New Guard 2002 - electronic learning and employee training - Statistical Data Included

T+D, May, 2002 by Jennifer J. Salopek

One test of a great community--and a source of its value--is the way its members inspire each other to excel. When we conduct our annual search for Training's New Guard, we hunt through the professional learning community for people who inspire--by their passion, their cleverness, their determination, their success. This search gets easier each year. Learning professionals, booted into prominence by the knowledge economy and jet-propelled into new thinking by e-learning, are breaking the mold every day.

E-learning is a consistent thread among this years New Guard, but that wasn't intentional. It's just that so much new thinking and creative practice are coming out of e-learning that most searches for people who do inspiring work eventually lead there.

This year's crop of envelope pushers and dream chasers is notable also for its innovation--which we see as the ability to connect two seemingly unrelated, plain-vanilla ideas into a killer app. See, for example, how Kate Moschandreas combined salsa dancing and animation technology to create a business that has made her one of a rare breed: a female president of a learning technology company. Or how Ed Sketch married an idea from the sci-fi film The Matrix to a learning network at the Ford Motor Company.

As usual, we looked for a mix of the entrepreneurial and the socially redeeming in our candidates: Trainers are brilliant at that. Take Kimberly Bunting, whose company places computers in the homes of disadvantaged people, giving them a bridge across the digital divide into employment. Or Jackie Edens, whose work at the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development for Chicago leads her to say, "We give people options. It doesn't get any better than that. It's the most noble work there is."

So, read on and find out who is making your community great.

Equal Access

Not many people get letters like this at work:

"I will forever be grateful for this experience. Your program helps so many families, of which I am a member." Or "Thank you for believing in all of us, because if it weren't for you guys, I would still be at home on welfare doing nothing." Or "Thank you for making a difference in my life and giving me a chance to make a difference."

Kim Bunting gets letters like that all of the time--and for good reason. By placing personal computers in the homes of historically disadvantaged citizens, her firm Business Access gives the people who need them the tools to improve their lives. Recipients, known as @chievers in BA parlance, use the PCs to pursue training programs and classes, search for jobs, apply for scholarships, locate assistance, and more. The computers come to the @chievers through BA's contracts with state and local agencies.

It was during her early career, working with some of those agencies, that the light dawned for Bunting. She was serving as the executive director of the Dallas Mayor's Commission for People With Disabilities, working with 30 large companies to place disabled employees. Bunting found that "there was no easy way to access people coming our of government training programs and that the programs were too restrictive: They typically trained people on only one software package at a time. "As I looked at what gives people general knowledge of the computer," she says, "I realized that most learn by exploring at home."

Bunting was further motivated by two convictions: She didn't want people to feel sorry for men and women with disabilities but wanted to level the playing field, and she realized that learning to use a computer and access the Internet were key to getting and keeping jobs. "Employers kept saying they wanted people who were comfortable with computers...then they'd train people on the appropriate software and applications," she says. Bunting believes the "U.S. government needs people to be connected" as it moves toward online voter registration, vehicle registration, tax filing, and so forth.

Bunting founded BA as a nor-for-profit organization, but she soon found that wasn't the way to achieve its major goal: to give people PCs in their homes. Within a year, she landed her first contract, serving 1,000 people on welfare in Dallas. For each @chiever, BA or its contractors install a computer in his or her home; serve as the ISP for home access; provide a proprietary portal to training courses, local resources, peer groups, and caseworkers; offer technical assistance; and track usage and capacity. Through BA'S closed online community, for which a patent is pending, @chievers have access to anything on the Internet except pornographic and gambling Websites.

The letters aren't Bunting's only evidence of success. Here are a few statistics:

* Of 700 PCs distributed, only five have been lost or stolen.

* @chievers spent more than 50,000 hours online in an eight-month period.

* @chievers have accessed training classes 7800 times and have completed 957 courses.

* Sixty percent of @chievers earned a wage increase in one quarter; 44 percent report receiving a promotion, raise, or new position.