Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Over a day long discussion at “Learning Object Interoperability Working Group Meeting”, organized by Scott Leslie, BCcampus, many challenges have been laid down on the table and many solutions were generated. One thing raised in the meeting was how we can overcome the “lack of sharing” mentality.

Over the years of instructional development practices, I realized one unique trend – the smaller the learning object is, the more willingness of sharing by the authors. Content creators are usually ok of sharing bits and pieces of their courses rather than the entire course as a whole package. This is understandable, while others collect and choose to re-use the “smaller” pieces of objects, they must put in their own intellectual procedures to re-assemble them into usable learning materials. This process is usually respected as a proper “re-publishing” process. Anyway, in simple, I believe us e-Learning developers should keep this in mind and always make sure the contents are modular and broken down to “smallest chunks” possible for the maximized re-usability.

4). Content sharing initiatives face new challenges
Ever since learning object was defined, content sharing became to be the number one research topic in many public institutions across the world. Canada alone has performed over 20 well known researches projects that varies from Learning Object Repository Developments (CAREO, BELLE, POOL, etc.) to EduSource distributed LOR initiatives. Many standards have been implemented (AICC, LRN, IEEE, ADL/SCORM, etc.). I personally believe these researches and developments will further advance in the year 2005. Growing with the rapid e-Learning demands everywhere, content sharing environments will be expanded in a great deal.

5). Rich media is zooming
Rich media is being used in the e-Learning practices at an increasing rate last year. Macromedia continuously produces amazingly popular rich media authoring tools such as Flash 2004, Breeze Alive, Flex and RoboDemo. I think macromedia is doing everything right in supporting the e-Learning industry. They have always played a role as the inspirer and supporter instead of the direct solution provider. However, they have made a clear move into the e-Learning and web based training market by acquiring e-Help. There are many other tools work just as RoboDemo, like Camtasia, Firefly and Epiance. However, RoboDemo certainly will take the advantage of the wide adoption of Flash and other Macromedia technologies. This year, we should be able to see more learning contents online using rich media.

6). A war is starting between the content publishing vendors
There are three main course content providers in the e-Learning industry: Skillsoft、Thomson NETg and ElementK. However, I vision there will be more traditional publishers soon join this market simply because there is still a large room in the digital content market.

I guess this is enough for the vision in 2005. There may be many ground-breaking innovations surface in the new year that will change our view of e-Learning. In the meanwhile, let’s all keep being creative and push the available technologies to their highest potential to benefit our learners.

3. LMS, “To be or not to be”?
According to the statistics, the LMS market has grown over 20% in the year 2004. Along with the $600 million revenue, the LMS market is facing many new challenges:
- Enterprise software giants merge their products into the training fields. We have seen Oracle、Peoplesoft and SAP are rapidly moving into the market. By the way the acquisition of Peoplesoft by Oracle will very likely change the equilibrium of this competition in the year 2005.
- New web based application technologies emerged (dot net, J2EE, Flex, etc.) in the year 2004, many LMS providers are changing their product infrastructure and product delivery. For example, companies like GeoLearning, Learn.com and KnowledgePlanet are all providing to their users with a new generation of solutions with simple installation, simple interface and generic solutions.
- There are almost “too many” LMS that are out there in the commercial market, many institutions and organizations use more than one LMS for their day-to-day training practices. Multiple LMS means multiple “versions” of contents that are not compatible with each other. Challenges in reusability, portability, efficiency and much more would surface.
- Learning Object based trainings are becoming more mature now days. Shared learning contents are entering the mainstream of the e-Learning market with almost zero cost. These contents are much favored by both the learners and trainers simply due to its low cost and reusability.
- Rapid Learning is demanding the market for more up-to-date, more modular and more innovative approaches through the training process. New LMS providers are pressured to re-structure their platforms in order to adopt third party tools and vary formats of learning contents.
- Open source industry is growing rapidly. Many innovative, learner centric, FREE learning management systems and tools are surfacing. This type of LMS obviously will change the way that commercial LMS dominating the e-Learning industry.
In general, LMS market is still growing. However, there are many challenges ahead in the commercial LMS. Many e-Learning analysts predict the pure commercial based learning management systems may fade out in the year 2006.

Here comes the year 2005, I feel this is a good time for us to look back and summarize what have we experienced in the year 2004 and what do we see coming in the new year.

According to the newest report from B&A, the year 2004 was a good year for the global e-Learning industry. The overall marketing value in e-Learning has exceeded 14 billion dollars and a nearly 30% increase in the technology based training market.

The e-Learning industry is finally reaching its maturity. Both consumers and the providers are becoming more realistic in regard to the service delivery. The consumers are no longer “overly excited” about the launch of new technologies but rather concentrate on how can the online learning packages solve their problems.

According to the newest statistics, the “winner” in this growing industry is still the “corporate training” market. This market mainly focuses on practical problem solving such as online IT Trainings, Web casting, mixed learning, client training, and many more.

Here are some highlights from 2004:

1. Rapid e-Learning became main stream.
Initiated in the year 2003, Rapid e-Learning has become the new “star” in the e-Learning industry. Courseware and content authoring has always been the bottleneck for online teaching/training. Since the demand of web based learning increase at a “rapid” pace, “Rapid e-Learning” becomes the only feasible response to the market. According to B&A, over 72% of corporate training solutions relied on “rapid learning” in the year 2004. Many predict the market for Rapid e-Learning will continue to grow simply due the “time-critical” demand in many e-Learning cases.

2. Synchronized teaching/learning comes into the mainstream:
Internet2 has become more realistic in the year 2004; bandwidth upgrades constantly take place in varies of places around the world. Many e-Learning system providers have turned to Synchronized teaching/learning solutions such as WebEx、Centra、Interwise etc. Macromedia also entered the market with its powerful new tool – Breeze Alive. However there is still much challenge ahead of us, how to we best apply the technologies; how to we train our instructors; how long should a class last; how should we charge. However, the solutions will surface while this market being further developed in the year 2005.