This blog is not just for people working in e-learning or running an e-learning solution at their enterprise. It’s also for those who haven’t yet made the jump and are wondering if this e-learning thing is really for them.
It’s a perfectly valid question, and it’s also exactly what we’re going to examine in today’s post. So, if you’re one of those people, read on.
Spoiler alert: the answer is most likely yes. But, of course, the answer alone is not enough.
To address all of your concerns and to convince you of the applicability of e-learning to your needs, we need to examine and address any particular use cases you have in mind.
Is this e-learning thing just a fad?
Are you perhaps afraid of investing on an e-learning solution because you are still wondering whether e-learning is an established educational practice?
If so, then have no fear.
E-learning is a multi-billion dollar industry (with no signs of slowing down), and has been adopted by the most respected academic institutions (including heavyweights such as MIT and most of the Ivy League schools).
E-learning in the enterprise?
Others might be wondering if they should deploy an e-learning solution in their enterprise or organization. To which the answer is a resounding yes.
E-learning is already deployed in all of the Fortune 500 companies, and it’s already considered a necessity for the modern organization, whether it’s a SME or a multinational behemoth.
It’s a perfect fit for employee orientation (including legal and ethical guidelines), compliance training, corporate training, knowledge transfer, and lots of other uses besides those.
Do I need a dedicated system administration team?
Then there’s the valid fear that, while e-learning is important, it might be too much of a hassle to deploy and administer. That might have been the case in the dark ages (that would be anytime up to the mid-nineties).
Nowadays though, e-learning platforms are both extremely sophisticated and easy to setup. So much that a single person can install and manage them.
But if managing servers is not your cup of tea, then there are Cloud based solutions, both hosted and fully managed, so that you can get your e-learning deployment going, regardless of your skills.
If you know how to use Facebook, you’ll have no difficulty in using a modern LMS platform.
And if you don’t believe me, just go give TalentLMS or eFront a try.
How about selling courses?
Perhaps you’re an educator or a content creator and you’re wondering whether you can create your own service to sell your eLearning courses.
Well, with most modern LMS platforms, you can.
eFront, for one, comes with ready-made plugins that you can deploy and get a fully functional commercial e-learning service in no time.
Well, you still have to add your content, but that’s the easy part.
Everything else, like credit card processing, accepting payments, user tracking, account balances and the like are automatically taken care for you.
And with transactions happening outside your e-learning platform (in PayPal’s or Visa’s servers) you don’t have to worry about credit card fraud or leaking your users’ credit card numbers.
Doesn’t it compete with my core offering?
If you’re a traditional school, you might be wondering whether e-learning competes with your business model.
Well, to be frank, it probably does, unless you’re working in some niche that requires physical presence (like, say, yoga lessons). But you shouldn’t really think of investing in e-learning as cannibalizing your core revenue stream.
Rather, you should think of it as diversifying your learning offerings.
You can keep your regular classroom based business and attract new students that need the flexibility e-learning provides. The fact that you have a physical presence and (presumably) years of experience in running a school, gives you an advantage over all the newly founded e-learning services.
And with modern LMS platforms, you can even combine traditional and e-learning courses in a “hybrid learning” offering.
But of course you would say that
We admit it, we have a conflict of interest here.
As a company that develops and sells a few well-known (and well-loved) e-learning management products ourselves, we are obviously prejudiced in favor of e-learning.
But if you think we’re pushing e-learning just because we’re in the e-learning business, then you got it backwards. It’s because we really believe that e-learning is the future of education that we’re in this business in the first place.
If our answers above got you covered, we congratulate you on taking the first step towards the future of learning. If, on the other hand, you still have unanswered questions, we would be more than pleased to try and tackle them.
Please, leave us a comment below, and our e-learning ninjas (OK, experts) will get back to you.
And with that, we have to close this post. Stay tuned for more e-learning tips, tutorials and opinions.
