Bringing Digital Transformation to the Traditional Classroom
Digital transformation is a hot topic these days, and here in Training Services, we’re in the process of implementing a new digital initiative. For thirty years, we’ve been producing printed coursebooks for students attending traditional instructor-led classes. Starting in September, we’ll be providing only digital course workbooks in our training center classes.
Digital coursebooks are actually the latest in a long line of digital moves.
- In 1997, we released the Esri Virtual Campus, one of the first commercial websites devoted to teaching GIS topics and technology on the web. Web courses were a relatively new phenomenon back then but they quickly gained a following, especially in the higher education community.
- Virtual Campus web courses were so popular, we decided to virtualize the in-person seminar experience. In 2001, we launched live training seminars—hour-long, free, online seminars on technical topics. Those also proved to be (and continue to be) very popular.
- In 2004, we took digital to the next level with the introduction of the Instructor-Led Online Classroom. Shortly after, the Great Recession hit and many GIS professionals found themselves grounded, unable to travel to attend a training class. For several years, the Online Classroom was the only viable option for many Esri customers to attend instructor-led training. Today, the Online Classroom is just as popular as our traditional classrooms.
- Last year we released a redesigned Training website and doubled the size of our e-Learning collection to include new formats and durations.
So digital is a huge part of what we do, and we’ve actually been producing digital course workbooks for thirteen years—Online Classroom students have always received digital course workbooks. Their feedback has helped us understand which digital features are most valuable, both during class and after class back at the office.
Digital books have several benefits, including
- Color: For years, one of the most frequent enhancements requested by students has been to replace black and white coursebooks with color books. When you’re working with maps, you want to see them in color—makes sense, we get that. However, producing thousands of printed color coursebooks every year is expensive. With digital books, we can finally provide color materials and fulfill this customer request.
- Productivity tools: Printed books are wonderful to hold in the hand and flip through, but digital books have great features too. For example, you can use the provided bookmarks to jump directly to lesson pages, you can quickly search the content for specific words and phrases, and you can highlight text and add digital notes, which makes it easy to find exactly the information you need after class when you’re trying to remember the steps to complete an ArcGIS task or workflow.
- Currency: At one time, a new Esri software release arrived every couple of years. Today, releases come quarterly. This cycle is great for providing new and improved functionality to our customers, but it presents a challenge to keeping training materials up to date. With digital books, we’ll be able to more quickly get updated content into the books and into the classroom.
- Reduced environmental footprint: As a company committed to sustainability and smart planning, we feel a responsibility to conserve resources wherever possible. Digital books allow us to significantly reduce paper use and the energy and chemicals required by the printing process. Digital books also eliminate the fuel usage associated with shipping printed books to each Esri training location.
- Cost savings: Recognizing that many organizations have limited training budgets, we strive to offer affordable, competitively priced products. As with all organizations, our costs go up each year. Adopting digital coursebooks will produce savings that will help us keep the cost of instructor-led training as low as possible.
To ensure students continue to have an excellent classroom experience, we're adding a second monitor to each classroom workspace. Students will view the digital coursebook on one monitor while following the course presentation and interacting with Esri software on the other monitor. Early testing feedback has been extremely positive, and we’re excited to introduce this new digital dimension to our real-world classrooms.