A plethora of businesses in recent years have taken advantage of the Internet to offer their services, tapping into a growing base of consumers who are connecting to the Internet from home.
It’s not surprising, then, that educational course offerings such as the Mortgage Bankers Association of America’s CampusMBA program are heading in the same direction. The CampusMBA site, launched this month, calls itself the “learning center for real estate finance” and offers several courses online ranging from quality assurance and risk analysis to secondary market management.
“[By offering online courses] we hope to add value to our membership,” said Dan Thoms, director of distance education for MBAA. “We’re also hoping we’ll be able to educate the real estate community. My main goal as a director is [to ensure that] everybody has the skills they need to do what they do.”
A search of online courses for real estate professionals turned up relatively few, and the majority of those focus on licensing and continuing education of real estate sales people. CampusMBA is virtually alone in the online world of banking and lending education. One analyst, however, expects the program to have a lot of company soon.
“It’s certainly a growing trend,” said Kevin Timmons, senior banking analyst with the investment banking and brokerage firm First Albany Corp. of New York. As an example, Timmons cites the securities industry where many companies now require their employees to take online courses in order to meet annual recertification requirements.
“What we’re finding is companies don’t want to send their employees out. They don’t want to pay for the travel, they don’t want to pay for the food, the hotel,” said Thoms.
Although travel expenses may not be much of an issue for Boston or New York companies, said Timmons, it gets to be very expensive and time consuming when your firm is located in a small town far away from a metropolis where courses are routinely offered.
“When the alternative [to traveling] is to sit at your desk and turn on the Internet, that’s an awfully attractive alternative,” said Timmons.
‘Test at the End’
The cost savings was important in Shanika Hammack’s decision to direct her staff to online learning courses. As director of operations for the Professional Advantage Group of Boston and New York, which provides residential mortgage loans to employees of professional firms, she sees online courses as more beneficial than the in-person alternative. “I believe it is more efficient this way [online], as you learn only the facts and in a structured manner that each individual can take at their own pace,” she said.
Each course offered by CampusMBA typically has four to seven lessons, said Thoms. A student can choose to take the class during a lunch hour or may take the course sitting at home in his or her pajamas, he said. But “as fun as it is to be online, there is a test at the end of the lesson and you have to pass it,” he said.
In addition to the courses, the program offers members a community atmosphere where they are able to communicate online with colleagues around the country or in their own state. Within the community network, students can participate in discussion groups on a number of subjects, from predatory lending to automated underwriting.
State associations and companies can create their own pages within the site to promote their discussions and events, he said. “We offer it to all the state associations for free,” said Thoms. Although no Massachusetts associations have jumped on board yet, Thoms said he is confident the program can benefit them. “Every dollar that comes through them, we give 10 percent back,” he said. Each course costs $125 for MBAA members and $185 for non-members.
The content of the courses is based on MBAA’s 38-year-old correspondence program, said Thoms.
New programs – sometimes suggested by the members – are researched by a team at MBAA and once the subject matter of the course is collected from various publications, an outline is sent to three experts within that subject who work with MBAA to write the course, said Thoms.
To keep the online community going, MBAA members have lifetime access to the community; non-members have access for 12 months after they enroll in a course. The site enables users to personalize the pages to list news links, briefs and even the latest sports scores. The virtual library feature allows users to search for articles by topic.
“Really, the intention right now is to build the community and [have members] interact with each other,” said Thoms.
Although sharing general ideas is possible, said Timmons, he doubts the community discussion aspect of the site will develop into an educational tool. “I suppose you could share different sorts of sales techniques, but honestly, the different regulations in the states limit the effectiveness of that,” he said.
About 7,000 people are enrolled in online courses at CampusMBA, said Thoms. Of those, about one-third are not members of MBAA, he said.