Content area
Full text
A current guide to finding the courses you're looking for.
In the past six months, learning portals have taken over the training business-at least that's the impression you'd get from the buzz blitz currently under way in the marketplace. If you've searched the Web for online-training providers, online registration for classroom training, or even online retailers who sell CD-ROM programs, you've probably run across lots of sites that call themselves learning portals.
There's no ironclad rule that dictates what is and what is not a learning portal; indeed, definitions abound and change frequently. To run the main players to ground, we refined a three-pronged definition from Brandon Hall, an author and technology-based training expert in Sunnyvale, CA, and editor of "Technology for Learning" newsletter (published by Bill Communications, which also publishes TRAINING). We define a learning portal as a Web site that provides, via e-commerce transactions, one-stop shopping for a variety of training programs from different vendors and instant access to online classes. Most portals also offer some form of learning management-a tracking and reporting service.
With those characteristics in mind, we...