People and Organizations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts

Emerging Trends of Learning & Developments

As the growing organizations, its leaning & development strategies should be implemented tactfully by the most companies to meet the requirements of today's workforce. Employees should be innovative, knowledgeable, diverse & skillful to ensure achieving of organizational goals. By offering proper training & development opportunities to the employees by the organization, this task can be achieved. Traditional methods of staff learning, training & development do little to improve knowledge & performance of staff. 

In today's modern society, some employees are not like to join an organization, where their knowledge & skills are not upgraded. Many organizations give the staff for learning & development opportunities in order to be knowledgeable & updated in their field & use the same as a retention tool (Suhashini & Suganthalakshmi, 2005).

Conferences, workshops & outbound training for staff are few some modern trends of leaning & development of the organization & e-learning method is the most affordable & efficient in current emerging trends. E-leaning method can be used to deliver training in shorter period of time even though the employees are spread island-wide or worldwide with very lower cost.

E-Learning

E-learning is a computer based educational system, which enables learner to learn anywhere & at any time. Actually e-learning is a modern technology, which plays a major role in modern information technology. This method is used as a real & meaningful learning experience (Bassoppo, 2006). This leaning content can be stored & provided for the leaner within a very shorter period of time.

There are different ways of classifying the ways of e-learning. According to Algahtani (2011), there have been some classifications based on the extent of their involvement in leaning. Some classifications are also based on the timing of communications. Algahtani (2011) has been divided e-learning into two basic types, which consist of computer-based & the internet based.

Organizational challengers for e-learning

Following are some challenges of e-learning (Turban et. al. 2004). 

• Lack of face-to-face interaction with a learning peer group

• Equipment, software & support needs

• Maintenance & updating of content

• Program development costs

• Learner drops out

• Assessment

The lack of face-to-face interaction with the leaner is an important matter in a training programme, which ensue the learner is actively attending for the programme. As such this e leaning method is suitable only for few areas only & in-house training will give an important forum for the employees. It needs modern technology, equipment, trained staff for operating & updating the system. Therefore it will be a costly method for small & medium scale organizations.

The National Development Bank of Sri Lanka is currently using this method for all staff to update recent Central Bank regulations, latest guidelines, compliance etc. The staff are given time period to complete the each modules by the HR dept. Staff can access to the system any time & has to read modules within the time is allocated. Then there are some questionnaire in the system & staff has to do answer for the same within a given time period. All staff are compulsory to do all the modules within the given time period.   

Conclusion:

To be successful & competitive in the industry, organizations must use effective modern delivery methods like e-learning. It has lot of advantages as well as some disadvantages. It is important to establish standards & best practices for the design & delivery of e-learning materials. Overall, traditional learning is quite expensive & takes a long time of time. E-learning method is fast, cheaper & potentially better. It save money & time for the organization as well as for the learners.

References:
Suhashini, R & Suganthalakshmi, T (2005) International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2015
Bassoppo, M, T.C. (2006). Evaluating e-learning: A front-end, process and post hoc approach. International Journal of Instructional Media, 33(1) Retrieved October 28, 2007, from Pro Quest database
Algahtani, A.F. (2011). Evaluating the Effectiveness of the E-learning Experience in Some Universities in Saudi Arabia from Male Students' Perceptions, Durham theses, Durham University

Turban, E., D. King, J. Lee, and D. Viehland (2004). Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall, 2004

https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/2015/02/elearning-human-resources-management.html 

Urdan, T. A., Weggen, C. C., Corporate E-learning: Exploring a New Frontier, Wr Hambrecht + Co., Equity Research, March 2000.