It should come as no surprise that universities, colleges and corporations are falling in love with the idea of online learning.
Running e-learning programs costs only about 30 per cent of what it costs to offer a traditional course in a classroom, estimates Peter Stunden, president of Calgary-based Fifth Era Knowledge Corp.
“Factor in travel and time, and there are significant savings to a customer to be able to do it this way,” says Stunden, whose publicly traded company describes itself as a specialist in “delivering advanced technology intellectual property” — that is, using the Internet to offer high-technology training.
The big question is: Can online learning be as effective as traditional, classroom instruction?
The answer seems to be a resounding yes — at least if you have the right kind of students.
Online distance education is harder than conventional learning in at least one important regard, says Colleen Miller, a Calgary-based multimedia course developer with Athabasca University, one of the pioneers of online learning.
“You have to motivate yourself. You have to keep pushing yourself,” she says.
That said, online learning clearly provides advantages to students who work or live in remote locations, and to corporations and institutions that want to keep a lid on the cost of education.
Effective learning on the Internet “is not only do-able, it’s done,” adds Winston Gereluk, co-ordinator of Athabasca’s Industrial Relations Program. At Athabasca, enrolment is up 20 to 25 per cent this year to more than 25,000 students, Miller says.
Almost half the academic institutions in North America offer online learning and 85 per cent expect to have some form of Internet-based courses available by 2002, according to figures provided by Fifth Era, which has recently signed agreements with the University of Alberta and McMaster University in Hamilton.
Those deals call for Fifth Era to provide instruction and materials for advanced information technology courses. Fifth Era has also provided services to Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.
The company — which owns software that houses and distributes training courses over the Net —concentrates on delivering course materials in such highly technical areas as mechanical and electrical engineering for corporate training programs.
Fifth Era’s approximately 100 clients include Intel Corp., Nations Bank, the U.S. Defence Department, Lockheed Martin and Telus Corp., Stunden says.
The growing interest in e-learning presents significant opportunities for companies like Fifth Era, observes financial analyst Evan Spiropoulos of Hesperian Capital Management Inc. in Calgary.
“The ability to learn remotely in a robust manner couldn’t be done five years ago,” he explained. “There’s precious few companies that have the capability to do that right now.”
By making a specialty of delivering high-technology training over the Internet to corporate and academic customers, Spiropoulos said, Fifth Era “has succeeded in carving out for themselves a very impressive niche in the market.”
But because of its history — it was founded in Calgary in 1992 as The Skill Set Inc. to deliver classroom-based instruction — Fifth Era is also able to deliver courses in the traditional fashion, Spiropoulos says. It is the only publicly traded Calgary company in this field, he adds.
Sometimes, classroom training is a necessary part of high-technology learning, says Stunden.
“Some topics are best done in the classroom. We can provide one-stop shopping — we can do the online, we can also do the instructor-led side.”
In short, he says, Fifth Era can create “custom universities for clients.”
Delivering such programs produced revenue of $1.6 million and profit of $357,000 in fiscal 2000, compared with revenue of $1.1 million and profit of $94,000 in the previous year.
But creating instructional course content is the key to future profitability, says Stunden — the Charlottetown-born son of a Mountie who grew up in communities across Canada and came to Calgary after completing a business degree at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.
“Think of Internet technology as a TV set,” he says. “In the 1950s, TVs were a significant technological advance, but set sales were flat because there were no shows.”
It was the development of sophisticated content that led to mammoth profits for media companies.
Similarly, e-learning companies must develop content if they want to go where the big money is.
“What you really need is content people want to buy,” says Stunden, who dreams of turning Fifth Era into “the Ted Turner developers of e-learning.”
But right now, the company must also cope with the vagaries of life as a public company. Fifth Era went public in October 2000 through the reverse takeover of Calgary-based Scyther Corp., a junior capital pool.
Its shares, trading on the Canadian Venture Exchange, have dipped from a high of $3 to 80 cents.
“We were painted by the dot-com brush,” Stunden observes.
But the company showed improvement in the three months ended Sept. 30. Fifth Era reported a 60-per-cent increase in revenue to $723,000 in the current year’s quarter, compared with $454,000 in the same period a year earlier.
Profit was $165,000 or two cents a share, compared with $98,000 in the year-earlier period. Share-profit figures were not published for the previous year’s third quarter because the current quarter is Fifth Era’s first full quarter as a publicly traded company.
The results “have the company on target to reach its targets for the year-end,” said Stunden. “These targets will show year-to-year growth for Fifth Era of close to 100 per cent.”
Fifth Era also expects to report revenue increases in the fourth quarter, Stunden said, predicting revenues of about $2 million in the first half of this fiscal year. Unlike the dot-coms that were pounded by a suddenly skeptical market, he adds, “we have a real business, and we have real revenues.”
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