Affordable e-Learning: How to bell the cat?

“If Muhammad will not go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Muhammad” – a senior director of the premiere government publication in India was explaining me. “It’s all fantastic Ashutosh – the web responsive systems, HTML 5 getting better, interactivities interspacing every other slide of your courses et al. But tell me son, over two thirds of my students don’t have access to computers, leave alone smartphones and 3G internet”. The grey haired experience spoke with genuine concern.

Can providing cheaper and subsidized smartphones be an option? Isn’t it smarter to build systems and content that are easily accessible and affordable to most of the target users? Things are not too different with the corporate either.

This report states that only the top 5000 buyers can actually afford traditional enterprise learning in its current form. What about the huge chunk of small and medium businesses who are in need of eLearning but cannot get and keep on board the eLearning wagon because of issues like capex investments, RoI, lack of IT infrastructure, non –  affordability of quality courseware and importantly – lack of expert advice on how to take up eLearning and gradually imbibe the learning culture in the organization ?

Please share your views as to how eLearning can be made more affordable, easily accessible and commercially viable at the same time, in comment box or at in**@gc**********.net. Help the mountain reach Muhammad!