Thoughts for Cathie .... Successful e-Learning in Corporations

Chen, E (2008), Successful e-Learning in Corporations, Communications of the IIMA, Vol 8, Issue 2, Article 5

The following strikes me, when reading the article ....

I like the direction of questioning around, what do the organisations / SMT think about e-learning as a complement or alternative to more traditional training methods.

I'd suggest extending the reasons outlined by Ettinger et al., (2006a). The following video gives a slightly different perspective (only need to watch the first few minutes on the why)



There is a statement about the hybrid approach - this resonates with ideas around effective deployment through a blended / flipped model. The reference by Leet et al., 2007 can be used to explore the intended learning outcomes of the design and delivery.

This would feed into a general comment on the paper, where there is little recognition around e-learning being a very broad church in terms of the types of activities.

The limitations section makes no attempt to which is the most important factor, as opposed to a simple list. I think the two most important (and inter-related) are motivation and resistence. Again a really good opportunity to undertake a stakeholder analysis around what motivates people (workers) to complete training, and their thoughts around e-delivery, and those up the food chain around resistence within the workplace.

The ideas around motivation and resitence (or culture, visions etc.,) have been modelled by Collis et al., (4 E;s model) w.r.t why a person would use e-Learning within their teaching design.

This might also dovetail with the discussion in the return on investment section. It has been really difficult to evaluate the return on investment of e-learning with HE, given it is often an individual learner development activity. So what is the criteria for impact?

I'd imagine the impact for the organisation of e-learning on staff (especially as it becomes more individual, informal and granular ... aka people using MOOCs etc.,) is even more intangible. There is a really nice connection with my area of interest (knowledge management within learning organisations) where you can explore the bigger impact on knowledge creation, sharing and storage)