E-learning, the new twist in continuing education

To stay competitive, companies are investing in continuing education. Valérie Gérard, CEO of Call International, explains how e-learning and communication techniques are making teams more effective.

Who said that continuing education was only for students? Quite the contrary. For a company, it's a way of boosting its competitiveness and enabling its teams to develop new skills. ‘Continuing education is a way of enhancing your skills, stimulating your curiosity and challenging yourself,’ explains Valérie Gérard, CEO of Call International, a B2B training centre.

Before 2020, Call International almost exclusively delivered its training courses face-to-face, using a traditional model: one teacher and students in a classroom. However, like many companies, the centre had to adapt to the Covid-19 crisis. In just a few weeks, it reoriented its training, moving from 95% face-to-face to 95% online. Today, Call International is pursuing a modernised e-learning model. Interview with Valérie Gérard.

Call International has been in existence for almost 37 years. What is your main mission?​

Call International is a training centre specialising in language and communication skills, whether in a foreign language or in the mother tongue. These two areas complement each other perfectly and our formats correspond well to the demands of companies. We have language trainers, but also specialists capable of providing our learners with jargon specific to their profession. For example, legal English or communication techniques for law firms.

How are your e-learning courses organised?

Up until now, we have been offering blended learning courses. In other words, a teacher who teaches in his or her mother tongue and provides support via a self-learning platform. Today, we are also using a particularly innovative platform: Speedlingua. It focuses on relaxing and training the muscles of the middle ear. In fact, all languages are spoken using different frequencies and sounds. At birth, the baby's ears are open to the sounds of all languages. Then, very early on in the child's development, the ear closes off to sounds that don't carry a message, to keep the focus on those of the mother tongue. Thanks to Speedlingua, we can retrain the muscles of the middle ear to hear the sounds of the target language more clearly.

In addition to languages, you also offer training in communication techniques. Why is this essential for companies?

With the globalisation of companies and the world of work in general, we have seen the needs of our students evolve. For example, we recently worked with a company whose financial and HR departments are spread across several countries. By organising a joint course for their employees, we created a team-building and emulation effect. We were also able to work on slightly different communication techniques, because taking part in online meetings requires more skills than just linguistic proficiency.

We're also finding that more and more students have to give presentations in front of an audience and convince them. Speaking can already be a difficult exercise, even more so when it involves speaking in a foreign language. So we're going to train them to master the content and form of the presentation. This is important for people in managerial positions, or even as company directors or CEOs.

Why is continuing education so important?

It allows us to develop our skills and move out of our comfort zone. Continuing education also opens us up to new cultures. We see this particularly with language learning. The more you master a language, the more you understand its culture. It's important to be aware of cultural differences, what we can and can't say and what we can and can't do. In this way, we contribute to a more productive exchange.