Appropriateness of E-Learning - ASDA and Telco - Essay Example

E-Learning Of late, with the advent of various effective s in e-learning by Online Shopping giants like ASDA and TESCO, E-learning has becomean effective means of education, providing varied services in the form of educational games, e-books, audios, videos etc Wikipedia says: "It may include the use of web-based teaching materials and hypermedia in general, multimedia CD-ROMs or web sites, discussion boards, collaborative software, e-mail, blogs, wikis, text chat, computer aided assessment, educational animation, simulations, games, learning management software, electronic voting systems and more, with possibly a combination of different methods being used." Performance Problem Analysis: A large amount of study material is available online on ASDA and Telco with variety of costs, depending upon the popularity and effectiveness of the material. The performance of E-Learning, particularly from such online media has closed all the gaps, due to uncompromising advertisement and availability of wide variety of materials with reasonable costs. Compared to the last few years, E-Learning has observed tremendous growth both in the sale of materials through e-mail and other posts as well as in creating a huge list of sponsors like Wal-Mart, etc. The online article "E Learning Development Process at Stylus" says: "The analysis stage includes studying the target audience, the primary objectives of the e-learning initiative, studying the content, the technical needs, the organization and structure of the content and so on" The success of performance of e-learning form such online markets as an effective method is evidently apparent from the pace of spreading of e-learning based on educational technologies in the form of mp3, PDAs and innumerable online courses on internet. An online article cites the Cost reductions and mitigated risk as two worthy indicators of performance of e-learning: "Cost reductions - By reducing business costs, resources are freed up and can be reallocated. In addition, quality eLearning and training has been shown to reduce employee turn-over and thus, decrease the costs of new employee recruiting and training. This element of an ROI analysis is fairly straightforward to calculate since the components of cost are few and relatively easy to quantify. Mitigated risk - Elearning solutions help managers assess employee competencies, giving managers a quick and real-time snapshot of the corporation's strengths and weaknesses. By identifying and proactively training against the company's weak points, a company can reduce its risk exposure in the market and further build its human capital competitive advantage." In present case, the cost mitigation can be clearly observed in terms of preparation of the required study material and their delivery as the number of orders has substantially increased clearly symbolizing the growing interest of people towards such courses and their increasing trust. Risk mitigation, however, is an evasive goal when dealing with such courses, particularly due to the presence of gut-wrenching competition and occasionally, unclear objectives and the consequent Performance gap. Target Group Analysis: "The main aim of the target group analysis within the Innoprevent project is to focus on the major target groups of the project, their frame conditions, backgrounds and learning motivation" (target Group Analysis, "InnoPrevent") Generally, the online courses designed and sold in online markets are targeted for the people at various levels of education ranging from school children to college graduates as well as businessmen in various fields in the form of weekly or monthly magazines, e-books etc. Cost and effectiveness of the study material and the tremendous rate of success observed by such courses have boosted the interest of people form various strata to join such courses. Lately, a large number of people have been employed just to respond to various queries posted daily by the users of different e-learning courses and advising them abut different courses applicable to them and the changes they can expect to see in their lives by following such courses. Different fields are being explored continuously to analyse the prospects of advent of E-learning courses in these fields and creation of more customers. Appropriateness of E-Learning: The appropriateness of e-learning courses is a subject of debate as it defies the customary method of class-room learning. However, the results shown by various online courses speak volumes of their success and the scope of their further improvement. ASDA, Telco etc have employed a well managed feedback system to constantly remain in touch with the changing needs and demands of the customers and keep their stock upgraded with latest developments in all fields of e-learning. However, by application of certain well-designed computer based programs, and response-oriented behavior on part of providers of learning material, a lot of enthusiasm has been infused among the learners. While some people find the isolated methods of e-learning psychologically more advantageous as it does away with various distractions apparent in class-room teaching, makes people fearless in their methods of approach of studying and allows them to progress at a pace suitable to them, others feel that this method of teaching is inherently ineffective as it does not contain any compulsion of class-room and obviates human interaction. Moreover teacher-student relationship is said to be affected because of emergence of such kind of learning. Elaborating the cohesion and synchronization of education achievable through e-learning using SMEs and Internet, an online article says: "Companies whose employees are spread out in a variety of separate locations can use online strategies to provide simultaneous, standardized training, which can be extremely useful when launching new products or services or rolling out new procedures." Eduardo Figueira writes: "E-learning strategies may lead to changes in the way people learn due to the increasing effectiveness of interoperability and security, (Rosenberg, 2001), appropriateness of time and pace, opportunity and speed." Michton, in an article penning down the questions to be asked to initiate an e-learning drive writes: "Implementing e-learning promises substantial benefits for organizations: it will potentially eliminate corporate training travel budgets, save 50% in training time (one to three weeks versus six months), and cut an estimated 40% to 60% from conventional classroom training costs. Furthermore, the printing of large training manuals is virtually eliminated, and because e-learning is infinitely flexible, courses can be completed during scheduled downtimes" Moreover usage of audios and videos for pursuing different e-learning courses has lessened the claims of absence of human interaction and encouraged the supporters of e-learning. Audios and videos come very handy in such courses as they are in complete control of the follower of such courses and no need of hurrying through the course and giving undue class-room attention is required. Availability of subject matter: Badrul writes: "The driving force behind e-learning is that the course content (or the module) must be available at any time from anywhere to the learner. The content material may include audio, graphics, simulations, assessments, videos, reading material and other features." With different schemes for sale and re-sale of e-learning material, the stock of e-learning has seen continuous increase and currently, a sharp customer, with a little effort can find almost every important material related to his field at some online shop or the other. Along with the sale of many established books, audio and videos, a large amount of quality material is being prepared every year by different online shopping centers indigenously and a large number of people are getting employment in due process for creating different e-learning courses suited to people at all the skill levels in every field. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning http://www.neted.com/WhitePapers/eLearning.php http://216.239.59.104/searchq=cache:WGuIbzMz424J:www.innoprevent.com/archiv/target_group_analysis.pdf+elearning+target+group+analysis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=in "E-learning training strategies for SMEs", 2003 http://messagia.net/bnc/webzine/0310/en/internet_pme.html Figueira, Eduardo, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of E-Learning Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises",http://www.theknownet.com/ict_smes_seminars/papers/Figueira.html Khan, Badrul "Instructional Design Making Effective E-learning:: People-Process-Product Continuum", December 2006 "E Learning Development Process at Stylus", http://www.stylusinc.com/WebEnable/elearning_solutions/elearning_development_process.php Minton, Michele, "Is Your Organization Ready for E-Learning Seven key questions you need to answer", 2000 Read More