Making E-Learning Work

As trainers, we have all experienced the disappointment of seeing promising innovations fizzle out or fail to reach their potential. All too often, on reflection, we realise that, if we’d only put as much care and attention into the implementation as we did into the design and build, we could have made them work. Of course we need to learn from our own mistakes, but we also need to learn from the mistakes of other organisations and, better still, from their successes. In this chapter, I search out the actions that need to be taken to make e-learning programmes a success, not in theory but in the hard world of reality.

Making an impression

It is a sad fact that we generally only get one chance at making an impression on an organisation, and so that’s a chance we’ve got to take. For many trainers, e-learning is the biggest chance we’ll experience in a lifetime; a chance to transform the way an organisation learns, with – because of the priority being attached to e-business initiatives - the budget to match.

So, what do we have to do to make the best of this opportunity? How can we make sure that we don’t waste this chance? Well, the best way is to copy those who’ve already made e-learning a success and to avoid the mistakes made by those who’ve lost out. That’s what we’ll attempt to do here.