We keep measuring e-learning at the wrong end. Twenty four years of research, pulled together in a new systemic review called Transfer of Workplace E-Learning, shows the same pattern. Studies focus on whether people liked the module, learned from the module, intended to use the module. Then they stop. What happens when people return to the job is mostly unmeasured and often invisible.

That gap matters because e-learning now covers complex work; judgement, prioritisation, situational decisions. Transfer is not optional for this kind of work and without it, nothing changes.

The review looked at what researchers describe when they study transfer. Physical context was rarely mentioned and social context was missing in more than half the studies. Temporal context was often skipped entirely.

Without knowing what people return to, we cannot explain why behaviour sticks or drops off. A module that works in one setting fails in another, and the research cannot tell us why. The conditions that allow transfer stay outside the frame.

Most studies still rely on self-report where people say they intend to use what they learned. Whether they actually do is a different question, and only a handful of studies check. The distance between what people plan and what they manage is where transfer lives or dies, but that distance stays unexamined.

The useful part is this. The problem is not a mystery, it is a design choice. Transfer happens when the environment makes the behaviour possible and worthwhile.

That means asking clear questions:

• Is the behaviour physically possible with the tools and systems available?
• Does the social environment support it or block it?
• Is there time to try it or does urgency push people back to old methods?

If we do not know the answers, we are designing in the dark.

So stop starting with content and start with the situation. Describe the behaviour as it needs to happen in the real environment. Identify the triggers and check the tools, systems and social expectations. THEN design the learning to fit that reality. Test it where it will be used, track what holds and what drops away, adjusting for the conditions, not the content.

The value of e-learning is not in the module. It is in whether people can use it when the moment arrives and transfer is not an outcome. It is a design decision.

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#LearningTransfer #LearningDesign #WorkplaceLearning