100+ Free E-Learning Tools
for Employee Training and Personal Learning
People commonly believe that you get what
you pay for. This report shows that sometimes you get considerably more.
In this report, written by Jane
Hart, a social media and learning advisor at the
Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT),
and Janet
Clarey, a researcher and senior analyst at Brandon
Hall Research, you can read profiles of many learning tools that
successfully merge working and learning.
Besides low cost, other notable advantages
include using less restrictive licensing terms than proprietary
tools; providing more opportunities for collaboration; not being “married”
to a particular tool; freeing up money, time, and other resources
so focus can be redirected to a higher strategy item; and
spending less time on licensing and integration, allowing learning
and development departments to focus more on designing learning.
However, free tools are often frowned upon
in corporate and or government environments, due to the following reasons:
- Security
issues
- Lack
of control of intellectual property
- Long-term
availability
- Maintenance
- Support
- Cost
- Interoperability
with other systems
- Tracking
usage
- Ownership
of data
- Open
source, free software often has limited features.
- Businesses
often like warranties and service level agreements bundled
with their products.
- Often
lacks uniformity and branding
- Training
needed for end users
In 2008, co-author Jane Hart gathered recommendations
from over 220 learning professionals from both education
and workplace learning about their favorite tools for learning,
and from this she created the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008.
While this list was used as a starting point
for this report, many tools were quickly disregarded because
they were commercial; firmly aimed at K-12 education; or
too generic. The list was further supplemented with free tools
that the authors felt had either been overlooked or would
be up-and-coming in 2009. Tools on the list were then categorized
for easy reference.
Through this report, you’ll see that
the free tools in this report were selected based on their
usefulness for workplace learning; you’ll be convinced
that it’s about merit rather than monetary value.
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