E-learning uses Web-enhanced material deployed over the Internet, employing a diverse range of tools such as animation, PowerPoint, streaming audio and video, hotlinks…. It is important to understand the various aspects of the e-learning environment in order to appreciate the rapid growth in the e-learning market over the next few years.

• Cost savings: Offsite learning is expensive considering travel, lodging and lost work time. The cost savings of e-learning go to the bottom line, resulting in better trained employees at lower costs.
• Onsite: Onsite learning is considerably less expensive, and more productive and timely than classroom learning. Onsite learning gives the employee an opportunity to immediately apply recently acquired knowledge to corporate issues.
• Continuing education: Corporations aren’t really interested in “sending” their employees off to school to earn bachelors and advanced degrees. By spending days away from their desks and sitting in classrooms, work time is lost, productivity drops to zero, and when offsite for long periods of time, employees tend to consider other employment options. Learning onsite, employees stay involved in corporate concerns.
• Training: The mainstay of onsite training has been general course work such as supervisory skills, human resource development, and broad-brush technical courses on accounting and quality control. The trend will be towards technical coursework which applies specifically to in-house corporate needs. Ultimately, onsite e-learning will use corporate databases and training on issues which have immediate application.
• Outsourcing: Demands on e-learning are high maintenance: bandwidth, storage, server space, data management, upgrading materials…. Consequently, all or some e-learning is often outsourced: hosting, delivery, scheduling and assessment. As onsite learning becomes more corporate-specific, training will likely revert from outsourcing to corporate management and control.
• All things: E-learning cannot teach all things to all people. Instructor-led learning will never be fully replaced and will in fact remain the best method for group-related projects (e.g., team building) and for teaching complex technical issues.

E-learning is becoming a strategic and tactical tool, and seen as a prudent commitment and investment in human capital. Increasingly, the lines between training and everyday work activities will blur as e-learning goals address specific corporate needs and materials integrate with corporate decision processes.