Developing an E-Learning Strategy, 8 Elements to Consider

In the current economic climate more and more organizations are looking towards e-learning as a method to reduce staff training costs. Many companies are new to e-learning and don't consider the impact of e-learning across their organisation. Each organisation will have its own aspirations and requirements, this document discusses 8 elements that you should think about before implementing 'e-learning'.

This isn't an exhaustive list but it will provide you with a starting point. I would ensure that any strategy focuses on a number of key areas, these are going to be specific to your organization but you may want to think about the following:

Participation
Who are the affected parties? What additional training provision will you need to put in place during the project life cycle? Who are your stakeholders (internal and external)

Technical Issues
What is the current IT platform? How will your e-learning strategy integrate with future IT changes and developments? You need to think about how these are aligned

Content creation and acquisition
Where are you going to get content from? Are you going to develop it internally? What will your quality standards be? You need to think about the creation of e-learning guidelines so that you can control the output.

Feedback systems
How will you measure performance? How will cost of ownership and return on investment be measured? What are the projected costs? How will effectiveness of the learning be measured?

Costs
How will ROI be measured, how will you work with the cost centers within the business

Limitations
Think of the issues that you might have and get these highlighted early

Types of learner
Several things to think about: IT literacy levels, mobile learning, expectations of e-learning

Business Improvement
Where will this be? Cost, Improvement in access to training material, process efficiency?

There are obviously many other things to consider, some of which will be specific to your organization. The structure, content and detail included in your strategy needs to match the size of your organization. If you are looking towards a rapid implementation then the creation of a strategy may appear to be a time-consuming activity. However, correctly done it can provide the basis for a structured and successful deployment