In Australia they made use of short-wave radio. Organisations have to go through a culture change and recognise that their assets are in their staff. Companies have to release individuals to learn. The older generation are the Luddites. It's a big cultural change and most firms still don't have an e-learning environment.
Email is just as good.
The Open University has support mentors but you don't always have to meet them face to face. Students will collaborate on searching out answers. Any good e-learning system will have a good tracking mechanism, so that it can identify which students are struggling and establish whether there is a personal or other reason, such as whether they are on holiday. In languages we can teach the basics of a foreign language, such as vocabulary and grammar. The difficult part is the oral skills.