The world of e-learning development is moving at a fast pace and yet there is still a vast amount of companies that do not use any form of e-learning.
I wonder that this is due to lack of awareness about the benefits of e-learning as well as a lack of organisational confidence to adopt a new way of learning and move away from a tried and tested approach.
While e-learning has numerous benefits, there is no doubt that it comes with barriers and in this article I have tried to explore what these barriers to adoption are.
The development of technology is driving the world of e learning into new fields and with gamification playing an increasingly pivotal role we can already see that learning will evolve into problem solving tools before too long and employees will start to use wearable technology for learning. Exciting times for those who love technology but possibly more and more daunting for the non-adopters.
Let’s look and see what puts companies off of e-learning.
- Technical
Logistical issues with infrastructure, bandwidth and technical restrictions can prove a nightmare.
- Organisational
Companies need to take care to properly support employees when embracing e-learning initiatives. Project partners need to be appointed to champion projects and support roll out of e learning to help embrace change and teach those who are not as used to e-learning or using IT within the workplace.
- Situational
Learning new skills is both a personal and a business gain and this needs to be taken into account when incorporating e-learning in the workplace. Learning requires social interaction and collaboration which can be fulfilled via learning communities as long as the knowledge is presented in an authentic context that is relevant and engaging for the end user.
- Cultural
An organisation needs to adapt a learning culture and attribute value to self-directed learning to support employees in embracing e-learning.
- Threat
Fear of moving from a tried and tested face to face form of training takes people out of their comfort zone and brings with it an understandable risk of adopting something new. That coupled with trainers believing their position is threatened can be a real hindrance for a company looking to adopt e-learning.
The main barrier to successful e-learning seems to be a reluctance to change whether that be in the mindset of the employee or the culture of the organisation.
Successful organisations have always invested in people and e-learning provides workplace learning 24/7 which is essential in our technology driven world.
