Deconstructing E-Learning

Most of the 94 courses are based on off-the-shelf software; Guthrie reckons that it costs less than £10 per employee per online course.

Blended learning can also be found at Hilton and in many cases, web-based courses are offered as preparatory tutorials before face-to-face courses. For example, online finance courses were recommended to a group of senior managers as way to brush up on the basics before attending a residential program entitled "Commercial behavior" at IMD, the Lausanne-based business school.

In other cases, however, Guthrie is happy to use traditional E-learning.

Consider finance. The empirical nature of the discipline lends itself to online self-study, says Ken Scott, CEO of London-based Intellexis, which provided 21 E-learning finance courses to Hilton. After the Intellexis courses were piloted with small groups in Germany in 2001, they were customized before launch last year, mostly in order to use vocabulary specific to the hotel business. For example: "incremental conversion" replaced "marginal profitability," while "revenue per available room" was substituted for income.

Today, five of the ten most popular online courses at Hilton are finance related. In fact, "Introduction to financial statements" is at the top of the list.

Guthrie now wants to expand the reach of the program further, and has earmarked £50,000 this year to develop customized management courses for sales and reservations employees. As far as Guthrie is concerned, using a combination of classroom courses, E-learning and blended learning gets top marks.

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