Allen Communication Learning Services Donates Free ELearning Development for a Good Cause

SALT LAKE CITY (April 19, 2007) — What do cycling, diabetes, and Allen Communication Learning Services have in common? Along with donated time from it employees, AllenComm funded the development of an online training course for the Utah Office of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) as a donation to the ADA’s Tour de Cure event in Utah. Tour de Cure is a cycling event held in nearly 80 cities nationwide to benefit the American Diabetes Association and bring diabetes awareness to the community. One of those cities is Salt Lake.

Developing this training course gave AllenComm an opportunity to use new, in-house learning technology that cuts development time without reducing quality. More importantly, it gave AllenComm an opportunity to give back to the community. “Because our work was donated, we could try some new ideas to produce a high-quality course more efficiently using our proprietary XML and Flash authoring environment,” said Michael Hassett, project manager, “but what we are most proud of is our ability to provide this course to an organization as important as ADA.”

The custom training course will train approximately 50 critical or key volunteers who are responsible for managing participant registration, handling money, and ensuring safety and legal compliance of the participants. ADA faced the challenge of volunteers being geographically dispersed, making in-person training difficult and costly, or volunteers having a wide variety of computer equipment and expertise. Another challenge they faced was that multiple in-person training sessions reduced the standardization of training, and the in-person training was completed only once, sometimes weeks before the event, not allowing any review by volunteers at their own pace.

AllenComm addressed these challenges by developing an online course users can complete from home, work or anywhere they have access to the Internet (and ADA may distribute courses via CD for users without internet). The online environment was designed for the lowest possible bandwidth and resolution. Additionally, delivering one online course for all volunteers eliminated variations in instructor-led training sessions while allowing learners to review the course as often as necessary right up through the day of the event.

Laura Landon, Executive Director of ADA said, “The ADA values Allen Communication’s willingness to help us streamline our training at Tour de Cure. With this training program, I am confident that we will better serve our Tour de Cure cyclists as well as our volunteers who make an important difference to people with diabetes.”

Currently, ADA is considering implementing this method of training volunteers at the other Tour de Cure events around the country.

Learn more about our custom training courses.

---

About ADA:

The American Diabetes Association is the nation’s leading voluntary health organization supporting diabetes research, education, and advocacy. Founded in 1940, the Association has offices in every region of the country, providing services to more than 800 communities. Locally ADA also presents Step Out for Diabetes, Diabetes Expo, Father of the Year awards dinner, Diabetes Clubhouse, and many other youth, family, and ethnic programs to promote diabetes awareness, prevention and management.

About AllenComm:

For over 25 years, Allen Communication Learning Services () has helped improve the training processes and methods of numerous Fortune 500 companies. With a rich history in training that started with the introduction of the world’s first commercial interactive videodisc system, today the company is recognized as a leader in custom training, e-learning, blended learning, and learning portal development. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, AllenComm’s mission is to align organizations’ training initiatives with their business objectives by developing the optimal learning solution for each organization.