NYNP blog post 1-27-10

Does anyone agree on what counts as e-learning?
Allison Rossett is taking a look

Yesterday I attended a Training Magazine webinar featuring Allison Rossett on the topic "Elearning Is Not What You Think It Is." I've been a fan of Rossett since I got to see her speak this summer at the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace and The eLearning Guild's Instructional Design Symposium (see my blog posts from 6.10.09 and 8.3.09 for details), and she was excellent once again.

Rossett is a professor at San Diego State University, and she and one of her colleagues, Jim Marshall, recently conducted a study on today's definitions of e-learning, today's e-learning practices, current aspirations for e-learning in the future, and organizational barriers to e-learning. In yesterday's webinar, Rossett shared some of their study's findings.

It was interesting to learn that amongst the almost 1,000 respondents, the top five e-learning practices today are:
1) Our programs include tests of skills and knowledge
2) We use computers as part of classroom instruction
3) Our programs present content and opportunities to practice and receive feedback. Employees work on these tutorials at a time of their own choosing.
4) Our programs use visuals with an audio track. Employees watch and listen at a time of their choosing.
5) Our programs are based on realistic scenarios which press employees to make choices and learn from the results of those choices.

The least selected response was "Our programs are delivered on mobile devices."

If you'd like to see the recording of the webinar, it's archived on Training Magazine's network at

http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/topics/show/893 or http://bit.ly/arossettrecording.

If you'd like to participate in the study, Rossett and Marshall are still collecting data, and the SurveyMonkey link is available at
http://tinyurl.com/elearningpractice.