Learning vs.

Training
It's important to understand the difference between
learning and training. Of course they are inextricably
linked, but they are unique aspects of any educational
process. Training is the giving of information and
knowledge, through speech, the written word or other
methods of demonstration in a manner that instructs
the trainee. Learning is the process of absorbing that
information in order to increase skills and abilities and
make use of it under a variety of contexts. Whatever the
goals, the quality of the learning will rely largely on the
quality of the training, and so the role of trainer is very
important as it can have a huge effect on the outcome of
a course for the learner.

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Let's look at the characteristics of each, and see what
makes an e-learning environment work.

The characteristics of learning

As mentioned above, learning is the process of

absorbing information and retaining it with the goal of
increasing skills and abilities in order to achieve goals -
but it's more than that. Learning is what we go through
when we want to be equipped for non-specific and
unexpected situations and the two are not mutually
exclusive. While you do learn to do something specific,
you are also inadvertently equipped with the knowledge
and/or skills to face future challenges. In essence,
learning is all about equipping a person to tackle not
just today's issues, but preparing him/her to creatively
come up with ways to tackle tomorrow's issues.

The characteristics of training

Training on the other hand focuses more on the

development of new skills or skill sets that will be used.
Training is the process each new employee goes through
when joining a company to learn how to carry out the
day-to-day operations, know how their department
works and how job-specific tools operate in order to
carry out their responsibilities. In essence, through

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training, we are not looking to reshape the behavior of
an individual rather the point is to teach the employee
or learner how things are done so that they can then
carry out a process on their own.

Ideally, an e-learning environment will utilize both

learning and training principles throughout its
curriculum. This allows instructors/trainers to provide
their learners with the tools to tackle current
issues, develop life-long skills, improve on their
problem-solving skills and utilize resources to the best
of their ability.

E-learning in education vs.

corporate sector
E-learning allows both students and business executives
to learn anywhere and at any time. You can learn from

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virtually any place with a computer or mobile device and
internet connection, meaning you can study from home,
on vacation or in your break. But e-learning is more
than about convenience and there are fundamental
differences between e-learning in the corporate sector
and in education.

What happens in the corporate environment?

The role of corporate training is to ensure an employee

has the knowledge and skills to undertake a specific
operation to enable an organization to continue to
operate. Fundamentally, corporate training is centered
on knowledge transfer. For example, conferences and
workshops are an essential yet expensive part of
business and e-learning makes it affordable and efficient
- sales people, for instance, can receive their training on
new products and sales strategies online. E-learning can
be translated to lower costs to deliver training in a
shorter period of time, especially when employees are
spread worldwide.

Corporate education however adds another dimension

and depth to training by involving learners as
participants in generating new knowledge that assists an
organization to develop and evolve.

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The main characteristics of corporate learning are:

Fast-paced: Enterprise learning is mostly "fast paced"

because "time is money" in the corporate world.
Training needs to be delivered in as short a time frame
as possible with maximum results.

Career-related: Enterprise learning helps employees

gain new skills to advance their careers inside the
company. Enterprise LMSs have additional modules to
facilitate that process.

Benefits organization: Enterprise learning focuses

mainly on pragmatic issues with immediate benefits for
the organization rather than just individual benefit.
Ultimately training is required for the organization to
function correctly, and corporate education in order for
it to evolve and develop.

Training vs. Education: Enterprise is mostly focused

on training, while education is mostly about learning
though "igniting curiosity" (check out this related post
on ‘Learning through Curiosity’). Training usually
means the act of being prepared for something, of being
taught or learning a particular skill and practicing it
until the required standard is reached. This has obvious
practical implications for the workplace.

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Return on investment: An enterprise needs to be
able to calculate the ROI of its learning investment. In
an educational context this ROI is difficult to calculate
and usually the effects of learning take years to show.

What happens in educational institutes?

In comparison with corporate learning, learning in the

education sector focuses primarily on knowledge
transfer and not on training i.e. in education we mainly
strive to learn things with global scope (e.g. a subject
such as mathematics) whilst corporate e-learning is
more focused on business needs (e.g. new recruit
induction). The word education means to gain general
theoretical knowledge and this may or may not involve
learning how to do any specific practical work, tasks or
skills. Please note that there is some overlap and that
the word ‘education’ can also refer to a process of
training or receiving tuition. For example, basic training
in a field such as health services is usually a
combination of theoretical, educational and practical
learning skills.

Convergence

Corporate e-learning professionals can learn from

academic e-learning initiatives and vice versa, and we

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are currently seeing a convergence of academic and
corporate e-learning needs. For example, the academic
space is starting to gravitate towards incorporating
corporate methods in the classroom on how certain
topics are taught. And on the corporate side they’re
shifting the model of utilizing technologies in a way that
supports the traditional classroom of academics
especially with regards to blending technologies.

There is obvious overlap: mobile learning for example is

becoming increasingly popular with learners having one
if not more mobile devices in their possession and
taking these devices to school or work. Learners have
access to the internet and social networks via these
mobile devices so all the technologies required to gather
information, create content and communicate with
other people are readily available and naturally create
an environment conducive to learning. Currently both
the education and corporate sectors are struggling to
answer the exact same questions: how do we use these
for learning? How do instructional design, and teaching
methodologies and theories apply to delivering content
via mobile devices? It’s only natural for knowledge to be
shared across the table.

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 The future of e-learning
E-learning is here to stay. As computer ownership grows
across the globe e-learning becomes increasingly viable
and accessible. Internet connection speeds are
increasing, and with that, opportunities for more
multimedia training methods arise. With the immense
improvement of mobile networks in the past few years
and the increase in telecommuting, taking all the
awesome features of e-learning on the road is a reality
with smartphones and other portable devices.
Technologies such as social media are also transforming
education constantly.

Generally speaking, learning is expensive, takes a long

time and the results can vary. E-learning has been trying
for years now to complement the way we learn to make

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it more effective and measurable. The result now being
that there are a number of tools that help create
interactive courses, standardize the learning process
and/or inject informal elements to otherwise formal
learning processes. Several e-learning trends give us a
view to how e-learning and learning tools will be shaped
in the future:

Micro-learning focuses on the design of micro-

learning activities through micro-steps in digital media
environments, which already is a daily reality for
today's knowledge workers. These activities can be
incorporated into a learner's daily routines. Unlike
"traditional" e-learning approaches, micro-learning
often tends towards push technology through push
media, which reduces the cognitive load on the learners.
Therefore, the selection of micro-learning objects and
also pace and timing of micro-learning activities are of
importance for didactical designs. Micro-learning is an
important paradigm shift that avoids the need to have
separate learning sessions since the learning process is
embedded in the daily routine of the end-user. It is also
perfectly suited for mobile devices where long courses
can be overkill.

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Gamification is the use of game thinking and game
mechanics in a non-game context to engage users and
solve problems.

Personalized Learning is the tailoring of pedagogy,

curriculum and learning environments to meet the
needs and aspirations of individual learners.
Personalization is broader than just individualization or
differentiation in that it affords the learner a degree of
choice about what is learned, when it is learned and how
it is learned. This may not indicate unlimited choice
since learners will still have targets to be met. However,
it may provide learners the opportunity to learn in ways
that suit their individual learning styles and multiple
intelligences.

The distant future: Automatic learning

In a well-known scene from the movie The Matrix, Neo

lies down in a high-tech dentist’s chair and straps on a
wild array of electrodes, downloading a series of martial
arts training programs into his brain. Afterward, he
opens his eyes and speaks the words geeks have been
quoting ever since: “I know Kung Fu.”

This type of automatic learning might sound like a

dystopian future for many but it is where we are

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heading. And despite the ethical questions that may
arise, the benefits could be substantial at multiple levels
if used properly. Here's how it works: you pick a task
that requires high performance from your visual cortex
such as catching a ball. Then you go find someone who's
a pro at catching a ball, place them in an fMRI machine
and record what's going on in their brain whilst they
visualize catching a ball. Then you've got your ball-
catching program, and you're ready to learn. Next step:
put yourself into the fMRI machine, and rig it to induce
that pro ball-catching imagery that you recorded earlier
in your brain using neuro feedback. You don't even have
to be paying attention while this is going on. Your brain,
though, becomes familiar with that pattern - which is
essentially what learning is: the brain becoming familiar
with new patterns.

Research has shown that this fMRI pattern playback can

cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require
visual performance. In theory, a type of automated
learning is a potential outcome and what e-learning in
the distant future may look like.

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 LEARNING
PLATFORMS

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 What is a LMS?
LMS stands for Learning Management System and it's a
global term for a computer system specifically
developed for managing online courses, distributing
course materials and allowing collaboration between
students and teachers. A LMS will allow you to manage
every aspect of a course, from the registration of
students to the storing of test results, as well as allowing
you to accept assignments digitally and keep in touch
with your students. In essence, the LMS is the backbone
of most e-learning activities.

LMSs are built on various platforms, commonly PHP,

.Net or Java and they will hook up to a database such as

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PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server. There are many
LMSs out there, both commercial and open source.

In a corporate environment such a system can be used

to monitor staff, and keep records of appraisals and
training. Whether your course is run for a few learners
over a long period of time, or for many over a shorter
period, a Learning Management System makes your life
easier and helps your course run smoothly. A good LMS
will also have a reporting system so you can access
information that would be tricky to gather yourself.

LMSs do vary in the features they offer, but most

systems are likely to have some or all of the following
features:

Easy GUI

GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. Most LMSs

offer customization options for the interface to allow the
user to give a unique flavor to his learning platform.
Although the GUI is there to make the environment
more aesthetically pleasing, it’s also meant to be
functional.

Customization

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Aside from the GUI an LMS will oftentimes offer several
different options for customization to tailor the system
to your needs. Language options, notification settings
and other important features can be changed to suit the
way you want your LMS to work for you. This is great
because one LMS can be used by many different types of
users, each with unique preferences.

Enrollment

The system may allow students to enroll online and keep

track of their details, course progress and test results for
you. It may also allow students to pay their course fees
online via credit card, debit card or PayPal.

Virtual Classroom

Your LMS may integrate with whiteboard systems for

virtual classroom sessions and help you to schedule
sessions too. It may offer you the ability to send out
invites or reminders for classroom sessions and
integrate with an online calendar system or with
Outlook.

Social Networking

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An LMS may be able to integrate with social media so
you can share your content or news items via Twitter or
Facebook etc. at the click of a button.

Communication

Your LMS system should also have built in functionality

for communicating with your students, such as sending
out a bulk email to everyone on a particular course, to
individual students or to students studying a particular
pathway. You should also be able to schedule automatic
emails which can be very useful for notifying students of
an upcoming test or virtual classroom session. A LMS
may provide you with a chat room or a forum that you
and your students can use.

Course pathways

With your LMS you should also be able to specify the

details of a course with a flexible work flow to set
students on certain ‘learning pathways’.

Reports

Any good LMS will have a reporting system you can tap
into, generating reports that you can export into Excel,
and also offering you graphical representation of your
data for ease of understanding.

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Help with content creation

Being user-friendly is more than just a phrase. It’s an

action. When entering into your LMS for the first time
it’s good to have at least a sample of a course to get you
going. An example of how to upload, manage, and
distribute content within the system can go a long way
with a new user. Templates are also good at getting new
users going. Testing

Tests are an important part of many online courses and

most LMSs will have plenty of functionality related to
this. You'll want a robust test environment with various
types of tests available to you and some built-in
templates to use as a starting point. It's likely that you'll
have the ability to randomize test questions and set a
time limit for tests. With the test environment being
within your LMS, you should also be able to rely on the
security of your system. Test results will be stored and
available to you within the reporting area of your LMS.
You should also be able to set up a multiple choice test
to be self-grading and choose to have the results
delivered just to you, or perhaps also displayed instantly
on-screen for your students.

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 Types of learning
management systems
There are many LMSs available depending on your
needs and budget. There are even free systems such as
open source software that by definition are 'open' i.e. the
source code is freely available for you to use and to
adapt to your own needs. Many users of open source
software will make improvements or use add-ons for
their own needs, and then put it back out into the
community for others to use. Open source LMSs can
grow rapidly if they get enough interest and input.
While you may not get any official support for an open
source LMS, there will usually be a strong community

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base online with forums or email lists where you can ask
for and offer help.

Of course there are also commercial LMSs. If you're

paying for an LMS then you'll get a more robust
product, you're also likely to get good documentation
and you'll probably have a good level of support as well.
A commercial product may be more stable and bug-free
than a free version, but of course there are always
exceptions to that rule so it's a good idea to read reviews
of various LMSs before you make your choice. Check out
the features to ensure that everything you need is
included.

You'll also need to consider whether to use a deployed

solution or a hosted system. A deployed solution system
will generally be set up on computers within your
premises and behind your firewall. A deployed solution
(or Internal System) may incur extra costs as the setting
up of the system is likely to be done in-house rather
than remotely. An installed system may also require
more maintenance and support than you're able to
provide unless you have a dedicated IT team ready to
support it. It is vital your system stays up and running
so before you choose this option make sure you have

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people with the relevant skills available who will be
willing to fix problems as soon as they occur.

With a hosted or SaaS (Software as a Service) LMS a lot

of the work is taken off your hands, the system runs on
someone else's server so you don't have to worry about
server load or maintenance. The system will be set up by
your provider and they should also take care of backups,
or at least offer you a simple interface to schedule your
own backups. A hosted service is normally up and
running as soon as it’s ordered since the service
provider will be used to the procedure. In some cases it
can even done automatically by the system upon
electronic request. They'll also be able to implement any
updates and fixes remotely for you.

A deployed solution will have a greater initial cost as

you'll have the software and installation to pay for, but it
may be more cost effective in the long run. With a
hosted system you'll have less to pay initially, no
software purchase costs, no installation fees and limited
technical problems but over the years you may end up
paying out more than if you'd opted for an installed
LMS.

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