22 September 2009
We all have different skills sets as diverse as our potential backgrounds, and therefore it should come as no surprise that in the pursuit of an online vs offl ine learning process will appeal to some types of people and not others. Since the emergence of computers, information is more accessible to people and the traditional outlook on learning has changed signifi cantly allowing people to learn at their own pace.
Many companies are now participating in online learning to better serve their employees and take advantage of fi nancial and time savings. More recent approaches focus on dialogue, interaction and collaborative activities - courses still contain content but it is of secondary importance. This advocates Social-Constructivism as a pedagogical perspective, whereby learners construct their knowledge through discussion, enhancing their thinking skills. Of course we know collaborative e-learning is not only possible, if put together in a correct and orderly fashion, it can be an incredible asset to both business and customer alike.
In coming years we will have the majority of Gen Y in the organizations who are all about freedom and experiencing. E-learning allows organisations to give fl exibility, freedom as well as learning to their employees assisting the organisation’s attrition and retention rates. Below are some of the approaches to be considered when building e-learning within organisations:
1. An integrated, strategic approach based on a vision for e-learning that links e-learning with business strategy and creates the appropriate infrastructure (technical and organisational) to help deliver the organisation’s objectives.
2. An ad hoc, solutions approach based on creating individual e-learning to address specifi c learning problems. However at the same time there are certain training programs which cannot be handled online such as, eg. use of an extinguisher. There are also some disadvantages to online learning - the human being is a social animal and at some stage requires face to face interaction, hence a combination of E-learning and offline learning is always the way to go for businesses.
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