There’s no doubt e-learning has many benefits to learners and consequently to businesses, as they can learn where and when it suits them, reducing the impact on their work, as well as their personal lives and at a reasonable cost compared with traditional classroom learning.

However, this doesn’t mean it’s the Holy Grail of learning, as it doesn’t suit everyone. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for providers to overcome is boredom -- if you’ve sat through endless dreary PowerPoint presentations you’ll get the picture.

Ensuring e-learning is attractive, interactive and dynamic will elevate it beyond the tedium and engage learners. Of course there’s a balance to be made between dynamism and distraction, so you need to ensure your e-learning is stimulating and engaging by using examples, quizzes, surveys, and short video clips, but without going over the top. There should be enough interesting elements to break the monotony without confusing and distracting learners. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between what’s engaging and what’s annoying, but you need to ensure learners have a positive experience.

And remember, e-learning isn’t simply about taking offline content and putting it online: reading materials, PowerPoint presentations, and videos of boring lectures. However, this doesn’t mean that a video of a great face-to-face presentation can’t be used alongside interactive text and graphics that illustrate the points being made.

E-learning has to be inclusive, as learners have different levels of experience and knowledge; the e-learning has to be suitable for these different needs and learning approaches. More than that though, there needs to be an awareness that the course has to be flexible allowing learners to use the materials in a way that works best for them.

Motivation is of course a key factor, if the learner has a desire to learn they are looking for greater personal or professional enlightenment and they tend to be open minded, enthusiastic and prepared to cooperate. Contrastingly people who are told to complete a piece of learning are less co-operative. These people need to be engaged and encouraged rather than forced to take part.
This doesn’t mean however that e-learning should be pitched at a low level to engage reluctant learners, conversely, the bar should be set much higher to positively change attitudes and behaviour.
You can motivate people through the clever use of e-learning to spark their motivation, using the following elements: challenge; curiosity, tests; control; fantasy; competition; co-operation; and recognition.  

There’s no doubt e-learning has opened up new paths to train and facilitate teaching, but don’t forget that content and its presentation are critical.

The good news though, is that used creatively e-learning will help overcome the negatives outlined above and deliver high quality cost-effective learning.

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