CUSTOMER LEARNING BLENDS WITH EMPLOYEE LEARNING - According to Elliott Masie of the Masie Institute, more and more companies are adding customer education to their eLearning strategy. While employee training and development is a natural subject for the growth of eLearning, there is often a larger opportunity and need in the education and learning requirements of customers. This includes pre-sale and post-sale support and knowledge transfer. A number of Masie's contacts in large organizations have reported that they are now being given the added responsibility of developing an eLearning strategy for customer education. They are investigating several options for blending customer and employee training efforts:

Leveraging learning development and delivery systems to include customer education, stretching the normal use of a learning management system to include customers or prospects.
Leveraging content to be reusable for diverse audiences, using the same content for product education, with different formats or intensity, for both employee and customer education.
Developing an eLearning Strategy that includes customer education.
Stretching the traditional training structure to include or partner with customer education. (TechLearn Trends #185 18 Sept 00)
LESSON PLAN WRITTEN BY INDUSTRY - High-school students in Prince William County, VA, now have the opportunity, with support from Microsoft and Cisco Systems, to receive IT certification in addition to a regular diploma. The firms are providing the latest hardware and software, training teachers, and also assisting in the development of the curriculum, and say they are preparing the students for the new economy regardless of whether the students end up working in the IT industry. Some educators are concerned, however, that the companies are merely looking for ways to reverse the shortage of trained information technology workers, projected at 800,000 within the next year according to the Information Technology Association of America, and that the programs will not give students a balanced education. The firms respond that the skills they teach are applicable to nearly any job in any industry. The new programs are so popular that participating schools are turning away students. (Washington Post, 12 Sept 00 - Edupage 13 Sept 00)