eLearning a better chalkboard: online learning has come a long way in recent years, and as an established part of most corporations' training infrastructures, it's poised for greater importance in the future.

• Author: Grollman, William K.
• Position: ELearning

Increased productivity is due to extraordinary advancements in technology. The development of computer hardware and software and digital telecommunications equipment--and their acceptance in the workplace--have undeniably revolutionized the way people work. Leveraging these powerful tools, today's workers produce more and produce a higher quality than was possible by their predecessors.

An especially beneficial use of technology has come in the areas of education and training, with eLearning being the enabler. ELearning combines improved computer capabilities (multimedia, browsers, databases, etc.), improved telecommunications infrastructures (networks, the Internet) and improved pedagogical techniques (instructional design) to improve training offerings cost-effectively.

ELearning offers numerous benefits that enable organizations to better accomplish their objectives. Here are some examples:

* A large professional services firm with a tradition of making enormous education investments in its highly-trained staff is using eLearning to provide continuing education in a new way, eliminating much of the need for travel to training events. The result: increased revenue and decreased costs, while maintaining the same high level of training.

* Professional trade associations are meeting their members' needs for rapid understanding and assessment of complex topical issues by delivering live webcasts. Now, critical information is delivered in an engaging, interactive format, more quickly, to a larger audience and at less cost.

* Corporations are capturing and better distributing presentations from onetime events that were previously available only to those who were able to attend the original live event. The result is improved communication throughout organizations with less distortion of information, as well as expanded use of quality content.

Variety, Delivery Systems Growing

Increasingly, online learning is becoming an established part of most corporations' training infrastructures. Proprietary and off-the-shelf courses with broad appeal in key areas such as IT training, management courses and soft skills lead the popularity list, followed by new employee orientations and harassment and safety training. Also, discipline-specific technical training is widely available, including online learning for corporate accounting and finance professionals.

For internal finance and accounting professionals (staff under the CFO, Controller and Internal...