What Is This Buzz All About?

What is this buzz all about? E-learning! But then don’t we all know about e-learning? Isn’t it that technical thingy where we post text files, quizzes, questionnaires with some images and graphics, to save a whole lot of time and money spent to distribute it otherwise, so we all know about it. What’s the big deal?
CRAP!
E-learning goes much beyond posting text files or quizzes online. It’s creating a platform to share the information, knowledge in an interactive environment. Yeah a part of it includes creating quizzes or posting text, but then that’s it, it is just a part of the process!
E-learning is a tedious task which involves understanding the learning aim and needs, understanding the content and understanding ways for its best representation to help the users grasp the knowledge the best way. Developing and using the graphics and interactivity, blending it with current online trends, developing new ideas, managing budget and the time schedule so that the course is ready in time for users. Finally, bringing together the subject matter experts, graphic designers, instructional writers and technical team to work together in harmony to blend in there inputs. All in all, it’s a wide array of different activities – overlapping, separate, independent and dependant!
E-learning is not bombarding the learner with knowledge but getting the learner to actively participate in learning, challenging his/her ability, allowing him/her to take initiatives, addressing a range of his/her skills while mocking a scenario. It’s all about giving them an interactive environment where they can, not only learn but hone and use the skills they learn while they learn them.
All in all, e-learning is a step to get the user out of the passive learning experience to an interactive learning experience, which involves investment in terms of time, money, resources, people, technology and a whole lot of information disseminated with a lot of thinking!