The popularity of elearning has grown tremendously in the last 10 years.

It has benefits both for learners and companies. For companies, it’s an excellent method to make employees learn. Employees also get the advantage from an easy training method which involves learning from their own home. Elearning is not only used by companies to train their employees but also their customers so that there is more awareness about their products and hence heightened revenues. Hence, Elearning indeed facilitates the adoption of products by customers because they learn about how to use them. The market for elearning products will grow at a rapid rate and will be standing at 275 billion dollars in 2022.
 
Elearning is imparted through devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is the training given through digital means. This means its users can learn without any kind of boundaries. Whether it’s computer-based training when a CD is handed over to the user or web-based training, where they have to log onto a portal,elearning is all too easy.
 
It’s important to understand the history of elearning. Elliot Maisie came up with the term elearning in the year 1999 and its reputation has increased.
But what are the reasons behind the popularity of the elearning?

• Coming up of internet:Before the internet, organizations made use of CD-ROMS and gave them to their employees. It was just one-way learning because organizations could not track who accessed the learning material, when and where. However, with the rise of the internet, the elearning was hosted on an LMS (Learning Management System), and companies could track who accessed the material when and where. Thus we can attribute the advent of the internet to rise of web-based training which requires learners to use the internet to access an LMS.

 

• Inclusion of multimedia: Inclusion of multimedia also ensured that elearning could be utilized to its fullest potential. This is because more and more materials could be included in elearning so that it was more interesting. These materials were graphics, sounds and videos which could be integrated thanks to authoring tools like Captivate, Storyline and Vyond.

 

• Cheap digital devices:This is also the reason why elearning is so popular. It’s quite true that the advent of mobile phones has been instrumental in increasing the use of elearning.

 

• Availability of LMS’s: Earlier LMS’s were installed on the cloud, then they began to be installed in companies. An LMS is a software which is used for monitoring elearning courses, tracking their usage and their delivery.

   
  There are many kinds of LMS’s which are available in the market such as those on the cloud and those that require installation on your local server. Cloud-based LMS’s easily allow you to develop a course and you can also, take care of your learners through an LMS team.

• SCORM: It stands for Sharable content object reference model. These are technical specifications that your course must meet. Most of such courses are developed using an authoring tool and follow the same standards. It’s better to have an authoring tool that generates content in SCORM compliant mode for this purpose.

So, this is the story of elearning and the position it is in today.