Best Practices Focus

Roadmaps Institute™ courses are focused on the world’s best management practices.  For example, each Touring Course is designed around a World-Class Management Step Chart.  The step chart is used to encapsulate and teach best practices, assess current capabilities, measure gaps at each participant’s company (or research site) and guide development of a roadmap for each participant to close the gaps.

World’s Best Facilitators

The Roadmaps Institute’s reach is global and the focus is on world-class.  As a result, our customers expect the “best of the best” facilitators form across the globe.    To achieve this lofty objective, the Roadmaps Institute™ reserves facilitation of the majority of our courses for faculty from the Financial Times Top 100 Business Schools.  No higher, more capable source for education facilitators exists.  The Roadmaps Institute™ can hire faculty from the top business schools for several good reasons: online delivery means they can facilitate from anywhere in the world, best practices is always a focus of research at top universities, the Institute serves as a “crossroads” with their peers, and they gain access to the leaders of industry from across the globe.

Bottom Line Savings

Each course results in tangible “take-aways” that can result in bottom line savings for companies that far exceed the cost of the course tuition.  For example, Touring Courses have six Diagnostics (one for each module) that cumulatively create value-added take-aways for each participant’s organization.  When combined, the Diagnostics provide value that exceeds the cost of the course.  How is that possible?  Diagnostic One is an assessment that creates focus on the most important issues.  Diagnostic Two then prioritizes the issues as projects.  Just knowing what the opportunities are from Diagnostic Two can save a company a sum greater than the course cost, but the Diagnostics do not stop at prioritization.  Diagnostic Three forces an understanding of the dependencies regarding the highest priority projects.  Diagnostic Four looks for solutions outside of the company – which is often never done.  Diagnostic Five calls for the participant to detail out the top three projects.  Diagnostic Six closes the process with focusing on one project that will yield the greatest return.

DR²IVE™ Learning Process

The Roadmaps Institute™ Education Methodology is a distinct, innovative approach that fosters: best practices, self-designing content, dynamic interaction and applicable results.  At the heart of the methodology is the DR²IVE™ Learning Process that is applied in the Touring Courses.  The DR²IVE™ Learning Process has three steps: 1. Understand World-Class, 2. Focus on the Gaps, 3. Close the Gaps.  Each week of a Touring Course is built around one of these three steps.

Global Participation

Most Roadmaps Institute™ courses are delivered using our proprietary online delivery system.  Online delivery was a “must have” for the Roadmaps Institute™ since participants in the courses join from across the globe.  Participants in our courses primarily come from Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.  Plans are in place to encourage participation from Africa, South America and the Middle East.   The online format makes such global participation possible.  

Participant/Facilitator Dynamic

The terms “student” and “instructor” no longer apply in the Roadmaps Institute’s self-designing course format.  The “instructor” becomes a “facilitator” and “students” become “participants”.  One of the goals of the course design is to free the facilitator and participant’s time away from mundane time-consuming activities and focusing them on interactive discussions, real take-aways and cutting-edge content.

Self-Designing Content

Self-designing content is a differentiating feature of Roadmaps Institute™ courses from traditional university courses.  Traditional courses follow a set curriculum that addresses what the instructor believes are the needs of the students.  As a result, traditional courses require more student time to learn the same amount of relevant material if the material is relevant at all!    In a self designing course, participants are free to create discussions on topics that directly address their organization’s needs.  For example, in Touring Courses, chart assessment is a core output of the course in the first week.  The course self-designs in the second week to address learning gaps identified as important to the participants.  The modification to the schedule is seamless and unnoticeable to the participants since the facilitator will primarily change the questions in the discussion boards (which are not seen until they are posted) to address gaps discovered in the first week of the course.  The self-designing format creates tangible “take-aways” and retained learning for the participants.

Proprietary eLMS 

The Roadmaps Institute™ tested the world’s best online Electronic Learning Management Systems (eLMS) and drew the conclusion that none of them fully met the needs of the Institute™.   Our experience was excellent with systems like WebCT and Blackboard, the leading providers of eLMS.  Still, our customers demanded: true collaboration hubs rather than top down learning systems, the capability for participants to highlight great discussion posts with stoplight figures, integrated project development add-ons, integrated DR²IVE™ Process modules, full participant profile capability for networking, no limitations on file sharing, and standardized and simple navigation.  To meet these demands, we combined the best features of existing eLMS and our own innovations into the proprietary Roadmaps Institute™ eLMS.

Portfolio Development

Diagnostics in Touring Courses result in modular outputs that fit together into a larger portfolio and ultimately into a greater roadmap.  Each course results in 3 reports, 1 charter and a roadmap to world-class for the course’s core competency area.  When the outputs of the ten Touring Courses are combined, they form a portfolio complete with 30 reports, 10 charters and 10 core competency roadmaps. If the participant continues to complete the Roadmap Master Certification, then he or she will combine the individual reports and roadmaps into one large, holistic roadmap.  No other curriculum in the world can tout this as an output.  The documents developed become part of the participant’s portfolio, which will greatly support career development whether the participant works for a company or owns a business.
 

Virtual Library

Electronic, online delivery of courses enables participants to save all discussions, papers and more in soft copy electronic files.  Imagine a searchable electronic text of the course dialogue at each participant’s fingertips!  Past participants tell the Roadmaps Institute™ they consistently returned to the file to search for ideas they vaguely remember from participating in the course.  The file brings the class back into their memory and contributes to their current success at work.  In the same way, all of the documents posted for the course in the ePackets are downloaded by participants to their hard drives, thereby creating a “virtual library” on each subject.   For example, the Touring Course World-Class eCommerce Management had 221 journal papers, magazine articles, book chapters, videos, voice-overs and presentations.  Multiply that course by ten Touring Courses and you truly do have a “virtual library” at your fingertips at work!

Online ePackets

ePackets contain “required” materials as well as additional “not-required” materials for a given week of the course.  Materials frequently include: readings in pdf and doc formats, videos, voice-over Power Points and audio files.  ePackets will be available two weeks prior to the start of the course.

Guest Experts

A wonderful feature of online discussions is the capability to have Subject Matter Experts (SME) from remote locations join the class synchronously or asynchronously to profess their knowledge in their area of expertise.  Want to learn more about “Supplier Development?”  The Roadmaps Institute™ can tap its vast database of experts from across the globe to invite an SME like Bill Butterfield who led the top supplier development program in the world at John Deere.  Bill could participate as a discussant asynchronously on the discussion board, or as a “live” speaker, using the Roadmaps Institute’s synchronous meeting capabilities.

Course Standardization

Whether you are taking a three week online Touring Course or a one day traditional classroom “face-to-face” Tune-Up Course, you will quickly notice that all Roadmaps Institute™ courses follow a comfortable standardized format.

For example, each three-week Touring Course is broken into six Modules of three days each.  For consistency, the first Module (i.e. start of the course) usually starts on the first Monday of the month.  Each Module contains only one Discussion Board and one Diagnostic.  The titles of the Diagnostics are the same from Touring Course to Touring Course.  The titles of the Discussion Boards vary only by the name of the course.

Why should such standardization matter to participants?  Standardization of course schedules creates a course “rhythm” that becomes familiar to participants as they progress from one course to another.  The “rhythm” reduces the learning time from one course to another.  Standardization also ensures that the facilitation methodology does not vary from one year to the next.  Standardization of the facilitation methodology helps make new graduates instant contributors to roadmaps programs at organizations where seasoned Roadmaps Institute™ Masters are leading initiatives.

Asynchronous Flexibility

Since participants come from across the globe, asynchronous participation is the logical approach for the majority of the learning within the Touring Courses.  Asynchronous learning has many advantages.  First, asynchronous classes are flexible in accommodating each participant’s real-world schedules.  Second, if a technology fails, such as a participant’s computer, the individual can “catch up” with the class by viewing the missed postings and presentations.  Third, an electronic script of the class is generated that can be referenced to prepare for the final exam.  In addition, in a asynchronous class more questions can be answered since time limitations are not as severe.
 

Time Zone Independence

The facilitator, not the Roadmaps Institute™, sets the time zone for submissions, tests (if any), and other class activities.  Hence, the time zone is not tied to the “bricks and mortar” institution, as it is at most online universities.  Why does this feature matter?  The online world is 24/7.  We live in a global business environment where adjusting to time zones is mandatory.  If a facilitator lives in Paris, it makes sense to set the course time to GMT+01:00, the Paris time zone.  Also, time zone independence is fairer for global participants.