SiliconRepublic.com Ireland's Technology News Service

Here2learn.com, which goes live tomorrow, will provide accredited adult training across hundreds of subject areas including IT training, stress management, financial basics and project management.

PrimeLearning will continue to offer separate courses to the business community under the Primelearning.com brand.

The company believes that the new courses will appeal to those returning to work, upskilling or changing career path. Founder and CEO Terry O’Brien said that with the internet going mainstream and the workforce under more time pressure than ever before, the “time is right” for a flexible e-learning product that could fit in with consumers’ busy lifestyles.

“Our research indicates a gap in the adult learning market for those who do not have the time or resources to attend night school or whose employers have not subscribed to an online teaching resource. In addition, a complete, fully accredited Here2learn.com course costs circa one third of the price of an evening course or high-street equivalent. For example, a €400 accredited evening course would cost about €140 online at Here2learn.com.”

To use the website, consumers browse through the courses on offer, make a selection by adding the course to their shopping basket and make a purchase using a credit or debit card. Prices start at €18 and go up to €145 for PMI-certified Project Management Training.

A number of Here2learn.com mentors at the company’s offices in Limerick as well as at the content providers themselves will be on hand to answer questions during training.

With Here2learn.com aimed at the consumer market, the biggest challenge would be how to market the courses to a vast population of users, said O'Brien. “We’ve got the service. We have the know-how to develop the content, website and build the offering. The missing piece is how to reach the consumer.”

To help address this, PrimeLearning has signed a commercial agreement with Independent News & Media, which is a 20pc shareholder in the company. Under the agreement the Independent Group will, using a combination of advertising and public relations, promote Here2learn.com in the pages of its newspapers, which includes the London Independent and Belfast Telegraph as well as local papers The Irish Independent and Evening Herald. “We have a commercial arrangement in place that, when it’s mutually desirable, they’ll run ads,” said O’Brien, who added that the agreement covers all English-language papers within the Independent Group. This paves the way for a potential launch of Here2learn.com in overseas countries such as South Africa and Australia, where the media giant also has newspaper interests.

O’Brien added that the course content was based on content and resources developed by PrimeLearning over the past six years and was being made available in a user-friendly format. PrimeLearning has two major content partners: Element K, which specialises in general business content, and Intuition, which produces well-known computer certification courses such as European Computer Driving Licence and International Computer Driving Licence.

O’Brien saw the launch of a consumer offering as an important milestone in the development of the six-year-old training provider. “A lot of people tried this before but they spent a lot of money advertising a product for which the market was not ready. Online learning is flexible and fits with people’s lifestyles and we’re going to do it a lot more cheaply than if they were doing a traditional course.”

By Brian Skelly