E-learning: Prospects, challenges for human resource practitioners

By Akin Akinpelu

Akin Akinpelu

With the ever increasing influence of globalisation and outsourcing, it is almost impossible for many employers and employees to meet up with their basic human resource (HR) needs without reference to the subject of e-learning. At all levels, it is essential to having the employees to deliver qualitative services. As a matter of fact, this is one of the major causes of high labour turnover in today HR practice.

The talented, highly motivated employees can become demoralised when they are not privileged to know or have facilities of variety of learning and will seek opportunities elsewhere. If learning is not adequate to meet basic HR challenges, employees cannot devote themselves full-time to their service roles.

To be able to tackle this issue in the workplace, the following questions need to be addressed by HR practitioners. What is e-learning? What is the role of employers and employees on this topic? As employees, when do I need to get involved? How much am I to spend and when and where?

Employers and employees are increasingly getting involved in discussing e-learning in the workplace. According to a recent survey conducted by CIPD UK, 80 per cent of employers and employees, especially proactive HR Practitioners, spend time at their jobs brainstorming on the prospects and challenges of e-learning.

Definitions of e-learning
There is no universally accepted definition of e-learning, but it could simply be explained as learning that is delivered, enabled or mediated using electronic technology for the explicit purpose of training in organizations. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) UK, in one of its surveys described it as “the use of distributed technology products (mainly CD-ROMs) which do not require the user’s computer to be connected to a network”. An exclusive definition will exclude these products and include only products delivered through the internet or an intranet.

The term, e-learning, first emerged in late 1999. Suppliers of computer-based training were full of optimism and were considering the implications of delivery through the web. The US-based supplier, CBT systems, re-branded itself as ‘Smart force – the e-learning company’ and held a satellite broadcast to announce the change a month later. However, if distributed technology products are included, it could be argued that e-learning stretches back several decades.

Types of e-learning
Since 1999, the advance of e-learning has taken a number of different forms. Much of current experience is based on the use of web-based modules which are accessed at an individual’s personal computer. In fact, as a learning tool, e-learning is much broader. There are three identified examples of current e-learning practice. The number may increase as new applications for learning through connectivity emerge.

• Web-based training
In corporate training, technology is used primarily to deliver content to the end user without significant interaction with (or support from) training professionals, peers or managers. A significant industry has grown up around this form of e-learning, spanning content authoring, content asset management, instructional design and learning management.

• Supported online learning
In higher education, majority of the content of the course may be delivered through lectures or through distance-education textual material, but the courses are categorised as e-learning because the interaction with the instructors, the dialogue with other students, the searching for resource materials, the conduct of collaborative activities, the access to course outlines and supporting materials are all conducted online.

I believe and strongly advocate that this approach should soon be extended to professional communities/bodies in Nigeria (for example, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPMN), Institute of Chartered Accountant of Nigeria (ICAN), to mention a few.

• Informal e-learning
Beyond these ‘course-based’ approaches to e-learning are the growing opportunities for technology to support informal learning in the workplace. In many knowledge intensive organisations, it is linked with knowledge management.

Another classification has been articulated in a somewhat different form in by a U.S commentator, Allison Rossett of San Diego University. She used the terms ‘stuff’ and ‘stir’.

The ‘stuff’ is the reusable web objects which are deployed on a corporate Internet while the ‘stir’ refers to the collaborative tools of e-learning- the online discussions and virtual classroom.

Progress made so far
It is worthy of note that recently, the CIPD UK, held an online poll to monitor progress, identify problems and offer some thoughts for the future on e-learning. The overall view was that, while there was still much practical work to be done on implementation, e-learning is now accepted as an essential feature of training delivery.

According to this report, a survey on training and development included a special focus on e-learning to gain a balanced view of how organisations are using e-learning, as well as seeking respondents' views on how it is shaping organisational learning as a whole. For the first time, over half of respondents (54 per cent) reported that they use e-learning, and a further 39 per cent said they had plans to introduce it in the coming year. Over two thirds of the e-learning users expected its use to increase in the next few years. And while e-learning accounted for less than 10 per cent of total training time, in the vast majority of organisations, respondents expected this to rise dramatically to up to 50 per cent in three years time.

While e-learning appears to be becoming a key component in organisations training and learning strategies, the survey results indicated that it is mostly used for particular types of training such as IT or technical training. It is less likely to be used for training in interpersonal skills, diversity and foreign languages. Stand-alone CD-ROMs were still the most common form of delivering e-learning, followed by generic e-learning modules accessed by the Internet/intranet, with collaborative activities such as discussion sites and web seminars/virtual classrooms in use by just a small minority of organisations.

No doubt, e-learning is more effective when combined with other forms of learning, reflecting the popularity of blended learning' in recent years. However, some HR practitioners still think that current e-learning products do not demonstrate the future of e-learning, while a similar proportion believe that e-learning can result in money being wasted.

Organisations seem increasingly prepared to commission e-learning modules rather than use generic products as they believe them to be more effective in giving context to the learning. Reassuringly for some training providers, only few believed that e-learning is a threat to more ‘traditional’ methods.

The benefits of e-learning
• Available 'just in time' and can be used continuously for learning and reference.

• Flexibility of access from anywhere at anytime.

• Ability to simultaneously reach an unlimited number of employees

• Uniformity of delivery of training materials.

•Can achieve cost reductions, if it is well managed

• Reduction in the time it takes to deliver training.

•Ability to log or track learning activities.

• Possibilities of global connectivity and collaboration opportunities.

• Ability to personalise the training for each learner.

Crticism of e-learning
It has become clear that making e-learning available to unprepared and unsupported learners will not work. E-learning must be appropriately presented and adequately resourced. The following are perceived barriers or criticism to the effectiveness of e-learning in organisations.

• Limits of current technology infrastructure.

•Ensuring learners have time and space to participate.

• Providing appropriate support for learners.

• Finding attractive, relevant and high-quality content.

• Gaining line manager support and commitment.

• Employee hostility towards e-learning.

• Motivating learners to complete courses.

• Lack of basic IT skills in the workforce.

• Others are critical of e-Learning in the context of education, because the face-to-face human interaction with a teacher has been removed from the process, and thus, some argue, the process is no longer ‘educational’ in the modern HRM best practice.

• The feeling of isolation experienced by distance learning students is also often cited, although discussion forum and other computer-based communication can help ameliorate this and, in particular,encourage students to meet face-to-face and form ‘self-help groups’

• The cost-effectiveness of e-learning is a subject of much debate as there is usually much upfront investment that can only be recouped through economies of scale Issues for HR managers/practitioners. Let us conclude by addressing specific issues about what makes for effective e-learning.

• E-learning should be regarded as a change initiative. It should not be seen as a way of saving short-term costs.

• E-learning has to be driven by training, not the technology. HR practitioners need to have faith in their own knowledge as training experts.

• There is a choice to be made between, on the one hand, introducing e-learning as part of a significant shift in approach to learning and, on the other, proceeding through a controlled pilot project.

- Akinpelu is Chairman, Oyo State branch of Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria.