Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 176 pages
- Published by: AMACOM
- Edition: 1st Edition March 1, 2003
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0814471692
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0814471692
-
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
- Weighs: 14.2 ounces
New Equipment Digest, Cleveland, OH ,April 2003
"..offers crucial insights [] to launch and run an e-learning program. The perfect "survival guide" for trainers and managers.
Training, Sept. 2003
"accessible format, good chapter summaires and useful tools..essential for those venturing into the world of online training."
Reader ReviewsThe title is somewhat misleading. True, Henderson asks and then answers hundreds of important questions but he offers more, much more, in one of the most thoughtful and carefully organized business books I have ever read. The Q&As are correlated within a narrative which explains eight major components of e-learning: What it is all about, its variable costs, strategies and tactics by which to implement it within a business, different e-learning styles, its building blocks, major factors which can affect a business' e-learning system, development and delivery of programs, and the system's "residence." Henderson devotes a separate chapter to each of these components. There are three other chapters: "Let's Be Specific -- Some E-Learning Case Studies" (Chapter 2), "What Do Today's E-Learning Thought Leaders Say?" (Chapter 5), and "Where Is E-Learning Headed in the Future?" (Chapter 11). Although Henderson focuses primarily on e-learning's options and opportunities for businesses, I think his book will also be invaluable to decision-makers in schools, colleges (especially junior and community colleges), and universities as well as to decision-makers in major health care organizations, especially those which have international commitments. Henderson's writing style is "reader friendly." For example, within each of the eleven chapters, he inserts "Tell Me More" several times to ease the transition from one key passage to another. He also makes brilliant use of various checklists and summaries. (Now you understand why I suggested earlier that this book offers more, much more, than questions and answers. The lively narrative gives both questions and answers a context.) Henderson is obviously an e-learning enthusiast but suggests "You should get excited about e-learning only to the extent that you can clearly see how it can improve your business"; specifically, in terms of cost saving, learning quality, rapid training rollout, and coping with shortened knowledge lifecycles. According to Henderson, e-learning can help to achieve objectives such as these: "1. You can replace learning events that are already taking place in the classroom setting or at least as a face-to-face presentation. You can replace a costly series of classroom courses with a sequence of e-learning courses or events. "2. You can create new learning opportunities; you can do training that is almost impossible to do when everyone has to gather face to face. You can, for example, train a group of new managers in bite-size chunks over a year's time if the managers are widely distributed in locations around the world." For many organizations, these are indeed highly desirable objectives. Those about to become involved with e-learning have three basic choices when determining where an e-learning system will reside: They can build it themselves and run it on a private intranet; they can use a public e-learning system at a Web site to which everyone else also has access; or get private access in a shared system. In a single volume, Henderson asks most (if not all) of the questions which must be asked and then answers each with precision and concision. He does so, as indicated, within a prose narrative which (in effect) "walks" non-technologists such as I through a multi-dimensional process by which to understand what e-learning is (and isn't); how and why it can be beneficial; and finally, what is involved when designing, implementing, and developing an e-learning system. If you share my high regard for this book, I urge you to check out Peter M. Senge's The Fifth Discipline (1990) and The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (1999), William Isaacs' Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life (1999), Carla O'Dell's If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice (1998), and Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak's Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (1997).
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