Effective e-learning remains in many instances a mystery. For this reason, we invited two knowledgeable contributors on the subject to reflect on e-learning’s key difficulties and limitations."

— Gabriele Piccoli, Editor

Here we are at our second issue of the new Cutter Benchmark Review. For those of you having New Coke/Classic Coke nightmares,¹ fear not; we are not abandoning our traditional format, just complementing it with this lighter version based on the white paper model. In July, we will return with a full-fledged survey-based CBR -- our yearly installment on IT budgets. As I explained in last month's inaugural issue, our new format enables us to give our contributors a platform to discuss emerging issues that don't easily lend themselves to a survey. Moreover, the white paper format allows us to ask our contributors to more freely reflect on a specific topic of interest to the IT shop, based on their unique experience or vantage point. This month's issue provides a perfect example of the value of this approach.

The topic -- e-learning/e-learning platforms -- is not new. In fact, this is a subject matter on which a colleague of mine from graduate school did his PhD dissertation, using an e-learning system that I had developed and coded. Actually, my work went a bit further than that, conceptualizing a study on e-learning effectiveness that became the basis of my friend's work. While my colleague did indeed carry out his own research, my PhD advisor, who has a penchant for colorful stories, still to this day likes to refer to this project as Gabe's First Dissertation.

While the topic of e-learning has surfaced in years past (for the record, my system came to life in 1998), it is still a timely and relevant issue (my system remained in use until just a couple of years back, when the school switched to a newer version). Effective e-learning remains in many instances a mystery. For this reason, we invited two knowledgeable contributors on the subject to reflect on e-learning's key difficulties and limitations. Our new format is the perfect venue for these contributors to provide some valuable insight.

This month, we have tapped into the expertise and knowledge of two contributors with significant backgrounds in e-learning. On the academic side is Aurelio Ravarini, Senior Assistant Professor of IS at Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC, Italy) and Director with LIUC's CETIC, Research Center on Information Systems. Many of you will recall Aurelio as a past contributor to CBR; he was our academic expert on the issues on content management systems (Vol. 6, No. 4) and software as a service (Vol. 9, No. 4 ). Our practitioner author is Gianni Maria Strada, a former HR executive of several US corporations and current Managing Partner of PeoplePoint, a boutique HR consulting firm focused on major organizational change processes. Both contributors have considerable experience with the organizational implementation of software applications and their consequential organizational change processes.

Aurelio begins his piece by tracing the history of one of the classic tensions in information systems: the interplay of organizations and technology with the ensuing set of change management and mutual influence problems. Using this historical perspective as a launch pad, Aurelio discusses the role of IT in IS projects in general, and then broadens his view with more specificity as applied to the set of problems associated with training and learning. The critical aspect of Aurelio's contribution, and the one that I believe you will find most useful, is his treatment of the individual-centric e-learning model. If you are involved in the design and deployment of e-learning programs in your organization, you will find this section particularly valuable.

Next, Gianni Maria begins his piece with some reflections about modern organizations and the evolution of work in the age of networks. While you may find yourself disagreeing with some of his more extreme predictions, his viewpoint will definitely get you thinking. From this premise, Gianni Maria proposes e-learning systems as the tools that can serve as the catalyst for individual and organizational development in the post-Industrial Age. To formalize his ideas, he proposes a new framework for such an e-learning program, called Refocus, and describes his experience in applying such an approach in several organizations.

With this issue of CBR, we have attempted to use the white paper format to give free rein to our contributors to bring their experience to bear on a cohesive but specific issue of interest to the IT shop. Our bet is that you will see value in the depth here, rather than the breadth of our classic survey-based benchmarking issues. While we intend for CBR to remain true to its nature as a publication designed to take stock of current trends, we hope breaking this pattern from time to time for some in-depth reflection will be useful to you. We look forward to your feedback in order to gauge whether we won or lost our bet.

ENDNOTE

¹ For our international readers and our younger audience who perhaps do not remember the botched attempt to innovate on a classic by the Coca-Cola Company, let me explain. In 1985, Coca-Cola introduced with great fanfare a new formula for its famous soft drink. The New Coke, as it became known, was met with very negative reactions by the majority of Coke drinkers, forcing the company to revert to its classic formula. Since then, New Coke has become synonymous with blatantly failed innovation.