Ashridge expands virtual learning offer

Leading international business school, Ashridge - www.ashridge.org.uk - is developing its commitment to online learning using content from Echelon Publishing.

UK-based Ashridge works with individuals and organisations in three core areas of executive education, research and consulting. The school’s activities and areas of expertise include open & tailored executive education programmes; MBA, MSc & diploma qualifications; organisation consulting; applied research and online learning.

Ashridge’s Virtual Learning Resource Centre (VLRC) was launched in 1998. It harnesses the school’s expertise in management and organisational development, using web technology to deliver learning material to learners’ desktops. This includes 60 learning guides on key topics such as leadership, mentoring, emotional intelligence, strategic awareness and coaching. Each learning guide has practical ideas for applying what has been learned, self-assessment exercises, and summaries of further resources such as books, and journal articles.

Ashridge has recently re-launched the VLRC with new content which includes a range of essays and digests published by Echelon together with links to 100 modules of generic content from its learning resource www.learningmatters.com aligned to its existing learning guides.

Participants access the VLRC to help support personal development in between modules and after the programme.

Organisations that subscribe corporately to the VLRC can also access the wealth of management development materials through their companies’ Intranet, or Internet.

At present, the VLRC has a user base of 500,000 potential learners and with the correct senior support, promotion and marketing activities usage figures can be as high as 30% for certain organisations.

Ashridge’s VLRC Product Manager, Andrew Mechelewski sees Echelon’s role as important to its development in usage commensurate with the school’s expansion in various international markets.

"We were impressed by the generic content available from Echelon to support the use of our guides," he says.

"This input has expanded to authoring important new bespoke material for our information portfolio, notably on the subject of human resources.

"We expect this contribution to be an important one in the successful development of Ashridge’s VLRC."

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Released February 2007 on behalf of Echelon Publishing by BLP&PR

Media contact: Peter Muir Tel + 44 (0)1296 715228
Email: echelon@pmpr.co.uk

Sales contact: David Hill Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500
Email: david@echelonl.com

About Ashridge

Ashridge is a leading international business school based in Hertfordshire, England. Founded in 1959, Ashridge works with individuals and organisations from around the world in its three core areas of executive education, research and consulting.
It is consistently ranked as one of the world’s leading business schools. In the latest Financial Times ranking (2006) for tailored executive education, Ashridge was ranked within the top ten schools in Europe.
Ashridge’s activities and areas of expertise include open & tailored executive education programmes, MBA, MSc & Diploma qualifications, organisation consulting, applied research and online learning.
www.ashridge.org.uk

About Echelon Learning

Echelon Learning is a consultancy-led publishing house that integrates electronically-delivered knowledge and learning into the development of management skills and business performance.

Echelon Consulting spearheads the company’s service with the development of new content in meeting clients’ requirements. This is usually derived from analysing employee knowledge and learning needs captured during client learning programmes.

Where appropriate, Echelon Publishing then offers this new content to a wider audience by publishing the material in generic format. This is made available in the form of easy to use ‘learning nuggets’ and is complimented with business development information licensed exclusively from one of the market’s best-known providers, Bloomsbury.

Echelon e-Learning provides the electronic systems which enable content to be published, distributed and usage tracked, and offers work-based solutions to a global audience. Now
Echelon’s blended learning based on a bespoke site populated with material selected to support specific courses, builds knowledge prior to the event and refreshes application when back at the desk.

About Echelon Publishing
Echelon technologies help organisations place solutions at people’s fingertips, whether solving everyday business and work-related problems or helping gain qualifications and continued professional development.
Echelon:
• Has a content management system enabling informational or learning material to be developed or converted into XML so that it can be published and distributed in text and/or via the web.
• Has a learning management system to provide ready access via the web to highly structured information, which is easily searched and retrieved, and whose usage can be tracked and learning logged.
• Publishes and/or reformats content for professional bodies and commercial organisations to help students and employees maintain or develop requisite skills throughout their careers.
• Supports people from the outset of their careers in working with professional bodies to develop and deliver the learning content required by students in preparing for examination.
• Frees up the knowledge and learning contained within a business so that people have ready access to these resources in helping them to solve problems or develop their careers.