An especially beneficial use of technology has come in the areas of education and training, with e-learning being the enabler. E-learning combines improved computer capabilities (multimedia, browsers, databases, etc.), improved telecommunications infrastructures (networks, the Internet) and improved pedagogical techniques (instructional design) to improve training offerings cost-effectively.

E-learning offers numerous benefits that enable organizations to better accomplish their objectives. Here are some examples:

• A large professional services firm with a tradition of making enormous education investments in its highly-trained staff is using e-learning to provide continuing education in a new way, eliminating much of the need for travel to training events. The result: increased revenue and decreased costs, while maintaining the same high level of training.
• Professional trade associations are meeting their members' needs for rapid understanding and assessment of complex topical issues by delivering live Webcasts. Now, critical information is delivered in an engaging, interactive format, more quickly, to a larger audience and at less cost.
• Corporations are capturing and better distributing presentations from one-time events that were previously available only to those who were able to attend the original live event. The result is improved communication throughout organizations with less distortion of information, as well as expanded use of quality content.

Evaluating the products and benefits
Several criteria should be considered when evaluating off-the-shelf courseware. These include:

• Who hosts the courseware -- the vendor or the corporation -- behind its firewall?
• How well does it align with the corporation's business and learning objectives?
• Does the vendor's pricing model work with the corporation's business model?
• What about the availability of course updates?
• Is the vendor's company stable and solvent?

When evaluating courseware offerings, use common sense. Try before you buy, and get referrals by speaking to others who are using the services.

There are many benefits to blending e-learning into a corporation's learning portfolio, which explains why the e-learning industry is expected to grow at an estimated rate of 10 percent in 2003. Some benefits are general for all e-learning audiences, while others are more specific to finance and accounting professionals.

Cost is a prime factor for implementing e-learning. Due to the economies of scale, well-designed e-learning is usually as effective as classroom training and much less expensive for addressing the training needs of a large audience (hundreds and thousands of people). Course fees are lower, travel-related costs are eliminated and the opportunity costs are reduced when people organize their learning to avoid leaving the office or missing client contact time. A major cost savings accrues for those on "billable hours" or other work time that is saved by taking courses outside of normal work hours.

Another e-learning benefit is its flexibility. With productivity continuing to increase, it becomes more and more difficult for employees to leave their jobs for training, and ever more expensive to displace other business activities with training. E-learning enables people to learn anytime and anywhere. It also provides a platform for just-in-time learning -- the ability to select a course or learning objective from a large catalog when it is required to meet a specific learning need. Classroom training cannot be scheduled on an as-needed basis as online learning can.

While the major downside to replacing a classroom event with e-learning is the loss of networking opportunities, today's Web-based e-learning provides networking power. Although distance learning is neither new nor unique for e-learning, what is new is the connectivity that e-learning makes possible due to the emergence of telecommunications networking.

The benefits of networking via the Internet are vast:

• ease of courseware distribution (in contrast, CD-ROMs, paper-based correspondence courses, videos, etc. are awkward to manage in group deployments);
• centralized and managed group enrollment;
• real-time tracking and reporting.

Administrators responsible for stand-alone group learning deployment, such as CD-ROMs, found keeping track of the course material and learning results could be a nightmare. With e-learning, administrators can easily manage the distribution of materials, track the usage and communicate with users via email to make sure their coursework is completed on time. Indeed, of all the benefits, networking capabilities alone would eventually cause the superiority of e-learning to displace any other distributed learning media lacking this capability.

The future of e-learning
As e-learning and the infrastructure to support it grow, we will see many new areas appear. Mobile learning is one of them. As handheld devices and wireless networks become ubiquitous over the next decade, e-learning will be weaned from desktop and portable computers and put onto cell phones and Palm Pilots.

Collaborative learning and interaction among users is another component that will be more successfully blended into learning solutions, and will play a larger part in e-learning's progress. An additional development will be a move away from courses that seem like education, towards courseware that functions like a game. Training often sounds boring; as instructional designers continue to make online education fun, user acceptance will grow -- as will ROI.

Simulation, another emerging area, is a unique aspect of digital media that print materials can't handle effectively. It is already used extensively within the military, medicine, aviation, macroeconomics and other fields where the consequences of mistakes are enormous. Finally, personalized learning that assess an individual's present level and assigns a specific learning path that enables individuals to develop their own competency will become the norm.

WILLIAM K. GROLLMAN, Ph.D., CPA, is Founder and President, and DANE CANNON is Senior Account Executive, both with SmartPros, the Hawthorne, N.Y., developer of multi-media learning products for finance, accounting and other professionals. SmartPros is the producer of Financial Management Network (FMN), and has co-partnered with FEI since 1987.

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FEI's flagship publication, Financial Executive magazine, has won another award -- an Eastern Regional gold (first place) award from the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) in their annual competition. FE won in the editorial division for its March 2002 special section on "Best Practices." This is the fourth juried award FE has won in the past two years. The award was presented in Boston on Monday, June 9.