100+ Free E-Learning Tools for Employee Training and Personal Learning

Jane Hart and I collaborated on a new report, 100+ Free E-Learning Tools for Employee Training and Personal Learning, and have just now released it. If you’re not familiar with Jane, you need to be.  Jane is a Social Media and Learning Advisor and founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT). She is also the author of Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day, a blog where she posts a daily item of e-learning interest. DAILY! I often wondered if Jane was actually 2 or 3 people because she gets so much done. She really provides and enormous service to our field.

For this report, Jane handpicked tools just for employee training and personal learning from her extensive repository. What’s really important to know about this report is that the tools chosen are both for personal learning as well as for creating learning for others. I think Jane said it best:

People do automatically assume that “learning tools” means “dedicated learning tools” and often don’t realise the value in what they see as “ordinary” tools. When to my mind that is actually the powerfulness of these tools – because they are not a separate tool you have to use, but one that is familiar to you – so that working and learning can merge.

After settling on the right tools, they were categorized

• Assessment, Testing, Polling, and Survey Tools
• Audio and Podcasting
• Blogging Tools
• Browsers, Browser Plug-ins, Browser Extension, Start Pages
• Content and Learning Management Systems
• Course Authoring, Rapid E-Learning Development, Presentation and Conversion Tools
• E-Learning Content, Resources, Directories
• Microblogging Tools
• Presence Technologies
• Project Management, Office Management, and Team Collaboration Tools
• RSS and Aggregator Tools
• Social Bookmarking/Tagging and Information Management
• Social Networking Services
• Video
• Virtual Worlds
• Visualization
• Web Conferencing and Screencasting/Screen Capture Tools
• Wikis

For each of those categories, we provide a few pages describing the technology and its uses. Then, within each category, we provide a profile of each tool:

• Description
• Interface
• How it Works
• Who the Organization is
• Contact information
• Availability (Download or Hosted)

This report really can be used both to find tools to improve employee performance (especially when your budget is tight or non-existent) AND to build your own skill set. If you’re not trying these tools, you’ll never realize their potential to support learning. And, the tools are not just for employee training. There are plenty of tools to help YOU work smarter. Play around with just two tools a week and you’ll have an enormous toolbox of potential FREE solutions.