How to keep On-Line E-learners

E-learning is the hottest trend currently being adopted in the education and business industry. E-learning means learning over the internet/intranet and this can be done at the learners own pace or at real time (LiNE Zine, 2001). Regardless of the flexibility and self pace learning, e-learning has been a "stab in the back" for many organisations as they have spent millions of dollars on the technology infrastructure to implement online learning but most corporate learners had joined the courses and they did not stay to complete it. At Motorola University, 69% of the students had dropped out (The New Corporate University Review, 2003). The attrition rate (the number of students enrolled in the course dwindles) was alarming for many companies including Toyota, GE Capital, New York Online University (NYUonline), Corporate University Xchange Inc and others.

According to Workforce Management (2003), many online learners neglect their courses complaining that they don't have enough time as some of the courses could only be viewed on the company's intranet and the distraction from the other colleagues made it impossible to complete the course during working hours.

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The importance of completing the course was not clearly emphasised by the management and the immediate supervisor and the course instructor did not check on the learners' performance thus resulting in de-motivation for the students.

The courses were poorly designed and certain aspect of the modules weren't relevant to the employees' job. The course could not be customised according to the learners preference, for instance they were not given a choice of information delivery, i.e. in audio or text.

The e-learning technology is new to most of the employees and a shocking number of them did not know how to go about using the programme as the guidelines were brief and insufficient especially to the computer illiterates.