The benefits

The students can develop their learning paths and work at their own pace. They have direct access to teaching materials which is one of the most important features of e-learning system. The students need not to travel to class but can chat online with lecturers and colleagues. It is flexible and readily available.

The barriers

The network may be poor most especially in developing countries. Downloading and printing of materials from the Internet may be very expensive. The Computer may be corrupted and subsequently breakdown and the cost of repair may be enormous. Updating the materials used may be a big task. Current development in the field of occupational health and safety or incidents which can be sited in the class will be omitted in e-learning. In other words the materials already developed may not reflect the total changes in the world of occupational health and safety.

Briefly, e-learning is beneficial for basics of OSH, however as an Industrial Hygienist

and IH is a science and art I believe that the art the know how is much better to be delivered in the class

In my expereince, e-learning is flexible and does not use a lot of resources to teach, but candidates can cheat both during the course and the exam. I have heard oif people going in a minute through a 30-slide e-learning course and then answering the Q&A with a 100% score. Not very likely if honest.

At U.C. San Francisco we have adapted several of our teaching cases to an interactive, web-based format, utilizing Articulate software:

http://oem.ucsf.edu/resources/tutorials.html

We are currently in the process of updating these modules from Flash to HTML5 (i.e., to be compatible with mobile devices such as iPads). We use these interactive modules as an adjunct to the lectures in our Occupational Toxicology course. Some modules are stand-alone and some reference content in the lectures.

One of the challenges small and medium enterprises (SME’s) face is the economics of hiring safety professionals that will dedicate their efforts to enhance safe operations. It is a common practice for SME’s to add the responsibility for safety to managers with other job functions. It also often happens that these managers have no safety background. E-learning will be usually the only mode for these folks to get the preparation they need for being effective safety leaders in their facilities. Here at Iowa State University we develop the online Occupational Safety Certificate program (http://agonline.iastate.edu/programs/occupational-safety-certificate-program ) for these managers. These is one of the most practical benefits of E-learning in Occupational Safety and Health.

This is an old question but UCSF still has its interactive case studies posted, all but one of which was successfully converted to html5 format. The UCSF DOM website was recently migrated, and the correct link is now:

https://oem.ucsf.edu/resources/oem-tutorials

virtual reality