Predictions for 2010

In response to this month’s big question on LCB – e-Learning implementation and usage of different upcoming platforms is at different adoption level in different regions, and hence it becomes difficult to generalize how 2010 will pan out for our industry. I have thus categorized my thoughts on geographical basis.

India –

1. Skill Development Programs – Many government bodies at both center and state level initiated skill development programs on mass scale in collaboration with private sector in 2009. I see some of them taking off the ground this year and benefiting hundreds of thousands of youths who so far could not find meaningful jobs.
2. e-Learning Adoption in Government Bodies to Increase – Many PSU’s who are leaders in their own domains started implementing elearning in 2009, e.g. Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Department of Post etc. As they successfully implement the systems over next few months, I see lot of activity from other entities in these respective domains to implement similar systems in their organizations. State education boards are already very actively implementing smart classrooms and I see this only growing hereon.
3. Traditional Sectors to implement Training Management Systems – Tech savvy sectors, such as BFSI, IT/ITeS, Healthcare and Telecom etc have reached ‘Early Majority’ stage in technology adoption cycle and this will continue to grow. Something that I think will be different in 2010 will be that traditional sectors, such as Manufacturing, FMCG, and Energy etc will start adopting elearning more vigorously. They would however start with implementing training management systems to better manage their classroom trainings, and slowly build elearning practice in their organizations. In my opinion this would essentially be because of lack of relevant and ‘Indianised’ content for these domains.
4. Online Examinations – After CAT fiasco this year (or the media attention that it got), other examination bodies, such as IIT JEE, MAT etc will wait for another year I think before they start moving from paper based examinations. However, organizations on individual level would use online assessments much more in 2010 to certify their employees, or to help them evaluate their skill gaps (Almost all of our Wizdom clients, including PSU’s, ask for and use/intend to use Assessments vigorously).
5. Social Learning & M-Learning – Innovators will adopt them in 2010, but these platforms are still sometime away from mass adoption – on both corporate & individual level.

US & Parts of Europe –

1. eBooks – Amazon sold more eBooks than physical books, and Kindle was the top selling gift item ever this Christmas. Many more products are coming in the market & Apple is set to announce its new tablet shortly. All this makes 2010 a very interesting year for eBooks growth, which I believe is set to explode now.
2. m-Learning – As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts also, we are now developing lot of content for iPhones & Blackberries, and the requests are only growing by the day. Apart from this personal experience, there are off-the-shelf m-learning content providers emerging on the scene. All this, combined with technology advancements, such as embedded Pico Projectors can make 2010 a year when m-Learning got its due share.
3. Rapid Content – Scars of recession are fresh and are not going to heal in a hurry. Cost cutting is and will remain name of the game for some time. Standardization and rapid content development, while keeping tight focus on instructional design is going to be the prevalent content development mode in 2010.
4. Search for ‘Magic Learning System’ – 70% of LMS users are unhappy with their systems. They are ugly & confusing. Social Learning is the ‘new’ way to learn & LMS’s don’t know what to do about it. Well, poor LMS has been everyone’s favourite punching bag for couple of years now. But the world currently doesn’t have an alternative for very important question from organization perspective – how to track and control learner’s movements (Yes, I know, this is not how it ideally should be – but please tell that to HR Departments & to learners who take undue advantage of liberties provided to them). Search for ‘Magic Learning System’ is on and will continue in 2010 (and we may actually see some answers too – SCORM/E-Learning cloud is one such emerging thought) which can be integrated with popular social platforms and provide a way to provide controlled access and objectively analyse learner progress in bridging her skill gaps.

So, this is what I think how 2010 is going to be. Would love to hear your thoughts & feedback.