| Company chairman and founder Neal Gersony, Ph.D., recalls a dinner at which several agents sitting at his table lamented the CE credit hours dangling over their heads and the pressure they felt to carve out the necessary time to meet them. Gersony, who had managed the development of online programs for the University of New Haven, saw an opportunity to apply the same educational strategies to an underserved market he believed was uniquely suited to online learning.
"Compared to many other professions, there are not as many distinct subspecialties," observes Gersony, who believed that many online courses could be created that would be useful and applicable to a broad range of members within the insurance profession. He also saw a very large market that could potentially benefit from his online offerings-an estimated 2.9 million licensed insurance agents in the United. States. Add to this the online educational needs of designation holders, such as CPCUs, and CLUB, and the result is a potential market in excess of 3 million.
CEU.com was founded in 1999, by the merger of Online Learning International, LLC, and the Graduate School Online, Inc., a Yale University spin-off, "to serve as a learning management system for licensed professionals," Gersony says. Bruce S. MacMillian, the company's president and chief executive officer, predicts that by the first quarter of 2003, 25 online CE courses will be available through CEU.com, with an additional five courses added to the roster by the summer. To date, approximately 15,000 "students" have taken at least one CEU.com online course, with 50% having
taken more than one.
"We also continue to develop courses that we believe respond to market interests," says MacMillian, who came to the company with more than 30 years of experience at a major national insurer. For example, he notes that the company is currently developing a CE course on toxic mold-which over recent years has emerged as a potentially costly and difficult exposure to address.
While not even the leaders of CEU.com dispute the benefits of a classroom learning situation for many learning needs-they do stress the many advantages of online learning-particularly to meet CE insurance licensure requirements.
One of the major advantages cited by MacMillian is flexibility to the students, who can learn at their own pace rather than at the pace of an entire classroom. They can review what they need to review and move quickly over what they already know. And they can accomplish this, adds Gersony, virtually anytime and anywhere, as long as they have access to an Internet connection. Online learning, continues Gersony, is also uniquely suited to the individual who may not have a long attention span. Instead of missing information that perhaps they've tuned out in a classroom, they can review material over and over again. Or, if English is their second language, they need not fear missing key information spoken perhaps too rapidly by an instructor. Again, the flexibility exists to review information repeatedly.
Additionally, notes MacMillian, online courses of study can be viewed just as easily off the computer screen because a portion or all of the course text can be printed out-a feature viewed as very desirable by the student who still feels more comfortable when holding and looking directly at a printed text.
And in a world characterized by the need for immediate gratification, the speed of Internet-based learning and testing is seen as paramount. Test results are virtually immediate, as is reporting to the state that the student has taken the required CE credits. And in a business environment likewise characterized by the emphasis on paring down expenses, the reduced cost of taking a course online, as compared to traveling to a remote location necessitating hotel and other living expenses, is obvious. But CEU.com has done the math, estimating that the cost of 16 CE credits conducted in a "traditional" classroom venue of two-and-one-half days averages $1,540.60 compared to $138 to take the same course online.
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