Differentiating needs: Customer demand for online training

link to pdf file

By Kristine Peters & Carolyn Lloyd

Introduction
"Much research into issues relating to online training has been undertaken from a supply perspective (the developer and delivery perspective), but little formal work has been done on the demand perspective (the customer perspective). The Australian Flexible Learning Framework Research Program commissioned this research into ‘factors influencing demand for online delivery’ to address this gap.

The research team took a market research approach to the task of defining demand. Key trends were identified in the existing literature and these were tested using customer surveys of individuals and employers. The survey findings were further refined with focus groups. The result is a ‘big picture’ view of online vocational education and training (VET) in Australia from the customer perspective. This report identifies demand features that apply to the mass online VET market as well as features that apply to specific market segments."