Content, technology and services are the real and essential ingredients of a good e-learning package and the way in which they are presented makes an e-learning developer/vendor stand out, says Dr. R. Srinivasan

In this final article of the series on e-learning, I would like to concentrate on who would be the best beneficiary of undertaking e-learning and also the most important factors of the e-learning package that would consistently make it attractive for people. I agree with the statement of Sunil Dutt Jha, Chief Executive Officer of iCMG Bangalore that adopting e-learning for improving the skills of a worker would enable the corporates to save 50 to 75 per cent on training costs (reference Express Computer, April 23, 2001).

As mentioned in one of my earlier articles, the white paper by Forrester Research, IDC and others also clearly indicates that the direct and immediate beneficiaries of e-learning would be the corporate sector. This is particularly true in the case of software development and IT where just-in-time training is the demand today.

In the white paper on "Corporate e-learning : Exploring a New Frontier" , one of the advocates of e-learning, WRHAMBRECHT+CO., exhibits a corporate e-learning universe comprising content, technology and services. These are the real and essential ingredients of a good e-learning package and the way in which they are presented makes an e-learning developer/vendor to stand on the shoulders of others in the market. In this competitive world where there are many commercially available packages, how would you choose an e-learning package of your choice? Any way in software development and applications, the most important feature should be the design of appropriate architecture. An organization going in for e-learning may be hosting and accessing the package either through the Internet or through the organization's intranet and so the relevant architecture has to be chosen. Once it is done, next is a thorough study of the contents and the services available in the package. For example on the technology side, the package should provide rich course content developed by experts in the field. It should have both audio and video facilities synchronized with the PowerPoint Slides, space for jotting down user specific notes, state-of-the art case studies, a complete list of reference materials, live User Chat with experts, interactive facility to stop presentation at any point and get the doubts clarified and then proceed further, worked examples and exercises at the end of every chapter.

On the services side it should provide facilities similar to that a person in an instructor-lead classroom will get, i.e, it should have good monitoring structure. Some commercially available e-learning packages also provide other services like instructor-let Web seminars, discussion forum, e-constancy, online reference library, etc.

(The author is Chief Technology Officer, Internet Component Management Group, Bangalore and can be contacted at: r.srinivasan@iCMGworld.com)