wareSource.com	Pay for courseware

Who has actually developed the course?

For Notes and Domino 7, IBM Lotus outsourced course development and distribution to Element K, which was recently bought out by NIIT, a global conglomerate based in India. So who at Element K or NIIT are Notes and Domino experts? Or will they in turn outsource the job to someone else? Prior to R7, Lotus typically outsourced most of their course development, so very little Lotus courseware has ever been developed by Lotus experts.

The first thing that most people want to know is how our courses compare in duration and coverage to Lotus courses. Keep in mind that our development goal is NOT to create analogs to the Lotus courses but to set our own standard of excellence. As such, any mapping is difficult, though there is a rough correlation between subjects/objectives for most of the courses.

Lotus claims that their courses are different (and innovative) because they are based on objectives "...tied directly and tightly to an individual's ability to successfully complete a task related to a specific job function." They built their objectives from a surveys they commission to determine the major job tasks of existing Lotus Certified Professionals. They contrast their approach to "product-oriented" training, which attempts to cover the entire product features and functions. They admit that their approach may leave gaps in understanding and using the product, but because it is focused on specific job tasks, people will be more successful when they return to work.

Lotus Education has done good job at finding the lowest common denominator of job skills and has successfully identified the minimum skills necessary to perform Notes-related jobs. And their curriculum does a great job of meeting those objectives.

Our courses are also objectives-based, but ours cover every important software feature and function. These features are indeed related to accomplishing a particular job function (e.g. user, developer, administrator), but are not limited to a single sampling of what that job is. We built our objectives from a deep understanding of Notes and how it is used as a tool to accomplish organizational goals. Our objectives incorporate all of the Lotus objectives but include many more.

Our materials cover the basic goals set by Lotus, but go further and deeper to explore strategies, techniques, and shortcuts that the Lotus material has dutifully eliminated.

Lotus courses are indeed based on the findings of their surveys. Their courses are indeed job/task focused to the jobs/tasks perceived as being important by a small sampling of the respondents. But as a result, their courses are also stripped of meaningful content and do not prepare students in all aspects of Notes.

To compare our approach with theirs, our courses aim to educate and challenge; certainly to include the basics of completing job tasks, but go further to give students the ability and insight to explore options and possibilities that are missed by focusing too closely on job-oriented tasks. Lotus courses are focused on training students to accomplish somewhat rote and simplistic tasks that can easily be tested with multiple choice tests (the basis of their certification program).

The student course materials reflect this difference. Our materials are extremely content-rich, providing the student with the ability to reference them once they are back on the job. The Lotus materials students receive are not sufficient as reference materials outside of the classroom. Their materials are useful only in accomplishing the limited tasks that are performed in class, and contain brief explanations limited procedural help.

Certification

Some organizations are interested in certification, usually as a way to validate that their employees have achieved a minimum level of competence or as a requirement to sell services (a check-off item on an RFP). Lotus certification is accomplished by taking a series of examinations. Lotus does not require that you sit in any class before taking the exams (unless you also want to become a certified Lotus instructor).

The Lotus exam objectives/competencies (supposedly based on the same objectives as their courses) are published and available free from Lotus, along with sample questions. They also sell software to help you study for the exams.

But our stated goal for our courses is NOT to "train to the test". Our courses are NOT certification "boot camp" courses that promise you will pass the exams and become certified. The exams Lotus provides are a low-water mark for understanding the way Notes works and in maximizing its potential. The content material in our courses far exceeds the technical demands of the Lotus certification questions (regretfully, too much knowledge may be a disadvantage when taking Lotus certification tests).

If your only goal is to become certified by Lotus, then you should take Lotus courses. If your goal is to really learn about Notes, then our courses are far superior.

Versatility and utility

Our courses are delivered electronically so they can be modified to better meet the need of students and the organization. Each topic is a separate file; as such, topics can easily be selected and printed to create a course that fits the specific requirements. We include a macro that helps you simplify the creation of table of contents, recalculate page numbers, and add a custom footer. The macro also allows you to print all or some of the topics to create a course.

Lotus courses are prepackaged and cannot be modified by the customer. Their Users End User Licensing Program lets you do the printing, but all they give you is the PDFs. NOT the source files for customization. OK, if you want custom courseware from Lotus, beginning January 17, 2005, customers will be able to contact their Education Center for IBM Software and request delivery of developer and administrator (not user) classes designed to meet their specific needs. The catch is that you must hire a ECIS to customize the courseware and then they must contract with ElementK to print and distribute the courseware. Or you can go to ElementK's "Select" site, where you can create "custom" courses ("custom" means you can change the course title, subtext on front cover, company logo in black & white or grayscale, and unique custom part number for re-order accuracy and ease). Then you must hire the ECIS to deliver the course. All this means a high expense for you. Lotus just can't trust the customer with source files! With wareSource courseware, you get the source files. You customize the content. You decide who can best deliver the training.

Cost and availability

Our courses are available to any training organization and can be taught by any person knowledgeable in product functions related to the course and capable of communicating knowledge (and a vision) to students. Only Lotus end-user courses are available to any training organization, but their application development and system administration courses can only be purchased by Education Centers for IBM Software (ECIS) (aka Lotus Authorized Education Centers). Some ECISs will resell the course material, but they prefer to bundle it with training, at $400 - $500 per day.

Our administrator and developer courses are from 1 to 5 days long. Lotus pricing ranges from the wholesale price of $56 - $75/person/day (ECIS cost) to the retail price of $112-$150/person/day (if you can find an ECIS that will sell you the course materials without sitting in class, this is your cost). Our administrator and developer materials are based on a $20/day model ($22.50 for R7). Our user courses are typically $10 for a half-day session.

We also offer per-Topic licensing. What this means is that you can create a course that meets your requirements using any Topics from any course. Because you will have the source Word files, you can fine tune the content and add your own materials to fulfill your training objectives. And of course, you can purchase an enterprise license for the custom course.

Our value pricing allows the small shop to deliver high-quality training and the large shop to maximize training dollar value.