| The Internet has driven an important shift both in business, communications, and more recently, global learning. Several factors have been driving these changes, including a shift of the US economy from the industrial age to the knowledge age, the increasingly competitive global business environment, the rapid technological change and ever shortening product development cycles, as well as the hangover effects of the corporate downsizing binge that occurred in the middle of last decade.;A controlled study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of e-learning technology to improve project management skills for participants in Latin America and the US. Participants from ten countries working in the project management field participated in the study by taking a course on the fundamentals of project risk management using one of two separate methods, an e-learning technology (Web-Based-Training (WBT)) or the traditional Instructor-Based-Training (IBT) and one of two different languages, English or Spanish. All received equivalent training program and an experienced project management instructor facilitated all groups reducing variability of teaching styles.;Three main hypotheses were tested regarding the METHOD (WBT vs. IBT), the LANGUAGE (English vs. Spanish), and the TIME (Pre vs. Post Training). As a result of comparable scores on knowledge tests, subjective perception and satisfaction questionnaires about the course, it was clear that, for the participants of the experiment and for the subject of project risk management fundamentals, the WBT method was at least as effective as the IBT method. However, English participants had higher overall knowledge than the Spanish-speaking participants did. The participants were, overall, very satisfied, regardless of method or language. However, the IBT English participants were less satisfied than other groups, caused in part by the basic level of the course and the conditions of the facilities where the course was offered, (not uncommon for the IBT method).;E-Learning technology opens new opportunities for improving project management skills around the world, however, differences in culture and the lack of standard project management lingo in Spanish must be taken into consideration as professionals demand the most effective techniques that ultimately produce top-notch content and delivery. |
