Rapid E-Learning with SAP® Productivity Pak by RWD

By now, pretty much everyone in the enterprise software field knows of the advantages of e-learning. It’s no surprise to anyone that e-learning helps keep training and travel costs down, and when done properly and for the right topics, can be as effective or even more effective than traditional classroom learning.

The problem, however, is that it’s so expensive and time consuming to produce. Depending on who does your development and where, it can cost from $15,000 to $30,000 to develop a single hour of e-learning – some estimates go even higher! And a recent survey of 659 e-learning practitioners revealed that only 35% were satisfied with e-learning development time. What is even more frustrating is that once a class is completed, it’s not easy to update or modify, so in many organizations, the benefits of e-learning are practical only for long-term training needs.

However, for current and future customers of the SAP® Productivity Pak application by RWD (also known as RWD uPerform), e-learning development costs have just become less of an issue, as the new 2.0 release of the software includes a rapid e-learning tool at no extra charge. The new tool is also part of the maintenance release for 1.0 and 1.1 customers.

For those who have not heard the term, the American Society for Training and Development defines rapid e-learning as “e-learning that can be developed quickly and inexpensively” (see www.learningcircuits.org/2005/jan2005/archibald.htm for a full discussion). While courses created with rapid e-learning tools may not contain all the most sophisticated features of standard e-learning classes, they can be created and deployed quickly and economically. That makes rapid e-learning especially useful for short-term training needs for which more traditional development methods would be prohibitively expensive.

The rapid e-learning tool integrated in SAP Productivity Pak 2.0 includes all the features one would expect in the genre: for example, you can create various types of quizzes and self-tests; import pre-existing data such as Flash animations, graphics, PowerPoint presentations, and embedded video; include links and HTML “hot spots”; and use a wide variety of predefined “stencils” for professional looking results. And as the classes themselves are compliant with the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), you can deploy them from the SAP Learning Solution as part of your overall corporate learning initiative.

With its rapid e-learning functionality joining the product’s already potent arsenal of user help, simulation, documentation, and collaboration tools at no additional charge, SAP Productivity Pak becomes an even more essential tool for building and maintaining end-user competence. We should also point out that version 2.0 extends the product’s reach further by including support for double-byte languages including Korean, Japanese, Hungarian, Turkish, Russian, and Chinese. What this means is that you can create a help document in English and automatically transform the system-created text into any of 24 supported languages.

In its first year of existence, SAP Productivity Pak has already made a name for itself as the premiere tool for building and maintaining SAP user skills. With the addition of rapid e-learning and double-byte language support, it clearly becomes an even greater value.

To learn more about SAP Productivity Pak by RWD, visit us online at www.sap.com/usa/education. In addition, please join us online on June 14, 2007 at 12:00 noon ET for a special SAP Education Web conference on Just-In-Time Learning.

To expand your knowledge even further please view the SAP Productivity Pak 2.0 Web conference replay from April 11, 2007 (registration required).

To learn more about the benefits that can come from automating user training and support, please download the Economist Intelligence Report, Maximizing User Performance: Automating Training and Support.