This is the last of my posts celebrating Employee Learning Week. Before I dive into it, I want to first thank my three guest bloggers who not only shared some great content, they also saved me from having to write three posts! They were:

• Brynn Grumstrop Slate

• Robin Reagler

• Christine Martell

I also want to call your attention to a great resource that I'll be adding to the post I wrote earlier this week on Seeing Yourself as a Learner--It's a self-paced tutorial on the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Learners created by Lori Reed of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Good stuff.

So, that out of the way, here's a look at E-Learning in Small Organizations.

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Although it tends to be larger organizations that spend the most time looking at and using e-learning strategies, elearning is something that would greatly benefit small organizations too. In fact, in some ways I think that elearning actually offers MORE opportunities for small organizations because they are often the most strapped for time and can't afford to lose work time to send people to all-day classroom events.

This abstract on Challenges and Strategies for Sustaining E-learning in Small Organizations offers some interesting insight into why smaller organizations have been slow to adopt e-learning and what they can do to overcome these challenges.  Some key points. . .

Why Have Small Organizations Been Slow to Adopt E-learning?
According to the authors, the e-learning adoption curve for smaller organizations has been slow for four reasons:

• Challenges with managers who are often operating in crisis management mode with little time to think ahead about employee development. Informal training (peer coaching, on-the-job experiences, etc.) is usually the norm, although these are generally not part of any structured, planned learning experience. Managers often have their own preferences and ideas about training, which usually do not include using e-learning as a strategy. I suspect that this is because it's usually Baby Boomers who are running the show and many of them don't have the same level of comfort with e-learning that digital natives (Gen X and Y) do.

• Lack of infrastructure. Many small organizations do not have equipment, staff or time to focus on e-learning.

• Difficulties in justifying e-learning, particularly in terms of developing the ROI, which may be very different for smaller organizations.

• Lack of understanding about training needs. Most small organizations do not have the staff or the know-how to get a true understanding of their need for training and there is often no internal champion (such as a training director) who can help them make those decisions.

Overcoming the Challenges
The authors suggest three ingredients for successful e-learning in small organizations:

• Combine e-learning and learning culture with the strategic goals of the organization
• Develop a web savvy staff
• Hire, maintain or train a good training professional

They also suggest a few strategies:

• Using e-learning strategies to serve multiple purposes to get the most bang for your buck

• Using technology tools to manage information and create employee networks of knowledge.

• Capturing niche skills (specialized skills and knowledge) using tools such as video, audio, etc. to create e-learning activities--for example, interviewing key staff about how to perform particular aspects of their jobs and then creating podcasts for others to listen to.

• Capturing process info with video, audio, etc, to be re-purposed for e-learning. This covers things like videotaping a particular procedure and then putting it online for staff to utilize.

Some interesting info here, with a few good examples of how small organizations have used these strategies. Ultimately it seems it's about getting small organizations to move out of reactive mode into pro-active planning mode and to think ahead about how they can strategically build the skills of staff using e-learning tools and strategies, many of which require much less of an investment of time and dollars. Definitely worth a read.

Low Cost ELearning
Obviously cost is a factor when it comes to elearning in small organizations, so I wanted to share a few good resources on how to do some elearning on the cheap. I should add that encouraging the development of Personal Learning Environments may give the biggest bang for the buck. Also, check out this post from Glenn Ross on some things that the American Cancer Society is doing with e-learning, in part because more and more staff will have had experience with elearning tools and expect them to be used as part of professional development.

• Exploring Personal Learning Environments

• Here's How to Save Time and Money Building Your Next Elearning Course

• The Complete Guide: 7 Ways to Learn Something New on the Net

• Free Camtasia for Screencasting

What other resources would you suggest to support elearning in small organizations? And do you think this is something they should even by worrying about or is it just for the big dogs?

UPDATE--Tom Kuhlmann has added a great post on 5 simple ways to get started with elearning--another nice resource.

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