Corporate Elearning - A Comparative Analysis Between Indigenous and Foreign Direct Investment Cmpanies in Ireland

This paper compares and contrasts the current attitudes, the awareness of and the take-up of eLearning in Irish High-Technology large and small organisations. An in-depth study was conducted with individuals responsible for training in the Irish sites of a number of high technology multinational companies in the electronics, aerospace, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors. The study focused on awareness, perceptions, technology support infrastructure, current and planned involvement, most frequent and most preferred methods of delivery, benefits, barriers, the motivational factors and overall attitudes to eLearning. A similar study has been conducted with a number of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) across 5 European countries. The comparison outlines a number of notable differences between the large and the small organisations but also describes a number of similarities and highlights a number of differences both within the large organisation sector and within the SME sector.