Investigating the impact of online ICT tools in government sector training: Towards overcoming barriers to web-mediated learning

Barriers to online training are common across the corporate sector and government institutions. The rhetoric would have us believe that the online learning platform has emerged as an efficient and effective training environment. Yet the reverse is the reality. This paper looks at the known issues relating to barriers that deter business organisations and their employees to adopt e-Learning in the workplace. A review of the common barriers to online learning is presented. Studies reveal that the training effectiveness issue has been identified as a barrier to online learning adoption in both the management and employee levels of business organisations. With information and communications technology (ICT) tools embedded in an online learning system, their effects on learning outcomes are varied. This paper reports on the literature overview and the first focus group as a work-in-progress of a larger funded study underway in Australia that is investigating the impact of ICT tools used in web-mediated training environments in the government sector.