eLearnity Comment :
Xebec McGraw-Hill courses are now being offered with supporting services including access to online mentors from KnowledgePool (see Press Release), with an interesting quote that the company is making this move in order to "deliver even more effective learning and raise the performance level of those undertaking its courses".
Michael Smith, Managing Director of Xebec McGraw-Hill, is quoted as saying: "There is considerable evidence that successful e-learning is closely linked to the level of support provided to the learner".
At the same time the Open University is offering a 2-hour course called "Learning to Learn Online", developed by its corporate arm Corous, in an attempt to address the high drop out rates from online courses.
Forrester research claims these dropout rates may be as high as 80%.
There are plenty of reasons for this failure, but most of them boil down to human issues - expectations of the learners that they will be taught rather than have to become independent and active learners, expectations that content will be as graphical and as engaging as playing games on a home PC, and expectations on the part of the business that e-learning can be done either in the normal working environment or the learner's spare time, expectations that learning can be done in isolation, expectations that adapting to a new environment holds no fear........
It's about managing human expectations and supporting the learners. In reality most learning just won't work unless there is support, coaching and mentoring guidance. It's good to see the world is finally waking up to this point!
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