Big companies like Boeing and Chevron naturally have hundreds of courses to offer to their thousands of employees around the world. In the pre-Web world, just administering those courses was a huge task. Now, most of that has moved to the Web.
Employees of these and other corporations can check out course offerings that are available and that they might be interested in. If they choose, they can receive e-mail alerts for certain types of classes when they become available.
In many corporate systems, not only can you find an excellent description of the course and when it will be offered, you can also see comments from people who have taken the course already.
People considering a course generally find actual participant comments to be some of the most powerful information that they can get. That's especially true if the participants are willing to answer follow-up
e-mails to clarify points.
Sometimes course materials are also made available so folks can see exactly what it is that they're going to be studying.
Finally, many corporations put actual registration processes online rather than handling them through a paper-based system.
Making It Work
:
If you're going to allow comments from course attendees to be made available, it's best not to censor them. It's too easy for folks in the company to find out and assume that the comments are all being censored so that only good ones show up. That's a credibility loser that's far more dangerous than a few negative comments about particular courses.
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 30 July 2002
This is only one Big Idea. You'll find more in Wally's book, What's the Big Idea? and in his Big Idea column. There's a complete list on the Main Big Idea page. You may also order the book by clicking here.
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