E-learning is in an IT ghetto from which it's unclear whether it can escape, according to Martyn Sloman, Adviser for Learning, Training and Development at the CIPD.

His comments, which suggest that e-learning as a delivery method is trapped by its overwhelming use for IT training, appear in a piece in today's Financial Times, which examines how the requirement to cut costs - and, as often seems to be the case during hard economic times, training budgets - has led many large companies to turn their attentions away from in-house classroom training towards e-learning.

The article presents what seem to be conflicting views of the way the e-learning market is developing - on one side, citing the Senior Vice-President of Oracle University, who apparently aims to have 100 per cent of classes delivered online soon - up from 67 per cent currently. On the other side of the fence, Hallstein Moerk, Senior VP of HR at Nokia, says his company regards teamwork and coaching as key development areas (although again e-learning is on the rise within the company), and Professor of HR at Nottingham Business School Jim Stewart adds that 'there is too much confidence in the technology'.

TrainingZONE says: This is a debate which has been going on for several years - is e-learning growing or in decline? It's clear there are still big contracts to be had, as large organisations continue to commit large chunks of training spend where they can see clear cost benefits in doing so, but on the other hand, there have been a number of high-profile mergers and collapses of e-learning companies during this last year, suggesting that the market is not as big - or perhaps has a slightly different make-up - to what was originally thought. For more on where the e-learning market is likely to go, see the Keynote range of reports and the TrainingZONE Biannual Review, published in June.