A response to 'The secret of e-learning' (Guardian Money, Feb 5)

In Anna Tims' recent piece 'The secret to e-learning' (Guardian Money, February 5) Britain's deskbound workforce is portrayed as autonomously brushing up on the fall of the Roman Empire or refreshing their Excel shortcuts in their lunch hour. Though this ad-hoc, informal approach is to be applauded the article is quite damning of formal courses without recognising the significant benefits organisations are reaping as a result of commissioning e-learning designed according to the specific needs of the business - combined with meticulous impact measurement.

Sky, for instance, has saved more than £1million in induction costs since the launch of their Get Up To Speed programme for new sales advisors. Not only do new recruits achieve competency a week earlier than under the old face-to-face training regime, they also exceed the expected sales conversion targets for existing agents in their first week.

The Guardian piece also describes e-learning as a potentially 'lonely journey' and we are advised to 'share the pain'. This view ignores cutting-edge approaches within the sector - user-friendly experiences incorporating aspects of social media and the likes of YouTube to create genuinely engaging, collaborative learning environments.

Informal learning is of course vital, as demonstrated by live audience voting at a recent keynote debate at London's Learning Technologies conference. Googlisation - the ability to find just about any piece of information as and when needed was seen as the leading personal trend to affect the workplace of the future. However, blindly wading onto the internet is not the panacea for all learning - as debate panellist Charles Gould said: "There will be a need for well-crafted, trusted sources of information that people will be able to digest quickly.” This is where little and often formal courses can come into their own.

Arguably more in-depth pieces on the changing face of e-learning are required, rather than the superficial tiptoe through the digital tulips that appeared in last Saturday's paper.

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