Elearning can have a transformational impact on small business, not-for-profit and other fragmented groups sharing common interests, challenges or opportunities.Being able to provide training to a disjointed group spread over thousands of kilometres on a flexible schedule enables you to capture more people, more quickly, and more effectively.

The relationship between organisation culture and learning is a critical one. The same considerations extend to elearning specifically. In the New Zealand context elearning is still a relatively new phenomenon. Many organisations, and their people, will not have had widespread exposure to elearning provision. This places even greater importance on understanding how organisation culture and elearning depend upon, strengthen and influence each other.

Learning is critical to organisation and people development in any organisation. Elearning provides improved and innovative ways to contribute to this vital function. This is a broad and complicated subject, but let’s consider it in simple terms and link elearning with organisation development in plain english. Thorn and Mackey proposed the following checklist for developing people and organisations

This post from Josh Persin discusses the transition from e-learning to WE-learning, the increasing role of collaboration and informal learning connections within organisations. He suggests that this is part of the evolution of corporate learning and builds upon, rather than replaces, accepted e-learning approaches.

Fortunately as elearning has evolved it has become clear that technology is a vehicle for learning, an opportunity to enable collaboration over distance, and can enhance the learning experience – but is NOT a substitute for skilled facilitation.

Selected tweets: Week ended 25 Oct 09:
New Web site offers supervisor growth through e-learning tools – AF.mil: 10/23/2009 – ROBINS.. http://bit.ly/2LR8O1 Private parties needed in promoting e-learning – Jakarta Post: The Government should push th.. http://bit.ly/AoFiT Sify Reports Revenues of $ 38.28 Million for the Second Quarter of … – Earthtimes: Perform.. http://bit.ly/1lx39R Crunch spurs training innovation: blended and Web 2.0 gain – Training Press Releases: 23-Oct.. http://bit.ly/qHdoY Next-Generation Collaboration Solutions Designed to Increase Productivity … – Business Wir.. http://bit.ly/t2Mxe New blog post, “Download: Peer Group and Collaborative Learning” – http://bit.ly/4gykRW

The recommended download this week is really a whole series of downloads. Peer Group and Collaborative Learning in real and virtual worlds was the theme for the eLearning at Edinburgh Conference held in August. The full conference programme with links to abstracts, presentations and videos is available.

The information is intended for elearning professionals and is heavy going if you are new to the field, but even a quick glance through the abstracts will give you a sense of the scope of collaborative elearning in practice.

Collaboration is key to the most effective models of e-learning. Well designed elearning programmes ensure there is opportunity for collaboration and interaction between learners, because it is in this aspect that elearning brings together the best of face-to-face and distance learning.

Distance education can be more stimulating and encourage more critical reasoning than a traditional large instructor-led class because it allows the kind of interaction that takes place most fully in small group settings. Studies have shown that students who take online courses are typically drawn into the subject matter of the class more deeply than in a traditional course because of the discussions they get involved in.