QUESTION: We're a company in the Netherlands that implements, manages, and supports enterprise learning management systems. With regard to integrated learning solutions, can you explain the difference between distance learning, Web-based training, online learning, and e-learning?

Defining terms is the most important step in any organization's journey into technology-based training. Having a common language to discuss your organization's technology-based training delivery strategy will accelerate the decision making and vendor selection.

First, let's narrow the field. Distance learning is a broad term indicating a geographic separation between instructor and learners. This can mean anything from satellite-delivered programs to correspondence courses. With advances in Web-delivered training, distance learning is considered an outdated term in some circles.

Web-based training and online learning are synonymous terms. In my opinion, it's more accurate and less confusing to use Web-based training and define it as training delivered using a Web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape, for example) to access the Internet or a company's intranet for courses residing on servers.

E-learning may be the term du jour, copying the e-commerce, e-business, and e-banking trends. In many ways this term is also synonymous with WBT, but it focuses less on training-event delivery and encompasses a broader range of electronic learning, accelerated knowledge sharing, and preservation of intellectual capital.

You didn't ask for a definition of integrated learning, but this definition may be the most important. Integrated--or blended--learning refers to a mix of delivery methods, which may include traditional classroom (face-to-face), asynchronous (self-paced, anytime, anyplace, Web-based), and synchronous (virtual classroom, same time, anyplace, Web-based) learning. It's with the use of integrated learning strategies that corporations have leveraged the best that technology has to offer in accelerating learning and knowledge sharing throughout their enterprises.

Published: July 2000