News
E-Learning at Oracle
- By Scott Bekker
- 11/03/2000
Next week
Oracle Corp.
will formally announce its new online learning network. The new part of Oracle University will allow users at all levels to subscribe to the company’s e-learning facilities.
Oracle University has been training its employees and
customers for a while now in a classroom-based setting. But recently, Oracle decided
it would be more cost-effective and time-efficient -- for both the company and
its end users -- to put learning into the hands of the students.
After testing the e-learning model internally on Oracle
employees, the company decided to roll it out to the public. In the online
classroom model, users purchase a subscription for one year -- at a cost of
$1195 -- that gives them access to all the lessons on the Oracle Learning
Network (OLN).
Instead of spending days in the classroom and giving up
valuable work time and spending a good deal more money, subscribers can access
lessons -- that are broken up into about hour sessions -- and learn at their
own pace, on their own time.
“With the new model, classes are more like two hours long,
rather than the two days of classroom training,” says Chris Pirie, vice
president at Oracle University.
Users will be able to access the most current information
relevant to them, or they can take series of classes that will prep them for
Oracle certification -- in much less time than in a purely classroom setting.
“With this we have an e-learning fast track. For those
without base level experience to take all the certification classes would take
about 22 days in the classroom. At $450 per day that equals almost $10,000. By
applying e-learning, we’ve cut the 22 day program and instead you come to the
classroom for 10 days, five at the beginning and five at the end,” Pirie says.
At this pace, he says, a program that would take 15-18 months in the classroom
would take about 15-18 weeks with the online and classroom learning
combination.
Currently Oracle is offering about 80 hours of content, but it
expects that to grow to about 600 hours during the next year. Interested
parties may go to the Oracle University
site for free trial subscription that allows them to view about 30 hours of
content. –Alicia Costanza
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.