Being an e-trainer or 'facilitator' I have to concur with Clive Shepherd of Fastrak Consulting that an e-trainer needs "the ability to adapt training materials to be extremely visual, allowing plenty of opportunities for the trainees to interact with online tools, such as whiteboard, polling and application sharing".
Learning guru Peter Honey also sums up the best attributes of a trainer as being someone who "sees life is a series of befores, during and afters, with the quality of the during largely determining what happens before and what happens after".
Not all trainers fit in with on-line learning in fact Don Taylor of InfoBasis points to a trainer totally unsuited for e-learning that of a 'classroom charismatic', this person has the force of personality to succeed, but much of the time is just winging it. A good e-trainer does not need to be charismatic, but they need structure and an ability to both get learners involved and respond to the audience needs.