eCornell, the university's online learning company, has been named to Training Industry Inc.'s 2010 list of the top 20 leadership training companies, and its suite of leadership and strategic management certificate programs garnered the award for "Best Leadership Development Program" at the 2009 Best of eLearning Readers' Choice Awards hosted by eLearning! magazine.

eLearning!'s readers also chose eCornell's proprietary learning platform as a finalist for "Best Software-as-a-Service Learning Management System."

eCornell, led by CEO Chris Proulx '91, offers certificate programs in 22 areas and features more than 120 online courses and has some 35,000 registered students to date. From middle school science teachers taking Laboratory of Ornithology classes to international business owners seeking executive leadership courses and major hospitality companies planning employee training, eCornell's client base is diverse and worldwide.

"We are working to a greater depth with a greater variety of partners to help the university fulfill its outreach mission with an entrepreneurial focus," said David Shoemaker, eCornell's vice president of learning solutions and innovation. "We feel we can play a significant role."

eCornell also works with such organizations as IBM, General Electric, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Boeing, the United Nations and Walmart to deliver learning programs to their employees, meeting the demands of more than 2,000 learners each month from more than 190 countries.

"We insist on a high degree of rigor in our courses," Shoemaker said. "We start with the unique expertise and talent of Cornell professors, who supply the course content."

Instructional designers and graphic artists help professors convert their in-class lessons into multimedia presentations that enhance the online learning experience. The course instructors schedule online chat sessions, monitor student progress and evaluate students' required assignments, which usually focus on the application of specific workplace skills to the students' particular circumstances.

"Recent studies have shown that students actually learn better in an online environment than they do in regular classes," Shoemaker said, citing a 2009 U.S. Department of Education report that showed that online learning caters to students with different learning styles by enabling them to review difficult concepts on their own time, listen to course lectures more than once, and participate in social media-like interactions with peers to share information.

eCornell developed its initial courses in 2000 in collaboration with the ILR School, which wanted to expand the reach of its program beyond Ithaca and New York City. It offered certificate courses in human resources for working professionals who needed the flexibility of online classes. Soon after, the School of Hotel Administration offered courses through eCornell, and now the Johnson School and the Colleges of Engineering and Agriculture and Life Sciences also participate, as well as such units as the Laboratory of Ornithology.

eCornell is now preparing to launch a new learning platform that will shift the emphasis of the learning experience from being content-centric to community-centric, Shoemaker said. "We know that learning is a social phenomenon, so our new platform will allow people to be more engaged with each other," he said.

The changes will include Facebook-like features that increase opportunities to network with other students by providing more complete profiles and ways to search for colleagues by industry, interest or specialty; new ways to deliver courses; and better tools for instructors to manage the online interaction among students.

"It's a really exciting time for eCornell," Shoemaker said. "We are poised for a significant leap forward."

To learn more about eCornell, visit http://www.ecornell.com.

Kathy Hovis is a writer/editor for Entrepreneurship@Cornell.