Is e-Learning Right for Your Business?
How companies can turn learning into a successful business strategy.

By Janice Thompson

Part I: How Adults Learn
According to recent surveys, it now costs an average of $4,000 for a company to hire and train a new employee. Ongoing training, especially for highly skilled workers, can easily amount to tens of thousands of dollars more. But this is just a drop in the bucket compared to what most companies, even small companies, spend to educate their customers.

The training tools and techniques used by large companies are now easily affordable and available to even the smallest companies. But, like everything else, what you can expect to save, or make, or whether you should add one e-learning tool or implement a complete e-learning solution to your business depends on several things.

While studies show that e-learning is highly affordable, key questions to ask are how effective is e-learning and how does it engage your learners?

Most adult learners are looking for the information they need right when they need it. The ability to instantly satisfy your student’s needs, no matter when those needs arise, is one of the biggest advantages of e-learning. Your customers need to know how to use your product to complete their job today.  Or, one of your new salespeople needs to apply the killer sales techniques of your best rep in the presentation he or she has to make tomorrow. Your learners may also need to come back and brush up on a topic again and again.

You’ve probably heard that “it’s not what you know, but who you know” that determines your success. Well, in e-learning, it’s not what you teach, but how you teach it, that makes the difference. And deciding how to teach your subject begins with understanding your audience. Knowing your audience will help you determine the e-learning tools that are right for your business. Let’s begin by looking at the three ways people learn and how you can use that to your advantage.

People are predominantly visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. Notice the emphasis on predominantly. Very few people learn anything just one way. Most people have a dominant learning style and a secondary learning style.

Visual Learners
Many people assume that visual learners are the only ones who would do well in online education programs, but they aren’t. Some of the tools that you’ll find most helpful in reaching visual learners are those that combine a strong visual image with a spoken or written explanation of the lesson.

Strong pictures or drawings can even stand alone and are useful to keep this type of learner focused on your message. You’ll want to make sure, for example, that the navigational elements of your course or e-learning Web pages provide a clear breadcrumb trail through your material. Visual learners could otherwise get lost following all the great links your information should include.

Auditory Learners
There are two types of auditory learners—readers and talkers.  While most people assume that people who read a lot are visual learners, they actually aren’t.  They’re auditory learners who sound out the words and symbols on the page or screen in their heads, then translate those words into pictures.

Some auditory learners need to talk through a lesson, either with someone else or to themselves, before they can commit what they’ve heard to memory. They hear and process information quickly, needing fewer visual cues.

Unlike visual learners who think in symbols, then images, auditory learners turn the sounds they hear into strong images as they hear them. Since far more words can be heard than read per minute, auditory learners are also most likely to be your fastest learners.

Kinesthetic Learners
It might be hard at first to imagine how a kinesthetic learner could benefit from an e-learning environment. How could someone who learns by touching something, or doing something, be a good long-distance learner?

These learners can actually get more out of your non-traditional online classes than the other types of learners. For one thing, because they must communicate by typing or using a mouse involves them more deeply in your program than any lecture. By offering plenty of hands-on homework, frequent progress assessments, short encapsulated lessons and plenty of opportunities to participate and interact, you can pull a greater performance from a kinesthetic through an online e-learning program. You can quickly have them saying, “I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

Delivery Methods
With so many different learning styles to satisfy, how do you determine which delivery method is the right one to use and what tools you are going to need?

Be sure to read the January 2004 issue of Kansas City Small Business Monthly for a discussion of how to select the appropriate tools and techniques for delivering your e-learning courses.

Janice Thompson is Director of Business Development for WSI P3 Web Solutions, a Web development firm that creates and delivers Internet-based learning solutions to middle market companies. She can be reached at (816) 587-8880 or