News

iBreakthrough Subscribes to Online Learning

• By Kathleen Ohlson
• August 8, 2005

As a corporate trainer, Kevin Greene spent a lot of time on the road—traveling 15,000 miles per month all over North America. So, when he decided to jazz up the company’s classes for about 10,000 customers, he sought a way that didn’t require more traveling.

As president of iBreakthrough, a training and consulting company that offers classes in sales, training and management for high-tech, oil and other industries, Greene decided to put the company’s courses online.

After assessing products from several companies that were “extremely expensive,” Greene says, iBreakthrough selected ScribeStudio, a software subscription service that hosts training material online. ScribeStudio offers a toolkit that companies can use to develop and publish online learning programs.

ScribeStudio for Business features CourseBuilder, a tool that creates and publishes courseware; TestBuilder, a tool that delivers and manages online tests, quizzes and assessments; and CommunityBuilder, a tool that can be used to host Web conferences.

iBreakthrough teaches five classes online for more than 20 customers, for which it pays ScribeStudio about $1,000 per month, according to Greene.

The company’s team of writers, technical staffers and trainers creates course material—complete with animated characters, polling, quizzes, Flash video, simulations and role playing—and uploads them into ScribeStudio for Business. Once an online class is set up for a customer, ScribeStudio generates a URL and sends e-mails to potential attendees. After the attendees accept the invitation, they receive e-mails with a user ID, password and instructions on how to access the class.

Some iBreakthrough customers are reluctant to move training online, but others are moving to online training or using it to supplement onsite training. “Sometimes people are not very comfortable with change; sometimes people say, ‘show me,’” he says. “Online learning isn’t good enough if there isn’t good content out there. There’s always some resistance to change, but that is going away quickly.”

iBreakthrough expects to put more classes, including custom projects, on ScribeStudio. For example, it’s developing a health benefits course for a client with 25,000 employees, Greene says.