Elearning Developments and Issues

May 19
09:09

2010

Joe Owens

Joe Owens

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Giving their employees elearning opportunities will be a win-win situation for any company. Every company wants to be able to provide its employees with the best corporate training that they could provide.

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Every company wants to be able to provide its employees with the best corporate training that they could provide. Giving their employees elearning opportunities will be a win-win situation for any company. In giving their employee adequate training,Elearning Developments and Issues Articles they boost the employee’s morale because the company is providing a free service.

The company will also benefit from the employee’s additional training since this experience and newly-honed skill will be put to good use by the company. However, there are many critics today that are talking about how the current technologically-enhanced learning solutions are not up to the standards of training and learning that is demanded by the market.

What most companies would love to get is a truly engaging, synergy dependent learning process for their employees and trainees. However, virtual learning solutions and other corporate training avenues are not able to create such an ideal environment. Most training seminars that give out certification afterwards are more or less below the level of quality that the information technology industry needs. This is because such online courses today are mostly an information spoon feeding program. Programmatic is the word that defines them. All that happens is that some digital content is passed on to trainees who are essentially just asked to memorize the information. There is no collaboration; living, passionate encounter with the lesson and thus the knowledge is not ingrained. It is simply programmed.

This is why companies that provide electronic learning solutions are now starting to realize that the key to their success against the crowd of other elearning solutions competitors is to bring up the level of the game. Thus, what the market is seeing are new kinds of techniques or ways to utilize technology in order to create a much more interactive learning activity.

Another development that several providers are doing is the addition of human support. Human support facilitates the interaction between the trainee and the instructional program. This is why several platforms are being invented to create a faster video and chat support for new learning programs. Syncing these new technologies with the old platforms is not as easy as it sounds but the development is clearly gaining popularity.

Keeping trainees and students motivated is a challenge in the virtual learning environment. Solution providers are coming up with creative solutions to address this issue, an example is the addition of a social networking type of platform. Earlier versions of technology assisted learning attempted to replicate the traditional classroom setting. This version proved to be unsuccessful in holding the attention of the students and keep them engaged in long periods of time. 

Another factor to consider is the type of learners that will use the system. There two kinds of learners: the dependent and the independent learners. The dependent learners expect to learn when they are told but independent learners take the initiative and are willing to learn because they are self-motivated.

There are a lot of problems and issues the industry have to deal with in this new teaching technology. Examples are questions on affordability and flexibility. Elearning is still at the early stages of growth as industry and analysts see that it is steadily growing at a healthy rate.