eeping IS staff current on the latest technologies is a daunting task when the staff works in the same building. So keeping off-site staff
up-to-date poses even more challenges for IS managers.
Lucent Technologies, the networking technology spin-off of AT&T, may have found the answer in videoconferencing. Lucent has set up video labs at five sites in Colorado, Illinois, and New Jersey to train staff in Microsoft Office, Internet browsing, and project management. The Piscataway, N.J., company will use the LearnLinc LAN/WAN videoconferencing system from Interactive Learning International Corp. (ILinc) of Troy, N.Y.
LearnLinc lets companies conduct live, instructor-led training sessions online, replicating a classroom experience. The system even lets viewer-students raise their hands to participate-just as if they were in a conventional classroom. The trainer can call on an individual, whose image will then appear on the screens of every online classmate.
So far, some Lucent participants say they prefer LearnLinc to standard classroom settings, says Alan Cohen, a district manager for Lucent who has organized the training program. He sa
ys these participants find the two-way video system easy to work with-and they appreciate not having to look at the backs of people's heads.
In Lucent's training programs, students gather online on Mondays and Wednesdays. The courses include a mix of lectures and self-paced multimedia work-with deadlines for getting the work done. "With self-paced multimedia alone, people don't attend to it," notes Cohen. "They postpone it when there's no deadline with their peers."
Lucent has taken other steps to make the system more palatable. "We put students on for 90 minutes at a time so they're not sitting at a terminal all day," says Cohen.
Last week, ILinc announced version 2.0 of the LearnLinc LAN/WAN system. The upgrade will deliver additional features that will let users launch Web-based material, view and use software applications in real time, and allow instructors to "look over the shoulders" of online students.
Version 2.0, which sells for $50,000 for 100 concurrent users, includes Intel's ProS
hare videoconferencing technology and Internet Protocol multicasting to reduce bandwidth requirements. Customers can also set up labs where participants physically attend a class but perform some work at their own workstations. Each lab requires a network connection of at least 500 Kbps, multicasting routers, and a 75-MHz or higher Intel Pentium processor.
Lightening The Load
LearnLinc can also assist companies whose training instructors face demanding schedules. At investment banking and brokerage firm First Albany Cos., instructors conceivably can be on the road 200 days a year offering instruction to investment bankers and financial analysts at some 25 sites on the latest tax laws, world market conditions, and insurance rules. LearnLinc helps lighten that load for the Albany, N.Y., company, which considers training a critical application.
"Clients today want strategic financial planning for some event they're planning, like a summer home or a college education," says Michael Lindburg, a
senior VP and managing director of retail sales for First Albany. "Enhancing the training of our analysts is value to our clients." With LearnLinc, "the trainer can get to every office every day," adds Lindburg.
First Albany expects its LearnLinc-based program to be fully rolled out by year's end.
Of the program's value, Lindburg says, "The ability to communicate new ideas, changing interest rates, and changing global environments, with advanced graphics, is unprecedented."
Back to Careers
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page
eeping IS staff current on the latest technologies is a daunting task when the staff works in the same building. So keeping off-site staff
up-to-date poses even more challenges for IS managers.
