E-Learning Trends

Stephen Downes gives us his vision of learning in 2050. Essentially,

Downes predicts that the “object system” – the learning environment – will
be remodelled by the network of interconnected people (social-network)
who teach and learn from each other in an unstructured fashion. (Downes
2008).

Janet Clarey echoes this vision “Learners need to be able to find you. The
learning department needs traffic and ‘search’ capabilities. There should
be no silos – everyone, everywhere should know what ‘knowledge’ you
have available and should be able to access it whenever they want. If your
LMS can’t do this or if you need an LCMS to manage the content or if you
need to mash together a bunch of tools – figure out how to do it. This is
pull time not push time!” She continues by highlighting the true
democratic nature of learning content “Quite often, the learning
department is the best kept secret within the organization. I didn’t know
you had that! I didn’t know you could do that! Other times, the learning
department is their own worst enemy – competing internally (my stuff is
better than yours), hoarding information, controlling information
distribution, duplicating efforts, and itself is a closed community (we own
all the training – its development, creation, distribution).” (Clarey 2007).

There are encouraging signs in Ireland that the government are looking to
increase funding in this area. €50m is to be invested in the Institutes of
technology to encourage business incubation in areas that include e-
learning. (Anon 2008).

Bill Thompson, a freelance technology journalist for the BBC attended a

two-day think-tank on the future of technology in education. He notes:
“Grasping the likely technological shifts is one thing, but what do they
imply for education? This is a much harder question, since once you start
looking at the way schools operate then you start to question teaching
methods, assessment, exams and even the very existence of "schools"
and "classrooms".
If every student has a powerful network device that plugs them into the
network, and work on digitising every book and other forms of knowledge
has been successful, then what is the point of teaching "facts"?
If Wikipedia has been replaced as the destination of choice by the entire
contents of the British Library, suitably tagged and indexed, then can we
really tell children not to look things up?

The challenge, I think, is to find a way to justify the sort of rote learning of
facts and techniques that takes place in school, of finding a reason why
knowing times tables, spelling and even the list of kings and queens of
England might be considered a worthwhile investment of time and
resources…Just as we try to encourage kids today to learn enough mental
arithmetic to decide whether to believe the calculator's answer, so we
need those using tomorrow's vast supercomputers to have a sense of
what is going on that will allow them to judge the validity of the answers
they get.

Getting that sort of education in a world which will increasingly rely on

computers is the real challenge for any education system, and it's
reassuring to see that the issue is at least on the agenda already.“
(Thompson 2008)

As Jay Cross warns: “Three out of four business leaders I talk with confide
that they don’t believe their current approach to training will enable their
workers to be prepared for the future workplace. They are so busy
chopping down trees that they don’t take the time to sharpen their axes.

In these volatile, accelerating times, the organization that fails to do a

great job of helping its people keep up with the pace of change will not
survive the decade. Increasing the training budget is not going to increase
the odds of survival or help the bottom line. What will is collaboration and
self-directed learning. It’s about making communication simple, and
partnering with customers and suppliers. Generally, it’s all about getting
out of people’s way so they can learn what they need to know to excel in
their work.” (J. Cross 2008a).

The major trend in e-learning presently is in virtual learning – using the

likes of Second Life to teach and learn in virtual environments. IBM is
investing a lot of resources in this area such as PowerUp an online
environment where school children can work through scenarios to solve
real life environmental issues. (Boran 2008a). The beauty of these online
scenarios is that one can reach richly textured environments, that allow
imagination to flourish, at a (relatively) low cost.

More controversially, Martin Weller describes a future un-structured

learning environment where there is no formal Learning Management
System. The course content is managed via an online wiki, blogs, online
quizzes. The idea is that this approach releases the teacher and student
from the limited tools available through the LMS. There are drawbacks
also; authentication – single sign-on through these distributed systems.
Application support for students and tutors. Lack of monitoring of student
progress. As a few of the comments on his blog point out, there are
certain realities that prevent such a scenario from getting wide-spread
adoption. “I am not convinced that this will ever happen - at least not in
formal learning settings, as some (most?) educationalists are not
interested in technology at all (as witnessed by the current minimal use of
our VLE). They want to produce clearly structured courses, control the
course flow, etc.” Another comment: “The walled garden of the VLE
provides a "trusted brand" (as Grainne Conole discussed at
OpenLearn2007) which is very attractive to students. Otherwise, why
would they want to pay us £3k a year for tuition - and then use Google?”
(Weller 2007).

In a more recent blog Weller softens his view on what he refers to as PLEs
(Personal Learning Environments). Firstly he sees the PLE evolving into a
Distributed Learning Environment (DLE?), which is built on a range of
applications. He feels that many of the issues that existed in 2006 / 2007
have now been answered or resolved by higher quality Web 2.0
applications – therefore support and quality assurance of the student’s
progress through the course are no longer potential problems.
Technological advances – even in two years, such as common standards
such as OpenID, RSS feeds, widget development have allowed a loosening
up of the PLE framework, yet still allow collaboration to be at the heart of
e-learning. (Weller 2008)

Equally radical, Steve Hargadon, provides us with ten trends that are, in
his view, making Web 2.0 the driving force behind e-learning. He refers to
the new Web as the “New Publishing Revolution”. The way content is
created online is changing dramatically through Blogs, Podcasts, photo
and video sharing and Wikis. This is leading to a “tidal wave of
Information”. The problem is no longer finding information, but filtering
and disseminating it. For Hargadon, this is the essence of the collaborative
web – we take some of the information, weave it to create more
information and share it with others and so on. Participation is crucial –
before buying a book on Amazon or booking a hotel online, we read
other’s testimonials. On the Web the collaborator is taking over from the
expert. This collaboration should lead to ground breaking innovation due
to unparalleled access to like-minded individuals around the world – it is
becoming a flatter world. It is this social aspect of the Web 2.0 allows the
student to move from being a passive recipient to a very real contributor.
Referring back to John Seely-Brown: “…as the technologies of the Web
make "differentiated instruction" a reality that both parents and students
will demand. I can go online and watch heart-surgery take place live. I can
find a tutor in almost any subject who can work with me via video-
conference and shared desktop. If a student cares about something--if
they have a passion for something--they can learn about it and they can
actually produce work in the field and become a contributing part of that
community.” (Hargadon 2008).
The key points for education in a Web 2.0 environment are: “From
consuming to producing
• From authority to transparency
• From the expert to the facilitator
• From the lecture to the hallway
• From "access to information" to "access to people"
• From "learning about" to "learning to be"
• From passive to passionate learning
• From presentation to participation
• From publication to conversation
• From formal schooling to lifelong learning
• From supply-push to demand-pull” (Hargadon 2008)

Some points raised by Hargadon may not be directly associated with

education and e-learning, however, he does raise seven points directly
related to educationalists as a way of getting involved in the Web 2.0
movement, which I have paraphrased below:
1. Learn about Web 2.0 starting with Classroom 2.0.
2. “Lurk” and learn before you participate.
3. Participate.
4. The solution to information overload is to produce more information.
5. Teach content production.
6. Make “Education” topical.
7. Teach thinking skills to the digital natives.

In the corporate market in 2008 as the credit crunch continues to bite,

some analysts are predicting that e-learning will be one of the first areas
to be hit with budget cuts. Donald Taylor has evidence (quoting Josh
Bersin) that the corporate market may be more robust: “The LMS market
is still growing at a decent rate (10-15%+ and more in some geographies),
despite the fact that most of the players are unprofitable. (Most of the TM
[Talent Management] vendors are unprofitable too.) And the two fast
growing segments of the LMS market are the mid-market and SaaS
[Software as a Service] segments - both places where GeoLearning plays. I
think we have to remember that LMS is one of the “bread and butter” HR
applications - if you do training at all, you need some kind of LMS - and
with more than 30% of corporate training hours now being done online, I
think this market still has a long future ahead of it.” (Taylor 2008).

In response, “I should have said LMS is struggling as a stand-alone

market. Sure there are pockets of growth but at the enterprise level,
companies are looking at LMS with a consolidation lens. Regarding
profitability, the recruitment-centric talent management vendors,
definitely understand how to make money. Look at our two publicly traded
companies today - Kenexa and Taleo. Profitability must be a priority for the
vendor market.
Lastly, I personally feel LMS needs a new, fresh approach. Today, LMS
solution only get us half-way there. What about unstructured learning, OJT
(on-the-job training), collaboration. Unfortunately, I don’t see many of the
traditional LMS vendors truly grasping to potential of web 2.0 technology!”
(Corsello 2008). Countering this A.G. Lambert states “I am not sure this is
purely a vendor problem (speaking as a vendor who has offered
collaboration — including discussion forums, wikis, and communities — in
our LMS for years, along with online meeting and collaboration tools).
There is a broader mindset change that is needed in HR to move beyond
traditional management to facilitating employee performance. Learning is
too often considered only as compliance or risk mitigation effort that
doesn’t focus on all the ways to make employees more effective. The
same can be said for many performance initiatives, where the focus is
often more on automating performance reviews and formal goals rather
than facilitating and recognizing each individual’s contribution to the
community.
Until HR moves to being a business enabler rather than a regulation
enforcer, the value of Web 2.0 technology will be limited.”(Corsello 2008).
So from a corporate perspective, is the problem Management / HR related
and not lie with the vendor? After all the vendor will end up supplying
what the customer wants (or at least think he wants) as opposed to the
vendor supplying what the customer needs.

Well if the issue (from a Corporate perspective) is down to management

inertia, then some work will be required to get new thinking into the way
companies view e-learning. As Jay Cross says quoting Gary Hamil “Unlike
their counterparts in medicine, engineering, and computer science,
business school professors don’t generally see themselves as the
inventors of new methods, tools and approaches. Most study management
as it is, and seldom dream of management as it might be, or should be.
They describe, but they don’t create.” (J. Cross 2008b).

In another blog Cross elaborates on the constraints of management today

“People inevitably short-change the future by investing all of their energy
in the present. Take the practice of management; it’s whirling around in a
squirrel cage, running hard and going nowhere. Management values (e.g.,
control, precision, stability, discipline, and reliability) have not changed in
a century. Business has streamlined strategy, production, services, and
operations. We’ve cut the inefficiencies from every business process but
the most important: management itself.
Managers are in denial about this. Their people are naturally innovative
and flexible; the organizations they work for are not. A handful of
companies “get it.” Look at the Whole Foods Declaration of
Interdependence or the corporate culture of W. L. Gore & Associates or
Google’s philosophy of doing business. These organizations trust their
employees to do the right thing; they give them room to manoeuvre; and
the employees excel with gusto. Why not you?” (J. Cross 2008c)

But this is not a critique on modern corporate management, it is, however,

a snap-shot of where e-learning stands in 2008 and what direction it is
facing.
As for the future Yan Söz summarises Gartner’s and the University of
Philidelphia’s top ten trends for the next decade. (Dunluk 2008). Without
going through the list exhaustively the key points are that speed of
deployment is crucial. Vendors will make it easier, quicker and cheaper for
companies to get into the e-learning space as a result it will become
imbedded more and more into a company’s infrastructure. The changing
environment will necessitate access to key information at just-in-time
fashion in order for employees to remain skilled-up.

E-learning will level the playing field by workers in niche industries having
access to field experts in other parts of the world. We heard these
arguments before for e-learning 1.0 when it would supposedly
revolutionise learning in third world countries. It remains to be seen if this
prediction makes it to fruition this time.

People seek to learn through experience and the gaming industry has
much to offer, by creating games to teach specific skills. However, we will
need to move from the mindset that if you are having fun you cannot be
working efficiently.

Josh Bersin sees a future in the corporate sphere where the LMS continues
to play a key role where the LMS is evolving into LCMS (Learning Content
Management System) whereby the content from corporate wikis etc are
kept with a walled-garden of the LCMS to facilitate learning on demand
and continue to evolve into a Social Network in within the organisation.
The key is for the vendors to remain on their toes and come up with
flexible innovative designs, because presently there is plenty of demand
in this market. “There are still many “unsolved problems” in the LMS
space, and buyers continue to select different solutions based on their
own internal strategy. While all HR managers would like to have an end-
to-end software system for all elements of talent management, only 15-
20% of organizations can even do this. Organizations have a “tower of
babel” of existing systems — and the LMS is a system with many
masters. While it is often purchased by the L&D organization, it is used by
sales, compliance, talent management, career development, customer
education, and many other groups in the company. With exciting new
technologies now available for corporate learning (tagging, blogs, wikis,
mobile interfaces, social networking, and we see many new ones on the
horizon) the role of the LMS is everchanging.“ (Bersin 2008).

The Learning Circuits website surveyed their readers to measure the

current level of e-learning in the corporate arena. The survey goes further
than I have quoted here, however, the two graph’s I have show how e-
learning is being used and the concerns against adopting e-learning fully.
Just under ¾ of corporate e-learners are employees, followed by
Customers (22%), and channel partners (1%).
How does your company use e-learning?

What concerns does your organisation have about using e-learning?

(Anon 2008).