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UNTIL RECENTLY, MIKE BOYLE WAS A RESEARCH CHEMIST DEVELOPING NEW TYPES OF POLYMERIC MATERIALS THAT INTERACT WITH LIGHT IN NOVEL AND USEFUL WAYS. THEN HE BEGAN USING THE WORLD WIDE WEB TO COMMUNICATE with colleagues and to keep up on the latest advances in materials science. Soon he became involved in developing a Web site aimed at improving technology transfer between his laboratory and the non-research world.
As work on the Web site progressed, Boyle found he needed to learn to program in Perl (a language used by Web-site developers to create "routines," such as allowing visitors to use a password to register). A self-directed learner, he read books on Perl and taught himself some of its capabilities, but he was struggling to understand more about how Perl interacted with a Web server. Then he happened upon O'Reilly Publications' Web-based training course in Perl programming. "It seemed to be exactly what I needed," he says. "I could access the class when I had time, go through the material at my own pace, review material at leisure, and skip over material I already knew."
And that, in a nutshell, is the attraction of online schools for technical skills. Whether employees need to learn Microsoft Access, upgrade their network skills, or get their Novell certification, the Web may be the answer.
Such online schools are proving to be one of the biggest success stories on the Web. 3Com Corp.'s educational marketing group...