Virtual Business Learning Center Becky Haugen Instructiona Learning Technology

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Synopsis
Action Research into developing a virtual business learning center for a small business consulting company called Entrepreneur Strategies.

Problem Statement

Entrepreneur Strategies, a small business consulting company, needs a more comprehensive system to provide instruction and information to clients. The current systems of providing timely information and require an upgrade to the system.

Analysis

Scope
Entrepreneur Strategies recognizes the need to provide value through instructional products and information to clients. Emerging technologies allow for more dynamic sharing of resources that allow real-time delivery of information and data to clients electronically. The concept of a virtual business-learning center is of interest to the business as a delivery vehicle. Entrepreneur Strategies does not have any evidence that this type of learning community will address the primary concerns of providing information to clients efficiently and adding value to our clients. Additionally, the business would like to provide instructional and interactive ways of communicating with clients in the future, but how to implement these kinds of tools on the web requires additional research and data review.

The Audience
Entrepreneur Strategies clients range from large companies to sole-proprietors. Many of the clients using the services need basic business experience or assistance with their business structure. Most clients have some experience with technology and can use email, the Internet, and most office software. The technology skill level of the clientele range from novice to expert.

The Learning Environment
Entrepreneur Strategies offers services and content to clients through email, face-to-face meetings, and professional development sessions. The scope of content changes depending on the clients and content can often be reused depending on the business situation. The learning environment needs to be at the convenience of the learner and will depend on their personal computing environment. Most learners will be accessing the learning content from their home computer and will have slow Internet access, and environmental interruptions. The learners will be able to access the content, but may not have ideal learning and Internet environments.

Client Supports
One of the main challenges is providing real-time information to the clients. The current system depends on the consultant to hand deliver, fax, or mail learning and documents to the client. Some of the content can be reused with different clients. The variety of supports are often in formats that are not electronic and require providing copies, whether this is through the mail or through fax or modem. Client supports include e-mail communication, documents, manuals, forms, templates, job aids, and articles. With the Internet, some of the resources we use with our clients are already on-line and available on the web. Some of the client resources are proprietary and shared only with clients.

Technology Infrastructure
Entrepreneur Strategies has a website that is hosted on a Windows server. Any additional applications beyond the existing business web site would need to be compatible with this infrastructure. Clients using our services are most often on modems, making high speed a distant option for applications that require bandwidth and speed. Most clients are have a personal computer and Internet access.

Constraints
Entrepreneur Strategies is a small business without a lot of extra resources for technology development and implementation. The staff has some technical background, but cannot invest a lot of time to develop new systems and troubleshoot larger enterprise software applications. The limitations of time, resources, and staffing make implementing any large software applications a planning and management issue. Decisions on how to address any technology changes in the business would need to be carefully examined before full implementation is possible.

Client constraints most commonly are related to the comfort of a user accessing the Internet and using a software application or user interface for a new technology. Usually, once the client has experience with the software they are not intimidated with the tools and using the information. The initial discomfort of our clients to get up to speed and start using a system would be training and educational constraint that would need to be addressed in the implementation of any program.

Rationale

Data Collection & Approach
The full documentation of the data collection and action research project is available for review.

The question of whether a virtual business learning center would provide the needed resources to clients, while providing the relief for the business in micro-managing the content and resources to clients was the focus of the research. A brief synopsis of key points are provided below.
For this action research there were five primary areas for research: (one) a delivery system of information to clients, (two) a resource center for clientele (three) a system scalable to small business, (four) technologies to create a learning center for Entrepreneur Strategies, and (five) marketing and business requirements. The following questions guided the inquiry:

What does a learning center for a small business (consulting) look like?

What are the existing technologies used in learning centers?

How is the learning center organized?

What services should we include in our learning center?

What do clients expect in a learning center?

What are the business considerations?

During the research and investigative portion of the action research it was determined that further structure for the research needed to be developed to contain the kinds of research that were being gathered. The scope was further defined:

The Virtual Learning Center (VLC) must be Internet based. Many learning centers are based on delivery of services using traditional school (face-to-face) or ground learning centers and are not offered on the Internet.
The VLC must contain learner supports. The websites needed basic attributes to be considered for the review: a contact us link, a web site index or map and one other form of learner support. A full list of learner supports are listed in both the report and the final presentation

The research included a review of literature related to virtual learning communities and learner supports, a learner survey, a virtual business survey, and a brief review of technologies.

Value

The data and knowledge collected by conducting the action research provides the foundation for business planning and implementation of a virtual business-learning center. The research was very helpful to build a body of knowledge related to virtual learning communities, virtual learning centers and virtual business learning centers. The types of knowledge that was collected helped to solidify the information in a manner that will make the development and implementation more useful for the business.

The data generated by the action research helped to solidify some of the key elements of learner supports and developing and implementing a virtual business learning community. By reviewing the existing models Entrepreneur Strategies now knows what the competition and models in this area are and can plan accordingly.

The most important value and understanding gained from this action research project was the understanding on learner supports. The indicators from the learner survey provided substantial information on what learner supports are important to the users. This information will be utilized in the development and planning of this VBLC as a key component.

Reflection

One of the key areas discovered through this process included the use of learner supports. The learner survey was very helpful to identify areas the learners would anticipate or expect to have provided in the area of learner supports. We were especially interested to find that more often the learner supports that were identified as important to the learner were in fact not being provided in the virtual learning communities. The data from the learner survey will provide the owners with some key information on how to plan learner supports into the infrastructure of the virtual business-learning center.

Additionally, the evidence indicated that most business-oriented sites that are calling themselves virtual business learning centers do not meet the minimum requirements of learner supports. When reviewing sites I realized that the business community is not providing basic learner supports. This knowledge would not have been available to me had I not conducted a formal action research project in this area.

The action research provided some very interesting perspective in developing knowledge around this topic. I chose to do a broad scope project that allowed me to interview current virtual business learner centers. In these interviews I was able to discover that more often than not these virtual learning centers were in fact not providing basic learner supports. I conducted a learner survey using the Internet that allowed me to experience administering a survey and reviewing the results. I researched literature and found that there is more knowledge in the area of virtual learning communities, but nothing specific to virtual business learning centers. More learning communities are communities of practice, which are driven by a different set of criteria than a business-learning environment. Additionally, I was able to explore the topic of learner supports for virtual learning environments and discover this is an area that is still in development in the literature.

Responsibilities

#1: Continued improvement of professional practice that requires critical inquiry, professional development and reflective practice.

The action research required professional inquiry into the area of virtual learning environments. I conducted formal research by administering a learner survey, reviewing and analyzing the results, conducting a survey of VBLC owners, and a formal literature review. The information is being utilized to implement a VBLC program and has deepened my understanding of virtual learning in my profession.

#6: Uses incisive and relevant assessment and evaluation techniques (e.g., product or project which uses formative and/or summative evaluations).

This project utilized a formal survey that was completed by users on-line using Survey Monkey. The data was evaluated and assessed to give objective and insightful understanding of the information being assessed. Specifically, this survey was designed to elicit information about the users, learner supports and expectations of a user of the VBLC.

A formal inquiry of models of VBLC was conducted and interviews were administered to determine the type of business, the use of technology, the provision of learner supports and virtual learning community supports.

The data between the learner survey and the VBLC was compared to show and contrast what VBLCs are providing and what learners expect. The data was then utilized to create objective knowledge about the gaps between users expectations and the VBLCs fulfillment of these expectations. The knowledge was quite useful to determine where there are fundamentally differences between the user expectations and the fulfillment of providing learner supports to users of the VBLC.