Open College of Ireland

It has been my experience over a number of years now that when discussing online learning with people, they have a very fixed idea of what it is.  The most prevalent view of online learning is that of self paced interactive multi-media where the learner only interacts with a computer.  I often completely failed to put my points across because I was unaware that as I talked the listener was constantly thinking about the multi-media approach and was just plain mystified by some of the things I was saying.  These days, I generally start by explaining that there are many forms of online learning, including multimedia, but also communication based methods such as asynchronous Non-live bulletin board type) discussions or live webinars and conferences.  So if you are selling instructor led online training to a potential customer, make sure that you explain the distinction between this and other forms of online learning, and of course, the advantages of the instructor involvement as well.  There’s more on this topic on the onlignment blog.