The real benefit of e-learning is being able to create a design that improves learners’ skills and behavior while simultaneously achieving the operational advantages that e-learning offers organizations. Yet much e-learning is composed of largely wasted opportunities for useful interactivity.

What most people fail to understand about e-learning, is that the mere presence of technology in a learning environment does not change the essential aspects of how people learn. Learning does not occur passively. In live teaching, lecture formats with minimal activity on the part of the learner do not work very well. Yet some e-learning designers tend to create e-learning lessons that are little more than exercises in listening or reading. Learners need to be intellectually engaged for learning to happen. Lasting change requires meaningful and compelling mental engagement and interaction.