The capability and flexibility of the systems that surround the e-learning courses will continue to improve, making e-learning even easier to manage. More and more e-learning systems will be interconnected, which should improve the accessibility and availability of e-learning courses. Tell Me More What do I mean by “around the courseware”? I mean the systems [...]

The e-learning technology will become richer and richer over time so that students will get closer and closer to the richness of a face-to-face learning experience. And e-learning courses will probably get cheaper to make and cheaper to deliver. But remember that the quality of any training session is in the instructional design. It’s possible [...]

While I don’t have a crystal ball, I can tell you what’s likely to happen based on the evidence of other recent technologies. E-learning has a good chance of growing quickly, reaching critical mass, and changing the fabric of how training occurs in businesses. Tell Me More I can’t see infallibly into the future, but [...]

Do you have the network bandwidth to run the e- learning courses you want? Are your employees equipped with computers that let you run the e-learning courses you want? Will your e-learning system scale up to handle a large number of students? Tell Me More Your company’s IT infrastructure includes: Networks The computers that your [...]

Firewalls are filters that keep unauthorized users and data out of your company’s intranet . But if students are inside your company’s intranet, and are trying to take e-learning courses that are coming across the firewall from an outside Web site, you need to be sure the firewall is not filtering out the e-learning course [...]

You don’t have to have a single place for your employees to go for e-learning. You can send them to a combination of public sites, to your own private e-learning system, and to anywhere else you want. How you mix and match where your employees go for training will most likely depend on costs and [...]

An e-learning utility is aimed at temporary access to an e-learning system. This is much like the ASP model described in Question 10-4 except that, as with any other utility, you only plug into it as needed. Tell Me More An e-learning utility is something you plug into only as needed, and it aims at [...]

With private access to a shared system, you get what looks like and acts almost like a private system installed within your own company. Because you are sharing physical resources, you have reduced costs. You hand over the system management tasks to the ASP provider. Because an experienced ASP will have done this already for [...]

A public e-learning system lets anyone come and take a course (usually for a fee). This is handy if: You need to get some employees trained with courses that are already available at a public site. You need to move fast and can’t wait for a private e- learning system to be built for you. [...]

If your e-learning system is installed completely within your company, you get complete control. You can, for example, connect your e-learning system directly to your HR system. You also bear all the costs and all the system management tasks. Tell Me More When you host your own e-learning system, it is installed within your company, [...]

Where your e-learning system physically resides is important because it affects your costs and the way you manage your system. You have three choices: Run it on your private intranet. Use a public system. Get private access to a shared system. Tell Me More You might think that your e-learning system simply resides on the [...]

E-learning standards are important because they will enable different parts from different vendors to work together. E-learning standards are still emerging. Tell Me More Standards are important so that things you buy from different vendors or at different times can all work together. Think of standards like this: All Lego toys are made with the [...]

You have to update your e-learning system so it stays fresh. You have to keep courseware up-to-date, keep student access authorizations up-to-date, and periodically upgrade system hardware and software. Tell Me More Your job isn’t over once the e-learning system is set up. You have to maintain it and keep it fresh. (In the same [...]

Figure out what you need e-learning for. Get the system set up on a small scale. Communicate to the students. Deliver the training. See if it really works in your environment. Expand the scale. Tell Me More E-learning will be a change in the way your business operates, so it might be best to start [...]

No, they come in simpler versions and in more complex versions. In the same way, all automobiles are not the same. Almost all LMS systems will have a similar set of “core functions.” Some will have selected extended functionality that make it easier to manage certain aspects of a complete e-learning environment. Tell Me More [...]

An LMS helps you manage complexity. An LMS handles the administrative tasks for e-learning —things like tracking students, enrolling students, etc. That administrative end can become very complex if you have hundreds of courses and hundreds of students to manage. An LMS will automate the handling of: Course catalog Course delivery Student enrollment and tracking [...]

You can feel confident about doing informal training without professional instructional design. But if you’re after formal training, you’re making a big mistake if you really don’t know how to make an instructionally sound course. Tell Me More Most education professionals will tell you that you get the best student results if you: Have a [...]

You can buy e-learning courseware ready-made. This is the “off-the-shelf” approach. Or you can develop it yourself (or pay someone to build it for you). This is the custom-built approach. Tell Me More If you need to have your employees learn something, like project management, over the Internet, there has to be a project management [...]

Depending on what you need to measure, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More As a businessperson, you’re interested in e-learning because it can have a positive effect on your business. So you’re going to want to know whether that’s happening. You’re going to want reports that tell you what’s going on [...]

Depending on whether you think you need collaboration, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More In general, it’s good to have the ability for students to interact with other students while they take the course. This is called collaboration, and it simply means that one student can talk to another. It’s the [...]

Depending on whether you need an instructor, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Yes, it is always better to have an instructor. And it would be better yet if you had the best instructor in the world all the time too. Instructors can play a crucial role in training, the same [...]

Depending on the starting skill level of the students and the ending skill level you need, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Let’s say you’re trying to teach the new extensions to the html Web-page language. Your approach to that training will be greatly influenced by the starting skill level of [...]

Depending on the expected shelf life of the courseware, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Will the e-learning training you create be good for years, or is it a one-shot deal? Will the course be valid this time next year, or will it need updating? Short-term shelf life: This is training [...]

Depending on whether you have a deadline for getting “everyone” trained, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More This is similar to the question above on “time to build,” but it is not exactly the same—this is delivery rollout. You might face such a rollout deadline in this kind of situation: You [...]

Depending on how much time you have to get it up and running, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Do you have months to develop the training course? Or only days? E-learning courses can take anywhere from one week to six months (and longer) to put together. (In general, the simpler [...]

Depending on how much time students have to spend on the training, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Your employees have jobs to do, and you can’t expect them to spend 100 percent of their time on e-learning (or on anything else outside the mainline path of their job). The first [...]

Depending on the number of students you have to teach, you can get very different e-learning solutions. Tell Me More Are you trying to train dozens of students with e-learning or hundreds of thousands? You’ll get different kinds of solutions depending on what you answer to that question. (In the same way, if you need [...]

Your budget is perhaps the thing that most affects your e-learning approach. Tell Me More Does your budget match your problem—big to big or small to small? Or do you have a mismatch of small budget to big problem? (If you only have $2,000 for a car, you’re first headed toward the used car lot, [...]

There are only a handful of factors that influence how big and complex your e-learning solution will be. These are the factors you trade off in order to come up with an acceptable (but probably imperfect) e-learning solution. Tell Me More If you think of your e-learning situation as a sheet of plastic, these factors [...]

The building blocks for e-learning do not fit together in just one way. You can use some or all of the building blocks for a specific e-learning solution. Tell Me More You can fit these building blocks together in almost any way you want. You can mix and match. What you do will depend on: [...]