Since the bold recommendations of the Defence Training Review of 1998, the British Army has, of necessity, adopted a pragmatic approach to implementing the use of e-Learning for training and educating its personnel.

The advantages that e-Learning purports to offer a large organisation with a distributed workforce, especially in terms of cost savings, are very attractive. To fully integrate e-Learning as a training option the Army developed an e-Learning Strategy working in harmony with MoD guidelines. Focusing on 5 lines of development - Funding, Courseware, Management, People and Infrastructure - the e-Learning Strategy provided a clear vision for e-Learning across the Army. However, the reality of implementing each of the lines of development has been fraught with practical difficulties & hurdles.

The authors argue that, with the benefit of hindsight, some of these obstacles have actually proven advantageous to the organisation as a whole and that far from being resisted, should be exploited.