It has always seemed like a good idea to do online training, but in the past it has been a secondary option to traditional methods like conferences and classroom-style training. Reduced training budgets have forced companies (and engineers) to get serious about it lately.

Internal online training programs still suffer from the usual problems in terms of not being up-to-date with the technology topics that engineers need, but online vendor-sponsored training is beginning to fill the gap. So far this is happening quietly, given that there is an existing training business that they are trying to protect, but I suspect it will grow quickly and become less of an online event and more of an online process.

It seems to me that the majority of this type of training can be automated, with questions handled on an email basis. This makes more sense than the traditional event format, where a relatively large number of people have to coordinate a synchronous meeting and at any moment 80% of them are wasting their time. One advantage of such an event is to generate the source material, but it is more efficient to search that material after the fact than to experience it in real time.