AMERiCA LEARNiNG MEDiA

Keys for industry, customer issues and predictions analyzed by The Company of Thought, a high level international think tank, comprising thought leaders from the e-learning and related industries.

The Company of Thought (TCoT) aims to report and comment on trends within the corporate online learning technologies industry worldwide, independent of any vested interests. It currently comprises seven specialists – each pre-eminent in their field. Each one has extensive knowledge and experience of the corporate online learning technologies industry, as well as an impressive ‘industry contacts’ list.

Five key things:

• Demand for off-the-shelf e-learning content remains robust – especially for courses that offer compliance with some form of accreditation or certification.
• Increasing numbers of small and medium sized businesses (SMB) are buying content on-demand from a variety of vendors. All of the ones whom we polled report continuing strong demand.
• In terms of content development, bespoke content development remains as competitive as ever and is likely to become more - not less - so.
• The drive for mobile content is still playing out through the market but the opportunity for content conversion (flash to HTML5) has not materialised.
• Virtual Reality (VR) is attracting considerable attention, with several vendors testing the market’s appetite for this genre.

Five key customer issues relating to e-learning trends:

• The e-learning and learning technologies market is exhibiting mixed signals at present.
• Commentators are saying that many organizations are dissatisfied with their existing learning management system (LMS) provision, but the energy and expertise to do something about it appears to be lacking. Our “poll” of LMS vendors indicates interest levels remain high, but the decision making time is extending with, typically, 180 days between enquiry and decision to procure.
• Why this is so remains unclear but, at the beginning of 2016, we noted a shortage of L&D professionals with a deep understanding of how technology can transform learning, As yet, this situation hasn’t changed.
• The Apprenticeship levy in the UK is also causing a fundamental re-appraisal of L&D in many organizations.
• Reviews and re-appraisals equal delay. Resources and expertise to undertake these reviews and appreciate the role learning technologies may play are scarce following an eight-year run down of training provision.

Three TCoT predictions:

• Owing to a combination of oversupply, lacklustre domestic demand and a slowing of demand for the outsourcing of development from the USA, there will continue to be a marked slowdown in the demand placed on Indian e-learning developers.
• L&D professionals will further explore VR’s possibilities in learning, now that the technology is maturing - and the integration of the Watershed learning record store (LRS) with VR materials developed by e-learning studios based in Coventry shows how this genre can deliver effective learning and deep learning analytics. This could even trigger a wider uptake of LRS/ xAPI.
• There’s a growing trend towards “bookending”, where the generic e-learning materials are bookended (and “book begun”) with snippets of in-house produced learning materials (short videos for example) or policy/procedure documents to put the materials into context.