"The Best of Elearning! Awards honor the best and the brightest among hundreds of solutions providers," reports Catherine Upton, Publisher of Elearning! Magazine. "The Best of Elearning! Awards are unlike any hosted in this market", says Upton. "We do not create a list of candidates from which readers can select. Every brand and product is reader-nominated, and the winners are the leading vote earners from each product category. With more than fifty percent of professionals relying on word of mouth and referrals as a source of product sourcing, this awards program provides the venue for adopters to share the brands and solutions that really worked for them."

Jamie Grettum, who heads up Blanchard's eLearning division, says the Blanchard program is based on the organization's core offering, Situational Leadership® II. "Just as excellent communication is a key component of Blanchard's leadership offerings, it is also the core of our eLearning process," says Grettum. 2It all comes down to a common language - when entire groups of managers and supervisors in an organization use the same leadership approach and the same language with employees, and employees get what they need to be successful, you see a different level of productivity from everyone," says Grettum.

Grettum and her team questioned whether a facilitator standing in front of a class was needed to learn leadership concepts, or if managers could learn through an eLearning module and show up to class ready to practice in real work situations. Grettum reports that it was very exciting to create a modality in which managers learn through a self-paced process. "This allows us to reserve the precious time together in a classroom to work on real problems and have deeper conversations about the real challenges of leadership within their organization."

Unique to the Blanchard program is its "Learner Care" process, which ensures that participants in blended learning designs - a combination of classroom and virtual learning - know why the content is important, what they are supposed to complete, and what is coming next. Grettum believes that the Learner Care approach is a key reason that Blanchard's eLearning program received the award nomination.

Elearning! Magazine is publishing the results of the competition in its January 2007 edition and will present winners with "Crystal Apple" awards at the Training 2007 event. Elearning! Magazine, E-zine, Elearning! E-news, Elearning! Alert, and the Elearning! Web site are produced by B2B Media Company, a privately held trade publishing and electronic media company.