The usefulness of e-learning and blogs

This interweb marlarkey. Is it worth holding a candle to? I'll never forget the dog-eared poster in the (dashingly-advanced-for-its-time) computer room back at Reigate Grammar School, circa 1981. "A computer is a moron," it read. "We have to tell it everything." So I am not surprised to hear that e-learning is proving to be something of a damp squib. Research for the Chartered Management Institute finds that 72 per cent of employees reject it, prefering face-to-face contact. Teaching and learning is quintessentially personal. Web research can assist (by making it quicker and easier to find stuff out); but anyone who thought the internet would lead to the re-invention of training was deluded. And probably driven by the hope that costs, not corners, would be cut.

With the internet, life is a good deal more, er, computerised. Lots of things are quicker and easier too. But the trick, surely, is to assume that the internet has NOT altered much in really fundamental terms.

Among other things, the full report from the CMI suggests that only 16 per cent of junior managers use blogs or social networking sites and only 10 per cent of directors bother, which must, ahem, make all bloggists like me wonder whether they are doing anything but braying in the darkness. Still, only 67 per cent of employees spend 30 minutes or less using the internet or intranets to solve a problem. That leaves 33 per cent of you devouring all the wise words posted on The Times' Snakes and Ladders management blog.