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Innovatia deal will turn one firm's existing instructor-led face-to-face courses into a virtual classroom

Innovatia Inc. has signed a deal to provide virtual classroom training for voice and text message technology firm Movius Interactive Corporation in 75 countries around the world.

Under the deal, Innovatia, a subsidiary of Bell Aliant, will move Movius' existing instructor-led face-to-face courses into a virtual classroom and self-paced e-learning courses.

The deal represents Innovatia's latest effort to move clients towards a 21st-century learning platform, says Dave Grebenc, director of sales and marketing for Innovatia.

"It means more revenue for us, better results for our client Movius and easier, more accessible training that's available in a ubiquitous manner for their clients globally," he said

Movius is an original equipment manufacturer of multimedia messaging technologies for telecommunications firms and enterprise-size businesses.

Innovatia provides documentation, e-learning, teleweb support, information architecture and auditing services to over 1,500 customers in 29 countries around the world. It has offices in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

Innovatia was recently named to the list of Top 20 Companies in the Training Outsourcing Industry by Trainingoutsourcing.com for the fifth year in a row.

Innovatia's virtual classroom uses video, chat, social networking as well as hands-on training segments to deliver complex, technical knowledge, said Grebenc.

"We would have an instructor online and (students) would basically all share a common screen where all the students are looking at the same content," he said.

"All of the students have the ability to ask questions. It's very interactive."

The chat and social networking components embraces a growing trend towards students learning from fellow students, he said. Video helps students learn how to use specific equipment and compliments hands-on training, Grebenc added.

"In some of the courses, not only with Movius, but also with other courses, we use video to demonstrate a task that needs to be done with the equipment."

The virtual classroom allows for greater efficiency, he said.

"Typically 10 students would be a full classroom. We've held classrooms using virtual technology with up to 30 or so students and this would be in a technical environment," he said.

"When there is a less technical environment you can...have 100 people participate in a classroom exercise or more."

Virtual classrooms for corporate training are becoming more common, said Grebenc.

"There's a trend here where companies are doing more and more outsourcing of training to companies like ourselves and in the process they absolutely want to move their traditional face to face learning approach to a web-based environment."

Mobile devices, such as Apple's iPhone or iPod Touch, or Research in Motion's BlackBerry, along with other smartphones represent a growing area of interest when it comes to training, said Blair Morgan, director of research and development for Innovatia.

While handheld technologies may not be useful for full virtual classroom-based learning, such mobile devices represent an opportunity to embrace the concept of "just in time, just enough, just for me" information delivery and training, said Morgan.

Morgan points out that the just in time, just enough and just for me approach to information has been talked about for some time but hasn't yet delivered on its promise.

"One of the challenges is the cost to deliver information in its various output formats, screen sizes and some of the restrictions and differences in devices out there," he said.

"We think we've kind of cracked the nut on that when it comes to information distribution and it comes from the very beginning which is to design and develop your information in such a way that it can be transformed and reused in any output format."