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E‐learning is increasingly adopted in the workplace for supporting professional development and continuing education; however, in higher education, the use of e‐learning is predominantly used as a tool support teaching. As a relatively new priority for universities, this paper explores what influences its adoption. Challenges identified in the literature include organisational features of universities like faculty autonomy and dispersed academic perspectives. This study, carried out at the University of Warwick, adopted a phenomenological approach and explored participants' perceptions through a series of faculty‐based focus groups and individual interviews. Factors identified as influential to adoption of e‐learning included the institutional infrastructure, staff attitudes and skills, and perceived student expectations. Participants suggested the importance of an institutional strategy targeted at providing sufficient resources and guidance for effective implementation. This strategy needs to be supported by a varied programme of staff development and opportunities for sharing practice among colleagues. In further developing understanding in this area, it would be beneficial to replicate the study with other stakeholder groups (including the leadership team and students) to develop an institutional strategy responsive at all levels of implementation. It would also be valuable to investigate the extent to which these findings are replicated within other workplaces looking to adopt innovation.

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The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has seen a dramatic rise in prominence over the last five years and is heralded by some as disrupting existing pedagogy and practices within the education sector, while others are far more sceptical about the impact of MOOCs. Numerous courses are now being offered on a number of different platforms, with participant numbers for some individual courses reaching hundreds of thousands. Expectations are high for what these courses can achieve in terms of opening access, widening participation and cost saving. In this paper we conduct a literature review to examine what is known about MOOCs (both those following the original connectivist model and the more traditionally didactic variety) and what indications there are that they can live up to such expectations. We discuss concerns arising from the review and identify issues including lack of evidence, absence of pedagogy, lack of support and unrealistic expectations particularly on beginner learners.