Having been involved in e-learning both as a trainee and also as business development consultant, I stand to make a very strong case for e-learning as being as effective, if not more so in some cases, as traditional classroom learning.
In the coming weeks I will be looking at e-learning adoption for corporate training, as well as further education delivery for the working class who are stressed as they seek to further their education.
A well planned e-learning programme has the potential of providing a very cost-effective and improved way of attaining the needed objectives for further studies and professional training. The e-learning platform can be adopted by companies which need to give some career-specific training to their staff to help boost productivity.
Many business executives who are enrolled in further studies are so pressed for time when trying to be physically present at lecture centres or classrooms.
Advantages for the Training Institution
Cheaper cost of training
In the bid to make education accessible as much as possible, most of our universities have set up learning centres away from their main campuses in selected areas across the country. This they hope will help enable students to be trained at centres close to them. However, the cost associated with having staff travelling from one centre to another to lecture has been ignored in this model.
For example, you have KNUST lecturers travelling from Kumasi every weekend to Cape coast or Accra or so as to take a two-hour lecture and travel back all the time. All these have made tertiary training very expensive to deliver here in Ghana. Distance-learning students are made to pay high school fees to cover for the expensive cost of staff travel and accommodation: e-learning has the potential to eliminate these costs, as content is delivered directly to students in their homes or workplaces.
Improved productivity
Continuous training of staff to help boost productivity in the life of a business cannot be ruled out of HR planning processes. Having been involved with some HR system implementations for the past years, I noticed that planning staff training is a big challenge for HR officers. Some, in the fear of missing targets set for a period, try to cut short training days or avoid them completely. What do I mean? Some companies cannot afford to take out staff from work and have them trained in new ways of doing things.
E-learning, where content is delivered via computer systems can be the perfect solution for such companies. Training materials can be uploaded onto the company’s network, where staff at their various office branches can access and study. Some can do this during break times or some window of downtime. The fear of getting everyone in one place to train is eliminated, and staff get to be trained exactly when necessary for higher productivity.
Standardisation of training impact
It has been observed especially that trainees don’t get the same level of impact from lecturers when they have to take different sessions for the same subject topic. Distance students suffer this. They are often not treated as a core part of the educational body and are rushed through class sessions. During my university days there were students from the Accra- campus who preferred to have their lectures on the main campus because of this.
They believe they were short-changed with regard to lecturer-to-student impact. One cannot wholly blame lecturers who have to travel long distances to take these classes. A well-organised content delivered over an e-Learning platform eliminates these challenges.
Reduced Cost of Training material
Apart from delivering lecture notes, there are other associated costs for educational material which come with the traditional method of training. Setting up practical centres to demonstrate first-hand how to carry out certain activities such as in the laboratory or engineering workshop can be quite expensive sometimes. In most cases, students are made to travel to one centre where they can find this equipment for practical training. However, with the advancement of technological tools, a whole virtual laboratory or workshop can be set up as part of an e-learning programme that can equally give the needed training at a cheaper cost.
Advantages for the Trainee
Easy access to education
We live in a country where we have a massive challenge with our road networks. Commuting every day from home to work and vice versa is hectic. Already, the high cost of training is passed onto the student. This same student has to now cater for travelling expenses from work to campus, sometimes all the days of the week, only to sit in classrooms. The worst part is that some lecturers don’t turn up but only call to reschedule the sessions.
I have a friend who lives and works in Tema. She hurriedly leaves the workplace, goes all the way to GIMPA and comes back sometimes as late as 10pm. Accessing further education need not be so stressful as the case is here in Ghana. E-learning alternative can be adopted by the likes of GIMPA, DATA Link, VVU, UG, KNUST, UPS etc. Students can access learning materials at their own time and study right at home or workplace.
Enhanced Knowledge sharing
Content sharing technologies have become more common today than ever. E-learning platforms are fortified with the emergence of these sharing tools. While studying a particular subject online, one can easily share content with a lecturer or a colleague and ask for some clarifications in real time. These platforms also come with forums where you can ask any question bothering you and get instant answers.
Improved understanding of content
The Traditional method, in which students crowd lecture rooms only to be given a 40 to 45 minutes of fast talk and call it training, is no longer acceptable. E-learning has the ability to package educational content and deliver it in various ways that students can access and better understand. For example, a course I took online had lecture notes, power point presentations, live lecture videos, online library access links available for better insight.
This rich delivery of content, which is also available anytime a student needs it, is an added advantage for the e-learning platform. If the aim of training is to gain needed knowledge and not just pass exams for certificates, then e-learning is a better option for good retention. You have the liberty of properly taking notes for revision and later studies.
Many more people would be willing to enrol for further education if the offering institution considered e-Learning as an option to make it cheaper and more accessible to the many.