representative explained, “The other thing is we didn’t have to generate revenue from [our virtual conference] because we covered our expense with the exhibit sponsor sales, so it was an opportunity for us to have our vendors get in front of our members again to give our members a free member benefit just to log in.”
While sponsorships are clearly a financial boon, some associations worry about the tradeoffs: “[W]e’re walking a really fine line where, being a scientific society, suddenly now people are starting to see sponsorships in our educational programming, [Webinars that] have fairly high visibility when you’ve got 600 people, and they’re starting to question the role and influence on content.”
StrategyThe interviews, as well as our experience in the field, indicate that most organizations approach e-learning strategy in an informal, back-of-the-napkin way. Asked if her association had documented an e-learning strategy, one interviewee responded, “No, no. Not at all. That’s too structured for us.... We didn’t have enough knowledge to even know how to plan that kind of stuff out. So it was just kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants....” Another interviewee said of her organization’s e-learning initiative, “[M]ost of our strategy was on how to implement it in a way that didn’t drive us crazy.”
The survey data paints the same picture. We asked survey participants who had implemented e-learning programs whether they have a formal, documented e-learning strategy. Only 22.0 percent said they do.
5.3%
72.7%
22.0%
Formal e-learning strategy No formal strategy Not sure
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Even associations with an e-learning strategy struggle with how to prevent it from being co-opted by the organization’s need to survive. “[O]ur learning strategy is somewhat now reactive based upon where the money is,” explained one interviewee, “which isn’t necessarily very strategic to meet the knowledge gaps for our members.”
But a number of the vendors we interviewed presented a different perspective, commenting on what they see as growing complexity, maturity, and, yes, strategic thinking in the association e-learning they deal with.
One of the main trends that we’ve seen is where they are integrating the solution over a broader solution set.... Before a few years ago, there would be a lot of organizations that would have one-off requirements. “We’re going to do a Webinar series.” “We need to capture some content.” “We have this thing we want to do.” It was all very...one-off. Now I’m noticing more organizations with a fully integrated approach that will use various technologies to have a complete e-learning or technology-based learning initiative for their members. It used to be that it seemed more opportunistic.... Now it’s more a long-term, strategic initiative that is becoming core to their educational program.
Another provider said:
It seems anecdotally...[e-learning] is rising in terms of the profile of it within organizations. We’re talking to executive-level decision makers, and they, in turn, are conferring with their boards, or they’re serving a board mandate to get on the e-learning platform or movement.... So we do see that most of these organizations are not just saying, “We’ve got a checkbox here that we need to get an LMS.” There seems to be an organizational initiative to bring value through education products, which we think is going back to the roots of the association.
The same provider characterized that forethought and planning—that strategy—as key for successful e-learning initiatives: “Education, for it to be successful, it can’t be a platform install. It has to be something that says, ‘Okay, how do we make this thing work, and how do we engage our constituents?’ This should be about member engagement. It shouldn’t be about slopping down courses on a tray of food.”
A third vendor stressed the criticality of strategy to success: “I’ve found that those groups who have a
developed a clear strategy for their learning programs, where they fit within the overarching mission and vision of the organization (instead of as merely an afterthought or exclusively as a method of generating non-dues revenue) often succeed in providing world-class programs and experiences (while generating revenue as well).”
That only a small slice of associations are deliberate and formal about e-learning strategy and that providers see an uptick in more comprehensive approaches to e-learning point to huge potential growth. 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 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.
“[M]ost of our strategy was on
how to implement it in a way that didn’t
drive us
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We profiled the National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA), a trade association representing 1,000 HVAC inspection, maintenance, and restoration contractors in 30 countries, in Association E-learning 2009, and the organization has been busy expanding and fine-tuning its e-learning offerings since then.
In 1995, 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—many company owners simply couldn’t afford to fly workers across the country or across countries for a day of training. In response, NADCA first converted the ASCS prep course to a full-day live Webinar (Schulte is the first to admit that’s a rough way to learn online). Now NADCA has rolled out the prep course as a self-paced program (developed by in-house staff in Articulate, with content support from volunteer subject matter experts). The organization no longer has to deal with the hassles of scheduling an instructor for every offering (or the costs of paying an instructor every time), and learners worldwide get on-demand convenience. “It’s an eight-hour class that we crunched down to about two hours and forty-five minutes for online learning,” Schulte explains, “and we’ve done really well with it.”
To be a member of NADCA, companies must employ at last one person who is certified as an ASCS. With the conversion of the ASCS certification prep course to a self-paced online offering, NADCA has cut its average conversion timeframe for new members from 140 days to 90 days. E-learning has helped NADCA address a business problem—and it’s simplified the sales process. “Instead of trying to have three different sales—you sell membership, then training, then certification—we bundled it all up, and we said for $1,600 you get the membership, you get the training, and you get the exam.”
The shortened conversion time and simplified sales process benefit not just NADCA but the new members
E-learning Solves Business ProblemsNational Air Duct Cleaners Association
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NADCA’s ventilation maintenance technician (VMT) online program features video of technicians on the job with accompanying narration.
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because, as Schulte notes, “a lot of companies join NADCA so they can qualify for a bid that requires either NADCA membership or NADCA certification.”
NADCA has just finished working with a production company to finish its next major e-learning offering: the ventilation maintenance technician (VMT) program, planned to be five thirty-minute modules featuring video of technicians on the job with accompanying narration. The modules feature reinforcing questions throughout, which automatically redirect users back to the content if answered incorrectly. The modules end with a quiz, and users have to score at least 70 percent to complete each module. Users automatically receive a PDF certificate on successful completion of the complete VMT course.
Schulte noted that NADCA has also leveraged its e-learning and certification investments to better position the organization to develop the qualified workforce the industry desperately needs. “NADCA members take pride in the service they provide—improving the quality of the air people breathe in their homes and workplaces. But this can be grueling work, and, as a result, turnover is a big challenge.” In an effort to improve recruitment and retention of industry personnel, NADCA established a more comprehensive career path for the industry. “We needed to go beyond offering jobs,” explained Schulte. “We needed to get industry personnel to see the industry as a career opportunity, supported by lifelong learning.” Each program is developed for a specific industry segment:
• The ventilation maintenance technician certificate course is targeted at entry-level personnel.• The air systems cleaning specialist certification program is targeted at supervisory-level
personnel.• The certified ventilation inspector program is a specialty certification.• NADCA’s new certified ventilation inspector credential (CVC) is geared to industry professionals
who have at least five years’ experience.
The CVC program was released in March 2011 and, with it, the need for new online training —for Schulte, that’s the more important part. “I believe most people want to be good at what they do. A good, comprehensive training program is invaluable in preparing industry professionals to do the job right and give them the confidence they need to be successful.”
Despite a respectable e-learning offering and impressive hands-on experience, Schulte wishes NADCA were further along. “Even though cost-effective training, like e-learning, has been part of our strategic plan for several years, we only have the two courses that are online, and we’ve been using it. It’s not a lot of training considering what we could be offering.”
The reason he worries is competition. “The pace of development for our association is a lot slower than I’d like to see it. Like our for-profit counterparts, associations must be able to compete—for training dollars, membership, meetings—and we need to continue to engage members.”
“Instead of trying to have three different sales—you sell membership, then
training, then certification—we bundled it all up, and we said for $1,600 you get
the membership, you get the training, and you get the exam.
John Schulte, executive director
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“[W]e know that we’re reaching members [with our e-learning] that we would not be reaching otherwise.”
Return on InvestmentWhether through sales, sponsorships, or both, the timelines—and the corresponding amount of pressure—that organizations target for achieving a positive return on investment (ROI) vary significantly. As a general rule, organizations tend to expect Webinars to operate profitably or on a break-even basis either from day one or within less than a year. Organizations that invest in more sophisticated on-demand products, may anticipated a two- to three-year horizon or longer before their programs would achieve positive net revenues.
“Aside from the membership dues, we’re becoming the second largest revenue generator for the organization,” said a representative from an association that was profitable out of the e-learning gate. “So as far as non-dues goes, we’re right up there with the group that sells corporate sponsorships for conferences.” Another association grossed over $400,000 for two virtual conferences with much lower direct costs than for its traditional conferences. “[C]ompared to an in-person event of the same scale in terms of number of participants, our direct costs were way less,” said the association representative.
Another organization similarly recognizes a greater ROI with online learning compared to on-the-ground learning: “{D]efinitely compared to the face-to-face, we’re doing better with the online programs. One of the things about our programs (and I know it varies in organizations) is we’re a cost center and not a profit center....”
One interviewee quantified the ROI for her association: “We’ve had about 3,500 participants go through a Webinar since we started it a little over two years ago, and in the first year it generated about $100,000 gross revenue.”
Another interviewee confessed her e-learning program isn’t profitable—but that’s acceptable. “Our objective here, at the association, is not to make a profit on our education, when you add in overhead, but just to...come close to break even. And when you add in all the overhead...we are not quite at a break-even position.” She continued, “But that’s okay. That sits within the objectives and the directives I’ve been given.”
And those objectives and directives can branch out beyond pure finances. For one interviewee, starting with Webinars and
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generating some revenue, helped make a case for doing more e-learning. “I think the Webinar program showed that this kind of thing can work,” he said, “and it can generate enough interest among the members to generate revenue and pay for itself and have some other benefits.” Another interviewee concurred: “[T]he Webinars have enabled us to talk about e-learning and using technology in different ways.”
One provider we interviewed described how the costs involved in e-learning development can change the return-on-investment question:
[F]or somebody who has been providing accredited training or information to their members over the last ten years, building courses has been a profit center. Not providing courses. Building courses. Because the subject matter expert provides them the content typically free of charge; they can get the little gold star on their profile.... They come and present the content, and typically don’t charge [the associations] anything. And then [the associations] charge money for people to sit there and take the content, and then if they do it right, they get a recorded version, which they get to sell for a year or maybe even longer. The SME, the presenter, doesn’t get any of that money. So, actually the process of building courses has been a profit center. Now you take that context, and you
go, “Okay, now to deliver a one-hour course, it’s going to cost you $7,000.” And they’re like, “Well, okay.” And right there, everything falls apart. And that’s why I think so many people are looking at recorded Webinars...because they at least keep their costs down.
Because education is at the core of why so many associations exist, another vendor has been surprised at how often organizations don’t invest more in it: “[W]hat’s really sad is if you boil it down to their mission statement, their mission statement is to educate their members. And yet, it’s the education component that has the least amount of funding.”
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.
Over the life of their e-learning program, the majority of associations surveyed reported growth across the board, in terms of resources (people and money), revenue, enrollments, and the number of offerings. All survey respondents were asked about their organization’s overall education initiatives
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During the time your organization has been doing e-learning, what has happened to your organization’s e- learning initiatives as a percentage of your organization’s overall education initiatives? (227 responses)
Resources Revenue Enrollments Offerings
72.0%61.1%
52.2%58.0%
8.3%11.9%
13.3%9.3%
17.4%23.5%24.8%30.1%
2.3%3.5%9.7%2.7%
Not applicable Remained the sameShrunk Grown
Resources Revenue Enrollments Offerings
49.1%38.9%35.6%40.2%
16.6%31.7%33.2%26.0%
28.0%24.2%24.2%29.1%
6.2%5.1%6.8%4.7%
Not applicable Remained the sameShrunk Grown
Over the past three years, what has happened to all your organization’s overall education initiatives (including but not only e-learning initiatives)? (297 responses)
55CASE STUDY
(including but not limited to e-learning), and while the largest group there also reported growth across the board, the growth was less pronounced than among the organizations currently delivering e-learning. In none of the categories did the majority report an increase, although the number of offerings came close with 49.1 percent.
Growth aside, the economy has clearly had a negative impact on many associations and their members. Associations have shed job—”we even downsized a little bit during the economic slowdown,” said one interviewee—as have many of the industries they serve. Matt Rumbaugh of the National Glass Association explained the impact of the downturn on his organization: “Obviously, economic events of the last few years have a big difference for us. Our industry, and the entire construction-related segment of the economy, has felt the effects really sharply. People just aren’t building buildings like they were a few years ago. For our purposes, if people aren’t building buildings, then there’s no place to install glass. If there’s no business, then they don’t hire. If they don’t hire, then they don’t train. As companies in the industry have downsized, we lose accounts.” But Rumbaugh knows to look for opportunities when there are threats. “On the other hand, some businesses have taken the opportunity to cross-train and retrain their employees, using the downturn to get ready for the eventual turnaround or invest in new markets,” he continued. “To the extent we can help them, we’ve done so eagerly.”
Another interviewee explained how her organization embraced e-learning as a direct response to the poor economy: “We initiated [our Webinars] almost two years ago, just wanting to reach out to our [members] more. Especially with the economy, they find it harder to travel, to go to the face-to-face meetings, get a hotel room, and all the expense around it. This is one way we felt we could provide for them when they weren’t making quite as much money, but they could still get their continuing education hours.”
While there was clear concern about the impact of the economy among our interviewees, many 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.
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. But, as is often the case, a complementary phenomenon may occur; associations who have traditionally sold e-learning as solitary products may move to bundling products in an effort to entice learners to spend more overall if less per product. One vendor we interviewed spoke of this phenomenon and how it’s influenced development of his company’s LMS.
There’s been...the idea to offer more options to members and people coming to their sites, particularly around how they bundle offerings together. A lot more flexibility we’re seeing there, and it’s one of the things where our product is going as regards some of the new e-commerce enhancements that we’ve added in, all around being able to bundle a mix of Webinars, podcasts,
For some associations, e-learning is an answer to the economy.
“We initiated [our Webinars] almost two years ago, just wanting to reach out to our [members] more. Especially with the economy, they find it harder to travel, to go to the face-to-face meetings....”
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the past, it] would literally be ten SCORM courses or whatever it might be, and you’d buy each one individually that you might be interested in.... Now it’s more a case of “Let’s bundle lots of different things together, target different segments of the market...or the types of members....” Also [we see] a lot of offering discounts, and that kind of thing, maybe trying to move with the overall economy being where it is the last few years, just trying to keep sales up.
Finally, along with the possible impact on enrollment 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. 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. 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. The vast majority (74.0 percent) of associations delivering e-learning 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 it, 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, 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 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. “[Our Webinars] ebb and flow based on new legislation and regulations,” said one association interviewee;
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.
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? (227 responses)Some 74 percent do not.
3.1%
74.0%
22.9%
Yes No Not sure
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association’s industry they hold a Webinar as a way to get timely, pertinent information out to members.
One trade association we spoke with is overhauling its Webinar offering in 2011, and one of the most important aspects of the revamp is finding the hot topics that will attract attendees: “It’s just a matter of finding the sessions that are going to draw their attention.... [W]e’re a trade association, not a professional association, so it’s not personal development, as much. So finding topics that are going to draw their interest is sometimes a challenge unless they’re government-related, legislation-related, or regulations. And then we’ll get a bigger draw.”
Aside from the topic being timely and relevant to learners, another key demand driver indicated by a number of interviewees is how engaging the presenter or presentation is. One of the providers we interviewed said, “[H]aving knowledgeable people in the industry as a facilitator is key.” Another characterized the prima facie importance having “the most interesting topics or thought leaders” as “go[ing] back to Education or Meetings 101.”
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 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 their educational offerings, and e-learning shares in this demand.
CONTINUING EDUCATION AND CERTIFICATIONWhether 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 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 its audience is small: “[W]e don’t have credentials or CEs or anything like that. We’ve looked into it, and there’s just not a big enough market. It just doesn’t work for us. We’re a second-niche type group.” Another association defers to partner organizations to provide credit because its membership is diverse, and “there’s no one body of knowledge where one has to be even certified.” The interviewee continued, “[S]ome affiliate organizations...will award credit within their system for people attending our Webinars. And what we do is we can document that the person actually attended, and we can say how many minutes they attended.... The individual submits it to his organization..and we leave it up to them, then, to decide whether or not they will award the credits for it. And many of them do.”
A representative from an association that does offer credit for its Webinars, which are sold by site
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licenses (multiple learners view the Webinar from one computer), noted internal challenges in collecting and keeping track of the necessary information for providing credit.
We have our own in-house credentialing program from which they [Webinar attendees] get credit, and also we have some public accountants in our fold, so we can give CPE credits.... I would say one of our challenges is certainly record keeping.... [W]e certainly have the list of who registered, but we’d like to know how many touches we have, so we try to capture everybody that watches the program.... [W]e have a pretty passive delivery, I’ll agree, but we do post the printout of the PowerPoint and any supplemental documents, and we post that on our Web site. So the day before the program, we send that link out to
everybody so they can go and print out their handout and have it in front of them during the program. The last page of that handout is an attendance form, so what we try to do is have everybody that watches to fill out that attendance form and return it back to us either by fax or by e-mail. So it’s a lot of paper trail, but that at least gives us a chance of while they’re in the program, they’ll fill that out, and somebody will gather it and send it back to us. And also we include on that an affidavit which states, “I vouch that I watched this complete program,” and they sign their name, so our accountancy board has accepted that as proof of their participation.
The representative describes the process as “definitely cumbersome,” but it’s workable. One of the vendors we interviewed noted that not all
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 degree6.7%
56.1%
76.3%
19.4%
9.7%
18.8%
59.1%
5.1%
56.2%
61.0%
17.7%
13.9%
14.7%
58.2%
Does your organization currently offer or plan to offer any of the following credit types for e-learning?
Current e-learning (252 responses)Planned e-learning (49 responses)
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59CASE STUDY
accreditors are as accepting as the accountancy board just described. “Some accrediting bodies still haven’t developed reasonable guidelines for virtual events and recordings,” he complained.
One association we talked with has big plans for its e-learning and sees how college-level credit could dramatically enlarge the audience for its education:
[W]e need bachelor’s degree programs at universities. And so the process that we’re going through now is trying to get all the curriculums in place, to go through the American Council on Education to get them to evaluate the program to make a recommendation for having the college credits. So I’ve been really, really particular about who authors courses. So we have PhDs and MDs and techs who have master’s degrees and things like that to be our authors in order to hopefully get that recognition and then not only market this as continuing education, but market it to universities as a package that is current and up-to-date. We’ll make sure that it represents current states in the field, and, in exchange for that, just keeping it all current, we’ll give you just the really inexpensive package deal. Put all your students in these courses. You add to that, and make your degree program. And I think we’ll have a lot of growth in the field.... A lot of people think that they want to put together a school.... I talk to people who say, “I always wanted to start a school, but just the idea of putting together all the curriculum is so overwhelming that I never did it.” But if you could hand them a package—“here’s a curriculum that you can use, and then you can add to that”—I think that will be real enticing to people who have a goal to have a training program of some sort.
That association isn’t just developing e-learning—it’s acting as a change agent in the field.
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.
“Some accrediting bodies still haven’t developed reasonable guidelines for virtual events and recordings.”
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The Society for Technical Communication (STC)—a 6,400-member professional society whose members work in every industry, producing technical writing, online help, multimedia, and other forms of technical communication—currently offers twice-weekly live Web seminars and six- to eight-week online certificate courses. The organization has been doing e-learning since the early days, “well before my time, back to when it was just a telephone and a PDF,” says Lloyd Tucker, deputy executive director of STC.
Although it’s nothing new to STC, e-learning has demonstrated its value undeniably in recent years. In 2009, like so many other associations, STC saw a decline in its reserves and in membership as a result of the general economic downturn. STC pursued a variety of tactics to address the drop, including
raising membership dues and asking chapters to return funds, but STC also credits revenue from its online learning for its ability to overcome the million dollar shortfall it faced. “Last year, we had a direct income (before you subtract G&A and personnel and all that kind of stuff) of $200,000 from online offerings, whether live Web seminars or our online certificate courses. And basically that additional $200,000 was enough for us to squeak by, even though membership tanked,” Tucker explains.
Leveraging its annual place-based conference efforts, STC recruits presenters for its live Webinars from the conference proposals it refuses each year. The organization receives some 240 proposals but only uses 60 for its conference. STC approaches the top prospective presenters
from the pool that remains and offers them $500 to conduct a live Webinar. STC also uses the top content from its annual conference to round out its Webinar offerings. “After the conference, we go back and look at the people who got the highest evaluations,” reports Tucker, “and then we ask them to do a live Web seminar for $500.” Around 30 individuals attend each Webinar—attendance Tucker describes as “pretty good”—and the pricing ranges from $79 for members ($29 for student members) to $149 for what it terms “not yet members.”
For its online certificate courses (delivered via Web conferencing software and the open source learning management system Moodle), STC pays instructors $2,000, but the demand warrants the
E-learning to the RescueSociety for Technical Communication
A fearless mindset and a willingness to try new things have factored into the Society for Technical Communication’s e-learning success.
“I'm kind of fearless in this. I’m willing to jump out there not exactly knowing all the answers or how it’s going to work exactly, but I have a pretty good idea it’s going to work....”
Lloyd Tucker, deputy executive director
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61CASE STUDY
investment. Tucker cites an 8-week course that sold out at 32 enrollments—“I had to turn 11 people away, at $600 a piece.” So STC knows its membership is willing to spend money to learn. “Our people, even though they sometimes complain about the cost, are willing to purchase education,” notes Tucker.
STC is also leveraging technology to appeal to the many segments of its audience and target different groups. “The diversity of our membership—because technical communication is such a diverse thing; it’s not just writing anymore—gives us the opportunity to offer lots of different topics.” In addition, over the past year, STC has also begun to offer certificate courses at times convenient for its international members. This presents a whole new set of challenges—only one of which is the time difference between the U.S. east coast and China.
STC continues to explore new options and offerings. Plans include offering a short virtual conference this fall and providing archived sessions from past annual conferences on its Web site as a member benefit. “What we intend to do,” explains Tucker, “is take the archived sessions from our conferences—and there will be well over a hundred—and begin to give them to members for free as part of the value of membership. They can sign onto the Web site, log in as a member, and go to these archived conference sessions as many times as they want. And then we’re going to say, ‘See there? Look at what you’re getting as part of your membership dues.’” The archive of free seminars will grow each year. STC is being shrewd about its existing assets and repurposing content. “There’s all kinds of ways to repackage material and resell it again.”
A fearless mindset and a willingness to try new things have factored into STC’s success. “I'm kind of fearless in this. I’m willing to jump out there not exactly knowing all the answers or how it’s going to work exactly, but I have a pretty good idea it’s going to work, and we just go forth boldly and make it work sometimes. But,” Tucker warns, “it’s not for the fainthearted.” At the same time, he doesn’t believe there’s any excuse for not trying it today. While it might not have been easy a decade ago, technology in recent years has become “a piece of cake, really, and this is from a guy who is not a technology whiz.” Wondering whether it’s bureaucracy or a board hamstringing other associations, Tucker says he often feels incredulous at the paralysis that can plague organizations, “What are you waiting for? Get out there. This is not difficult, you guys.”
Lloyd TuckerDeputy executive director of
the Society for Technical Communication
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Average per content hour (members only)
Median per content hour (members only)
Average per content hour (members and non)
Median per content hour (members and non)
$49.50$46.82
$40.00$35.83
$40.00
$57.82
$50.00
$64.50
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. We asked the questions of four groups: organizations currently delivering e-learning to members only, organizations currently delivering e-learning members and nonmembers, organizations planning member-only e-learning programs, and organizations planning e-learning programs for members and nonmembers.
While this approach has limitations, particularly for 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.
The average price per content hour for organizations currently offering e-learning to members only is $64.50 and $57.82 for organizations offering e-learning to both members and
nonmembers. Organizations planning e-learning are anticipating lower pricing: $35.83 for member-only e-learning and $46.82 for e-learning made available to all.
For most associations, time and credit is equivalent in their pricing—that is, one content hour costs the same as one credit unit.
PRICING IN TRADE ASSOCIATIONS VERSUS PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
Compared to their trade association counterparts, professional societies currently offering e-learning to members and nonmembers tend to charge more on average ($64.87 per content hour versus $51.85).
We’re not surprised to see higher pricing among professional societies, where the learners served are likely to accept ongoing education as an important if not required aspect of their personal professional growth. It’s probably safe to say that salaries in general are higher in professions than in trades, and so a higher price point for relevant education can be better tolerated.
PRICING AND FORMATS
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. That said, the interviews for this report reminded us that
Current e-learningPlanned e-learning
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. On average, how much (in U.S. dollars) does or will your organization charge members per hour of content for an e-learning offering?
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Trade associations
Professional societies
$40.00
$40.00
$64.87
$51.85
Average per content hourMedian per content hour
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Not applicable (we do not offer credit) Other
Current e-learning(members only)
Current e-learning (members and non)
Planned e-learning(members only)
Planned e-learning(members and non)
11.8%16.8%20.0%
14.7%
66.7%
24.7%30.0%
73.5%
33.3%
58.4%
50.0%
Average $33.75Median $30.00{{{Average $60.00
Median $40.00Average $83.44Median $37.50
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 or will your organization charge members per credit unit for e-learning?Most organizations charge the same price per credit unit as per content hour.
Some 99 professional societies and 54 trade associations currently offering e-learning to both members and nonmembers provided per-content-hour pricing information.Professional societies charge more per content hour than trade associations.
64THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
Audio or video podcasts(73 responses)
Real-time Webinars(164 responses)
Recorded Webinars(143 responses)
CD-ROMs and DVDs(61 responses)
Facilitated online courses(49 responses)
Member-only discussion boards(91 responses)
Blended learning(31 responses)
Self-paced courses(102 responses)
“Off the shelf” courses(34 responses)
Offline with online assessments(40 responses)
Educational simulations or games(9 responses)
Electronic study guides(23 responses)
$42.80
$45.56
$49.26
$50.22
$54.16
$54.72
$54.84
$57.84
$62.95
$63.54
$63.76
$69.32
Pricing levels when a particular type of content is included in the associations product mix.When audio or video podcasts, real-time or recorded Webinars, CDs and DVDs, or facilitated courses are present, pricing levels per content hour are above the sector average—although just barely in the case of facilitated courses.
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$57.82(average per content
hour regardless of product type)
averages can be made up of disparate data points, as several interviewees shared what we consider low pricing for Webinars. “For our mini [Webcast]—that’s our hour-and-a-half version—a member pays $65, and a nonmember pays $95,” said one interviewee. “For the half-day—that’s the three-hour program—a member pays $100, and a nonmember pays $150. And they are, in essence, site licenses, so one person at the at the school district would register, and then we encourage them to gather as many of their other staff from that district. So we encourage that as a way of broadening the impact.” Given the association’s membership comes from cash-strapped schools, this pricing may be all this market can bear.
Another interviewee reported her trade association charges members $40 and nonmembers $75 for an hour-long Webinar, and that pricing is for a site license, so more than one learner can gather around the screen. The interviewee noted that her
competitors charge more—for example, $195 for 90- or 120-minute Webinars, which is more in line with what our experience indicates as the going rate. “I guess I could make a case for us to charge more,” the interviewee commented, “but we want to keep it a member benefit.”
The idea of e-learning as member benefit has changed the way some organizations market their offerings. The National Air Duct Cleaners Association is packaging e-learning and the ensuing certification in with membership. So rather than three separate decision making cycles, NADCA can make one sale, John Schulte explained. “[W]e bundled it all up, and we said for $1,600 you get the membership, you get the training, and you get the exam.” Other associations are similarly providing some amount of e-learning as part of membership. One interviewee explained that, at his association, “membership comes with six credits, so when you buy a membership, you get six credits to use
65THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
toward any of [our e-learning] products. And Webinars are typically one credit. So members have six free credits, or six free Webinars if that’s how they choose to use their credits.... [A]nybody who wants to attend a Webinar after their six credits are up would pay $129, and the nonmember price is $179.”
Some associations bundle e-learning in the more common way—with other e-learning products—like this association that sells Webinars and DVDs.
Our Webinars are typically 90 minutes, and we charge members $150. And then if they get the DVD, we charge $200. But if they don’t do the Webinar, and they just want the DVD, then it’s $150. So you’re getting it for $50 more, where somebody else that doesn’t do the Webinar has to pay for the whole $150. But if you’re not a member, I think it's $200 for the Webinar and $250 if you do the DVD. And then you can have as many people in the site. That’s just per site.
In distinguishing between Webinars and other formats, it is important to realize that Webinars are often purchased on a per-site basis, as described above, 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. Previous conversations we’ve had with vendors in the Webinar market suggest that an 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.
A provider well versed in pricing for on-demand product offerings felt that the $56.79 average pricing for a content hour suggested by the data collected for Association E-learning 2009 sounded “about right.“ The $57.82 number from the data for this report is up slightly but well within the same range, and it also jibes with our experience in working with organizations that offer on-demand e-learning products.
In Association E-learning 2009, we commented that the market seems to assign a pricing premium to content that is facilitated, whether in real time or asynchronously, based on looking at pricing levels when a particular type of content was included in the association’s product mix. In Association E-learning 2009, we saw that when real-time Webcasts and Webinars, facilitated courses, and member-only discussion boards were present, pricing levels per content hour were above the sector average. For this report, we see different categories. When audio or video podcasts, real-time or recorded Webinars, CDs and DVDs, or facilitated courses are present, pricing levels per content hour are above the sector average—although just by two cents in the case of facilitated courses.
Of the twelve types of content we looked at, the pricing for six changed by no more than $5, up or down. Of the four categories where there was an increase of more than $5, two changed remarkably: podcasts and recorded Webinars. In Association E-learning 2009, associations with product mixes containing podcasts saw a lower-than-average price per hour of $32.98. In this report, that price more than doubled to $69.32, making it the highest-priced category. One explanation is podcasts may only be a few minutes long—so, while the pricing per podcast may not be high, if you multiple the cost of a 15-minute podcast by four to get pricing for an hour, it may look expensive. Of course, this logic would arguably have applied to the 2009 report data as well, so this is a good reminder that the pricing levels by category are not directly tied to a specific 0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
“Our courses run for 20 hours of CEU credits from $199 to $299. And it’s asynchronous. They have a year to complete when they sign on. Nothing has to be done at a particular time, so they can work their schedule around it.... [A]nd we’ve sold about 7,000 courses.”
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product offering but rather to whether a particular product is present in an association’s mix of offerings.
In Association E-learning 2009, associations with recorded Webinars in their mix saw a lower-than-average price per hour of $34.43. In this report, that price jumped to $63.54, putting pricing when recorded Webinars are in the mix on par with when live Webinars are in the mix. This may be attributable to a growing trend of rebroadcasting Webinars, where a recording of the main presentation is used, but experts are on hand for a live question-and-answer session. But this is pure conjecture on our part, as the survey was not detailed enough to distinguish recorded Webinars with interaction from those without it.
In one category we saw a noticeable drop in pricing. Member-only discussion boards dropped from $61.19 to $54.84. This may be attributable to the growing popularity of LinkedIn and Facebook, which allow people to find and connect with peers outside the association’s control.
At the bottom of the pricing, and below the average, we see five on-demand offerings: electronic study guides (at the very bottom), educational games and simulations, offline content paired with an online assessment, “off the shelf” content, and self-paced online courses.
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 pricing numbers may suggest is an enduring perception that human interaction is valuable in learning. Common sense suggests that formats that revolve around instructors and presenters—like podcasts and Webinars—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, even if that interaction is recorded.
PRICING AND CERTIFICATIONOrganizations that offer members and nonmembers credit towards a certification or other credential (which may or may not be their own) reported an average price per hour of $60.62 while those that do not offer such credit reported an average price of $55.50. This data suggests that learners are willing to pay more for e-learning where credit towards a certification is at stake.
But the data shows no clear pricing advantage for associations that own a certification. Comparing organizations with their own credentialing program to those without one, we don’t see a notable difference in the average cost per content hour; in fact, the organizations with a certification program reported a slightly lower average price per hour ($57.85 versus $59.92).
0%
18%
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53%
70%
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What these pricing numbers may suggest is an enduring perception that human interaction is valuable in learning.
67THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
PRICING STRATEGY AND MODELSHow 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 are not directly involved in setting the pricing, they are typically asked about pricing by associations, and they do provide pricing advice.
The survey data shows that less than a quarter of associations with e-learning programs have a formal, document process for setting prices.
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
Do you have a formal, documented process for setting prices for e-learning? (226 responses)Less than a quarter of the associations surveyed have a formal pricing process.
PRICING AND AGE OF PROGRAMThe survey data shows a generally rising pattern for pricing over the course of building an e-learning program, excepting a drop in year two.
We’re not inclined to make too much of this pattern until we see how it changes 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, which might explain the drop after the first year.
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 and continues for organization that have hit the five-year mark.
0%
18%
35%
53%
70%Less than 1 year 1 to 2 years 3 to 5 years More than 5 years
$68.72
$56.97
$48.07
$55.25
Average price per content hour, by age of the e-learning program.The survey data shows a generally rising pattern.
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67.7%
23.9%
Formal pricing process No formal process Not sureDon’t charge for e-learning
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environment as they start to roll out their products. “We started out pricing...way too high,” said one interviewee, “and there was a lot of trying it. That’s not working. Let’s try this. That’s still too high. We really had to feel out our members on what is a good price. We offer a good number of Webinars and other sessions...for free and very low prices, and that’s what it’s going to take for our members to get invested and get involved in doing this. It’s going to take low prices, otherwise they’re not even going to take a look.” After its initial experimentation with pricing and market feedback, that association opted to pursue a lower-price, higher-volume strategy.
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 who is getting ready to roll out a self-paced offering shared her early thinking on pricing. “I'm thinking it’s going to be about $95 per module,” she told us. “And if they go for all six of them, most likely, it will have to be a bundled price. I’m thinking what feels good is $495, but that may be too much. I just haven’t gotten to the point of doing that research yet.”
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. 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.
“I didn't want to price it too high. My executive director kept telling me,
‘You’re pricing it too low. You’re pricing it too low.’ And I kept saying,
‘I’m pricing it low because I don’t know what I'm doing.’”
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Do members of your association receive a discount on e-learning products and services? (198 responses)The most common level of discount for member purchases among organizations currently using e-learning is from 20 to 29 percent.
DISCOUNTSDiscounts are a standard part of association e-learning. Most offer lower pricing for members than for nonmembers. 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 20 to 29 percent (28.8 percent). That bracket was also the most common range selected by organizations planning an e-learning initiative (22.5 percent), though many (32.5 percent) indicated they do not yet know what level discount they will offer.
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 (30.2 percent of those with current e-learning programs) 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.
As also noted in the chapter “The Operational Perspective,” under 9 percent of associations currently delivering e-learning provide a mobile version of any of their content, and only 3.8 percent of associations planning e-learning say they will offer a mobile version of at least some of their content. However, given that the
largest segment (58.5 percent) of associations planning e-learning say
they’re undecided about offering a mobile version and given the clear interest expressed by interviewees not yet delivering m-learning, we expect to see growth in this area over the coming year, particularly among organizations that serve audiences who are on the go 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
4.5%11.1%
8.6%
12.1%
28.8%
25.8%
2.0%7.1%
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No member discount1% to 9% discount10% to 19% discount20% to 29% discount30% to 39% discount40% to 49% discount50% or greater discountOther discount
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hand over content files to the purchasing organization or host the files on their own servers in a way that allows them to 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 PENETRATIONWe sought through the survey to establish a benchmark for the level of penetration that organizations appear to be achieving with their e-
learning programs. As with pricing, this can be a messy area that comes with umpteen caveats. To try to make the reporting cleaner, we focused our question on the percentage of members served.
The average penetration of 19.5 percent is not significantly different from the 18.2 percent reported in Association E-learning 2009, and the median of 10 percent is the same as reported in 2009.
Naturally, penetration numbers can vary greatly based on industries, formats, topics, and other factors. While survey respondents indicated penetration ranges from 0 percent to 100 percent, our experience and input from the associations and providers we interviewed suggest that the 19.5 percent average and 10 percent median are not far from reality for most organizations. These numbers could be used, along with the average pricing figures above, to establish 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. “I see two groups that are very similar,” explained one vendor. “One organization is knocking [it] out of the park, and another one is constantly struggling and being disappointed. A lot of that has to point to the marketing and the approach to it.... They have a very similar sized conference, they have a similar profile of members, yet one organization does really well while another one is still struggling to find its message.”
In our interviews, it was clear that what was meant by marketing was often one specific aspect: promotion. In the survey, respondents with active e-learning programs put targeted e-mails dedicated specifically to e-learning at the top of the list of promotional options (73.9 percent indicated it was absolutely necessary)—and that’s not surprising, as nearly any seasoned Internet marketer will put e-What
percentage of your membership base would you estimate participates in at least one e-learning offering from your organization annually? (262 responses)
Average Median
10.0%
19.5%
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71THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
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.
One association interviewee said her marketing department limited promotion of its roughly monthly Webinars to two e-mails a month; she was underwhelmed. A provider, speaking of associations with successful e-learning programs, commented, “They understand the benefit of doing multiple promotions per event to drive more registrations (and their association does not put limits on doing multiple promotions).” Another association interviewee attested to the importance of e-mail marketing—and the power of testimonials: “Our most effective promotions to get people to register or to go online to look at information are e-mail messages. We use a lot of testimonial-type quotes in those promotions.”
While most associations seem to understand the value of segmenting lists, our interviews suggest
Direct mail
Fax
Print ads
Press releases
Targeted e-mails
Non-targeted e-mails
Dedicated Web page (micro-site)
Marketing on own Web site
Marketing on other Web sites
Free access to demo offering
Web-based video
Pay-per-click ads82.1%
51.7%
30.9%
59.0%
17.8%
6.8%
6.7%
3.7%
58.1%
45.3%
85.6%
40.5%
12.1%
30.9%
29.6%
24.0%
24.3%
21.3%
22.1%
3.3%
27.3%
30.8%
9.6%
40.1%
4.5%
15.2%
29.6%
13.1%
36.5%
37.0%
42.9%
19.1%
12.8%
19.7%
4.4%
14.8%
1.3%
2.2%
9.9%
3.9%
21.3%
34.9%
28.3%
73.9%
1.8%
4.3%
0.4%
4.6%
How important are each of the following methods for promoting or marketing your e-learning offerings? (241 responses)
Absolutely necessaryVery importantSlightly importantNot at all important
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72THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
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—is the prize sought by many organizations. The good news is most associations acknowledge the importance of marketing on their own Web site (57.8 percent say it’s absolutely necessary or very important). Micro-sites garnered even higher marks, with 71.9 percent characterizing it as absolutely necessary or very important. The competition for placement on the main Web site may be a factor in the apparent popularity of micro-sites, where it’s all about the e-learning, and the jockeying is only among the online offerings.
We find it somewhat surprising that free access to a demo offering, the use of Web-based video showcasing products or spotlighting testimonials from happy learners, and pay-per-click advertising—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. Free access to a demo offering fairs the best, with 39.5 percent of respondents indicating that it is very important or absolutely necessary. Web-based video was mentioned as a marketing method by only one of the organizations we interviewed and was seen as absolutely necessary or very important by only 17.4 percent of survey respondents. Pay-per-click advertising—seen as very important or absolutely necessary by only 5.8 percent of respondents—was almost dead last, beating out only faxes.
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, including paid search like Google AdWords, and
social media approaches to bolster word of mouth will need to be part of the marketing mix of programs that hope to grow.
While there is clearly some frustration around marketing, there’s no doubt that it matters. “We do an initiative every single month where we put something on discount or special or promotion or loyal user,” said one interviewee. “Every single month we do that. And every month, those are the ones that sell for me.” If associations can get the word out, it pays off.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE 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. “Some of our clients struggle with marketing,” said one provider. “Their marketing departments are used to promoting big classes and meetings. So, when it comes to the online learning, they accidentally focus on the technology and the content gets lost.”
In some cases, the organizational representatives we interviewed—either out of necessity or desire—assumed responsibility for marketing. One
“[W]hat would have happened is we [would have had] a listing in our printed magazine—isn’t that nice—and then we [would have gotten] two e-mail blasts a month, and that was it. I was [thinking], ‘Really? Really? Come on.’”
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73THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
association interviewee expressed her frustration and explained how she’d come to handle the promotion of her e-learning:
The marketing department has looked at it [the association’s e-learning] as just another pea in the pod. And as much as I give them information...trying to get them to understand that these are really awesome learning opportunities, and to come up with some creative ways of getting it out there, what would have happened is we [would have had] a listing in our printed magazine—isn’t that nice?—and then we [would have gotten] two e-mail blasts a month, and that was it. I was [thinking], “Really? Really? Come on.”... Our marketing, I can’t say, has been as intense or as effective as I would have liked it to be. Now I’ve created the marketing pieces to send out to people, and, of course because I created it, I like it, but I would have wished that we could have had a little more support from our marketing department.
The support from her marketing department that the interviewee craves may be a critical ingredient in an association’s overall e-learning success. “[W]here we’ve seen success is where marketing and events and education are kind of tied together in some way,” said one provider we interviewed. “Where we haven’t seen as much momentum and delivery, or execution on the initiative side of the program, is where people will do splinter-type activities, but if you think about it, on an organizational level, these types of initiatives should be cross-departmental.”
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. One said, “[C]ompetition for us seems to be exploding.” For others, like Cynthia Hereth of the Restoration Industry Association (RIA), competition is all too familiar a problem. Hereth saw a drop in revenue from RIA’s Webinars
between the first and second years of the offerings: “[W]hat I noticed is that a lot of the speakers that went through the first year of doing Webinars with RIA and with me, then went and launched their own Webinar series.” Everyone is 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.
Other interviewees saw relatively little competition at present but were aware that the situation
could change. One interviewee issued a blanket warning to other associations: “[I]f you are not offering at least Webcasts and/or e-learning courses, someone in your area of expertise is—or will soon be—offering these.” Some areas of expertise, especially in healthcare, are already completely competitive. One interviewee said, “We can’t not have any online learning out there because there’re too many of our competitors that do. So we have to have something in order to just stay close to the market.” A provider also described that kind of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality, “I’ve often heard [from prospects] quotes of ‘Well, our competitors are doing [this], so we need to do that as well. Can your system do that?’”
The noise created by a full field of competitors can make it hard to even connect with members. As one vendor said, “Getting the attention of members is the hardest part now. Not only are all associations offering online content, but for-profit competitors are popping up all over the place. Associations have to remain innovative and relevant to remain competitive against a rapidly changing marketplace.”
“Not only are all associations offering online content, but for-profit competitors are popping up all over the place. Associations have to remain innovative and relevant to remain competitive against a rapidly changing marketplace.”
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74THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
While some associations find their voices drowned in a competitive clamor, others find their e-learning is helping to raise their association above the fray. Stephanie Menning of Midwest ENERGY Association (MEA) said, “There is competition out there. Some of it’s kind of regional, some of it not, but over time MEA, because its members actually have gotten used to such a high quality of [e-learning] product...we’re actually now gaining membership from outside our territory and have been for quite a while.”
Still, the threat of competition is all too real for many associations. 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. As one interviewee phrased it, “[A]s everyone says, there’s content everywhere, [but] there’s not a lot of content that is from a reputable organization.”
“[A]s everyone says, there’s content everywhere, [but] there’s not a lot of content that is from a reputable organization.”
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75THE 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. In The Decision to Learn: Why People Seek Continuing Education and How Membership Organizations Can Meet Learners’ Needs (published by ASAE in 2010), Lillie Albert and Monica Dignam point out that a sense of affiliation
is a more important factor for learners when evaluating offerings from associations than from other providers, so the association’s brand is key.
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. We believe that pay-per-click advertising, in particular, should play a more important role of the e-learning marketing mix.
Competition for learners will continue to 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.
An association’s brand and ability to articulate a clear value proposition are critical to the success of an e-learning program.
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76THE 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 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 can be shared with those who need to understand 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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77CASE STUDY
The Restoration Industry Association (RIA), a six-staff, under-$2 million-budget professional trade association, represents 1,000 member firms that restore and reconstruct commercial and residential properties damaged by fire, flood, other natural disasters, and crime—in short, anything. To do that restoration work, the members and their employees need a variety of training, and RIA was providing it live in classrooms until the association began to see attendance decline as the economy in general dropped off. “From an economic standpoint, it was in 2008 that our board of directors, mid-year, made the declaration that we needed to get into online learning,” remembers Cynthia Hereth, director of training and certification at RIA. “They weren’t sure what that exactly meant, and no budget was allocated for it because we finalize that a year ahead of time. Online learning wasn’t on the priority list in 2007, and consequently no development money was available.” Hereth notes, “With smaller associations, you’re always trying to find ways to make money without any money.”
Although it’s felt like slow going at times, RIA has stuck by that decision to embrace online learning. “I did begin work on our first online learning program in 2008,” says Hereth, “and now that is actually coming to fruition—and it’s online training in the truest sense of the word—an eight-module program focused on basic water loss.”
Because development of that full-fledged online program took significant time, Hereth says, “I needed an immediate patch because I had to get RIA on the map for some type of online learning or technology based on the board’s directive, and that’s where the Webinar creation came in.” In 2009, Hereth launched RIA’s Brown Bag Webinar Series, which quickly took off. There was little industry competition—and clearly an unmet need. “I had people signing up all over the place,” Hereth recalls. “My first year we took in $25,000, which, for us, was amazing. I managed the development and delivery of that program myself because I knew enough about what our people wanted that I didn’t want to have to work with volunteers who would slow me down.”
Pricing was challenging, especially that first year, but Hereth settled on $45 per Webinar for members and $75 for nonmembers. “I didn’t want to price it too high,” Hereth explains. “My
Webinars Get the Organization on the E-learning MapRestoration Industry Association
Cynthia HerethDirector of training and certification at the Restoration Industry Association
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78CASE STUDY
executive director kept telling me, ‘You’re pricing it too low. You’re pricing it too low.’ And I kept saying, ‘I'm pricing it low because I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Essentially, I didn't want to overprice something because I couldn’t predict if the Webinars were going to be able to deliver the goods—it was a completely new venture for us.”
For Webinar content, Hereth asked well-known speakers in the industry to present for free. In exchange, RIA marketed the presenters along with the sessions and provided the attendee list to them at the completion of the Webinar. The first time she solicited speakers, Hereth got four takers in the first hour—she knew she’d found an opportunity.
In 2010, RIA followed essentially the same approach to its Webinars as it had in 2009—although it raised prices to $55 for members and, based on the 2009 success, created two types of Webinars: Brown Bag Webinars, focused on more scientific or industry-related topics, and WorkPlace Webinars, geared to more business-related topics. But the association brought in only about two-thirds the revenue that year. The market Hereth had discovered had attracted others. “A lot of the speakers who went through the first year of doing Webinars with RIA and with me,” says Hereth, “then went and launched their own Webinar series.” While the new competition disheartened Hereth to a degree, she feels it was inevitable: “The bottom line is imitation is the highest form of flattery—if you have a good thing, people are going to replicate it, and that’s basically what happened with us.”
RIA is continuing its Webinars in 2011, with 16 to 18 planned throughout the year. “For us—because we’re small, and I’m the chief cook and bottle washer when it comes to that—it is not prudent to do more than two a month,” explains Hereth. “I like to really keep it at one a month, but sometimes we get pressed.” Pricing is a bit lower now—$35 for members and $75 for nonmembers—and RIA carries on the practice of offering continuing education credits, so if individuals attend four Webinars, they earn one continuing education credit. “My goal is to get at least 50 people in each Webinar, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get that from our membership,” says Hereth, but she thinks she’s only getting 15 to 30 per Webinar depending on the topic—it’s a little hard to tell because RIA follows a group pricing approach that allows companies to pay once but show the Webinar to as many individuals as they can gather around the computer.
As for how RIA’s Webinars will fare in 2011, Hereth says she’ll just wait to see. To date, she’s finding Webinars are still pulling an audience of repeat customers and new members, but numbers are not at the 2009 level simply because of increased Webinar competition, which makes the financial pie slices thinner. “Webinars are still popular, but, with three years’ experience, topics and speakers must be as entertaining, engaging, interactive, and informative as possible—combined with a fast delivery. Otherwise, it’s a snooze-fest,” states Hereth.
While she may feel behind the curve compared to some organizations, Hereth also knows that RIA, even with a small staff that can feel stretched too thin (e-learning is just one of Hereth’s many responsibilities, which also include RIA’s conventions, conferences, and certifications, which she manages with RIA’s training and certification administrator, Leanne DiGuglielmo), has accomplished a lot, and she’s excited to be on the cusp of launching the self-paced basic water loss online learning program. She firmly believes that “if I can do it, anybody can do it.” But she doesn’t promise it’ll be a cakewalk.
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“A lot of the speakers who went through the first year of doing Webinars with RIA and with me then went and launched their own Webinar series.”
Cynthia Hereth, director of training and certification
79THE 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 43.4 percent of survey respondents. Among organizations planning an e-learning initiative, this concern ranked quite a bit lower, but still almost a quarter (24.1 percent) selected it.
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, 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—with significant effort in some cases and by limiting the features in others. One association opted to use only text chat at its virtual conference, as the voice over Internet protocol (IP) proved too problematic in initial testing with target attendees.
One of the things I will tell you...is this [virtual conference] has a voice over IP capability problem because...I’ve got Bob and Sally and Frank and Jean and Bill all across the country, and they’re on a [work] PC, home PC, or something, [and] they’re not configured. Or they might be. Or half of them might be. Or half of them might not be. So the voice over IP, just even when we did it internally, was so problematic, it took 15 or 20 minutes...working with [a technical support person] to get it up and running, and that’s why I decided to go with chat. So that's a significant limitation right now. [The virtual conference solution provider has] the capability, but it’s on the user side.
Another interviewee said, “Our guys are a little behind in getting electronically up to speed. They’re being forced to, more and more, [but] we still have to do print and faxing to those who are not on the Internet or e-mail savvy.”
The age of the target audience, and sometimes the association staff and leadership, was a factor noted by many interviewees when it came to potential technology issues.
[W]hile they can get on a computer and peck away, the leadership, overall, knows that technology is really important, and they see their sons do it or their daughters do it. Their sons and daughters understand that, but they [the leaders] still think that a fax machine is a big deal. Well, nobody uses a fax machine any more, right? So, there’s kind of a disconnect between the generations because, when I deal with the people that are actually signing up and sitting through this [e-learning], they’re the 30-year-olds. They’re the late 20-year-olds. They’re maybe even the early 40-year-olds. They want their information fast, furious, quick, on time, real time, and make it entertaining by the way. And if you have somebody that’s really a snooze, they’ll click out, and they won’t be attentive. So I think that technology and all that it offers, just because the world is swirling so quickly, is extremely important.
The Technology PerspectiveEnd Users, Systems, and Standards
0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
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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 significant factors.
Organizations often see good customer support as critical to their overall success. “Our ability to provide much better customer support now is definitely one [of the keys to our e-learning success],” claimed one interviewee.
Organizations that aren’t staffed to provide adequate support for their e-learning look for outside help. “[O]ne of the things we did...either last year or the year before is we pay extra now with our vendor for 24/7 customer support, so that there’s an immediate response, even though there may not be an immediate resolution.” The interviewee continued. “They’ve also developed tracking and reporting tools that they provide to us on a monthly basis, and we’re actually working with them now to develop a technology support survey, which they’ll send out quarterly at my request.” 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 a provider.
One of the interviewees that used a vendor to augment in-house user support during a virtual conference said that most issues were not technical in nature:
We had really good support from our vendor. From the participant side, very minor things, like they didn’t know how to get the map out to go from one hall to another. And our customer support team was educated on helping members navigate, but it seemed to be relatively easy for our members.... The fact that they had to key in a membership number was probably the biggest issue because they had to call or get an e-mail sent to them because they couldn't remember their membership number. But relatively smooth. Not much in terms of technological issues at all.
Finally, there are 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 preloaded onto computers or make targeted exceptions to network policy.
“[W]e still have a few technology issues, glitches but actually very few. We had
something like 1,700 attendees online [for a virtual conference], and we got about 119
comments that folks couldn’t see the video. And so we think that’s a firewall in their
healthcare facility. There’s just not a lot that we can do on our end about that.”
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Webinar PlatformsAmong survey respondents with current e-learning programs, GoToMeeting (44.2 percent) and WebEx (25.0 percent) lead the pack of Webinar platforms, and Adobe Connect (16.1 percent) and Microsoft Live Meeting (14.3 percent) are the only other two named systems to reach double digits.
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 Blue Sky Broadcast (Adobe Connect), CommPartners (for WebEx and Live Meeting), KRM (for Live Meeting and WebEx), and Peach New Media (for Live Meeting).
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,
Does your organization currently use a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS) for delivery and/or tracking of e-learning? (233 responses)
11.6%
42.5%13.3%
32.6%
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WebEx
Adobe Connect
Live Meeting
ReadyTalk
Genesys
Elluminate
Wimba
Other
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
27.2%
0.4%
3.1%
3.1%
5.8%
14.3%
16.1%
25.0%
44.2%
Which of the following Webinar software platforms, if any, does your association currently use for e-learning? (224 responses)
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
82THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
“[W]e have a list of things we want from the LMS that’s as long as your arm. We expect it to do everything but fetch our coffee in the morning.”
particularly if integration with other systems is involved.
Even people who are familiar with the term LMS 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 to their needs, and track learners’ progress towards 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 LMSes and LCMSes unless otherwise specified.
Under half (45.9 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 roughly equal number (42.5 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. Despite the central role the software can play, a noticeable slice (11.6 percent) of respondents aren’t sure if their organizations make use of an LMS. The majority (63.5 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 an LMS. Of these organizations, 67.5 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 to have implemented an LMS than organizations that do not (36.8 versus 25.3 percent). Organizations that have a formal documented process for setting prices for e-learning are more likely to use an LMS than those without a formal process (44.4 percent versus 28.1 percent). Finally, age impacts usage—the older the e-learning program, the more likely associations are to have an LMS. Most organizations who have been delivering e-learning for less than a year (57.1 percent) or for one to two years (52.2 percent) have no LMS and no plans to implement one in the next 12 months. Among older programs, the largest segment uses an
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LMS. For e-learning programs three to five years old, 36.6 percent use an LMS currently, and for programs older than five years, that number jumps to almost half (48.0 percent).
Almost all the organizations we interviewed either are using a learning management system or are actively in the process of implementing one. And even an interviewee from one of the few not in that camp said she saw her association looking into an LMS in the future: “I think going forward we’re going to become more formalized in the way that we do it [e-learning]. Like right now, for example, we don’t have an LMS system in place.”
That sense of the inevitability of an LMS implementation was echoed by other interviewees, who frequently cited business issues (untenable customer support demands, lack of flexibility in how content is presented, etc.) that led to the purchase of a piece of technology. New opportunities were also a reason. “[A]nother big reason that we’re moving towards an LMS platform is our certification,” said one interviewee. “[W]e’ve gone through that whole upgrade of our certification program, moving from paper and pencil to online, as well as our study guide for that.” Another woman whose association was in the throes of a selection process at the time of our interview explained the business drivers for her organization’s decision to move to an LMS:
[W]e had been basically using our Web content management system and a fairly pieced together process for deploying online content...and it was clear that we didn’t have the flexibility that an LMS would give us to package and sequence and deploy courses as packages. Our members didn’t have good tools for tracking their own progress. We weren’t able to give them good self-service access to past records and that sort of thing, so we ended up providing a lot more customer service
support along those lines.... We’ve been through a preliminary screening round [with LMS vendors], and we’re expecting proposals from two finalists actually on the 21st [of December 2010]. We hope to make our decision right after the first of the year. Then we’ll develop an implementation plan. We expect the full implementation could take most of next year, but we would expect to have some basic functionality up and running way sooner.
When asked what her association needs from the LMS, the interviewee provided the following requirements.
[W]e have a list of things we want from the LMS that’s as long as your arm. We expect it to do everything but fetch our coffee in the morning. But some really critical facts, some must-haves for us: It has to integrate really, really well with our AMS.... Very high on the list was we want to be able to do business with corporate customers. Our current system is entirely configured for individual users. We want to make it possible for a hospital or a school system to manage and direct its employees’ activities in our courses, and that will enable them easily to buy a lot of seats and assignments to employees as it prefers. We want the corporate customer to be able to monitor its employees’ progress. We will be able to develop programs tailored for a particular corporate employer. So that’s probably the number one thing that we care about.... And then following that were a whole bunch of areas of improved functionality for the individual user. Ideally, we want to be able to dynamically recommend courses to people based on elements of their profile that we have in our LMS.
Even after a potentially long and laborious selection and implementation process, don’t think your work is done, cautioned one interviewee.
The thing that one learns as soon as you start is that it’s never over. It’s an ongoing process, totally. So you think that once you acquire the LMS, you customize it. and you launch it, you’re done. As soon as you launch it, you start really thinking about what you want to change in the system, either because you get feedback from your users or because you realize that things could have
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“We expect the full [LMS] implementation could take most of next year....”
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been done differently. And so it’s always an ongoing process. We just released version 8 of the software, some major changes like two years later. We are already looking at the next release of the software. It’s inevitable. But we are very happy. We were able to improve dramatically on our operations. We’re doing a lot more with [the same] people. We are a lot more flexible. We can offer different solutions to our companies. We can offer customized learning portals, customized catalogs. We can license our materials and also customize, if needed.
Continuous improvement aside, some organizations realize their LMS simply isn’t up the job. One provider commented, “We’ve come across...quite a few associations where they started a couple of years ago, and they might have had an LMS, and they’ve realized now that they’ve progressed a bit, and they want to do more, and they’re looking, potentially, at another LMS. It shows that people...have tried it, and they go, ‘Okay, there’s something in this e-learning, but we want to do more, and we need a different system to do it,’ and so they do an RFP process or whatever.” One association interviewee provided a concrete example of the type of situation that might precipitate a new request for proposals: “One of the limitations is our platform. We look at the platform every couple of years, but right now what we’re struggling with is that we’re still in a manual CE fulfillment process, and that’s largely because the platform can’t support 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.
One interviewee mentioned that it took his association’s leadership a while to get on board with the idea of an LMS.
It turned out to be...the success of the Webinars...helped prepare the organization to do additional things and feel that it would be okay. We got to the point where our leadership was comfortable thinking of putting some of our classroom-based courses in e-learning format. The way that it’s comfortable for our leadership was to almost think of it as an extension of our membership database.... That’s what our leaders were comfortable with, is thinking about an LMS in terms of almost, like, an add-on. Last fall, they okayed us to move in that direction, so we are building an LMS....
The do-it-yourself approach this association opted for is relatively rare in this era of affordable software as a service (SaaS), but building the LMS in house and positioning it as an add-on to the already familiar and established AMS allowed the organization to take another big step.
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. One vendor we interviewed posited this as a change: “[W]e do see that most of these organizations are not just saying,
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Let us save you time. In Association Learning Management Systems (http://www.tagoras.com/catalog/association-lms), we’ve done the work to identify and compare LMS systems with a track record in the association sector.
85THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
‘We’ve got a checkbox here that we need to get an LMS.’ There seems to be an organizational initiative to bring value through education products, which we think is going back to the roots of the association.” 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. And we see room for even greater efficiency, although it will require improvements and enhancements on both the software side and in the association’s use of the technology. We believe the future will see more associations bringing their full e-learning portfolio under the umbrella of their LMS—which is decidedly not the case now. Asked if her association’s Webinars are in any way connected to its LMS, one interviewee said, “It is completely separate,” and that’s a situation we heard described by many others.
LMS AND LCMS PACKAGESWhile overall usage of learning management systems across the sector is still relatively low, we did collect data to provide some insight into the specific platforms that associations seem to be using. Among our respondents, the open source platform Moodle proved popular (15.8 percent). Among the organizations with proprietary systems, LearnSomething, which offers associations two LMS products (Isoph Blue and LearnPro+) made the strongest showing with 7.9 percent.
AvilarBlackboardCertiLearn
Digital IgniteDigitec Interactive
EducadiumeLogic
GeoLearningiCohere
InteractyxIntraLearn
Latitude LearningLearn.com
LearningSpanLearnSomething
Meridian Knowledge SolutionsMoodle
OutStartPeach New Media
PlateauResults Direct
SabaSakai
SumTotalWBT Systems
Web CourseworksCustom or proprietary
OtherNot sure 11.8%
27.6%17.1%
2.6%3.9%
0%2.6%
1.3%1.3%
0%2.6%
0%15.8%
1.3%7.9%
0%2.6%
0%2.6%
0%2.6%
0%0%0%
1.3%2.6%
0%2.6%
0%
The following organizations provide LMS and/or LCMS packages. Which does your organization currently use? Check all that apply. (76 responses)Of the named options, Moodle came out on top at 15.8 percent.
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GRAY AREASNeither 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.
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)? (76 responses)This question was asked of organizations with current e-learning programs and an LMS.
2.6%
18.4%
79.0%
ACGI Software
Advanced Systems International (iMIS)
Affiniscape
Aptify
Avectra
CDC gomembers
Euclid
internet4associations (i4a)
IRM Systems
Protech
TMA Resources
Wild Apricot
Custom or proprietary
Other
Not sure 6.7%
20.0%
6.7%
0%
16.7%
3.3%
0%
3.3%
1.7%
0%
10.0%
3.3%
8.3%
23.3%
1.7%
The following organizations offer association management system (AMS) packages. Which does your organization currently use? Check all that apply. (60 responses)This question was asked of associations with an LMS and an AMS. Of the named options, ASI, TMA Resources, and Avectra were the only three in double digits.
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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 e-learning and with an LMS in place to indicate whether they use an association management system, and if so, which one.
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.
LMS/AMS INTEGRATIONIn our survey, we asked respondents who indicated that their organization uses an LMS and an AMS whether the two were integrated. Most (76.7 percent) either had already integrated or planned to integrate the two systems.
One vendor, emphasizing “continuous learning,” explained how this emerging trend plays out at the technical level: “One change I’ve seen in the market is how learning is becoming a continuous initiative rather than solely focused around specific conferences or events. What this means is that learning programs are becoming completely integrated with everything else on the organizational level. The LMS needs to be integrated with the AMS, which needs to be integrated with the community software which needs to be integrated with the CMS. And all of this should have a SSO (single sign on) for the end user.”
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.
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? (60 responses)Almost 55 percent indicated their association’s AMS and LMS are integrated.
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21.7%
54.9%
AMS and LMS integratedNo, but plan to integrate them in futureNo, and don’t plan to integrate themNot sure
88THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
• 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.
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. But the question is still actively debated, as one LMS vendor described.
I often get [into] the master-system arguments in requirements workshops, particularly [around] things like events.... [AMSes] do a certain amount of event management, but not great from what I’ve seen. And usually you’ll have one side of the business saying, “Well, can we not just use the LMS? We do not have plans to do the event stuff.” And then you get, “Oh, but we need to have it back in [the AMS].” You get these kind of arguments quite a lot. It’s interesting to see the kind of crossover between the functionalities that we offer and what the AMS itself offers.
The ongoing prevalence of these types of debates led another LMS provider to pursue working out the integration questions independent of a particular client. A representative said, “[O]ur big focus for 2011 and the back end of 2010...is to find strategic partners, work out all the integration stuff behind the scenes, so that we can come to an association and say, ‘Here’s what we do, and we have integrative partners to do all this other stuff if you’re interested in that.’”
A Webinar service provider is chagrinned at what he described as the undue primacy of the AMS.
I’m always surprised—and obviously this is a biased perspective—that associations spend so much money and time on an AMS installation, and the interactions of a member with an AMS are probably once or twice a year—probably the majority once, to pay dues. Now granted, those dues pay the bills...but which one provides you a return on the mission more? Is it an education program or your AMS program? I try to encourage this, and I would love the industry to encourage this more is, “Okay, we’re not going to ask you to take the money away from your AMS initiative, but please consider that the interactions that the members make in a future ideal scenario where you have valuable products and education personalized and presented, are far more frequent, far more valuable and far more profitable, both to the association and to the member, than maintaining a membership profile.”
He continued his lament, making it clear that he doesn’t believe LMSes should be the focus any more than AMSes: “[M]ost organizations spend six figures for an LMS, and then have no content in it.... We know how much these LMSes cost, and then we hear how little money they have to put education in them.” From his perspective, and it’s one we happen to share the focus needs to be on the content, not the technology: “You turn your members on by having them walk away from an event and go, ‘That was great.’ And I don’t think any of them are walking away going, ‘Thank you, Moodle. Thank you, WebEx.’ They’re not. They don’t even know the difference [between] Flash or Silverlight or any of that.”
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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 22.1 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 14.1 percent of respondents in this group.
MedBiquitous standards, which apply primarily to healthcare education, faired even worse than the more general standards, even among the groups most likely to embrace them. They were selected as very important by only 2.2 percent of groups that identified their industry as healthcare and social assistance, and not a single organization in that industry classification described them as absolutely necessary.
Among respondents planning e-learning initiatives in the coming 12 months, “don’t know yet” 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 50.0 percent of respondents. This may be because respondents assumed 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 were significantly more likely to indicate that SCORM was very important or absolutely necessary (32.5 percent).
0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
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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)
18.8%
16.8%
20.1%
19.8%
16.5%
6.6%
15.0%
0.5%
0.5%
28.0%
7.5%
7.1%
1.4%
0.9%
1.4%
9.4%
10.2%
4.2%
6.5%
2.8%
57.7%
50.9%
73.8%
72.4%
76.6%
How important is adherence to guidelines from each of the following sources for your e-learning initiatives? (227 responses)
Not at all importantSlightly importantVery importantAbsolutely necessaryNot sure
90THE 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/joomla/dev/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=28) 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. In November of 2010, the AICC announced the beginning of development on the first major e-learning data exchange specification since 2004, which will expand on both its own standards and SCORM and add the ability to integrate group learning activities, simulations, and custom learner interfaces with learning management systems. The new specification will supersede the existing AICC computer-managed instruction specification and is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2012 (http://www.aicc.org/joomla/dev/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=151%3Apress-release-44&Itemid=9).
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 SCORM. 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 (http://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 to 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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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 integration with association management systems.
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, and 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.
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?
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
We expect to see lingering concern about end user technology skills continue to decline and perhaps even drop sharply in the relatively near term.
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92THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
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 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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93CASE STUDY
The focus of the Escrow Association of Washington (EAW) is education, as Jonelle Wheeler, education chair and past president, makes clear: “That’s why our association exists—for education of the members.”
For years, EAW, a state association open to all escrow professionals in the state of Washington, offered instructor-led classes at hotels to help people prepare for their limited practice officer (LPO) exam, which is offered twice a year, in April and October. But that place-based approach was costly, not necessarily convenient for the learners, and part of what EAW perceived as a dying culture. “We wanted to be proactive and not reactive,” explains Wheeler, “because we really feel that online classes are going to be the way of the future.”
But recognizing the need for change and the opportunity online learning offered didn’t translate into immediate action. “We spent three years talking and preparing for the transition,” Wheeler admits, but in August 2010 EAW rolled out its first online course, a self-paced prep course for the LPO exam, offered via Educadium’s EasyCampus system.
While the online LPO prep course is not yet operating in the black, EAW knew it would take time to recoup initial start-up costs. “We didn’t expect that we were going to make all that money back in the first year.” But EAW has a vision for expanding its online offerings and increasing revenue without adding much cost: “What I like about Educadium is that we are able now to add the Escrow 1 course, and even an Escrow 2 when we get to that point, without paying additional costs,” Wheeler explains. Beyond helping members prepare for the escrow officer exam online, EAW wants to provide more e-learning so members can fulfill their annual CEU requirement online.
When asked what advice she would give to other associations undertaking e-learning initiatives, Wheeler stresses the importance of choosing the right vendor. “We’re all unpaid volunteers in this association, so what we’re doing is all on our own time…. We know a lot about escrow. We don’t know a lot about online courses, so it was kind of a hard thing to figure out what to do. [The vendor’s team was] very helpful in getting us established with this course and helping us get it set up.”
With only volunteers and a vision (no documented strategy—“we didn’t have enough knowledge to even know how to plan that kind of stuff out”), EAW has managed to role out a successful online offering—and has plans for more to follow.
“That’s why our association exists—for education of the members.”
Jonelle Wheeler, education chair and past president
Education Focus and Proactive Mindset Fuel E-learning SuccessEscrow Association of Washington
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EAW’s EasyCampus portal
94THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
Even given the level of statistical error that may be present in a non-probability survey, the combined results from the 2008 and 2010 sector surveys make it clear that online education is now a mainstay in the association sector and will likely continue growing until it is a significant part of most associations’ education initiatives.
Offering e-learning as an educational option is not the same, however, as achieving the desired results it. We indicated in Association E-learning 2009 that we felt associations were still in the relatively early stages of e-learning growth. This view was not so much a matter of activity—even at that point the majority of survey participants indicated they were delivering e-learning—but rather of maturity. Interviews and our own experience in the market suggested that most organizations were embracing e-learning in a piecemeal fashion. For the most part, the same holds true today.
As noted earlier in the report, relatively few organizations with active e-learning programs have developed a formal strategy (22.0 percent), created a product development process (22.9 percent), or follow a clear pricing process (23.9 percent). Given shortcomings in these areas, it is not surprising that most association CEOs report that online education programs have not produced the increase in revenue for their organizations that they had anticipated; data from ASAE and published in Associations Now (March 2011) shows a gap of more than 20 percent between CEOs who anticipated revenue gains from online education in 2009 (60.9 percent) and 2010 and those who actually experienced it (only 36.3 percent). Even as associations CEOs experience this gap, the overall
market for e-learning has grown steadily over the past
several years and is projected to reach $24.2 billion in the United
States by 2015 (Ambient Insight’s The U.S. Market for Self-Paced eLearning Products and Services: 2010-2015 Forecast and Analysis).
Revenue, of course, is not the only measure of satisfaction or success when it comes to online education. Other factors such as enrollment levels, feedback from users, and resource requirements also play a role. Notably, when we asked associations whether they were satisfied overall with their current e-learning initiatives the great majority were either somewhat (53.9 percent) or very (20.4 percent) satisfied, but when it came to specific aspects of e-learning, user feedback was the only area in which the majority of respondents indicated they were either somewhat (42.3 percent) or very (20.3 percent) satisfied. It seems that online education is well received by members, but organizations nonetheless struggle to get the levels of operational and business performance out of it that they would like.
Satisfaction, Success, and the State of the SectorAn Assessment
0%
18%
35%
53%
70%
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Overall, how satisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives? (230 responses)
Almost three-quarters of associations with active e-learning programs are very or somewhat satisfied overall.
3.0%
22.6%
54.0%
20.4%Very satisfiedSomewhat satisfiedSomewhat dissatisfiedVery dissatisfied
95THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
Portrait of SuccessGiven the data on satisfaction, it is perhaps not surprising that, while most organizations (63.5 percent) rate themselves as somewhat successful in their e-learning initiatives, only 15.0 percent characterize their e-learning as very successful. We found that organizations that consider themselves to be very successful were significantly more likely than average to do the following:
• View revenue generation as a key benefit.• Make use of professional instructional design.• Have a formal, documented e-learning strategy.• Have a formal, documented product
development process.• Embrace more interactive forms of e-learning
(e.g., facilitated and blended offerings, use of discussion boards, games, and simulations).
All in all, these traits suggest a more focused, professional approach to online education and a desire to provide engaging, effective learning experiences. Anecdotal input from interviews tends to support this view. Some themes that emerged from organizations that characterized themselves as very successful with online education included the following:
• A high capacity for listening to members—initially and continually—to identify and align with their needs
• A focus on concrete outcomes, including awarding credit, supporting various types of credentialing, and delivering highly actionable content
• A willingness to take reasonable risks,
Usa
ge
Rev
enue
Fina
ncia
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f cr
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ng
Fina
ncia
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f m
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Sta
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ime
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ain
Too
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gie
s
Feed
bac
k fr
om
par
tici
pan
ts
1.8%
1.4%
0.5%
0.9%
1.4%2.2%
7.7%
0.4% 2.
3%
8.6%11
.0%
12.6
%
7.7%8.5%
16.7
%
16.6
%
11.7
%
19.9
%
19.7
%25.6
%
22.1
%
20.2
%
23.0
%28.3
%
21.6
%
24.4
%
27.1
%
22.9
%27.5
%
27.4
%
15.8
%
11.2
%
42.3
%
35.7
%
33.9
%
30.5
%
28.8
%31.8
%
27.5
%
35.9
%
20.3
%
10.0
%
7.8%
7.6%
12.6
%
9.9%
9.5%
7.6%
Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives in terms of these specific items? (224 responses)
Very satisfied Somewhat satisfied Neutral Somewhat dissatisfied Very dissatisfied Not applicable
How would you rate the success of your organization’s use of e-learning? (227 responses)Almost 80 percent characterized their e-learning as very or somewhat successful.
2.6%18.9%
63.5%
15.0%
Very successful Somewhat successfulSomewhat unsuccessful Not successful
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96THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
experiment, and, when necessary, lead learners to new opportunities they might not even have been aware of
• A highly integrated approach to online education, meaning not just integration of technology systems, but also inclusion of multiple departments (or, at small organizations, mindsets) in planning for e-learning and an understanding of e-learning as one part of an overall portfolio of educational offerings
• An ability to secure buy-in across all major stakeholders and manage expectations
E-LEARNING PROVIDERS ON SUCCESSFrom the vendor interviews we heard some repeated and some different themes of successful association e-learning.
The following excerpts attest to the importance of an innovative mindset combined with a willingness to take reasonable risks—and this was by far the characteristic of successful associations most cited by the e-learning providers we interviewed.
• “Associations who are the most bold with their marketing, their pricing, their willingness to try new things are the most successful at generating revenue and engagement through learning online. Fear of losing what you have is killer to innovation.”
• “[Associations with successful e-learning programs] operate like professional gamblers. A professional gambler once told me that he doesn’t make a bet unless he’s done his homework and made pretty sure the odds really are in his favor.”
Revenue generation as a key benefit
Use of professional instructional design
Formal e-learning strategy
Formal product development process
Interactive offerings
2.4%
0%
0%
16.7%
0%
15.3%
18.8%
16.3%
34.7%
22.2%
21.9%
23.0%
22.1%
40.7%
39.6%
24.5%
24.2%
23.7%
42.4%
44.4%
30.9%
35.3%
47.1%
47.1%
44.1%
Very successful respondentsCombined very and somewhat successful responentsAll respondentsCombined somewhat unsuccessful and not successful respondentsNot successful respondents
Characteristics of successful e-learning
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97THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
• “There’s a lot to be said for moving carefully into new territory...but at some point it’s important to take the plunge.”
• “I think [associations with successful e-learning programs] embrace a different type of culture. It’s an R&D type of culture that says we’re going to incubate ideas. We’re going to avoid trying to take 12 to 16 months to build something.”
• “If we take a look at some of the more successful technology initiatives now on the Web, like...Facebook, they put out an idea. If it goes well, they develop even further. If it doesn’t, they quickly kill it. And I think that the people who are constituents and members, they’re savvy enough to accept that and have a tolerance for it, but it’s incumbent on the association to embrace that and deliver content and products much more rapidly and maybe much more informally than they’re used to and break away from just doing events and just doing conferences and trying things new. It could be as informal as an aggregate Twitter feed or a live chat. They don’t even have to use our platforms; the expensive platforms, cheap platforms, whatever is out there, try it, and get it in there and iterate. You never know until you get in. And building up to some grand vision, it’s much better to do that through little cycles than it is these huge leaps.... A client worked with us in late October of this past year, and we launched in January. In the association space, that’s typically unheard of, but there’s nothing that prevents you now, with the technologies out there... If the provider’s not doing that, then we’re not doing our good job, but we need to, as a community, say let’s build quickly and get things out much more efficiently. There should be no reason why not. No matter who the platform is and what the technology is, it should be feasible.”
• “[S]ome organizations fall into analysis paralysis. They feel that it’s a one-time shot, and if they don’t get it right the first time, they will need to start over. That’s simply not the way we see the successful organizations start out. Success comes to the association that experiments and is constantly trying new things, reviewing them, and evolving as they go. Online learning is not a system to
implement and then reevaluate in 12 months. It’s an ongoing improvement and development process.”
One provider made the case for imitation. “I think the association market...should be looking at six to twenty organizations that are truly making a difference,” he suggested, “and then analyze the daylights out of them and start running their classes on, ‘How do we become more like the Ritz Carlton?’” And associations might need to look beyond the sector for the most powerful models: “I think TED is an example. TED lets everyone access their content now, and, before, it used to cost you so much to go to that meeting. And now they sellout in seven minutes because everyone wants to be there live. That is a perfect example of the NFL or the NBA or the MBA. Everyone wants to go to the live game, and yet there’s still a million people watching it on TV.”
An overarching message from the vendor interviews was that there’s no secret ingredient or magic bullet for e-learning success. It boils down to hard work over time. As one consultant said, “It really isn't mysterious—it just takes time to do well.”
“Success comes to the association that experiments and is constantly trying
new things, reviewing them, and evolving as they go.”
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SUMMING UP SUCCESSWith 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 executive leadership• Increasing professionalization, including
formal strategy and processes and professional instructional design
• Deeper integration of social media and online learning
All these factors will contribute towards success and the sector’s overall e-learning maturity.
Voices from the Sector on the Current State of Learning and TechnologyWhile we certainly have our views, it seems most appropriate to end this report with comments from the interviews. We asked most 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
• “[Online learning] finally has hit its stride [in the association world], where it is the norm, and the market is now a mature market in my opinion.”
• “Offering content online has become a given: Members expect to find educational content on your Web site. It’s not a bonus any more.”
• “I’d say that association educators are willing to access online training themselves and are curious about how to make self-paced learning available to their members. But it’s a long,
gradual climb to the top of that mountain, and in the meantime Webinars and Facebook interactions seem to rule the day.”
• “I would say that we [the association sector] would be in the teenage years. I certainly see that I’m not explaining the benefits of the technology anymore. It’s already recognized. It’s just now the challenges of implementing it properly within their organization and their culture.... It has been understood that this is a strategic requirement. It’s not a threat to live meetings or other educational programs, and it’s not a one-off opportunity. It’s now being recognized that it is a strategic goal for the organization. Now each organization just sort of seems to be, the way I see it, working out their own quirks and the unique requirements so it fits within the culture for their group.”
• “I think [online learning] is obviously on the upswing. It’s growing. It’s definitely, I would still say, in its infancy, so that excites me.”
• “While great strides have been made over the past few years—including what I see as an e-learning renaissance of sorts—there is always room for improvement and the continued examination and generation of best practices, especially as they apply to the use of emerging technologies. It is a time of great promise, but it will also take discipline and focus for organizations to take full advantage of what is available as well as what is yet to come.”
• “[W]e’ve been in this space now for a good few years. I’d say in the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve definitely seen a big uptake overall, whether it just be at the conferences we’re attending or just incoming leads.”
• “I think that we’re seeing a reawakening and re-interest in the learning space, and we’re happy that people are calling it learning and not training because we do think it’s a completely different space for professional education and continuing education, much more different in terms of the needs, the drivers, and everything from the corporate space.... I think it’s still kind of nascent in that people are starting to redevelop interest. They’re pulling away from probably initial platforms or just developing the interest or moving away from just doing a recorded Webinar series and saying, ‘Well, what could
“I think [online learning in the association sector] is obviously on the upswing. It’s growing.”
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99THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
we do to package these products or these publications in different ways to approach our audience?’ People are recognizing that the audience is shifting. Almost every association we talk to recognizes that the members that they used to know are different now, both in terms of where they are in the world, geographically, demographically, and everything else. So, it’s a good time to change. I do sense that things are shifting. Due to the collaborative nature of associations, I don’t think it’s going to be an upheaval or a revolution, but I do sense that there’s a new generation of practices, platforms, and just approaches coming up. So I think it’s a good thing. I think associations sense that too, and I think that means that all of us can stay busy and do good things.”
ASSOCIATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE SECTOR
• “I think the tools are becoming quite a bit more pervasive, but I don’t think we’re necessarily getting more sophisticated about using them. So almost everybody is doing online stuff. Most of what is being done is direct content capture. What people do is they record a lecture being given in person, and then they put that on the Web. Now that’s an advancement in one sense, but not so much in another sense.... I don’t think that very many
associations are diving very deep into the potential of online systems to really allow and promote coached practice over time, which is where I think Web-mediated learning ultimately is going to have really the most potential.”
• “[A]s far as adoption [of online learning] in the association community...I’m not seeing much, and it baffles me. I don’t understand why more people aren’t picking up on it because to me it’s such a member service.”
• “I feel like we’re still trying to catch up with the corporate sector. I know there are very few state associations [in our field] who are doing any e-learning. Our national association started doing it a few years back before we started, and I think that’s been very helpful for them to get federal regulation information in the hands of doctors. But I feel like we’re still coming up to speed with the corporate. The association still likes a lot of the networking, face to face, talking to your colleagues.”
• “I think we [associations] have got a ways to go, but I’d say [online learning is] on the radar screen of more people.”
• “[O]ur people want to be entertained.... They want education, and they want entertainment. You cannot keep doing it the same way. Like what I did in 2009, I can’t do it that way in 2011. [It has] to be more.”“[W]e’re seeing a reawakening and
re-interest in the learning space....”
“I think the tools are becoming quite a bit more pervasive, but I don’t think we’re necessarily getting more sophisticated about using them.”
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100APPENDIX A: PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
We are grateful to the hundreds of organizations that took the time to participate in the 2010 online survey of association learning and technology. 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• American Academy of Physical Medicine &
Rehabilitation• American Institute of Chemical Engineers• American Nurses Credentialing Center• American Psychiatric Nurses Association• American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic
Technologists• American Speech-Hearing-Language
Association• America’s Health Insurance Plans• Association of Cable Communicators• Association of College and University Housing
Officers-International• Community Associations Institute• Council of Administrators of Special Education• Escrow Association of Washington• Healthcare Financial Management Association• Institute of Food Technologists• International Foodservice Distributors
Association• International Foundation of Employee Benefit
Plans• Iowa Chiropractic Society• Midwest ENERGY Association• National Air Duct Cleaners Association• National Association of College Stores• National Association of Counties• National Glass Association• National Recreation and Park Association• Pennsylvania Association of School Business
Officials• Restoration Industry Association• Society for Technical Communication• Toastmasters International
Technology and Service Providers• Ellen Behrens of aLearning Blog• Blue Sky Broadcast• DelCor• Digital Ignite• Digitell• KRM Information Services• LearnSomething• Peach New Media• WBT Systems
Appendix A: Participating OrganizationsWith Thanks and Gratitude
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101APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
Please note that whenever data was not collected, the results are marked NA, 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? (349 responses)
Yes 77.4%
No, but plan to start in the next 6 months 8.0%
No, but plan to start in the next 12 months 8.0%
No, and do not plan to start in the next 12 months 6.6%
THREE-YEAR VIEW OF ALL EDUCATION INITIATIVESOver the past three years, what has happened to all your organization’s overall education initiatives (including but not only e-learning initiatives)? (297 responses)
Grown Shrunk Remained the same
Not applicable
Total resources (both monetary and personnel) 40.2% 26.0% 29.1% 4.7%
Revenue 35.6% 33.2% 24.4% 6.8%
Enrollments 38.9% 31.7% 24.2% 5.1%
Number of offerings 49.1% 16.6% 28.0% 6.2%
Currently Using E-learningThe following questions were asked only of organizations currently using e-learning.
Appendix B: Survey DataResponses for All Questions
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102APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
YEAR-TO-YEAR COMPARISON OF E-LEARNING TO ALL EDUCATION INITIATIVESDuring the time your organization has been doing e-learning, what has happened to your organization’s e-learning initiatives as a percentage of your organization’s overall education initiatives? (227 responses)
Grown Shrunk Remained the same
Not applicable
Total resources (both monetary and personnel) 58.0% 9.3% 30.1% 2.7%
Revenue 52.2% 13.3% 24.8% 9.7%
Enrollments 61.1% 11.9% 23.5% 3.5%
Number of offerings 72.0% 8.3% 17.4% 2.3%
TIME USING E-LEARNINGHow long has your organization been using e-learning? (270 responses)
Less than 1 year 10.0%
1 to 2 years 28.9%
3 to 5 years 38.9%
More than 5 years 22.2%
CURRENT PARTICIPATION BY MEMBERSHIPWhat percentage of your membership base would you estimate participates in at least one e-learning offering from your organization annually? (262 responses)
Mean Median
19.5% 10%
OVERALL SATISFACTION WITH E-LEARNINGOverall, how satisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives? (230 responses)
Very satisfied 20.4%
Somewhat satisfied 53.9%
Somewhat dissatisfied 22.6%
Very dissatisfied 3.0%
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103APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
SATISFACTION IN SPECIFIC AREASHow satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your current e-learning initiatives in terms of the specific items below? (224 responses)
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied Neutral Somewhat
dissatisfiedVery
dissatisfiedNot
applicable
Usage (e.g., number of course enrollments) 7.6% 35.9% 11.2% 28.3% 16.6% 0.4%
Revenue (e.g., from course sales) 9.5% 27.5% 15.8% 23.0% 16.7% 7.7%
Financial cost of creating the initiatives 9.9% 31.8% 27.4% 20.2% 8.5% 2.2%
Financial cost of supporting and maintaining the initiatives 12.6% 28.8% 27.5% 22.1% 7.7% 1.4%
Staff time required to develop the initiatives 7.6% 30.5% 22.9% 25.6% 12.6% 0.9%
Staff time required to maintain the initiatives 7.8% 33.9% 27.1% 19.7% 11.0% 0.5%
Tools and technologies used to develop and maintain the initiatives 10.0% 35.7% 24.4% 19.9% 8.6% 1.4%
Feedback from participants in the initiatives 20.3% 42.3% 21.6% 11.7% 2.3% 1.8%
SUCCESSHow would you rate the success of your organization’s use of e-learning? (227 responses)
Very successful 5.0%
Somewhat successful 63.4%
Somewhat unsuccessful 18.9%
Very unsuccessful 2.6%
E-LEARNING STRATEGYDoes your organization have a formal, documented strategy for e-learning? (227 responses)
Yes 22.0%
No 72.7%
I’m not sure. 5.3%
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSA 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? (227 responses)
Yes 22.9%
No 74.0%
I’m not sure. 3.1%
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104APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
PRODUCT PRICING PROCESSDo you have a formal, documented process for setting prices for e-learning? (226 responses)
Yes 23.9%
No 67.7%
I’m not sure. 1.3%
We do not charge for our e-learning. 7.1%
MARKETINGHow important is each of the following methods for promoting or marketing your e-learning offerings? (241 responses)
Not important at all
Slightly important
Very important
Absolutely necessary
Direct mail (e.g., printed postcards or letters) 40.5% 40.1% 14.8% 4.6%
Fax 85.6% 9.6% 4.4% 0.4%
Print advertising (e.g., ads in magazines or newspapers) 45.3% 30.8% 19.7% 4.3%
Press releases 58.1% 27.3% 12.8% 1.8%
Targeted e-mails dedicated specifically to e-learning 3.7% 3.3% 19.1% 73.9%
Non-targeted e-mails (e.g., e-learning promotion mixed in with other content in an e-newsletter) 6.7% 22.1% 42.9% 28.3%
Dedicated Web page(s) or “micro-site” 6.8% 21.3% 37.0% 34.9%
Marketing (e.g., banner ads) on your own organizational Web site 17.8% 24.3% 36.5% 21.3%
Marketing (e.g., banner ads) on other Web sites 59.0% 24.0% 13.1% 3.9%
Free access to an archived Webinar or other “demo” offering 30.9% 29.6% 29.6% 9.9%
Web-based video (e.g., testimonials or product highlights) 51.7% 30.9% 15.2% 2.2%
Pay-per-click advertising (e.g., Google AdWords) 82.1% 12.1% 4.5% 1.3%
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, and one question (about the biggest barriers to e-learning) was also asked of those who indicated they had no plans for e-learning within the next 12 months.
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105APPENDIX B: SURVEY DATA
PURPOSE OF E-LEARNING
For what purposes does your organization use or plan to use e-learning? Check all that apply.
Current e-learning (272 responses)
Planned e-learning (55 responses)
Professional development for members 95.6% 85.5%
Professional development for nonmembers 69.5% 54.5%
Training for staff 29.0% 16.4%
Training for affiliated organizations or chapters 22.1% 18.2%
Training for volunteers 29.4% 30.9%
Advocacy and issue education 33.1% 27.3%
Other 7.0% 14.5%
KEY BENEFITSFor 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 (270 responses)
Planned e-learning (55 responses)
Instructional effectiveness versus other modes of training or education 10.4% 12.7%
Cost-effectiveness versus other modes of training or education 73.0% 65.5%
Ability to reach more learners 71.5% 69.1%
Opportunity for learners to direct their own learning 18.1% 25.5%
Convenience for learners 78.5% 72.7%
Ability to generate revenues (e.g. from online product sales) 37.8% 50.9%
Reduction of risk related to educational products by diversifying product line 3.3% 3.6%
Ease of tracking continuing education for learners 6.7% 1.8%
Other 3.0% 1.8%
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THREE BIGGEST BARRIERSWhat are the three biggest barriers your organization has encountered or expects to encounter while developing e-learning initiatives, or what are the three biggest barriers preventing your organization from developing e-learning initiatives? Please check only the three that your organization considers most important.
Current e-learning
(267 responses)
Planned e-learning
(54 responses)
No plans for e-learning
(23 responses)
Concern that costs would exceed financial return 41.6% 51.9% 21.7%
Concern that costs would exceed non-financial return 7.1% 5.6% 17.4%
Lack of funding necessary to implement an e-learning initiative 23.2% 38.9% 39.1%
Concern about the effectiveness of e-learning 26.6% 24.1% 17.4%
Concern about end users’ technology skills 43.1% 24.1% 17.4%
Staff time required to develop the e-learning offerings 40.4% 46.3% 60.9%
Staff time required to support e-learning 31.5% 29.6% 43.5%
Lack of expertise in e-learning 25.1% 42.6% 13.0%
Lack of management buy-in 6.7% 7.4% 8.7%
Resistance from current trainers or facilitators 6.0% 1.9% 4.3%
Fear that stakeholders will not use the e-learning offerings we develop 31.5% 24.1% 26.1%
No perceived need for e-learning 7.1% 0.0% 47.8%
Other 5.2% 3.7% 0.0%
FINANCIAL GOALS FOR E-LEARNINGWhich of the following statements describes your financial goals for your current e-learning offerings or your planned e-learning initiatives?
Current e-learning (265 responses)
Planned e-learning (54 responses)
Must be self-sustaining, but profitability (positive net revenue) is not required 31.3% 27.8%
Must be self-sustaining and profitable (positive net revenue) 52.5% 70.4%
Doesn’t need to be self-sustaining because costs will be subsidized 16.2% 1.9%
MEMBER VERSUS NONMEMBER OFFERINGSTo whom do you or will you offer e-learning?
Current e-learning (255 responses)
Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Members only 12.9% 13.2%
Members and nonmembers 87.1% 77.4%
We don’t know yet NA 9.4%
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CHARGING FOR MEMBERS E-LEARNING
Does your association charge or will it charge members for its e-learning offerings?
Current e-learning for members only
(33 responses)
Current e-learning for members and non
(221 responses)
Planned e-learning for members only(7 responses)
Planned e-learning for
members and non(41 responses)
Yes, we charge/will charge members for all our offerings. 27.3% 32.1% 28.6% 36.6%
Yes, we charge/will charge members for some of our offerings. 33.3% 58.8% 57.1% 48.8%
No, we do not/will not charge members for any of our offerings. 39.4% 9.0% 0.0% 7.3%
We don’t know yet. NA NA 14.3% 7.3%
PRICING OF E-LEARNING: PER CONTENT HOURAssume 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?
Current e-learning for members only
(18 responses)
Current e-learning for members and non
(195 responses)
Planned e-learning for members only (6 responses)
Planned e-learning for
members and non (32 responses)
Mean price per hour of content $64.50 $57.82 $35.83 $46.82
Median price per hour of content $50.00 $40.00 $40.00 $49.50
CREDITS FOR E-LEARNINGDoes your organization currently offer or plan to offer any of the following credit types for e-learning?
Current e-learning (252 responses)
Planned e-learning (49 responses)
Continuing education units (CE or CEU) 58.2% 59.1%
Continuing medical education (CME) 14.7% 18.8%
Continuing legal education (CLE) 13.9% 9.7%
Continuing professional education (CPE) 17.7% 19.4%
Certificate of successful completion 61.0% 76.3%
Credit towards completing or maintaining a certification, licensure, or other credential 56.2% 56.1%
Credit towards a degree at a college or university 5.1% 6.7%
Other 0.0% 0.0%
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MEMBER VERSUS NONMEMBER OFFERINGSTo whom do you offer or plan to offer e-learning?
Current e-learning (255 responses)
Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Members only 58.2% 13.2%
Members and nonmembers 14.7% 77.4%
We don’t know yet. NA 9.4%
CHARGING MEMBERSDoes your organization charge or plan to charge members for its e-learning offerings?
Current e-learning for members and non
(221 responses)
Planned e-learning for members and non
(41 responses)
Yes, we charge members for all our offerings. 32.1% 36.6%
Yes, we charge members for some of our offerings. 58.8% 48.8%
No, we do not charge members for any of our offerings. 9.0% 7.3%
We don’t know yet. NA 7.3%
CHARGING NONMEMBERSDoes your organization charge or plan to charge nonmembers for its e-learning offerings?
Current e-learning for members and non
(216 responses)
Planned e-learning for members and non
(41 responses)
Yes, we charge nonmembers for all our offerings. 58.8% 70.7%
Yes, we charge nonmembers for some of our offerings. 33.8% 26.8%
No, we do not charge nonmembers for any of our offerings. 7.4% 0.0%
We don’t know yet. NA 2.4%
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PRICING OF E-LEARNING: PER CREDIT UNITAssume 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.
Current e-learning for members only
(20 responses)
Current e-learning for members and non
(190 responses)
Planned e-learning for members only(6 responses)
Planned e-learning for
members and non(34 responses)
Not applicable (we do/will not offer credit) 30.0% 24.7% 66.7% 14.7%
Same as per course hour (time and credit are equivalent) 50.0% 58.4% 33.3% 73.5%
Mean price per credit unit $60.00(4 responses)
$83.44 (32 responses)
— (0 responses)
$33.75 (4 responses)
Median price per credit unit $50.00 (4 responses)
$37.50 (32 responses)
— (0 responses)
$30.00 (4 responses)
MEMBER DISCOUNTSDo or will members of your association receive a discount on e-learning products and services?
Current e-learning for members and non
(198 responses)
Planned e-learning for members and non
(40 responses)
No, pricing is the same for members and nonmembers. 7.1% 0.0%
Yes, most or all members receive a 1% to 9% discount. 2.0% 7.5%
Yes, most or all members receive a 10% to 19% discount. 25.8% 15.0%
Yes, most or all members receive a 20% to 29% discount. 28.8% 22.5%
Yes, most or all members receive a 30% to 39% discount. 12.1% 2.5%
Yes, most or all members receive a 40% to 49% discount. 8.6% 5.0%
Yes, most or all members receive a 50% or greater discount. 11.1% 10.0%
Other 4.5% 5.0%
We don’t know yet. NA 32.5%
DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNINGAre 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?
Current e-learning (238 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Entirely in-house 21.4% 1.9%
Using a mixture of in-house and consultants or vendors 66.8% 86.5%
Completely using outside vendors 11.8% 11.5%
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INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERSDoes 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?
Current e-learning(234 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Yes 39.7% 34.6%
No 49.1% 13.5%
I’m not sure./We don’t know yet. 11.1% 51.9%
E-LEARNING PRODUCTS AND SERVICESWhich 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.
Current e-learning (258 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Self-paced online courses, tutorials, or presentations (excluding recorded Webcasts or Webinars) 48.8% 28.8%
Facilitated online courses (excluding Webcasts or Webinars) 22.5% 25.0%
Real-time Webcasts or Webinars 82.9% 57.7%
Recorded or on-demand Webcasts or Webinars 70.9% 63.5%
Audio or video podcasts 36.0% 28.8%
Member-only discussion boards 42.6% 36.5%
Electronic study guides 12.0% 13.5%
E-learning programs combined with classroom-based learning (blended learning) 13.6% 15.4%
Offline formats (e.g., journal articles or classroom-based seminars) with online assessments 17.1% 11.5%
Educational simulations or games 5.4% 3.8%
CD-ROM or DVD-based education 30.2% 9.6%
Third-party “off the shelf” courses 16.3% 13.5%
Other 2.7% 3.8%
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VIRTUAL CONFERENCESA virtual conference is a Web-based event that replicates many aspects of a traditional place-based conference. It features multiple sessions (not just a single Webinar or Webcast) and may include keynote presentations, training and education workshops, discussion areas, social networking opportunities, exhibit areas for vendors, and various other features. Activities in a virtual conference may take place in real time (synchronously), on demand (asynchronously), or in some combination of the two. Does your organization offer a virtual conference, or does it plan to offer one in the next 12 months?
Current e-learning(257 responses)
Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Yes 11.7% 3.8%
No NA 69.8%
No, but plan to in the next 6 months 5.8% NA
No, but plan to in the next 12 months 17.9% NA
No, and do not plan to in the next 12 months 64.6% NA
We don’t know yet. NA 26.4%
MOBILE LEARNINGDo you offer or plan to provide a mobile version (i.e., a version specially formatted to be easily viewed and navigated on a mobile phone) for some or all of your e-learning content?
Current e-learning(257 responses)
Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Yes 8.9% 3.8%
No 91.1% 37.7%
We don’t know yet. NA 58.5%
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AUTHORING TOOLSWhich of the following authoring tools, if any, does your association use or plan to use for creating e-learning?
Current e-learning (203 responses)
Planned e-learning (51 responses)
Adobe Captivate 15.3% 3.9%
Adobe Dreamweaver 15.8% 3.9%
Adobe Flash 30.0% 5.9%
Articulate 15.3% 5.9%
Camtasia 13.3% 3.9%
Lectora (Trivantis) 5.9% 0.0%
Outstart Trainer (Outstart) 0.0% 0.0%
PowerPoint 75.4% 17.6%
ReadyGo 0.5% 0.0%
SumTotal Toolbook 0.0% 0.0%
Tools provided in your learning management system (LMS) or learning content management system (LCMS) 18.7% 3.9%
Other 10.8% 3.9%
We don’t know yet. NA 82.4%
WEBINAR PLATFORMSWhich of the following Webinar software platforms, if any, does your association currently use or plan to use for e-learning? Check all that apply.
Current e-learning (224 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Adobe Connect 16.1% 5.8%
Elluminate 3.1% 1.9%
Genesys 3.1% 0.0%
GoToMeeting (including GoToWebinar and GoToTraining) 44.2% 29%
Microsoft LiveMeeting 14.3% 2%
ReadyTalk 5.8% 3.8%
WebEx 25.0% 14%
Wimba 0.4% 0.0%
Other 27.2% 9.6%
We don’t know yet. NA 61.5%
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SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLSWhich 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.)
Current e-learning (229 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Blog 15.7% 13.5%
Discussion forums 36.2% 32.7%
Microblogging tools (e.g., Twitter) 20.1% 11.5%
Photo-sharing sits (e.g., Flickr) 7.0% 1.9%
Podcasts 24.0% 13.5%
Private social networking site (only approved users can join) 20.1% 17.3%
Publicly available social networking site (anyone can register) 24.5% 11.5%
Slide-sharing sites (e.g., Slideshare.net) 4.8% 7.7%
Social bookmarking tools (e.g., Delicious or Diigo) 0.9% 0.0%
Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) 0.9% 0.0%
Web video sites (e.g., YouTube or blip.tv) 17.5% 17.3%
Wiki 7.4% 0.0%
We do not use/plan to use any social media tools. 34.9% 7.7%
We don’t know yet. NA 53.8%
Other 4.8% 1.9%
USE OF A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMDoes 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?
Current e-learning (233 responses)
Planned e-learning (52 responses)
Yes 32.6% 17.3%
No NA 19.2%
No, but we plan to start in the next 12 months 13.3% NA
No, and we do not plan to start in the next 12 months 42.5% NA
I’m not sure./We don’t know yet. 11.6% 63.5%
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LMS AND LCMS PACKAGESWhich of the following LMS and/or LCMS packages does your organization currently use or plan to use? Check all that apply.
Current e-learning (76 responses)
Planned e-learning (9 responses)
Avilar 0.0% 0.0%
Blackboard 2.6% 0.0%
CertiLearn 0.0% 0.0%
Digital Ignite 2.6% 0.0%
Digitec Interactive 1.3% 0.0%
Educadium 0.0% 0.0%
GeoLearning 0.0% 0.0%
iCohere 0.0% 0.0%
Interactyx 2.6% 0.0%
IntraLearn 0.0% 0.0%
Learn.com 2.6% 0.0%
LearningSpan 0.0% 0.0%
LearnSomething 2.6% 0.0%
Meridian Knowledge Solutions 0.0% 0.0%
Moodle 7.9% 11.1%
Outstart 1.3% 0.0%
Peach New Media 15.8% 0.0%
Plateau 0.0% 0.0%
Results Direct 2.6% 0.0%
Saba 0.0% 0.0%
Sakai 1.3% 0.0%
TotalLMS (SumTotal) 1.3% 0.0%
WBT Systems 2.6% 0.0%
Web Courseworks 0.0% 0.0%
Custom or proprietary 17.1% 0.0%
Other 27.6% 44.4%
I’m not sure./We don’t know yet. 11.8% 66.7%
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USE OF AN ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMFor purposes of this survey, an association management system, or AMS, is a type of technology that performs a range of functions for managing a membership organization. There are many providers for these systems, but some popular examples include iMIS (Advanced Solutions), netFORUM (Avectra), and Personify (TMA Resources). Does your organization currently use an association management system (AMS)?
Current e-learning (76 responses)
Planned e-learning (9 responses)
Yes 78.9% 66.7%
No 18.4% 22.2%
Not sure 2.6% 11.1%
AMS PACKAGESWhich of the following AMS packages does your organization currently use? Check all that apply.
Current e-learning (60 responses)
Planned e-learning (6 responses)
ACGI Software 1.7% 0.0%
Advanced Systems International (iMIS) 23.3% 16.7%
Affiniscape 8.3% 0.0%
Aptify 3.3% 0.0%
Avectra 10.0% 16.7%
CDC gomembers 0.0% 16.7%
Euclid 1.7% 0.0%
internet4associations (i4a) 3.3% 0.0%
IRM Systems 0.0% 0.0%
Protech 3.3% 0.0%
TMA Resources 16.7% 0.0%
Wild Apricot 0.0% 0.0%
Custom or proprietary 6.7% 16.7%
Other 20.0% 33.3%
I’m not sure. 6.7% 0.0%
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LMS/AMS INTEGRATIONAre 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 (60 responses)
Planned e-learning (6 responses)
Yes, the two systems are/will be integrated. 55.0% 83.3%
No, the two systems are not/will not be integrated, but we plan to integrate them in the future. 21.7% 16.7%
No, the two systems are not/will not be integrated, and we have no plans for integration. 21.7% 0.0%
I’m not sure./We don’t know yet. 1.7% 0.0%
ADHERENCE TO GUIDELINES AND STANDARDSHow 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 (227 responses) Not important at all
Slightly important
Very important
Absolutely necessary
Not sure
AICC (Airline Industry CBT Committee) 76.6% 2.8% 1.4% 2.8% 16.5%
IMS Global Learning Consortium 72.4% 6.5% 0.9% 0.5% 19.8%
MedBiquitous 73.8% 4.2% 1.4% 0.5% 20.1%
SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) 50.9% 10.2% 7.1% 15.0% 16.8%
Section 508 (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) 57.7% 9.4% 7.5% 6.6% 18.8%
Planned e-learning (47 responses) Not important at all
Slightly important
Very important
Absolutely necessary
Don’t know
AICC (Airline Industry CBT Committee) 50.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.2% 47.8%
IMS Global Learning Consortium 40.0% 0.0% 2.2% 2.2% 55.6%
MedBiquitous 42.2% 0.0% 0.0% 2.2% 55.6%
SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) 37.0% 0.0% 6.5% 4.3% 52.2%
Section 508 (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) 31.1% 4.4% 4.4% 6.7% 53.3%
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DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR E-LEARNINGWhich department or division of your organization holds or will hold primary responsibility for e-learning?
Current e-learning (239 responses)
Planned e-learning (53 responses)
Education or professional development 70.3% 49.1%
Member services 5.4% 9.4%
Marketing 1.7% 1.9%
Technology 2.1% 1.9%
Other 7.1% 3.8%
We don’t have departments or divisions. 13.0% 20.8%
I’m not sure./We don’t know yet. 0.4% 13.2%
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)? (301 responses)
Single-community or municipality focus 2.0%
Multiple-community focus within one state 5.0%
Single-state or province focus 21.6%
Multistate or multiprovince focus 3.7%
National focus 40.5%
International focus 27.2%
TYPE OF ORGANIZATIONWhich of the following best characterizes your organization? (300 responses)
Charitable or philanthropic organization 3.0%
Trade association 35.3%
Professional society 49.3%
Educational institution 4.0%
Other 8.3%
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ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT COMPANYDo you work for your association through an association management company? (356 responses)
Yes 11.0%
No 89.0%
CERTIFICATION PROGRAMDoes your organization offer a formal certification program? (301 responses)
Yes 37.5%
No 62.5%
CONTINUING EDUCATIONDoes 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? (301 responses)
Yes 59.5%
No 40.5%
BUDGET SIZEWhat is your organization’s annual budget? (290 responses)
Less than $100,000 3.4%
$100,001 to $500,000 12.8%
$500,001 to $1,000,000 14.5%
$1,000,001 to $5,000,000 36.6%
$5,000,001 to $10,000,000 9.7%
$10,000,001 to $25,000,000 11.7%
$25,000,001 to $50,000,000 5.9%
$50,000,001 to $100,000,000 2.4%
More than $100,000,000 3.1%
INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIPHow many active individual members does your organization currently have? (299 responses)
1,000 or less 18.7%
1,001 to 5,000 24.1%
5,001 to 10,000 16.4%
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10,001 to 25,000 14.4%
25,001 to 50,000 4.3%
50,001 to 100,000 5.0%
More than 100,000 4.3%
We have only organizational members 12.7%
ORGANIZATIONAL MEMBERSHIPHow many active organizational members does your organization currently have? (293 responses)
Less than 100 18.1%
101 to 200 9.2%
201 to 500 13.3%
501 to 1,000 10.6%
1,001 to 5,000 13.3%
More than 5,000 3.1%
We have only individual members. 32.4%
CLASSIFICATIONWhich of the following classifications (from the North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS) most closely aligns with the audience served by your organization? If you wish to review the classifications to see where your organization fits, you may do so at http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/sssd/naics/naicsrch?chart=2007. (296 responses)
Administrative and support and waste management and remediation services 0.3% Mining 0.0%
Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 0.7% Professional, scientific, and technical services 18.9%
Arts, entertainment, and recreation 3.0% Public administration 3.4%
Construction 6.8% Real estate and rental and leasing 2.4%
Education services 12.5% Retail trade 1.7%
Finance and insurance 4.4% Transportation and warehousing 2.7%
Healthcare and social assistance 20.3% Utilities 1.0%
Information 0.7% Wholesale trade 0.7%
Management of companies and enterprises 1.7% Other 17.2%
Manufacturing 1.7%
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STAFFHow many paid staff does your organization currently have? (300 responses)
1 to 5 23.7%
6 to 10 17.3%
11 to 15 12.3%
16 to 30 13.0%
31 to 50 9.3%
50 to 100 12.3%
101 to 250 7.7%
251 to 500 2.7%
More than 500 1.7%
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121ABOUT TAGORAS
This report is published by Tagoras, Inc. (www.tagoras.com). Through a combination of independent research and strategic consulting, Tagoras helps organizations maximize the impact and revenue potential of their educational offerings. We provide our clients with a unique blend of experience in marketing, technology, and education and back it up with years of successful projects with clients like the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing, Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders (NICHE), Booke Seminars (a Division of Aon), Advanced Energy, and CASTLE Worldwide. Other Tagoras reports include Association Learning Management Systems, Association Virtual Conferences, and Learning 2.0 for Associations.
About the AuthorsAll the research and writing for this report were done by Tagoras principals Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele.
JEFF COBB
A managing director at Tagoras, Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the world of marketing, education, and technology. He was cofounder and CEO of Isoph, a leading provider of e-learning technologies and services to associations. He has also served as senior vice president of business development for Quisic, an e-learning partner to top-tier business schools and fortune 500 companies, and as vice president of business development for LearnSomething.
Jeff is an award-winning teacher, author of the highly popular Learning 2.0 for Associations, and co-author of Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education (www.shiftedtransformation.com),
published by Corwin. He has served on the Professional Development Section Council of the American Society of Association Executives as well as on the research committee of the eLearning Guild and the editorial board of Innovate, a leading resource for information about technology and education.
Jeff speaks frequently about the impact of new technologies on business, education, and society in general. More information about his speaking is available on his personal Web site at www.jeffthomascobb.com.
CELISA STEELECelisa has led the development of successful online education sites with smaller groups like the Frameworks Institute and the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services and 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, where she serves as editor-in-chief of the company’s research publications. She was cofounder and COO 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 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.
Celisa is a published poet (www.celisasteele.com).
About TagorasPublisher of the Report
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