We've just announced some new research focusing on e-learning authoring strategies and tools, including the first of a series of three research papers. The first paper, titled E-learning Authoring: The Shifting Landscape analyses the the key forces driving changes to the way corporates are approaching the creation of bespoke e-learning, together with a high-level perspective of the new strategies for content authoring and new types of authoring tools. The next two papers, to be published in Q2 2010 will focus more specifically on a deeper analysis of the strategies and the tools.

http://tinyurl.com/ycjzk2p

The E-learning Debate - An Inside View

On the 30th September 2009, David was a main speaker in the E-learning Debate at the Oxford Union, alongside Professor Diana Laurillard, Marc Rosenberg and others. The motion: “This house believes that the elearning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow”.

It's already clear from many conversations after the event, and in the days since, that this event
has really captured the imagination of many people in the UK e-learning industry. And the result on the day was very interesting: 90 for the motion, 144 against.

Here are David's thoughts on the debate itself and its implications.

How do you outsource you elearning development?

There seems to be an emerging trend over the past couple of years for corporates to buy in specific expertise rather than purchase an entire elearning project. In part this has appears to have been driven by the growth of generic publishing tools. But there also seems to be much more significant re-evaluation of where vendors add value, almost on a project by project basis.

This fragmentation which coincided with the growth of Rapid elearning also suggests some interesting new potential. Will we see the growth of syndicates of development specialists dealing directly with corporates rather than operating through a standard elearning vendor? These hubs of expertise already work on a contract basis for many of the established vendors... so why have the middle man?

Managing Rapid - New Research Paper

We've just posted the next paper in the Rapid e-learning research series. This document focuses on the different approaches and considerations to managing Rapid e-learning, including:

• Rapid e-learning management styles and team organisation
• The “rapid “project life cycle and its processes
• Managing course redundancy
• How “rapid” effects your relationship with suppliers
• The critical success factors for working through a Rapid e-learning project

The Managing Rapid paper, alongside the previous Core Insights paper and Executive Viewpoint are available immediately for download from Elearnity’s Knowledge Centre.

Managing Rapid - Link: http://www.elearnity.com/EKCLoad.htm?load=ByKey/DWIN7FXL4R

Rapid e-learning webinar

Heads up on a webinar session David Perring will be running on rapid e-learning for Mohive:

Follow this link to register.

Event: Joint Webcast Mohive/ elearnity: Rapid E-learning: The Power of Rapid Thinking
Date and Time: Thursday, 3 July 2008 14:00
GMT Daylight Time (GMT +01:00, London) Change time zone
Duration: 1 hour

Description:
To help you understand and explore the key trends of the Rapid e-learning movement, Mohive has invited David Perring, Principal Analyst from Elearnity, to share their insights and analysis of what is, perhaps, the most significant development in e-learning of the last 10 years.
We will discuss:
- What is Rapid and its importance?
- How fast is Rapid?
- What are the key trends?
- How are corporate Managing Rapid e-learning
- What are the implications of applying Rapid approaches
Lars, CEO of Mohive invites you to join David & himself and participate in this special event.

The Myth of Rapid Authoring Tools

If you look at the debate around Rapid e-learning then a myth seems to be emerging it's all about rapid e-learning tools...

This is too narrow a view.

Now, I'm not against myths. They are very powerful stories that hold an inner truth; even if they don't always hold water when they're taken literally.

If you look at Rapid elearning objectively, there are two things that are fundamental to a rapid outcome - intent and processes . These are the two things that make rapid e-learning truly rapid.

Why intent...? Because if the project can stretch out for 10 weeks it probably will.

Why processes....? Because if you don't accelerate your process of scoping through to development and launch, then you still won't complete your project rapidly.

Sure the tools are geared up to work in a streamlined way and they are a pivotal part of the story, but if you think Rapid e-learning begins and ends in authoring tools, then you’re really not looking at the whole picture. It's not just about squeezing development.

So, where is the true power of Rapid e-learning?

If you look at Rapid e-learning as a philosophy and methodology as much as it is a tool set, then you are going to drive some really strong value. That's because the inner truth about rapid is it's relentless focus on the effectiveness and efficiency of every stage of production. And that has some very powerful overtones for all e-learning production - internal and external.

Goodbye scripting documents! ?!

But, the real story of Rapid e-learning is still being written. Leading corporates are using a wide range of ‘Rapid’ approaches and tools, but there has been no analysis of what really works best in different contexts.

There is a massive blind spot in the comparative effectiveness of materials, production models and implementation techniques. This means that most of them may not be realising their full potential.

Two of the most important questions have yet to be answered..

· How effective is Rapid e-learning?

· How sustainable is Rapid e-learning?

Whilst the market presence of Rapid e-learning continues to grow at an exceptional rate, the full ramifications of pursuing this strategy in the long term hasn't yet been resolved with some real research and tangible data.

Rapid e-learning papers

Elearnity has just announced some new research on Rapid e-learning, including a couple of white papers and a new research project. See this press release for some more information.

The Big Question - Rapid or Quality

Clive Sheppard has posted an interesting response to Learning Circuits Big Question for January. As I quite like the point he is making, I'm commenting to that rather than the original question per say. I like the sentiments but think he's (maybe deliberately to state his point) misinterpretting the question.

Rapid e-learning is a marketing label being put on the use of a new form of tools for use by non-elearning specialists for creation of e-learning content. This will tend to be done rapidly as its a more collapsed development model - especially if its the SME doing the development. Or that's the theory anyway - and quite a popular one at this point in time.

But I don't really buy that.

If tools are more rapid, then they should be being used by the professional developers anyway. That's unless they turn out not to be very good, flexible, reliable or expensive. The reality is that these tools often have limitations. The ones that don't are often complex to use and therefore are just a more modern authoring tool.

But the issue for rapid e-learning is not about the tools, it is about the process, and about the expertise of people in the process. A collapsed development model also means collapsing the expertise involved. With SME production that means minimal e-learning or even learning expertise (e.g. instructional design). It also often means limited technology understanding or knowledge of the tools and associated standards. "What do I have to do to get this to create SCORM 2005 conformant content that can be uploaded into the LMS?" is not necessarily a question we would expect a SME to ask.

In many ways, this the essence of the debate; rapid versus professional content production.

Our (Elearnity) view is that rapid is a necessary part of a diversification of e-learning away from a pure e-course model (which was always too limiting) towards a more holistic technology enabled learning model. We also believe that tools for supporting mass internal production need to be more connected or shared in order to be more scalable and manageable. Individual local content production replicates the bad experiences of unmanageable document-based content. Finally, for the "rapid" elements, the whole process must be rapid, not just the development process. Rapid content needs to be able to be quality assured and tested, uploaded deployed and accessable, and maintainable or removable all in a rapid timescale at low cost.

David

Subject Matter Experts as Trainers - Implications for Rapid E-learning

Wendy Wickham has posted a comment on her blog about Subject Matter Experts as trainers. I think this is a very interesting point she is making about the mindset, focus, interest and commitment of subject matter experts in the learning process. I'm sure we can all think of SMEs that are very motivated to pass on their knowledge, and try hard to help their learners really understand their subject. But unfortunately this is still all too rare.

I think a key reason for this is that SMEs assume that learners are in their (i.e. the SMEs) context, not the other way around. Wendy's point 3. The learner typically has to make the leap of understanding to be able to relate what they are being told back to their own needs or problems. In reality this is very challenging, unless the subject is very easy, and of course if it is that easy, they could probably have worked it out for themselves anyway! Context is critical for learning.

One key area of interest for me currently which directly relates to this discussion is the growth in rapid e-learning activity and its potential challenges and limitations . (See the discussion linked to some trends for 2007.

Rapid e-learning has emerged as one of the key trends for e-learning, and in some ways, rightly so given the cost and time to produce custom e-learning content. A big part of this assumes that SMEs can also become e-learning authors, but as you have pointed out SMEs are generally not great trainers, let alone educators. They might be able to generate lots of powerpoint slides but that doesn't necessarily equate to good learning content. Now the problem will potentially be magnified as they start to produce lots of bad e-learning instead.

I say magnified because this problem already exists in current e-learning, and it also exists in SME driven training. But with rapid e-learning, we don't even have the SME face to face to give us a chance to ask questions or examine our context. Their potential to crank lots of bad learning reaches new levels.

Of course this is a risk, and more enlightened organisations are aware that they have to manage quality. But our research with large corporates shows that this is not an easy battle, often taking the form of damage limitation rather than added value!

David

Corporate e-learning trends - headlines for Europe

I know it seems a bit early to start the "what's the trends for 2007" stories, but someone just asked me for such a view based on our corporate research. Thought you might also be interested in the answer. As always, happy for feedback.

For 2007, we expect the key developments for corporates to be around a) reconstructing and expanding the e-learning supply chain, b) reengineering and integrating learning management processes, and c) a diversifcation of e-learning content including experimentation with alternative delivery approaches.

A big part of a) is adoption of rapid e-learning inside corporates, and we expect most organisations to acquire tools and grow activities (if they haven't done so already). But we expect corporates to also start to realise the limitations of the rapid model, not least, the challenges for managing quality, educational value, and technical assurance. Whilst we are advocates of rapid e-learning, we also believe it is significantly over-hyped currently, and more sophisticated approaches are required. In addition, we also expect to see more changes in the ways corporates use external custom e-learning developers with increasing pressures for lower-cost, more rapid external solutions as well, and for self-maintenance.

b) Many corporates are reevaluating their LMS strategy going forward, and now increasingly interested in integrated talent and performance management. Although consistent with the grand ERP/HRMS story, and often the overall direction for extending use of their ERP platform, the HR sub-functions are sceptical of the fit of these products to their specific functional needs. We expect to see tactical successes for the LMS vendors in the performance and talent space, although longer term we still expect to see pressure from IT for a single integrated HR/ERP solution.

c) Although Wikis and podcasting maybe very trendy currently, most corporates are not really using them. We expect to see more experimentation in 2007, and some very interesting project successes, but we do not expect this to become truly mainstream in corporate usage. We also expect to see a shift away from traditional large e-learning course-based content towards smaller, more granular just-in-time e-content and performance support. We also expect to see referenceware growing in popularity relative to traditional e-learning courses, and greater adoption of virtual meeting/classroom technologies, which have now matured and are more widely available.

Across all of the above we expect to see more externalising of the infrastructure to deliver it, i.e. further growth in ASP or Software as a Service delivered infrastructure and solutions.

Key corporate drivers: immediate solutions, lower cost, more flexibility, more connected/aligned, bypassing internal constraints

A really worrying trend ....

Barry Sampson has started an interesting thread picking up some of my discussion about changes to custom e-learning. In particular he is concerned (rightly so in my book) about the probability that rapid e-learning tools with massively magnify the amount of dodgy e-learning content swishing around in corporates.

I believe he is right, but the challenge is not to prevent the explosion in content, but to make sure it is fit for purpose as a learning resource. A lot of this will come down to making it easier to produce OK content than bad content, and the processes that support and surround the management of the content for distribution.

David

The changing face of custom e-learning

Last year we did some research looking at the changing nature of custom e-learning production within large corporates in the UK. A couple of key trends were clearly emerging that I think will have a profound impact on the e-learning market - especially given that custom e-learning content has been one of the more bouyant parts of the market.

Firstly, it seemed clear that pretty much all of the organisations we researched were increasing the amount of company-specific e-learning they were doing. But, they were also radically changing their patterns and amount they spend on it too. Most organisations had historically used specialist custom content vendors to develop their content, often having a short list of preferred suppliers. Whilst these arrangements were still in place, the budgets for projects were becoming significantly reduced. Whereas historically they might have spent £50-100K+ per project, now they are trying to get similar work done for £5-10K.

Secondly, as well as exploring offshore production to cut costs (usually with variable success), companies are also increasingly adopting rapid authoring tools - Lectora, Breeze, Articulate, Atlantic Link, etc. to enable self-authoring of content within L&D and line of business. This shifts the point of production completely, but creates a lot of other issues internally as well.

We expect both these trends to continue, and to interconnect. Corporates need to diversify their content production strategies to deal with the increased scale of need, and the associated focus on reducing cost and time for development and maintenance. For volume content, corporates will increasingly mandate the development tool in order be able to self-maintain the outcomes. They may pay one vendor to develop some customised templates that are proven to pre-integrate with their LMS (a topic for another day!), they might pay another company to provide instructional design input to projects, and yet another to quality assure any outputs.

Who will actual content development and production - good question? Some of it will be done internally, some will be done offshore, and some will be contracted out whole as a discrete (yesteryear-like) project with a reasonable budget allowing some creativity and investment in custom media. But the majority will be "fit for purpose", quick to produce, cheap and easy to maintain.

If the above really happens ,and I believe it is inevitable, it will have big implications for the skills and resources needed within L&D to manage it effectively. It will have even bigger implications for the large number of vendors that make a living by delivering whole projects. Nice big £100K+ projects will still be there, but they will become few and far between, the main focus is switching to the mass of "fit for purpose" content that corporates need everyday.

As the corporates also start cherry-picking single service components (template development, instructional design, media production, project management, quality assurance, content input, ...) rather than buying whole projects, I believe the writing will be on the wall for many vendors.

How will they survive this? Some will specialise and down-scale. Running a £0.5-2m custom e-learning company is a lot easier than running a £3-5m one. Others will offshore and automate tools to slash development costs further to compete. A few will aggregate and rise above it - move up the value chain and do a total BPO on learning development, but it will be only a few in each geography. The rest??? Start diversifying now!