Anytime anyplace learning.

• Author: Karr, Susan Schott
• Position: ELearning

For companies focused on change and growth--while charged with lowering costs and improving product offerings and service--learning is clearly at the center of achieving these goals. And, with current technology capabilities, enterprise-, electronic- or "eLearning" is fast-becoming the tool of choice for enhancing the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. Learning itself has become a competitive advantage.

Learning has been dramatically altered by the Internet, with many factors contributing to its evolution. As a medium for communication and learning, the Internet is a powerful instrument for helping employees, business partners, suppliers and customers, particularly as it allows a "student" an anytime/anyplace classroom. This article surveys some eLearning trends and strategies, and assesses how best to measure its business impact and return on investment.

eLearning, the electronic delivery of training resources, or the process of learning new information over the Internet, allows for varied types of student interactions. These include self-paced courses, virtual classrooms, email and voicemail interaction, chat sessions, discussion boards, online resources and reference libraries, activities and readings and multimedia presentations.

Until now, many of the systems built to deliver eLearning have been fraught with troubles. They've been difficult to implement, difficult to understand and have fallen short of their promises. eLearning's difficult beginnings raise questions: How are you going to evaluate the system?

What does it do for you? How do you know if you're paying too much? How do you make sure this isn't another fiasco?

As technology is becoming more refined, there's a shift to concentrating on improving content, learning and knowledge acquisition. We're no

longer concerned with How are we going to build the schoolhouse? The technology for building the learning infrastructure is sophisticated enough so that we can concentrate on more important questions: What are employees learning that is of value? Is this learning aligned with employee needs and those of the company which has invested to provide employees with learning that is applicable to their jobs and will make them more productive?

A Growth Market

The percentage of companies offering eLearning is expected to double within the next two years, say results from a study of 144 companies conducted by The Forum Corp., a Massachusetts-based training and consulting firm. Also, a 2002 State of the Industry Report by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) finds that training is thriving, with eLearning poised for growth. It notes that companies are spending more on employee training and that eLearning has reached its highest level since 1997. Other trends identified in the study relate to time, money and diversity: There are shorter time frames for learning often facilitated through technology, increasing pressure for short-term profits and a greater need for people to work together as a result of growing cultural diversity.

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