The Use of Social Networking in an Online Training Course

The use of educational technologies to support learning are utilised across many parts of education and training and institutions have invested heavily in technologies such as VLEs, ePortfolios and even wikis and forums. The advantages that these technologies provide have meant that eLearning is now supplementing and, in some cases, replacing traditional (face-to-face) approaches to teaching and learning. However, there is less evidence of the uptake of these technologies within private vocational training organisations. This paper discusses the implementation of eLearning within an employer-led vocational training provider for the engineering industry, in particular, the use of social networking features, and provides early feedback from the trainees.