Are aware of any change and innovation intiatives in the publishing industry towards e learning here in UK?

Answer 1

eLeaning was a big initiative about 10 years ago.

Idea was the costs of training staff could be slashed by 'teaching' using pre-prepared software packages run on computers.

It didn't work because :-

1) Staff were expected to learn at the same time as they continued to work = so constant interruptions

2) The software was unable to detect the level of trainees understanding.

A good instructor can immediately see when students are lost and rephrase the material - the PC has no such understanding = some attempts were made using 'end of module tests', however students failing the test were simply presented with the same material again == i.e. exactly the same material they failed to understand in the first place .. and so they learnt how to 'pass' the tests (by selecting different answers at random until the program was satisfied) rather than actually learning the course material.