Limitations of E-learning are classified into three types and they are technological limitations, personal issues and limitations compared to traditional campus. The other limitations that do not come into these three limitations are indicated as the other limitations.
Technological Limitations:
One of the important technological limitations in E-learning is the necessary requirement of the needed resources and computer hardware. Students always should carry desktops or laptops and even the cost of hardware is considered as the main limitation to this type of learning systems and that’s why small and medium level companies does not take the risk of E-learning to train their employees. Access to the networked computers all the time is another major drawback of E-leaning system and if any of the learners or staff members are disconnected from the network, continuity of the learning process is affected a lot and in some cases, other listeners are also affected if one of them is disconnected from the network.
Even E-learning is facilitated 24 hours all the 7 days a week, there are few cases, where learners from rural areas cant be accessible to internet in week ends and they miss few important concepts. In general, E-Learning systems are accessed via in built graphic and only few browsers support these features and if learners are not aware of the technical browser settings, it takes some time to catch the flow of the lessons and thus the overall continuity of the learning process is affected a lot. In most of the cases, multimedia application and material are embedded in the E-learning websites and if the internet connection is slow at some places, downloading the multimedia material would affect the E-learning process a lot.
E-Learning process includes high definition online videos and if the transfer rate of the interne is limited to the bandwidth constraints, video streaming would become very slow and thus few learners may be affected with the slow streaming rate. Always a broadband internet service is required at the listeners end to follow the classes on video conference and end users at the rural areas are not facilitated with broadband services and thus their learning process is affected a lot.
Personal limitations:
The learners who are new to e-learning requires some preparation because they will be in a opinion that e-learning is similar to traditional learning but the fact is that e-learning is a non-traditional learning. Even the new learners may some times divert from e-learning because of lack of proper knowledge on what to do and how to proceed, this is because of the reason that no teacher will guide them in using the e-learning. Non-traditional learning like e-learning can be used by the new comers when they are educated with some orientation courses. This indicates that there is a necessity of preparation for the new learners to use e-learning .
The other limitation of E-learning is lack of information technology skills and communication technology skills in the learners. Learners should have skills of information technology and other technology in order to use e-learning because e-learning is a product enhanced from the technology. ICT skills in the learner help the learner to learn efficiently .
E-learning students get irritated because of the technical skills because they suffer from exceptional environment of E-learning and also because of isolation from others. Students may have different levels of knowledge some may have good skills and some may have less skills this may be the reason for the isolation problems. Therefore it is evident that learning new skills will be disadvantage for e-learning particularly for information technology and communication technology learners.
