Rating:

In a hurry?  Recommendation    Product Preview/Demo

Each year, Training Media Review recognizes the products that received the highest qualitative and quantitative ratings in the calendar year from our independent reviewers. This product is one of the handful that received a Best2Buy 2004 award.

The Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional certification has created a cottage industry in training. SkillSoft alone offers over 40 online courses and over 600 project management-related books via their Books 24/7 website. This review focuses on the online course covering the topics of ethical and legal requirements of being a project manager; the course also addresses the responsibility of a project manager to contribute to the body of project management knowledge.

As a PMI Charter-Global Registered Education Provider, SkillSoft courses meet continuing education requirements, which are prerequisites to sit for the Certification Exams (in other words, they know this stuff). There is a project management continuum from managers who try, or are instructed, to apply basic principles of managing vendors, project costs, schedules, and timelines for multiple projects to certified PMPs, who use issue logs, risk assessments, context matrices, GANT charts, and the like. This course is valuable for both types and anyone in between.

Course content and design
The course is well organized into three lessons covering such topics as Understanding Ethical Standards, Components for Knowledge-Based Management, Dimensions of Competency, and Assessing Personal Strengths and Weaknesses. I found the content held my attention and challenged me. I especially like the main menu feature of showing completion status. The pre-test and main menu listings helped me create a learning path based on my lesson pre-test scores.

For training program development managers, the content provides many “Ah ha!” moments for better understanding and appreciation of the value of project managers. The obligation to follow contract specifications, recognize conflicts of interest, and commit to documenting what worked and what didn’t in order to improve the standard practice are topics which, if applied, will improve most training development initiatives.

SkillSoft courses reflect a disciplined e-course development effort. The use of templates for interactivity and the consistent user interface result in more effective e-learning. Most users should be able to navigate the main menu buttons with ease.

For learners who dislike being scored on every instructional quiz, the learner is occasionally offered an “explore mode.” To their credit, Skill Soft has invested generously in expert copywriting of multiple problem-based learning scenarios. This frequent use of practice, with ample feedback, elevates the course to an interactive level of three (on a four-point scale). Sure, with an unlimited budget, I like to see the use of engaging video streams or multiple branching that takes the learner down a decision tree (complete with distracters).

Yet, all in all, frequent use of multiple-choice quizzes and incorporation of audio narration and real world scenarios make for effective learning and maintain the learner’s attention. The problem-based learning approach succeeds because of the depth of writing. It is not so simplistic that you can breeze through the course. The use of audio on each page makes for easy viewing and learning by individuals with different learning styles (I found the use of headphones kept me tuned in and focused). This is especially true for people not accustomed to reading quickly. Fast readers have the option of turning the audio off.

Individuals who have a propensity to be good project managers because of their attention to detail and no-nonsense approach to getting things done on time and on budget will appreciate the SkillSoft approach to e-learning and will probably agree with my four star rating. Those who expect e-learning to creatively entertain and offer complex branched simulations may beg to differ. In the end, I side with the 800-pound gorilla whose success in the business e-learning marketplace speaks for itself.

Things I liked about the course
Here are the strongest features of the course:

• Pre-test and scoring on main menu
• Use of audio on each page
• Multiple real life scenarios
• Option to enter check on learning sequences in “score mode” or “explore mode”
• Several checks on learning questions per topic
• Links to study aids
• Access through SkillPort to something like 600 project management books
• Mentor program

Concerns I have about the course
Here are concerns I have about the course:

• More exercises that require learners to reflect on their own experience
• Revealing content by requiring the learner to “click” on three buttons to learn more is old hat and should be dropped from the SkillSoft bag of templates
• The drag-and-drop moves are small and require sensitive mouse work

I think SkillSoft should consider in-depth discovery or challenge exercises that can be viewed as PDFs and printed. Also, content pages should make suggestions for further study in project management or link to an overview of offerings.

Recommendation
I highly recommend the Ethics and Professional Knowledge e-course to anyone interested in furthering their understanding of what it means to be a professional project manager or if pursuing a PMP certification.

Project Management: Ethics and Professional Knowledge Ease of navigation      Holds user interest      Production quality      Interactivity      Value of Content      Instructional Value      Value for the money      Rating

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