According to a study by IDC, worldwide spending on ELearning will surpass $23 billion by end of 2004. However, with current economic climate, companies are less inclined to spend money unless they get a great return on their investment. So exactly why is ELearning so popular?

1. What will good ELearning do for your organization?

ELearning can be much more effective, and cheaper than more traditional learning methods for many reasons.

ELearning can tailor itself in ‘real time’ in response to student progress. Immediate feedback allows student’s progress to be monitored and learning materials to be automatically adjusted accordingly. The student can also monitor his/her own progress in an ELearning environment much more easily than in traditional learning environments.

Elearning can employ all of senses in learning process, by using latest technologies. People remember 10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see and 50 percent of what they hear and see. Because different people have different learning styles, allowing student to receive information using more than one of senses increases recall greatly.

While few organizations find ELearning courses cheaper to develop than traditional methods, many find them cheaper to deliver once they are built . Once an ELearning course has been built, it can be reused day in, day out and can be used to reach a potentially unlimited audience without costs associated with more traditional methods of learning – for example, there is no need to pay an instructor, rent out a room, pay for lunch for students or pay any travel costs involved in running a course.

A Student can choose most convenient time and place in which to learn, and can also work at his/her own pace. For an organization, this can mean reduced cost of training, as student does not have to take time off of work to attend training and there are no hotel / food / travel costs involved. For student, this can mean more convenience. ELearning is always available, and can be fit around a student’s family and working commitments. Many students also tend to feel less intimidated by ELearning than they do by having to face other students in a classroom atmosphere, and compare their own progress to that of others in classroom who may be of a different competency level, age, race or gender.

ELearning courses can be kept up to date much more easily (and more cheaply) than traditional paper-based courses. Only one copy of course needs to be updated – course binders, books, and other materials do not have to be re-printed each time there is an update - and ELearning can thus much more easily and cheaply include relevant information from student’s everyday life, from latest news events or developments within an industry or academic field. This can make courses more relevant, timely and more interesting to student.

An ELearning program can help companies successfully train people in specific skills for specific performances (Study-Center.com offers ELearning in specialist skills to Electricity industry as well as general courses in subjects like Telephone skills) while providing increased access to information tools for decision-making and general skills that effect overall employee performance.

Very importantly, ELearning is widely available to all, often extremely cheaply (sometimes even free!). With increasing numbers of people having direct access to web (72% of employees now have access to a computer with internet access as part of their jobs ), a wide number of courses on a wide number of subjects is available, making it possible for people in remote locations and people with disabilities to participate in ELearning much more easily.

For organization that developed a good quality ELearning course in first place, it means extra income from that course, as well as reputation for providing good quality ELearning content outside of organization. For purchaser of such ELearning content, it provides a cheaper way to develop ELearning content. And for LMS host (in this case, Blackboard.com) it makes their LMS system more appealing to those who wish to use an LMS as they know they can choose from a wealth of ELearning content that has already been developed.

2.How can you ensure that good ELearning succeeds?

In order to ensure that good ELearning succeeds, it is firstly important to select one LMS that your organization will standardize upon and work only with that. It is very costly to support many different products, and it is far easier to provide technical support if only one tool is used organization-wide. It is also easier for students and tutors to use a single product so that tool itself does not obstruct learning process.

It is important to help students to feel comfortable with ELearning system early on. Where possible, it is good to have very good help / support facilities – or, ideally, live online helpers to interact with students - to help them to get started so that they do not grow frustrated at system or find that they are not able to use it. Drop out rates are at their highest within first use of an ELearning system, so try to ensure that your students have a good experience first time!

Live online interaction with other students and/or tutors at pre-appointed times tends to increase retention rates also. This can take form of ‘online classrooms’, in which tutor reviews material for that week/module with students, or ‘café’ type chatrooms in which students can chat informally about course subjects etc.

Having an ‘online classroom’ or ‘webinar’ to attend each week/month can provide incentive for students to go online more often, especially if those sessions improve student’s chances of passing tests, exams or coursework, and if students can ask questions in a question/answer session while online. Incentive to attend such events increases if coursework, tests or exams are mandatory in order to pass course.

Any online events should be timed to be convenient to maximum number of students in order to be effective – students have lives offline and may live within different timezones so it is important to make course flexible enough to accommodate for fact that students may also have work commitments, children or even be taking other ELearning courses. Transcripts of online sessions can allow students who missed sessions to catch up on anything they missed and in some cases it is possible to rerun online session at different times for different timezones or provide access to a recording of a webinar that can be re-run at any time.

ESecurity

Current Situation

Up until recently, security was very much like teenage sex in that it was typified by lots of talk but no action. Companies declared their sites as secure simply because credit card payment page was protected by SSL (Secure Socket Layer). Even now, there is an overwhelming sense of complacency across industry.

However, Etailers, are reportedly still finding that web shoppers are still very concerned about security. It is becoming increasingly essential that Etailers gain trust and confidence of their customers in order to gain competitive advantage over their competition, but also, simply to stay in business.

With increasing use of Ebusiness for enabling business processes and operations across internet, it is critical for organizations to recognize information as a valuable business asset and implement controls to secure it, to ensure privacy of their customer’s data, integrity of that data and to ensure that they do not lose it!

General Security Issues

The aim of a good security strategy for an Ebusiness organization should be to combine maximum flexibility, performance, and scalability with highest availability and security. The goal of a security strategy is to protect information assets through:

•Authentication – identifying parties involved in communications and transactions •Access – provide access to appropriate levels of information (with as little inconvenience as possible) to those who should have access, but prevent access to anyone who should not have access, and prevent access beyond level of information that is appropriate to user’s ‘class’ •Confidentiality – ensuring that information is not accessed by unauthorized parties •Non-Repudiation – ensuring that transactions, once committed, are legally valid and irrevocable •Availability – ensuring that transactions or communications can be executed reliably upon demand.

Top management needs to understand that security is a hygiene factor: when it is there, and is effective and efficient, people hardly notice it at all; however, when it is not there it can mean end of business overnight. It is essential to get it right, particularly for transactions placed over Internet.

Further, management needs to understand that security is a never-ending process. Security policies and measures should be under constant review, network support teams should monitor newsgroups etc for information about latest threats to security (e.g. latest virus attacks, hackers , security loopholes in software products, etc), security audits must take place to ensure procedures are working, logs of unauthorized access should be reviewed, and disaster recovery plans should be tested out regularly.

Many companies have now either been bitten by problems inherent in having no real built in security policies, or have seen media reports about others who have been bitten.

MSNBC reported cases in which large numbers of credit card numbers and associated information had been stolen from sites in March 2000. Visa had earlier announced that around half its disputes concern internet based credit card transactions, despite these only making up 2% of its total revenue . The Melissa virus caused an estimated $80 million damage, and Love Bug similarly wreaked havoc across world. Denial of Service attacks have hit big names like Amazon.com, Ebay and Yahoo, causing loss in terms of revenue and public image.

There is much evidence to suggest that reported cases are simply tip of a very large iceberg as many security breaches go unreported due to embarrassment caused by admitting to them and risks to future business of doing so.

For consumer, there is not only worry that personal information such as credit card data could be stolen, but there is also worry that anyone they appear to be dealing with on internet could be untrustworthy – and even when dealing with a company known and trusted there is risk that in reality consumer is dealing with an imposter. Thus, it is up to those with integrity who are running websites to find ways to reassure consumer that it is safe to use their websites – for example, by providing Digital Certificates verified by a trusted third party such as Verisign .

It is very difficult for Governments and Legislation systems to protect consumer from internet fraudsters and conmen because national boundaries are very difficult to establish or enforce on internet as content is accessible from everywhere. The US and UK, among others, are investigating possibility of policing internet using national ‘cybercrime units’. Financial regulators such as SEC in US and FSA in UK are looking at measures to help them in controlling websites within their own jurisdictions. International bodies like OECD and European Union are working on standards for Ecommerce to be implemented and enforced at a national level by governments, but progress is very slow because industry opposes idea of government intervention, preferring to rely on self-regulation.

Procedures

At last, many large organizations are now taking security fairly seriously. However there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about what security really means for an organization that uses Internet technologies to trade.

Organizations deploying internet technologies tend to focus on technologies rather than procedures behind technologies. Having solid security procedures in place is often much more important than technology which is used to implement security. The benefits of using SSL to gather credit card information from a consumer over web could be nullified if it is common practice within organization to subsequently email them from one department to another. Putting virus scanning technology into place in an organization is only useful if virus scanner is updated regularly as new viruses are found. Procedures are required to ensure that technologies are being used effectively to meet organizational security goals.

Such procedures should include clear divisions of responsibility for different areas of security: backup procedures, disaster recovery procedures, physical security (security card control, building security, etc), password procedures, system access levels and authorization procedures, virus control procedures, firewall policies, and all other traditional areas of security which an organization should have under control.