As the eLearning market continues to grow from strength to strength, it’s only natural that eLearning evolves too. Here are our predictions about the upcoming trends in this industry. While there is possibly some overlap between a few of them, the growing importance of each calls for a separate acknowledgement.

1. eLearning On Tablets and mEnablement

From ‘just another type of PC’ to ‘an interesting media consumption device’, tablets have come a long way in a short time. Overall, the tablet market is showing exponential growth with tablet sales touted to overtake that of notebook PCs with an estimated volume of 240 million units sold worldwide by end of 2013 (by Tech-Thoughts). In the enterprises too, the usage of tablets for business related activities and enterprise mobility is on the rise, making eLearning on tablets almost a necessity.

As we mentioned in The Question Of Why (Not) eLearning On iPads Or Tablets?, while eLearning on tablets is not ‘real’ mLearning, it serves as a bridge to Mobile Learning. This has given birth to another trend most commonly found in organizations these days – mEnablement. mEnablement is the conversion of existing (legacy) eLearning courseware into a tablet compatible format. Know How To mEnable Your eLearning.

2. Pervasive Learning and Embedded Ubiquitous Learning

‘Pervasive Learning’, as described by Dan Pontefract, is learning at the speed of need through formal, informal and social learning modalities. The idea of pervasive learning makes perfect sense as more and more of us become concept workers, and work and learning merge. This is further driven by the emerging technology, which is helping pervasive learning to happen more effectively and will continue to impact positively.

In line with this is the ‘embedded ubiquitous’ approach, where learning is embedded with the work, and is provided just at the time of task execution, just enough to accomplish the task at hand. Mobile devices and technology are the first wave in technology that supports this type of learning; it only gets better from here.

3. Responsive/ Multi-Device Learning

We live in a multi-device world. Almost each one of us today uses a smart phone and a laptop (and that’s just the bare minimum requirement!) and other such devices that can support learning. For training administrators, this means developing and delivering learning solutions that work seamlessly across all devices – irrespective of their sizes, shapes, resolutions or OSs. The answer to this is ‘responsive eLearning’.

Responsive eLearning design, simply put, is used to “provide an optimal viewing experience – easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling – across a wide range of devices”.  But while responsive design provides device/display specific structuring of the content, it is important to ensure the relevance, type and context of the content, and more importantly the ‘point of use’ and access.

4. Wearable Computing Technology In Learning

Wearable computing devices and associated technology, though still a novel concept, have been around for a while. Right now, most of these devices seem to be tethered to a phone or other mobile device, but as miniaturization continues this tethering will no longer be required. There are three main reasons it cannot be ignored for learning:

• ‘Real Sharing’ – (life streaming becomes real, searchable, sharable streams of data BIG data becomes real)
• The Provision of context
• Natural Progression from mobile phones

5. HTML 5

HTML 5 was hot when it came into focus and till this day remains to be one of the hottest trends to have hit the eLearning industry. So while Flash vs. HTML5 was a point of debate earlier, it’s not anymore. For any web-based mLearning, HTML5 is the future of mobile web, even if it’s not ready to the extent we believe it to be.

Speaking of authoring tools, most tools, today, actually struggle to provide real HTML5 compatibility. Several of them actually just embed non-interactive videos in HTML code. Good quality animations and interactivities are still missing. The tools are expected to become more capable in exploiting the potential of HTML5 in the future. Of the tools available out there, Lectora, Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate seems to be the most promising. Some of these also provide options to publish as Flash or HTML5 or as an app. Here’s a compilation of 15 Authoring Tools For mEnabling Your eLearning For iPads.

6. Tin Can API

We had rendered our first impressions of the Tin Can API some time back. That this API promises to address many of the shortcomings associated with the existing SCORM standards, that are now over a decade old, is a given. But what remains to be seen is how it will affect the LMS as we know it and how soon?

Very soon, if you ask us; although the actual adoption may take some time. It’s true that getting a standard off the ground is a huge challenge, but Tin Can API, with its ability to collect data about the varied experiences an individual has had, both online and offline, capture them in a consistent format and record them in detail, has the power to move more quickly than other standards for a number of reasons.

7. Gamification In Learning

‘Gamification in learning’ means attempting to apply the principles that make individuals play games for hours at end. Properly implemented, gamification has the potential to make learning ‘stickier’, increase uptake of learning content and also provide a more comprehensive record of learning than is possible using conventional measures in courses.

As millennials continue to enter the workplace at an increasing rate, gamification in learning can be used by leveraging the mindset of these young individuals who look for ways to be acknowledged for their accomplishments by their peers by making use of social connections/ media. As in a game, where there are reward points for displaying the player status, in a learning context too, the same mechanism/ strategy can be used.

8. Informal Learning

Majority of learning in the modern context happens naturally and at most times is embedded in other tasks – contextually and subconsciously, and is always self-initiated. While you cannot ‘create & implement’ informal learning, you can at best support it by providing an environment, which breeds informal learning. Part of that environment will be the culture of your organization and that’s not something any vendor, technology, or tool can do for you. Mobile with its several unique characteristics of being always on, always carried, and a host of sensors in it, could be the ideal enabling technology to begin with and offers a transformational opportunity if pursued properly as discussed in one of our previous posts Mobile Enables Informal Learning.

9. Videos In eLearning

In early stages of eLearning, video was used by most organizations for training, which later sizzled with the emergence of web and its associated limitation on bandwidth utilization. Fifteen years later, videos are all set to return to eLearning in a big way. And here’s why.

• They provide engagement
• They act as on demand Performance Support tools just when your staff needs them
• They provide an opportunity to bridge the gap between different screen sizes and multiple platforms
• Since they ‘show’ pictures and can include subtitles, they can act as Cross Language tools for learning
• The cost of video production is low
• They tends to be more viral that other assets
• Employees can record events, processes, problems – just about anything they wish to share creating User Generated Videos

In line with videos is a similar asset which will hold its own place in delivering learning to individuals – Television. In fact, its presence has already been felt with the emergence of products like Apple TV and Google TV, which connect to conventional television sources and the Internet to dish up an interactive experience as opposed to the experience provided by a regular one-way TV. Apart from being made use of for entertainment, TV coupled with video has already been used for learning initiatives in a big manner.Perhaps in a decade from now on, the TV would be completely different from what we know of it today. We had spoken about this in TV In The Future Of Learning. In fact, with the APIs and tools for creating applications for TV fast emerging, it now depends on us as to how we, as learning designers, make the most of it.

10. Algorithmically Generated Content In Learning

Algorithmic generation of content has existed for a while now, most commonly used in games to generate content used to populate the game environment. So how long before we have algorithms that are setup to create ‘learning material’ by constantly monitoring streams of user generated content, monitoring individual context? Not too far.

The first inklings of this are already visible, in the form of search, discovery and sharing services such as Scoop.it and Summify and a whole lot more. The algorithms the services use don’t really create the content, but that will change soon. We will have algorithms that actually glean information from various streams and write content.

Do you foresee any other eLearning trends? Leave a comment in the box below.

The post Top 10 eLearning Industry Trends For 2013 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

As an industry, eLearning has witnessed significant growth over the past years. Then the recession hit and not only did it disrupt the continuity of growth and momentum in the industry, but as I see it, even when fading away it poses another threat to eLearning industry. I will explain how.

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If the only thing the last 15 months or more of the cruel downturn has taught more companies than anything else, it is the need to be cautious on cash (and costs) front. Tremendous pressures were put on companies to save on costs (and continue even now, while a little milder) and more so to generate more value at the same cost. These pressures led organizations to react in varied ways – downsizing, rightsizing, blanket budget cuts, even training cost cutting, across the board salary revisions, etc. On one hand while the pressure to reduce costs kept on increasing and still is a reality, on the other there was also a burning need to upskill and reskill employees to generate more value and productivity.

This mix of cost pressure and need to still keep an eye on training to survive and grow beyond the recession phase, in my belief, started the second wave of adoption of eLearning. Over the past few years, as the industry was maturing, the focus was slowly, but firmly, moving towards producing learning solutions that impact performance and dollar numbers, this second wave could have a pull-back effect, potentially.

In the last few months (6 to 9 months) we (as a solutions provider) have seen an increase in inquiries focused on adopting eLearning primarily to compensate for the budget cuts and to reduce overall training costs. This is where my concern stems from. There are cases where the customers are looking for something quick, dirty and of course inexpensive. That these cases are increasing in number is a matter of concern, primarily for two reasons:

1. If such demand keeps increasing (and I believe as effects of the recession continue to get milder it will) there could be a surge in solutions which are good from a cost perspective but not from a ‘learning’ perspective. This could undermine or distract from the progress and advancements the industry is making in coming out with innovation and solutions to enhance learning in self-paced environments.
2. As more such solutions sell it would take another level of effort to evangelize and educate customers on the true value and potential of eLearning. This seems like going back a few good years and that isn’t good.

While I am confident that the recession is definitely proving and will continue to prove a booster in terms of revenue growth for learning solutions providers, I am also worried that it has the potential to erode the true value to some extent.

The bright side is that more companies are now able to produce excellent quality eLearning at costs lower than before and will still be able to offer good value at low cost striking the right balance. However a challenge still remains on the other front. How big this challenge will be only time can tell. As a company that provides high quality solutions we are pushing Innovation and development to ensure that we don’t fall into the trap (for the lack of a better word).

I’d love to hear more about this and how others feel about this situation. I’d really like to hear and conclude (hopefully) that most of my concerns are unfounded.

The post Is the Recession Bad for Effective Learning Solutions? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

I was looking forward to the Apple iPad even more so as we have been doing good stuff on mobile learning and putting up applications and tools on iPhone as pilots and on a trial basis. The iPad was supposed to be better and bigger than the iPhone, closer to a computer and much more than just a phone.

However, from whatever I have been able to gather about it so far, including Apple’s own website I think the iPad is a big miss. To me it is just a big (physically speaking) iPhone clone (that too with something like a camera missing! Whoops!). Just this morning Amit Garg asked me about the iPad being a great tool for our sales meetings and I was excited too. However now I feel that’s not going to happen. Some reasons:

1. What would I carry an iPad for? I need to connect to my family back home, talk to my team and do video calls regularly – with the iPad there is just no way to do that. If I have to carry my iPhone and a laptop anyway; why would I carry another device?

2. How do I store regular files in it? Again, it is not meant for that. Without support for MS Office – I can’t even deliver good presentations. While I haven’t seen much about this; my experience with iPhone is a great indicator.

3. The missing camera. While demonstrating our Innovation and new projects team’s work on Augmented Reality the iPad is useless without the electronic eye.

4. And most importantly – Flash support (rather the absolute lack of it). The eLearning industry thrives on Flash and without it how do I even present the great stuff we create to prospects. I have failed to understand reasons behind Apple’s continued ignorance of Flash. I am sure it is not technically challenging to build support for Flash in an iPhone or an iPad but then what is it that is keeping Apple from supporting Flash?

I’d best not make any big statements against or for Apple or any other company. Personally I was really disappointed to read about iPad. I hope Apple is not being blinded by the iPhone’s success. To me it looks like that somewhere Apple lost its customer focus while building the iPad. And as a result, it looks like I just saved a few hundred dollars. And as with all things Apple, there isn’t going to be iPad V2 with the missing elements being built in any time soon.

I would love to hear comments from peers in eLearning industry on the iPad and what it could have been for the industry. With the amount of websites out there that can help you recognize synonym It’s hard to gauge where the industry is heading. Microsoft, HP, IBM – where are your tablets? We’re waiting…

The post Apple iPad Disappoints eLearning Industry first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.