Experiencing E-Learning

I gathered some opinions from people who already had an experience in e-learning.  This may help you to conceptualize the design of your e-learning program and further develop your courses to provide an engaging learning community to your target learners.

• According to Mark Felipe (Theorem Global employee), since his professor in Trace University used it during their thesis days, he concluded that this is a good environment to share information among students through uploading assignments, files, and other resource materials that can eventually help each member of their learning community to accomplish their projects.

• According to Marc Sy (Consultant and a self-paced learner), this self-managed learning is very much applicable to busy professionals who would like to gain additional knowledge despite of their limited time.  As he experienced it, he assumed that a learner should be very disciplined to study his course.  Thus, the provider should give an ample time and target deadline in studying the whole course which should apparently be reasonable and attainable.  E-learning can be presented in several ways; however, learners’ needs and nature of the course should be considered.

• According to John Erwin Magno (member of Microsoft Learning Community), it helped him to be more updated with new IT courses.  Through this, he realized that learning new knowledge can be accomplished anytime, anywhere.  He also enjoyed the “progress report” that the learning community has provided which aided him to assess his pacing in his course.  He also appreciated how interactive and dynamic the courses are because they uses well-developed course materials which caters different learning needs and preferences.

• According to German Laylo (IBM employee), he really enjoyed the self-paced learning because he was able to maximize his spare time to study bulk of modules.  He also added that he appreciated the flexibility it offers because this tool provided several methodologies and activities that may be utilized according to preferences of the students with different learning styles.  He was also challenged with the “thought-provoking questions” that every module has.  This way, he is more disciplined to study well so he can move forward to the next step and finish the whole course in a very limited time. Overall, this is very effective and efficient enough for a busy person like him.

You may establish an interactive and dynamic online learning community which offers several methodologies and activities that will cater diverse learning styles and needs while considering the nature of the course you may offer.  Further, since this is a self-paced learning, a progress report and evaluation are essential to assess the pacing of their own learning while providing greater collaboration to them.  Succinctly, e-learning is a helpful tool for our learners to achieve professional growth in a very convenient, portable, and flexible way.  This is an innovative learning means that offers limitless possibilities of learning.

Have you tried experiencing E-Learning?  You may try some open source course management  system like Moodle and Docebo for free.  You may also invest in some learning solutions (software tool) like Adobe E-Learning and Articulate.