Why use GrowLive!

Have you ever thought learners in your course were listening to what you say, yet barely communicate with you? Have you ever wanted to provide a large number of documents and information to your learners without using the copy machine? Have you ever had the intention to guide learners to certain topics, but there were too many in your class to be able to do this? If your answer to any of these questions was "yes," GrowLive! may be a solution. GrowLive! provide many possibilities to use online tools in and of themselves, or even better, as an addition to a face-to-face class. In GrowLive!, course- and content-management are incorporated and easily coordinated through Web-based software. Alternative teaching and discussion methods like online quizzes, forums, chats, or Wikis (comparable to a white board on which anyone can write anything) are built in. Best of all, working on the Facilitator's (as well as the learner's) side of GrowLive! is simply a lot of fun.

What Exactly Is GrowLive!?

This virtual learning environment is a set of facilitation and learning tools designed to enhance a learner's learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process. GrowLive!'s software runs on a server so that it can be accessed from a convenient place (e.g. work, home, or Internet cafe©) with an Internet connection.

A Web page for your courses is a good starting point and literally the simplest form of using GrowLive!. It offers a fast and easy way for publishing schedules, papers or Internet links (Ansburg, Caruso & Kuhlenschmidt, 2003). A more sophisticated approach to online facilitation and learning is the usage of GrowLive! to include tools such as electronic communication (e-mail, forums, chats), syllabus, reading lists, and timetables. All of these are manageable without HTML or other more expert computer knowledge. It further provides quizzes, Internet links, assignments (that can be fulfilled by uploading a file to the GrowLive! server or solving a task online), electronic delivery of teaching materials (presentations, documents or sound and video files), and finally the tracking of learners' work (a convenient feature for Facilitators that automatically checks for deadlines, shows participation rates and plots results).

GrowLive! is easy and intuitive, support is great, and there is the possibility of suggesting new features and working on them in the spirit of collaborative development.

Speed!

When e-learning development cycles are long and costly, an organisation is unable to cost effectively meet its evolving training needs. With rapid e-learning development, consistent communication of training material can happen quickly and inexpensively.

GrowLive! has a unique development methodology and suite of support tools (collaborative and technical) designed to support rapid content development and to provide client self-sufficiency in content maintenance.

Our collaborative approach to instructional design and content development leads to rapid creation of an e-learning solution. Ongoing collaboration engages all participants and leads to clear and rapid decision-making for the definition of learning objectives and a structured training curriculum. The result is an efficient, in terms of time and money, detailed knowledge capture process.

Efficient content creation and maintenance procedures, using a set of technical tools and processes which can involve multiple content owners, produces an e-learning solution designed to enhance performance that can be maintained beyond the original rollout activity.

The Advantages
Our rapid e-learning development process:

  • Quickly arrives at a solution to allow consistent communication of training material using web-based delivery;
  • Incorporates blended learning strategies that appeal to different learning styles and take advantage of synchronous and asynchronous training deliveries;
  • Uses a collaborative approach for rapid instructional design that quickly defines learning objectives and a structured training curriculum;
  • Uses smart templates and MSOffice applications in an efficient knowledge and content capture process that optimises subject matter experts’ time in the storyboarding process; and
  • Uses content management tools that address requirements and allow client self-sufficiency in change management.
The Business Case
It is widely accepted that e-learning can reduce costs associated with traditional instructor-led training. Using rapid e-learning development, traditional e-learning costs in the range of R 25,000 to R 160,000 per hour of training can be greatly reduced, since the construction of complete, ready-to-use training is done in a timely fashion – days and weeks instead of months. Rapid e-learning development also makes it feasible and affordable to maintain the e-learning content to address evolving training needs and changing environments.

Last modified: Tuesday, 6 November 2012, 10:58 PM