Only 2% think e-learning is effective

The announcement from the CIPD Annual Survey Report 2007 (http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/lrnanddev/), that only 2% of respondents cite e-learning as the most effective way to learn, came as no surprise to anyone here. If you catch anyone from the e-learning market in honest mode I'm sure they would agree but that is unlikely.

The problem nowadays is that when companies have a business problem they often throw training at it. They then tend to say "let's do e-learning" rather than thinking whether the subject material - what needs to be learnt - can be effectively learnt using e-learning. The reason why we're in the parlous state that we are, is that e-learning is still used more inappropriately than it is used appropriately.

Ten years ago companies threw generic learning at their problems, then they converted all their courses to multimedia. No doubt the next step will be to add blogs and wikis to everything or say that the learning can be completely informal. But then they'll wonder why no-one learns anything. We use the analogy of an architect. When you are constructing a building you bring in an architect who responds to all the needs of the client. They then hand their design and ideas over to the engineers who build it - everything is thought through and considered from first principles.

All too often e-learning content providers have to say yes because the customer says that they want e-learning but the customer isn't always right. Companies with a business problem should ideally spell out what their problem is and leave learning design consultants to design the learning. That way the learning will fit the learners rather than the learners being asked to fit the learning.