Has it been a year already?

As I looked at the September 1st date on my calendar I was amazed. No, it wasn't just the amazement that summer is gone - as well as a good portion of the year - or that there are only 115 shopping days left until Christmas. I was amazed that we have been implementing and utilizing our eLearning program for a year. We have come a long way and I thought I'd reminisce a bit.

May 2008 - I started with my company and was assigned as project lead for looking at alternative training delivery methods. I began research to establish baseline cost information for the "as is" picture or our training delivery.

June 2008 - Project kicked off and the real work began. Through the month of June we evaluated many options to meet our needs of delivering training and reducing travel costs.

July 21, 2008 - Made recommendations for alternative training methods. This was the start of our current blended training delivery and the beginning of utilizing eLearning solutions for our training programs.

August 2008 - Developed our implementation plan. This required the purchase and installation of rapid development software and learning how to use it.

September 8, 2008 - First eLearning course completed!!

This timeline makes it look simple and without the bumps in the road (which there were many). It is nice to look back now and see where we are compared to where we were.

Today our training delivery looks a bit different. We have 17 web-based training courses published. We are utilizing web-based meetings and webinars for trainings on a regular basis and have trained many employees through these options and I have 7 web-based training projects in the works for additional training opportunities. These numbers don't include any of the video projects I'm working on for use in our recruiting efforts which has been another interesting development for us. The most exciting thing for me is our cost savings over the past year of ....(drum roll please).....more than $11,500 while still providing quality training to our employees.

It has been quite a year!