Reflections on eLearning
In 1985, William Rainey Harper, distance-education pioneer and president of the University of Chicago wrote:
“The day is coming when the work done by correspondence will be greater in amount than that done in the classrooms of our academies and colleges.”
In 1999, John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, quoted to the New York Times:
“The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email usage look like a rounding error.”
It seems as if every new technology becomes training's new darling. Trainers blame their present tools and thus readily embrace new technologies. But in reality, these same trainers do not define performance problems and solutions in the required detail, hence, they go in quest of a silver bullet. . . but unfortunately there is no silver bullet... or mystical orb to be found at the end of their journey.
While elearning is having a huge impact in the learning, training, and development profession, there is still a great deal of hype, thus this report looks objectively at both the hype and the validity of elearning.
Reading selections may be selected from the the below list.
Next Steps
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Introduction (this page)
