Albany Analytical specializes in teaching businesses how to achieve higher customer service, employee satisfaction and retention, how to meet and exceed regulations, be good corporate citizens, and do it all while improving profits. As part of BeeLineResults, Albany Analytical’s blended learning approach, Bee-learning (www.beelearn.com) captures 25 years of experience - anecdotes, tricks, traps, & tips - in the application of improvement and design tools. The content is currently focused on Lean Six Sigma quality methods, but will expand in the coming months to other business improvement topics.

Built with Moodle, Bee-Learning provides unprecedented flexibility in content and features to students and teachers alike. Its robustness reduces course development time to days and weeks – not months. With the professional support and hosting provided by ClassroomRevolution.com, Albany Analytical has been able to launch not only the e-Learning site, but convert their company website (www.albanyanalytical.com) to Moodle, in just 6 months.

Before selecting Moodle, Albany Analytical investigated a variety of applications for e-Learning development. These were evaluated using a set of criteria which included ease of authorship, speed of development, cost to implement, cost to maintain, stability of the product, accessibility for students, upgrade capabilities, ability of the software to work with (now and in the future) current technologies (such as operating systems, wireless access, and various browsing methods), ease of use for students, and scalability (ability to add content, courses, and users). Because Albany Analytical had a unique set of needs in order to offer courses for commercial resale, additional criteria were used. The software had to support:

• Both stand-alone (Internet) & enterprise (intranet) applications;
• Both single course users and certification (matriculating) students;
• Courses with no end-dates;
• Many courses available all of the time
• Many user accounts, but with low odds of all of them using the site simultaneously.

What we found was an unacceptable trade-off between initial costs and scalability. Readily available in the proprietary software market were relatively low cost ($5,000 - $15,000) “out of the box” applications that were easy to get started with. But they offered no scalability and limited features, they were difficult or impossible to modify once created, and most could not be hosted remotely (to host internally would add tremendous costs to start-up). These applications were targeted toward small educational facilities or very small businesses for internal training purposes, and therefore were intended to reside on a PC inside each client’s office. They could not support Internet accessibility around the world on a 24/7 basis.

Enterprise applications seemed to begin at $100,000, although it was difficult to get a quote without detailed sales discussions. They took months to get started (some appeared to be almost completely custom developed for each user), loads of equipment, and had steep learning curves. Very few software demos were available (again indicating that each was custom-developed), and of the ones that were, the product was often not at all acceptable from a teaching perspective. Several enterprise level applications focused more on the reporting and tracking of training than on the actual training experience itself.

Many features that are built into Moodle were only available as expensive, and coding-intensive additions to both the small PC applications and the enterprise packages. Control did not lie with the authors, but rather with the software developers. We were concerned about this “indebtedness” to programmers. Several concerns were raised, such as the long term viability of those companies, the non-value add time of waiting for changes to be implemented, and the significant time and rework involved in trying to communicate those needs.

We did a second pass at our research and this time looked at Open Source applications. Moodle was viewed as a potential candidate because of its time in service and its reported stability. Reviews were good and the forums on Moodle.org indicated a good support network and prompt resolutions to issues. Independent research on e-Learning came up with high marks for Moodle from university students.

Finally, we found ClassroomRevolution.com listed as a Moodle Partner on Moodle.com. We were up and running within a week. Their support has been timely, and most importantly, helpful. We have consistently received useful suggestions, options for action, and creative ideas to solve our unique needs, always within hours. The site loads quickly and has superb uptime that continues to inspire our confidence.

Once we had the opportunity to fully test the skills and experience of the staff at ClassroomRevolution.com, we asked for advice on how to solve some issues we were experiencing on our Albany Analytical (www.albanyanalytical.com) site . We wanted a professional site that allowed us direct and easy access to our content. We needed fast uploads for users, and reliable hosting. ClassroomRevolution.com recommended that we use Moodle and a third-party Content Management System (CMS) module. We were so pleased with the support and reliable hosting for the first site that we decided to convert our main site to a Moodle solution bosted by ClassroomRevolution.com.

If you're running a small business or part of a large corporation, and looking for a bit of knowledge, certification for yourself, or to transfer knowledge to your entire organization, BeeLearning™ is the perfect solution for your needs. Contact us at 888-252-2694 or visit http://www.albanyanalytical.com for more information.