ICCA Online – enjoy the benefits of e-learning though the pain of others

Review by John Harris, Director of Education, Epic

Ever wondered where to go to get advice on how to embed e-learning in your organisation? One stop worth considering is the ICCA Online website. ICCA stands for Increasing Citizens Choice & Access, a project sponsored by the Department of Education and Skills, part-funded by the Treasury Invest to Save Unit and developed and co-funded by a Strategic Partnership led by City & Guilds. ICCA aims to help organisations realise the benefits of e-learning without repeating the costly mistakes of others.

At the core of the website is the ICCA Toolkit – a rich resource of best practice principles presented in the context of a project lifecycle that takes a project through from initial research to evaluation. Although the Toolkit attempts to provide guidance for each stage of the project lifecycle, it is strongest on the Research and Scoping stages of the project and rather weak in the other areas. I liked the way that it included concrete suggestions for events such as workshops and it links to a wide range of short case studies to illustrate a particular stage. The Toolkit is presents the information as a Flash application that allows easy navigation to short chunks of information. Conveniently, it also presents the information as Word, HTML, PDF or PowerPoint – very useful for printing off, presenting or for other accessibility reasons.

Additional sections of the site cover e-learning implementation case studies from organisation as diverse as LloydsTSB, Greater Manchester Police, I&DeA and the National Extension College, a section on quality in e-learning and a Search to help you pinpoint exactly what you need.