2011 e-learning Benchmarking Survey - Results

The impact of e-learning on employment outcomes is at its highest recorded level, according to the newly released 2011 E-learning Benchmarking Survey.  

55% of students say e-learning helps them to do their current job better and 42% say it helped them to get a better job. These findings represent a reality to the types of rewards afforded to employees willing to invest in their workforce. Instilling an environment through technology strengthens problem solving, which in turn strengthens learning pathways. 

More than 6,000 students from 250 different registered training organisations (RTOs) responded to the survey, which was conducted by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework).

Other major findings in the survey were:

• Students' preferences for e-learning have not changed since the2009 survey - 90% would like at least a little e-learning in their course, with 26% wanting a lot of e-learning.
• The proportion of students with e-learning in their course was highest in South Australia (92%) and the ACT (91%), with lower results in New South Wales (77%) and Victoria (81%), and students undertaking training with private, enterprise and industry providers (75%).
• More than 40% of students have experienced e-learning through the use of web-based seminars/presentations (eg Elluminate), virtual classroom environments (eg Moodle) or web 2.0 technologies (eg blogs, wikis).
• Use of other technologies is less common, with a third to aquarter of students using voice (eg podcasting, recording) or mobile (mobile phones, smart phones) technologies, e-portfolios (eg Mahara) or social networking (eg Facebook, Twitter).
• Away from their course, 99% of students undertaking vocational education and training (VET) courses have access to and use computers  at home or at work, and 82% use them a lot of the time.