On March 7th, 2008, the award ceremony of the eureleA, the European eLearning Award took place in Hanover. That was at the same time as CeBIT.

I still had the chance to present the blended learning concept for authors that ZF decided upon last year.

The following text is taken from the award ceremony catalog:

So far, around 20 authors have been trained in a two-day training course every year at ZF Friedrichshafen AG. For reasons of cost and time, the idea arose to implement the author qualification as a blended learning concept, which consists of online training, face-to-face training, NetMeeting, telephone conference and other methods.
The aim was to qualify authors with high quality and as quickly as possible at the beginning of a project.

The blended concept begins with the invitation of the authors via email with a reference to the concept and schedule. The email contains the link to online training. One week after receiving the e-mail, a NetMeeting in connection with a conference call will be held. It shows and explains how a new project is to be created in the software and how the start page is structured. The software is then installed on the authors‘ PCs. The authors then receive a second link to a further online training course. In terms of content, it mainly contains explanations of the functions of the software and which processes can be programmed, as well as a final test. With this certificate the authors can, for voluntary use, receive exercises in which they can try out the practical part directly. Solutions are also provided for the exercises.