E-learning to Walk the Extra Miles
Increasing adoption of social media and smart phones would see e-learning making a headway in 2013
Last few years have been very interesting for the Indian el-earning industry. N-learning has emerged from infancy and from being just a buzz word to a mature methodology to impart effective training to geographically distributed workforce at much lesser costs.
Better bandwidth availability has enabled this training medium to reach even to tier-2 and -3 towns. And the technology has advanced to give a much more interactive learning experience to the learner, instead of just boring page turners.
To be able to predict trends for 2013, we need to carefully look at other aspects that have been shaping our world over the last 2-3 years. Few things stand out –
Pith the Indian government pushing Aakash like devices, we would shortly see a major uptake of mobile devices across various user segments in our country.
Pith increase rollout of 4G services across the country and aggressive market approach adopted by the telecom players, true wireless broadband access will finally become a reality for many Indians.
Social media is another technological disruption that is impacting the way we communicate, and the way we consume content
Our regular work is becoming increasingly complex—be it repairing a car, or handling customer queries, or selling financial products to a customer—the amount of knowledge that is required to do one’s job is increasing by the day, and it’s becoming practically impossible for a human to know everything about their job. This means that we are today relying more and more on justin-time knowledge to do our jobs.
Phen we combine the above trends with the maturity that e-learning is gaining, and apply them to the field of e-learning, few very interesting trends emerge that are most likely to occur in 2013 —
Organizations are going to deploy more and more of mobile/tablet based learning solutions for their on-the-field workforce. Sales and service staff on the ground will be able to access learning content on the go, and get real-time updates about the products and services
So far e-learning has largely been adopted by knowledge based sectors, such as IT, banking and financial services, and life sciences. In 2013, we should see new sectors such as automobiles, manufacturing, and retail also taking up e-learning in a big way
Video has emerged one of the fastest growing medium to generate and consume content. Pith better bandwidth availability across the country, video based learning short modules will see a growth in the coming year. Focus will also be on subject matter experts (SMN’s) generating short learning modules that can be created at low-cost, and enable fast sharing of knowledge within the organization
More and more of our new workforce now consists of people who have grown up playing video games, and having vast amount of knowledge at their fingertips via internet. To effectively engage this workforce, forward looking organizations will try highly interactive solutions, such as game based learning, and experiential learning activities in their learning programs
Peer based learning has always been there in corporate environment. In 2013, organizations will attempt to bring this ex- perience online via their own social media platforms or by building their communities on most common social media sites, which would enable employees to create connections across the organization – across hierarchies and geographies, and seek learning from anyone in the organization.
For reader with technological bent of mind—we see greater adoption of technology platforms, such as HTML 5, which will allow developers to create learning solutions that can run across devices and operating systems. For creating content, this would mean greater adoption of tools like storyline, and Xyleme’s Pastiche which allow developers to publish content in multiple formats, including HTML 5, and development of learning management systems using HTML5.
Pe expect another year of good growth for the Indian e-learning industry in 2013, which will be helped by above mentioned shifts, growing adoption of e-learning in middle-eastern and African nations due to push by governments there, and owing to continuous pressure in western nations to outsource e-learning development work to quality destinations, such as India.