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Advancing e-learning implementation in Financial Services conference

Fortis Bank discovers the challenges of home learning

Presenter: Kristien Bergans, E-Learning Manager, Fortis Bank

This Belgian bank introduced a learning portal with an LMS back end to house learning content which staff could chose to do from home. Providing learners with home access, however, led directly to one of the toughest challenges this project faced - the issue of technical support. The issue arises because with home access, content is being delivered to unknown client machines.

65% of home users had a problem of some kind, and these were almost all of a technical nature. Fortis introduced a help desk to help solve some of these technical issues.

A fairly widespread area of confusion was over bandwidth and its impact on the speed of downloads. As a result of feedback from the help desk, Fortis put a bandwidth indicator on the portal, to help people establish whether they were dialing in at a time of heavy traffic, and might be better off rescheduling their learning to a less busy period.

The helpdesk worked extremely well in introducing the learners, 92% of whom had never done an e-learning programme before, to this new delivery method. Where the technical issues might potentially have been a serious barrier to e-learning adoption, the provision of a sensitive and responsive helpdesk facility actually helped encourage continued use.

This was reflected in the post-project evaluation. Of those that did the learning, 90% felt they had learned from the course and 95% were keen to continue in that way.

The introduction of the platform has had wider repercussions too, causing the organisation to look at how face-to-face workshops can be blended with online learning. The results of this exercise have also been encouraging. In a recent survey 80% of learners felt that blended learning was better than traditional face-to-face, citing the chance that e-learning gave them to learn at their own pace as a significant improvement. Subsequently, 'classroom' events have been redesigned to be more experiential, interactive and interesting.

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