The power of online learning that most people miss

The point I'd really like to drill into the learning community's mind is that
presential (face-to-face) training achieves limited knowledge retention.
I believe the typical measure is that 20-30% of the material presented
is remembered. A PPT-Flash, Video, or PodCast element has similar if
not lower effect. the power of eLearning is that if done like web
content, the students can come back to it over and over. This raises
the efficiency from 20-30% up to 70-80% (my estimate from anectodal
evidence). Then, because the learners know where they can find/access
the content, the remaining retention is unnecessary because they can
find it quickly, either through hierarchical navigation or a search
engine. A PPT or video movie does NOT provide this easy indexed access.

Most SCORM and AICC-based LMSs (and the SCORM community at large) seems
to have missed this point. This is represented by the behavior of most
LMSs where the student is measured on "completion" of the course, and
previous tracking results are overwritten when a new session occurs.
Also the examples where each page of content is a Unit/SCO, and the LCMS
puts the courses together for the sake of author re-usability severely
handicaps the more important learner reusability. When the LMS or LCMS
has to deliver each page as a separate session, rapid student access and
continuity of concentration are impeded. The AICC and SCORM
specifications do not force these implementations, but a large portion
of the community has assumed these approaches because they fit into
their large database paradigm.