This is what led us to develop the ECDL Self-Study Pack. The Pack from the IPA comprises seven modules of learning material to coincide with the seven ECDL modules, diskette-based courseware, and a Skills Card. The key to the pack is flexibility, according to Cawley. It is designed for beginners, but also facilitates those who already have IT skills to plug gaps in their knowledge. Students can decide themselves how much time they spend on each module, although we give guidelines.
Students can study at work or at home.
And in some organisations we have up to 1,000 employees enrolled on the Self-Study Programme. We have also tried to keep the cost very low to allow large numbers to enrol. We found more traditional distance learning approaches to be more effective in actively engaging learners with the real software environment. The IPA now has over fifty corporate ECDL programmes in place. In most of these testing is provided on-site.