REPORT
(Page 1 of 5)
IEEE Educational Activities Board – 15 November 2008
SUBJECT:
Continuing Professional Education Committee Report
FROM:
Kostas Plataniotis, Chair
____________________________________________________________________
The CPEC membership is composed of Kostas Plataniotis, Chair; Philip Laplante, Mary
Reidy, and Hector del Castillo, and is supported by EAB Staff.
The CPEC is committed to the IEEE becoming a leading provider of continuing
educational and professional development products, services and activities to support
member’s careers. The EAB Manifesto provides a comprehensive plan for the
challenges to be addressed by the CPEC.
The Committee is working to carry out the planning and actions to meet these
challenges. The Committee has met by regularly scheduled teleconferences throughout
the year.
IEEE Expert Now currently contains 75 titles. There are 40 additional courses in
development (17 of which are in final production with external vendors). Course production
continues with external vendors (SkillSoft and EdgePoint Learning). Individual courses are
available for IEEE Member purchase through IEEE Xplore. Corporate/institutional
customers can purchase the entire library for delivery either through our hosted LMS
solution (currently through SkillSoft) or through IEEE Xplore. IEEE Sales and Marketing is
leading the sales efforts for IEEE Expert Now. Their contacts in the government and
educational institutions are providing sales opportunities. 2008 Commitments for financial
sponsorship had an increase of $160K over the 2007 commitments ($520K vs. $360K,
respectively).
The IEEE Expert Now Region/Section pilot program was launched in May 2007, to provide
the opportunity to use the courses as a tool for educational events at the local level. 14
events have taken place to date with an additional 8 planned through the remainder of the
year.
A market research study was performed over the summer. Following are some of the key
findings:
 Awareness of Expert Now is low among both non-users and decision makers and
seems to be the main barrier to trial.
o Most non-users are open to trying Expert Now, now that they are familiar with
it and would be likely to do some additional research.
 Many respondents feel the availability of content is lacking in Expert Now. They want
to see a wider range of topics and more depth/technical issues in current topics.
o The idea of bundling a series of courses together ranging from an overview to
more advanced topics is of strong interest to respondents, particularly if it
includes a cost savings as well.
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The program satisfies the major needs of an online, self-paced education providing
convenience and cost savings.
Most users are satisfied with their Expert Now experience and would be likely to take
another module in the future. In particular they are impressed with the convenience,
short duration, and presentation format.
o Wider selection of topics
o Increased complexity and length of modules
o Study materials: printouts and note taking capabilities for later reference
o Related references to pursue after completion
o Ability to ask questions during the module (interactive features)
The IEEE Education Partners Program (EPP) continues to grow. The program offers
a 10% discount to IEEE Members with selected partners through academia and
industry.
The partners then provide a revenue share to the IEEE based on the following annual
scale:
 3% - for $1-$50,000
 5% - for $50,001 - $100,000
 7% - for $100,001 - $150,000
 10% - for $150,001 and beyond
We ended 2007 with 435 IEEE members taking courses through the Partners program
(that we know of not all partners had a mechanism in place to give us the information on
how many participants they had)
Revenue from 2007 = $55K
30 Partners in the program, 16 of which now also offer IEEE CEU's. The offering of
CEU’s also enables Partners more overall exposure to the membership, which will
hopefully make the membership more aware of the programs and drive registrations.
The partners program helps the CEU program by giving the program an additional
source of revenue.
2008
Market Research
A market research was completed, where we talked to IEEE members who have taken
courses to determine the quality of the courses and their opinions on the program. (see
if the 10% discount made a difference and see if they value the program as a Member
benefit). Also we had a focus group bulletin board of members who have not taken
courses to see their awareness of the program and opinion if they knew about the
program would that make a difference for them to take courses at a discounted price.
Strategic Planning Assessment
At the end of March, early April several programs were reviewed during the Strategic
Planning committee assessments. The IEEE Education Partners Program was looked
at and was not well received as the committee did not see a value added.
Some of the things that were mentioned were:
 The partners are too US Centric
 The partners are too East Coast Centric
 The awareness of the program in the IEEE and to Membership is minimal
 The program as a whole is losing money each year (approximately 30K)
 Does the IEEE Membership feel this is a benefit?
 Who is our competition?
 Should we continue to have this program?
EPP learned many lessons from the market research and strategic planning
assessment this year, such as:
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Our partners maybe primarily East Coast centric as the assessment pointed
out, however many of our partners offer courses in different languages, and
have global outreach already in place.
The awareness has been minimal and our marketing efforts for EPP have just
begun to go out, we should see results from this in 2009
Members do feel this is a benefit and would like to see more quality providers
and higher discounts
To date the program has brought in $94K in revenue through October from 1238
IEEE Members including 283 members from outside the US.
The revenue goal for 2008 set by EAB was $55K we have exceeded it and expect to
bring in $100K plus by year end. The program as a whole will show a surplus of $5K
plus, however it would have been about $25K, but the program is covering the market
research cost in full.
Partners, such as:
 Rutgers University
 EnginZone (from Lima Peru)
 QAI Global Institute (from India)
 General Electric (GE)
 Siemens
 The IPL Group
 EMC Education Services
 Pace University
 ETAP/Operation Technology
 Bogatin Enterprises
A recruitment plan is in the process of being developed to add additional quality
providers and will be ready to be implemented in 2009.
Other plans for 2009 included the redesign of the EPP home page, launching of a
course catalog search database, higher discounts from our partners, the creation of
survey for each member to complete at the completion of their course and continuing to
work with other IEEE OU’s, such as MGA, WIE, Student Branches, Regions, Sections
and EA committees (SEOC and CPEC) to promote the program to the membership.
CPEC has begun oversight of the IEEE Continuing Education Units (CEU) program.
The committee members will review course applications and will provide guidance to
the staff supporting the program.
Plans for the IEEE Educational Web Portal upgrade are ongoing. Staff is leading an IEEE
team effort to improve the information architecture and usability of the current EA site. Staff
are also working to incorporate an education products database search feature that will
enable key word and advanced search capabilities for all courses available through
Educational Activities (including IEEE Expert Now, Education Partners, and CEU courses).
The estimated completion of the database project has been slated for 1Q 2009.
This report reflects the ongoing work of the CPEC and the supporting IEEE staff.