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In an online learning community where interaction occurs primarily through reading and writing, podcasting is an ideal way for instructors to better connect with their students. Podcasting can enhance instructor-student relationships, and provide an avenue for instructors to speak to the students whenever it is most convenient for them, even repeatedly. Heather Zink explains why adding this on-the-go content is invaluable.

Everyone wants value for money even from their e-learning solutions. But getting value for money can be confused with merely trying to save money, which is far from being the same thing. Bob Little has some pointers for helping you get the most out of your e-learning tools.

IMC (UK) Learning, an eLearning content solutions provider, published research on how organizations use learning-management systems (LMS) and virtual learning environments (VLE). The study examined how much functionality is being used and how beneficial LMSs are at meeting business needs. Bob Little, who writes frequently for eLearn Magazine on the state of e-learning in the U.K., summarizes some of the key takeaways of the report.

Linda Formichelli has written for more than 120 magazines since 1997, including Health, USA Weekend, Writer's Digest, Redbook, Woman's Day, Inc., and Alternative Medicine. She's also the co-author of eight books, including The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success and The Renegade Writer's Query Letters That Rock. Linda teaches a popular e-course called Write for Magazines, which takes the student through the eight steps to writing and sending a winning query letter, from generating a salable idea to doing interviews to finding markets to send the query to. The next session starts July 19, 2010. I spoke with her about the steps she took to develop the course, some of the business decisions she's had to make, and her experience actually teaching the course.

Opinion columnist Roger C. Schank describes how he came to use a specially-written novel to teach business students. Becoming engrossed with fiction, characters, and story can be just as engaging as getting wrapped up in an interactive activity.

In online learning, there is a need to create more effective interaction between e-learning content and learners. In particular, increasing the learners' motivation by stimulating their interests is very important. However, for any e-learning system to be effective, the knowledge transfer must occur in a usable, accessible, and functional manner. Eye tracking can be used to improve the functionalities of an e-learning system. It can dynamically capture users' behaviors in such a way that determines what they are doing, how much attention they are giving to each topic, where they are stuck, at and in what order they are reading content.

The high attrition rate for computer science students has generated significant debate as to the cause and possible actions to address the problem. For the introductory courses some departments have switched to new programming languages like Alice or Scratch that are much more visual than traditional languages and are considered easier to learn. Many instructors have also turned to hardware and software technology in search of better ways to inform and motivate their students. Fortunately, computer science educators are in an enviable position. As programmers, they have the means to write software to meet the pedagogical goals of their courses if existing software doesn't fit the bill. As a result, enterprising computer science educators have created software tools to help faculty teach and students learn virtually every topic in computer science. Some of these tools are designed for the physical classroom, others for the online classroom, and others for outside student activity. This article will describe some of these home-grown software tools. I'll also describe how several general tools can be used in a computer science context to enhance the learning opportunities available to students. While the focus is computer science, many tools also apply to other disciplines.

In this exclusive three-part series, Susan Landay of Trainers Warehouse has been identifying the best ways for face-to-face trainers to add a component of e-learning to their repertoire, without the assistance of a fancy IT team or tens of thousands of dollars of investment. In Part I, she focused on tools for authoring and course development. In Part II, she looked at software for games and interactive learning. Here in Part III, she finishes with learning-management systems and conferencing applications to conduct live webinars.

A survey of learning technologies in the voluntary sector encompassing more than 80 charities, representing more than 50,000 staff and volunteers has found that the top four benefits of adopting learning technologies are: 1) improving flexibility of learning, 2) improving access to learning, 3) cutting costs and 4) increasing reach.

In Part II of this three-part series, Susan Landay explores the range of games and "interactivities" that can easily be created and posted for online learning reinforcement; selection criteria for the various offerings; plus some features and benefits of a few reputable, cost effective solutions. Part III looks at tools for web conferencing, as well as learning-management systems

How do you train customer service reps or other employees to think on their feet, to provide satisfactoryor even exemplary service to potentially irate customers? And better yet, how do you know they are applying the training correctly?

The first part of this three-part series focuses on authoring and course development tools and techniques for integrating e-learning. In Part II, Susan Landay explores games and interactivity solutions for e-learning. Part III looks at tools used for web conferencing, as well as learning-management systems.

What are the mistakes that even an experienced online trainer and educator can make? As resources for training and education collapse (time, budget, personnel), e-educators hunt for new efficiencies and shortcuts. However, we don't spend as much time as I think we should thinking about what we personally should be doing differently. I can't say I wasn't warned.

A recent report from Learning Light found that the annual size of the U.K. e-learning industry in 2009 was between £300 million and £450 million, with growth rates forecast of between 6.7 and 8 percent.

Twitter has recently flourished in its number of registered users. Amazingly, nearly 73 percent of all Twitter users have joined the service in the first five months of 2009. This Twitter trend can and should be utilized to benefit education. Twitter has various educational uses in both developing countries and more developed ones. But the real tipping point for Twitter in education will only come if teachers can manage to add Twitter to their arsenal of teaching tools. The question is can they do it?