Class Act

Entrepreneur, August, 2000

LOOKS LIKE A CLASS? SMELLS LIKE A CLASS? NOT AT ALL, BUT AS FAR AS LEARNING GOES, ONLINE TRAINING DOES A PRETTY GOOD VIRTUAL IMPERSONATION.

YOU'VE GOT EMPLOYEES TO HIRE, A LIST OF CLIENTS CLAMORING FOR ATTENTION AND A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH THE LADIES ROOM ON THE SECOND FLOOR. YOU'D LOVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL TO ENRICH YOURSELF AND YOUR BUSINESS, BUT FRANKLY, IT'D BE EASIER TO FIND AN EXTRA MILLION DOLLARS THAN TO FIND EXTRA TIME IN YOUR DAY.

We at Entrepreneur understand your needs--you want to keep learning, but in the most efficient manner possible. So we sent our writers into virtual classrooms to find out whether online business classes are worth your time and money. What we found is that, though these classes are far less time-consuming than your typical brick-and-mortar university term, they are often valuable. To find out what subjects we tackled and who got detention in homeroom, read on.

WORLDLY ADVICE

Class: Around the World in 80 Cultures

Where: www.headlight.com (Click on "Business," then "International Etiquette.")

Cost: $99.95

Duration: two to four hours

We technology writers aren't known for our stunning social skills. I'm more likely to write HTML than practice my business etiquette. That's why a virtual class sounds great: I take it on the Internet...any time I want to. My virtual class went into (literally) foreign territory for me: "Around the World in 80 Cultures." Business etiquette. Worldwide. Time for a tech hermit to learn some social graces.

Headlight.com was the home of this country-hopping excursion. Headlight acts a lot like a library collecting business courses created by other providers and organizing them into categories. It also offers features for managers and business owners. You can build and keep team profiles for your employees and check their course progress and transcripts.

Signing up was quick and painless. SkillSoft Corp. (www.skillsoft.com), a developer of technology-based educational products, created the class, but everything is handled through Headlight. Included in the sign-up fee is access to the course for one year. Assigning courses to a team? You'll have to buy the course for each person.

After hitting the "Start" button, I got a course overview. The SkillSoft Course Player interface acts a lot like a regular Web page. You can also take mastery pretests that allow for an accelerated course that skips what you know. This is handy for busy business owners, but I went in for the full experience.

The course spans four sections: "Cultural Roots," "Cultural Mindsets," "Louder Than Words" and "Intercultural Business Protocols." The best parts of the class dealt with real-world situations. Did you know the Zulus have 39 words for green? That you shouldn't send yellow flowers to a European businesswoman? (Yellow suggests she's been unfaithful.) That gifts given to Asians should be wrapped in red, not white? (White means bad luck.)

The majority of "Around the World in 80 Cultures" deals with Asian, Arab and Eastern European customs. There were a lot of textbook-style terms, such as "Linear-Active" culture versus "Multi-Active" culture, and short pop quizzes at the end of each section. Dialogues between imaginary businesspeople and a role-playing section livened things up a bit, one advantage a virtual class has over a textbook. As predicted, I spent one hour per day over three days-probably the shortest class I've ever taken.

"Around the World in 80 Cultures" isn't a comprehensive guide to international business protocol, but it's a solid primer. If you're taking a trip abroad or expecting to receive foreign businesspeople, the information on face-to-face encounters and decision-making styles will come in handy. It didn't turn me into a social business butterfly, but I'll know not to blow my nose in public if I ever go to Japan.

Amanda C. Kooser

NOW IS THE TIME

Class: It's About Time!: Managing Your Time Effectively

Where:www.smartplanet.com (in the "Career & Business" section)

Cost: $19.95, but you get one complimentary class when you sign up for free membership at SmartPlaner.

Duration about 40 minutes

It's panic time, right? "I'm late on this contract proposal, I have a million things to do, the phone won't stop ringing, and I'm going to pull my hair out." If this is you, SmartPlanet.com's time-management course might help.

As a card-carrying procrastinator, I was the poster child for misusing time. I would get bogged down in the tiny details of my daily duties and postpone the big, important ones-precisely because they were really big and important and therefore seemed insurmountable. In short, I was the perfect test case for a class like this: If it could modify my habits, it could help anyone.

Because books, college extension courses and seminars overflow with time-management advice, I didn't know whether SmartPlanet would offer anything new: It does. The class is broken up into 13 sections, each designed to tackie the causes and effects of time waste. The final section even has nifty printable organization lists (to-do list, master list, task-tracking sheet, etc.)