What is Section 508 Compliance

Winning an e-learning proposal or grant has become more difficult over the past few years because of the initially high expectations of e-learning and the subsequent disappointment in the financial results. Effective grant and proposal writers need to understand the business of e-learning and address apprehension and fears of the grantee to successfully win the opportunity to develop e-learning in corporate and academic settings. When e-learning initially burst onto the scene, the promise of untold riches was almost too much. E-learning was going to revolutionize traditional universities while simultaneously pouring millions and millions of dollars into the schools’ coffers. Dozens of major universities rapidly started to develop e-learning “branches”—many of them in partnership with private organizations. These institutions actively recruited faculty to write courses, hired instructional designers to put the courses online, and undertook large public relations efforts to market the online courses. After a few years, these universities began closing their virtual doors. The reality was that online universities failed to make a profit. They were expensive to create and revenues did not match expenditures. The dream of untold riches was just that—a dream. Students did not flock to login to e-learning courses as hoped. As an example, the E-university in the United Kingdom estimated a target student body of over 5,000 online learners; they could recruit no more than 900 (MacLeod, 2004).