Internet Education for The Public

A July report from American College Testing, a surveyor of 2,564 colleges and universities, found that the first-year dropout rate at private colleges rose to 26 percent, up three points since 1983.

In a recent survey conducted by the Olsten Forum on Human Resource Issues and Trends, more than half of the company executives surveyed said their employees' lack of certain skills resulted in increased production costs. More interesting still, these same companies, while acknowledging a deleterious skills gap in workers, scaled back their in-house training programs.

While no positive inference seems possible from these reports, both surveys uncovered the common fact that increased computerization was leading the drive for increased basic training in computer skills. The question still remains, however: Who will deliver the necessary training, and how?

Quik sees such gap in skills as an opportunity to participate at the community level by providing basic computer training through its franchise network and, at once, encouraging new access customers to choose Quik before they are influenced by other national providers. Indeed, to Quik, the perfect access customer is one who has benefited by our network of community "information outreach" in advance of becoming a customer. They will have already participated in a local Internet Training meeting or attended a basic skills workshop conducted by the local Quik franchise owner.

A two-point strategy, advanced by Quik management, includes maximizing ease-of-use of all systems and equipment, whether by franchise owner or end-users, and providing accessible, topical and affordable (often free) basic computer training to customers and non-customers alike.

• Maximize Ease-of-Use: Quik proprietary applications, such as Cheetah, will assure that anyone --however new to computing --will find little to discourage their first-time experience on the Internet.
  
  Additionally, Quik's Agent sign-up program will provide yet another way of buffering the technological shock to first-time Internet users.
  
  Quik and its franchises know that first-time users with enjoyable Internet beginnings will become the company's preeminent lobbyists.

• Ubiquitous Training: Quik is intent upon training for training's sake. Train the entrepreneur to become a successful Quik Internet franchise operator; train the franchise operator to train its staff; train the staff to train users in the course of helping solve a problem; train satisfied customers to train family and friends prior to themselves making choices about Internet access; and above all else, train the franchisee every day in some way that keeps them equal to the jet-paced technology of the Internet.

One of the most successful training forums in Quik's growing arsenal is the user-group meeting, a collection of Internet customers linked by community geography through their Quik Internet service provider. Typically, the Quik ISP will hold one meeting a month until demand from a growing base of customers, driven largely by regular user-group meetings, requires multiple meetings in order to contain the size for maximum effectiveness and participation by attendees.

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