Online education specialists believe as the market continues to embrace technology to digitise the learning experience, there is an increasing need to consider the merits of combining e-learning with instructor-led training workshops.
Richard Rayne is the MD of iLearn, a national specialist provider of onsite instructor-led and online e-learning training methodologies.
He suggests that the benefits of e-learning are well documented and clear to decision-makers, which is why there is an escalating demand.
“E-learning provides clients with a simple learning methodology that can be scaled with no geographic implication. I don’t believe that e-learning is the silver bullet to all training requirements but is definitely appropriate for environments that require geographic scale, recurring training of the same generic content and perhaps for people who just cannot take the time to attend instructor-led sessions.”
Aside from interest in the need to digitise client owned training content into an e-learning format, there is also a focus on the relevance of an online electronic assessment solution.
Rayne believes it is critical to measure and report on these experiences in order to measure the impact and return on expectation of a training experience – and the best way to distribute and collect the data is in an electronic format.
With HR emerging as the frontline of transformation within commerce (amid the introduction of advanced systems and new regulations), businesses are looking to technology to help them manage the resource more effectively.
Management at iLearn suggest that this has paved the way for the introduction of learner management systems.
“These systems are required in order to host, provision, administer and report on e-learning delivery. Most systems have the functionality to manage all learning; including instructor-led training,” says Rayne.
“The greatest benefit for Talent Managers is to be able to at the click of a button produce a report aligned to the specifications of the SETAs Annual Training Report (ATR) and that in itself is a massive time save,” he says.
Rayne predicts that e-learning will completely dominate the market, finding application in most sized organisations, across a myriad of industries and sectors – whether for a specific intervention or a product.
His hope is that blended learning solutions become the de facto requirement.
