On July 17 the MOEA’s Small and Medium Business Administration held the “E-learning International Forum.” E-learning experts from industry and academia, including Shen Wen-yu, manager, HR Department, Texyear Co.,; Su Wen-hua, managing director, Over Paradigm Technology Inc; Prof. Liu Shi-hao, Department of Information Management of  Chungyuan Christian University and Xia Wei-feng, chief editor of “China Distance Education,” were invited to discuss questions everyone is concerned about with forum participants. The experts observed that in the west learning is a process in which learners take the initiative to “give” and “enjoy,” however, in the Chinese cultural sphere, learning is often passive and painful. Taking Mainland China as an example, the force fed kind of  “hard education” makes many “consumers” think “I’m at university I can throw away my books now!” or “What’s the point in taking classes if there is no degree?” and so it is necessary to link e-learning with the promotion mechanism to provide an incentive for consumers to learn. Taiwan has similar phenomenon. The experts said that “enterprise warriors” must cast aside the “learning to pass” thinking of old and replace it with a “no learning, no life” crisis sense and value. Experts at the meeting also said if e-learning is still rote type learning and insufficient incentives to learn are provided, the consumers’ willingness to learn and the results of learning will be significantly reduced.

How can learners be made to take the imitative and happily take part in e-learning? Experts suggested that human resource or knowledge managers should select on-line courses that are closely connected to the learner’s career and establish a course evaluation mechanism to monitor learning results. Promotion and performance can also be linked to on-line learning to increase learner motivation. On a technology level, e-learning courses are no longer than 20 minutes, or even less than 11 minutes, because looking at a screen for a long time will makes the student bored. Flexibly using multi-media elements and presenting courses in a lively way (tables rather than text, charts rather than tables and animation rather than charts) can also increase the student’s willingness to learn.

How should e-learning be implemented? In difficult economic times how can enterprises use e-learning to strengthen their advantages? The 2008 economic crisis led to many enterprises cutting down their management plans and implementing internal training: “training soldiers in the depth of winter in preparation for the future”. Experts taking part in the meeting offered technology and policy level suggestions with regards to how to allow employees to learn happily and effectively for limited cost.

On a technology level, enterprises can use free resources from government departments, the SME online university, TELDAP and the “Program for nurturing high quality human resources and promotion employment” to lower costs and avoid the expense of building their own e-learning platform.

How can employees be made to willingly take part in e-learning courses. An expert at the meeting said that “word of mouth” strategy can be effective. Firstly some employees take e-learning courses and are encouraged to use Web-2.0 to share their skills and knowledge, building up the knowledge structure the enterprise needs together. In this process the enthusiastic discussion of the students engaging in e-learning will attract the attention of other employees to the e-learning platform and eventually achieve the objective of having all employees engaging in e-learning.   

As for company organization policy, an expert in attendance said that, in the midst of this bitter economic winter, enterprise leaders and decision makers must ask themselves: “What can e-learning do for my company?” Only when the objectives and vision are clear can an organization  meet the requirements of sustainable development and set effective e-learning courses that will be accepted by employees (not rote learning, held just to get government subsidy)

It cannot be denied that learning will still sometimes need a teacher and student to be face-to-face to pass on knowledge and clear up their confusion effectively and that e-learning, in Taiwan and the whole Chinese market, has room for improvement in terms of consumer attitude and practical usability of technology, however, what is sure is that flexibly using digital technology at a suitable time will benefit an enterprise. Are you keeping up with the e-learning trend?

Further reading
SME On-line University
http://www.smelearning.org.tw/
Videa
http://www.videa.com.tw/index.php