What’s happened
to the e-Learning revolution?
“How do I get the
correct training software (at a reasonable price) for
a small department so that I can
design and write materials, publish them, and then distribute
them without having to have a PhD in 3 sciences to do so?”
“How do I convince
our rapidly changing corporation that e-learning is one
of several valuable tools in developing
a continuous learning environment within the organization?”
Questions like these from
our clients make us wonder: Did we miss the e-Learning
revolution? Why haven’t
more organizations, large and small, taken advantage
of this
technology? The benefits seem obviously clear. E-learning
offers convenience for the student (training anytime
or anywhere), consistency of delivery, lower long-term
cost
of ownership, easy to update, delivery on a global
basis via the Internet. The list goes on. With all
these benefits
going for e-Learning, what’s holding so many
organizations back? That’s what we wanted to
know.
As a company that has been
in the training business since 1986 and in e-Learning
since 1995, MindIQ has been
actively (and sometimes painfully) following, participating
in,
and awaiting a full-blown e-Learning evolution in learning.
Don’t misunderstand, some organizations have
embraced e-Learning and have successfully implemented
web-based
employee career and customer education programs. Several
respondents to this survey cited their success with
implementing a successful e-Learning program. (We will
follow up with
these companies and report some of their “how-to’s”.)
However, for the most part, the dream of e-Learning
as an integral part of daily work life has yet to reach
its
full potential. Integral is an important word here.
As we heard from some of our respondents, one of the
best
uses of e-Learning, is that it becomes as much of a
worker’s
daily routine as getting the morning coffee (and hopefully
as stimulating). Learning - not just training – needs
to be at the modern workers’ fingertips.. Idle
time, problem solving, career development should all
be woven
into fabric of daily work.
We sent a single question
to several thousand people associated with the training
process in their organizations.
We simply
asked, “What is the single biggest challenge
you have today as an HR or Training Director/Manager
as it
pertains to planning, rolling out, and managing an
e-Learning training program?" We asked this
question for two reasons: The first was to help form
a community of peers
who face similar challenges and are interested in
moving ahead with e-Learning. While it does not make
it any easier,
it is always comforting to know you are “not
alone” in
your particular endeavor. Secondly, MindIQ, a premier
e-Learning company, is committed to understanding
where the “pain” is
for its customers and potential customers in order
to improve its products, services and marketing to
ease that pain.
The results of our survey, as you will see, were
very interesting. We received over 130 responses.
I believe we have captured
them all in the Appendix.
After looking at the responses they seemed
to fall into
three major categories and several smaller, but
equally as important, subjects:
- Money
This
was called several things; budget, funding, allocation,
etc.
- Resources
Having
enough people to allocate to the task.
- Management “Buy
In”
How
do we convince the people who control the purse strings
that
for certain
types of training, e-Learning not only provides a good
return on investment (ROI), but actually increases
profits, customer satisfaction, and employee retention.
We received many more responses than we thought we would.
This paper will analyze the top three responses. All the
other responses will be listed here and analyzed in future
white papers and teleconferences |
