As a member of Ellicom's business development team for the Canadian market, I have often wondered whether companies around the world had the same perceptions of and demand for e-learning, and whether they relied on the same decision-making criteria, project implementation methods and standards.

This August, I traveled to France for a seminar with Ellicom’s international partners, where I had the opportunity to discuss and compare my observations on the e-learning market with representatives from France, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Chile and Columbia.

It appears that Europe is quite a bit ahead of Canada in their use of e-learning, judging by the number and diversity of organizations that rely on e-learning to train their employees. Many countries offer government funding to increase access to professional development initiatives, which encourages companies to establish e-learning programs to increase and maintain their employees’ skills. In Switzerland, employees can even take off a full year for training, paid for by their employer. With such strong needs and incentives for professional development, it is not surprising that there has been an increase in the number of businesses that consider e-learning to be the best method for developing and delivering training.

Some European countries, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium, have an entirely different linguistic reality than ours. For example, here in Canada we use only two languages while Switzerland has four: German, French, Italian and Romansch. This gives added weight to the argument for e-learning; it is not only very beneficial, but also very easy to create an e-learning program and then translate it into different languages.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that France, with approximately 65 million citizens, is much more active in the e-learning sector than Canada, a country of less than 35 million! I also learned that European countries are more likely to develop their e-learning solutions internally, unlike in Canada where we are more likely to draw on the expertise of specialized companies for the development of customized solutions. Also interesting is the fact that the French government is beginning to implement initiatives to encourage the use of serious games in companies.

In conclusion, it is clear that there is a growing trend in other countries to view e-learning as the ideal method for developing and delivering professional development programs. In addition, each country has its own needs and incentives, due to differences in government policies, linguistic realities or other socioeconomic factors. However, this doesn’t help us to fully understand why companies choose different kinds of e-learning solutions… I look forward to learning the answer to this question!

Claudianne Godin
Business Development Representative