Sustaining elearning innovations

Abstract

The challenges of turning funded projects from elearning innovations into sustainable products and services have featured in the higher education literature for more than forty years. Various guidelines and strategies designed to facilitate the process have been developed and tested. Key challenges are identified and critical success factors proposed. Yet the problem persists in more or less original form, suggesting that most of the advice has been lacking in some respect. This paper examines the current raft of ideas and proposed solutions to the problem of sustaining elearning innovations. Preliminary findings from sixteen case studies are presented to see how experience aligns with the guidelines. While the evidence from these cases is not universal, it is does support comment on the usefulness of existing guidelines and a proposal for an alternative approach to sustainable innovation based on this research.