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Podium
The Business of Training and Education
Donald G. Perrin Ph.D., Journal Editor
I was shocked when one of my online students said that “downtime was a problem with elearning.” I asked for an explanation, and then went into a research mode. This is what I found.
Our educational systems that existed for so long with handwritten teacher notes, spirit duplicators, and hand-me-down technology have leaped into the future with cable video and networked computers. Some schools and colleges still use 20-year-old television equipment, but their computers are closer to state-of-the-art. Some institutions pride themselves with providing seamless service, while others still work nine-to-five and hope nothing goes down on nights and weekends. The internet is available 7 x 24 x 365. Outages even for a few minutes are featured in the national news because of the severity of the economic impact on business.
Schools and colleges tolerate system problems that are unacceptable in the business world. Obsolete equipment is less and less a reason, which redirects the focus to management, operations, and how to cater better to the needs of instructors and learners. As electronic technologies break down the walls of the classroom to make the entire community a learning environment, they extend the learning organization into a 24 x 7 x 365 environment.
Training organizations in high-tech industries, along with larger and more experienced online universities, have adopted the new performance standards. Who then are the transgressors that have so much down-time?
My immediate research found the majority of complaints came from persons using modems on POTS – Plain Old Telephone Service. As you move away from the large cities there is a lot of older telephone equipment still in use. The technology is inferior to DSL and Cable modems, or the T1, T3 or OC-12 connections used by providers of online learning.
As a persons who has worked in large cities and in the Silicon Valley, I forget what 33K and 56K modems are like until I stay in an older hotel in a not so major city. I connect my laptop to the telephone, and suddenly downtime is no longer an issue. The problem is uptime - how to get a connection that works!