To learn online, the new learning

We all know the benefits of E-learning, how its easily accessed from virtually anywhere, there are no limitations of time and space constraints etc. But are these benefits overly emphasized? Is there something more than meets the eye?

Here are some successful stories about E-Learning building E-learning sites lest you might not have heard about it:

This was even featured on the popular Lifehacker blog - "we introduced Articulate Online to the market, we launched with it 30 tutorials — each in the 1- to 3-minute range — on how to use each feature of the new product. We continue to receive very positive feedback from customers and lots of “Wow! How’d you do that?” questions."


A series of blog entries that include some examples of thinking outside the PowerPoint box and leveraging branching when building courses with rapid elearning tools. You can find links to some more great examples in each of these posts in the series:

• Yes, Rapid E-Learning Can Do Branching
• Click & Read E-learning Courses Don’t Need to Be Boring
• Curiosity Might Have Killed the Cat, But Learners Love It

There are also have a number of demos of the kind of elearning you can build with "Engage". Don put together this example that highlights some of his favorite features of Engage:

Finally, our most popular forum thread — with more than 23,000 views, this is obviously a really hot topic — is called "Examples of articulate in action" which is chock-full of links to other great customer examples of elearning.

So what are some disadvantages of E-learning?

Access - Not everyone has access to the internet. Even so, we require computer skills, internet browser knowledge and email access to fully participate in E-Learning. Although computer literacy is improving all around the world.

Motivation - The site being available all the time might cause you to have low levels of motivation to visit the site because it is always there. This means students must have high levels of motivation and responsible for their work. Or a very interactive website.

Isolation - Students might feel isolated during their learning process. Instructions are given through the computer but there is no way for feedback to a physical presence that can help you with your questions. And with little interaction with others, some students might fall behind or even become bored.