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What Are the Advantages and Potential Challenges of E-Learning?

AllisonLaMotte's avatar
10 years ago

E-learning is kind of a big deal—and it’s getting more popular every day. Roughly 80 percent of organizations use some form of online training and 30 percent of all corporate training is e-learning. But when it comes to getting organizational buy-in for e-learning, many folks are challenged to aptly explain the clear advantages and address the potential disadvantages posed by e-learning.

Whether you’re an instructor looking for ways to supplement your in-class training or an e-learning professional looking to present the pros and cons of e-learning to your client or boss, this article will help you get the whole picture.

Advantages of E-Learning

Let’s start by looking at the main benefits of e-learning.

  • Lower costs. When corporations replace instructor-based training with e-learning, they save big. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see a cost savings of anywhere from 35 percent to 60 percent. Where does this cost savings come from? Decreased travel and material costs are a big part of it, but that’s not all. Thanks to e-learning, trainers can build a course once and use it over and over again. This means they can focus their efforts on creating new training courses, resulting in increased productivity. Not to mention that employees spend less time traveling, so they have more time to concentrate on doing the actual work.
  • Faster delivery. Organizing training sessions can be time-consuming and expensive—especially if your employees are scattered around the country or the world. With e-learning, employees can get the training they need, when they need it. And the sooner your employees learn new skills, the sooner your organization will reap the benefits!
  • Increased reach. The world is moving faster than ever. Employees expect their training to be mobile, just like they are. Thanks to responsive course development apps like Rise, it’s super easy to create courses that learners can access no matter where they are—or what device they’re using.
  • Personalized training experience. One of the hardest things about face-to-face instruction is that you have to adapt your course for learners coming from a variety of backgrounds. With e-learning, learners can advance at their own pace. You can even build different learning paths into your course, providing learners with a more personalized experience.
  • Eco-friendly. Reduced travel means reduced CO2 emissions! That’s something you and your learners can feel good about.

Potential Challenges of E-Learning

Like any other training solution, e-learning does have some potential challenges. However, if you’re aware of them, you can avoid them.

  • Motivation. Some people contend that employees have to be extremely motivated to get something out of online training. I would argue that the same is true for in-class training. Just because you’re in the room doesn’t mean you’re learning. As e-learning course developers, it’s our job to make our courses engaging to ensure our learners pay attention and soak up the information.
  • Less face-to-face interaction. One thing people worry about with e-learning is isolation. Won’t learners miss out on discussions with peers? How will learners ask questions? There are many ways to counteract this potential for isolation, for example, by recreating the social aspect of training online, via discussion boards or instant messaging, or by supplementing e-learning courses with in-class sessions.
  • Access to technology. By definition, e-learning requires learners to access courses using some sort of technology. If they don’t have the device or Internet connection required, they won’t be able to take the course. The best way to avoid this kind of problem is to identify the learner environment prior to development.

This is not an exhaustive list, so to learn more, check out this great infographic about what people love and hate about e-learning or this article on why e-learning is so effective. Convinced e-learning is right for you, but your boss and coworkers are still on the fence? Learn how to make the case for e-learning in this article and how to convince the “higher-ups” that e-learning software is a worthy investment.

What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of e-learning? Do you have experience making the case for e-learning in your organization? Please share what you learned by leaving a comment below!

Follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.

Published 10 years ago
Version 1.0
  • AngelaDonald's avatar
    AngelaDonald
    Community Member
    Thanks for the great article! Are you able to share your source for the following comment: "As of 2015, 80 percent of organizations use some form of online training and 30 percent of all corporate training is e-learning."

    Thank you so much!
  • VickiPreyer's avatar
    VickiPreyer
    Community Member
    Hi Allison,
    I’m new to the field of Instructional Design and Technology and to the Articulate blog. I’ve been exploring some of the blog topics, and I came across this post. As a person who has taken eLearning courses in the past and in the present, this article resonated with me. The advantages and disadvantages you state are accurate, and the information in the infographic is telling. Something I thought about that wasn’t mentioned in either source is the effectiveness of eLearning on employer performance versus traditional teaching methods. If it can be proven that eLearning is more effective than traditional teaching methods on worker performance or that it positively impacts it, another point could be made for its implementation. Do you know if any research has been done in this regard?
  • Good stuff. I'm trying to balance the strengths and weaknesses of interactive online courses (a la Storyline) vs. online videos with graphics and audio (Camtasia).

    I tend to think people learn more with the interactive, but at the same time, they're more likely to watch a series of brief videos.

    Where I'm landing is offering interactive as a detail introduction with embedded videos that are also available separately for gap training.

    Any thoughts?
    • AllisonLaMotte's avatar
      AllisonLaMotte
      Staff
      Hi Rob! Glad you liked the article. I'm curious as to why you think people are more likely to watch videos than take an interactive course. In any case, I believe that you're adopting the right approach: using both interactivity and videos is a great way to keep your learners on their toes!
      • RobSwanson-3ce0's avatar
        RobSwanson-3ce0
        Community Member
        Perception of time, mostly. I know if we want formal training, interactive online training is preferred, but if I'm going out to learn, say, a new program, I'll watch short videos over a longer, involved interactive course (which has a lot to do with my learning style; not sure about other people, but I prefer to best guess stuff and look for quick answers. Which makes it odd for me to be an ID, but go figure).
  • Hi Vicki! So glad to hear that you were able to relate to points brought up in this article. Thanks for bringing up the effectiveness of e-learning! Very good point. I found this meta-analysis of online-learning studies done by the US government which is pretty interesting: http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf . It states that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
  • JeanScott1's avatar
    JeanScott1
    Community Member
    Allison, where did you get the stats you used for this post? Pls. advise. Thx.
  • One of the risks in elearning (inherited from its ancestors that ran on PCs or mainframes) is the ALAWHT factor: "As Long As We Have Them," meaning the learners, let's include:

    - This nineteen-item list of expense-report policies, because they're important for people to see.
    - Photos and bios for everyone with "vice-president" in her title, because staff really oughta want to see them.
    - A sales pitch explaining the benefits of the new project-management system, instead of those tiresome instructions about how to record your time using that system.

    It happens ALAWHT in instructor-led training as well, of course. In that mode, there's a hard-dollar sense of sunk costs: we're already paying people to be away from the job and in a formal session, so As Long As We Have Them...

    On a related topic, I think organizations today are far more reluctant to pay training-related travel and living than 10 or 15 years ago, especially for front-line employees. As a result elearning isn't saving some of those dollars; they'd never be spent.

    That's not to take away from the potential benefits you list: training as needed, when needed; easier access; the possibility of adapting to different backgrounds or abilities.

    One additional feature: the ability to use elearning in combination with other tools and experiences. For a specific portion of our pension-administration business, I'm using elearning for an initial lesson to give an overview of key concepts and processes. Next comes an instructor- or coach-guided set of hands-on exercises in our training database. That's a faster, cheaper, easier way to provide realistic tasks than trying to emulate the pension system inside elearning.

    Depending on the task and the experience of learners, you could even say "do exercise X, then compare your results with this one," where This One is an example or document inside the elearning course. You could point out, say, the five key areas where errors occur, relying on the adult learner to compare the example with his own work.