Post Office Accountbook Training: Interactive teletraining or the classroom: A comparative study

Postal Satellite Training Network (PSTN) provides the Postal Service with training through interactive teletraining. This study investigated the effectiveness of Post Office Accountbook Training delivered on PSTN compared with the effectiveness of Post Office Accountbook Training delivered through the traditional classroom. Interactive teletraining was defined in this study as training delivered using satellite transmitted video and audio from a studio or classroom to students remote from the instructor, and using telephone lines to transmit audio from the students to the instructor. It was predicted that: participants of training through interactive teletraining would achieve the same, or higher, scores on a post test as the participants of traditional classroom training: and that the difference between the mean pretest score and the mean post test score of the interactive teletraining participants would be the same or higher than the difference between the mean pretest score and the mean post test score of the classroom participants: and that interactive teletraining would perceive the training as being as good as, or better than, the classroom training: and that the skills learned by the interactive teletraining participants would transfer to the job at the same, or higher, rate as the classroom participants. Content related Pretests and post tests, participant reaction surveys and interviews were used to measure the results of the training. Validity and reliability for these instruments were determined from the results of extensive pilots for this training. All instruments were designed and developed by the United States Postal Service. The study revealed the Post Office Accountbook Training delivered through interactive teletraining was as effective as the training delivered in the traditional classroom.