Some interesting statistics and facts
- The global self-paced e-learning market reached $32.1 billion in revenue in 2010 (Ambient Insight, 2011).
- The global e-learning market revenue is expected to touch $107 billion by end of 2015 (McCue, 2014).
- It also means that the number of e-learning courses organizations need have grown exponentially
- Organizations want the courses developed in 6-8 weeks and are no longer willing to wait for 3-4 months as earlier
- Firms prefer a simple and effective design which is cost effective
- M-learning is a fast-growing trend that demands bite-sized modules
Trend 1: Standardization of Curriculum Development
Standardization means identifying elements such as the GUI, templates, interactions, and instructional strategy that will be reused across all courses in a curriculum.
But, why do you need to standardize development of e-learning curriculums?
Because EFFECTIVE STANDARDIZATION
- Enhances the quality of the e-learning material
- Ensures consistency in the look and feel of modules and presentation of content
- Enables re-usability of the content
- Helps cut development time and cost substantially
- Reduces the number of errors considerably
- Improves completion rates and “absorption” of learning
Trend 2: Bite-Sized Learning
- Is ideally suited for our limited attention spans
- Improves learner engagement in a big way
- Facilitates easy digestion of learning content
- Adapts to the modern-day learner
- Learning in such smaller chunks with a distributed bite-size approach results in 17% greater transfer (Mind Gym, n.d.).
- Bite-size learning results in greater understanding, application and retention than a day-long equivalent and results in savings of up to 30% (BBC, 2003).
- 94% said that e-learners prefer short form modules (10 minutes or less) (Boyette, 2014).
Trend 3: Translation of Learning Content
Here are some statistics that reveal the importance of translating your content
As the use of the internet by non-English speakers increases with each passing day, The demands for effective translation of online content are growing, and e-learning courses are no exception.
- English speakers constitute only 26% of the total number of internet users . (Internet World Users by Language, 2015)
- The translation industry is expected to grow by 42% between 2010 and 2020. (Bureau of labor statistics, 2014). – Th.
Trend 4: Gamification
Gamification refers to the application of game Mechanics and design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. (Source: Gamification Wiki).
- By 21 years of age, many males will have spent over 10,000 hours immersed in online gaming (McGonigal, 2010).
- By 2015, more than 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes (Gartner, 2011).
- Increases learner engagement by making e-learning fun and interactive
- Facilitates better learning by fostering competitive spirit
- Creates a sense of accomplishment
- Improves knowledge absorption and retention
- Provides enhanced learning experience for people of all age
Trend 5: Use of Videos
Learning through videos is the order of the day A few statistics that tell you the importance of videos in corporate training.
- By 2016, large companies will stream more than 16 hours of video per worker, per month (which is up from 10.8 hours in 2012 and 7.2 hours in 2010) (Gartner, 2014)
- By 2016, 83% of organizations are predicted to use video as part of their digital learning (E-learning Industry, 2015).
- Improve engagement and retention
- Provide opportunities to view complex or abstract concepts/places which might not be possible in the learning environment
- Appeal to learners of all ages and improve course completion rates
Trend 6: Increased Use of M-learning, HTML5 and Mobile Apps
An important statistic
By 2015, about 80% of people will be accessing the internet from mobile devices only, with the main focus on education. (Naidoo, 2015).
The tremendous growth in the number of “mobile internet” users is compelling companies to adopt m-learning methodologies.
The market for m-learning solutions will register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2% between 2012 and 2017 and reach $12.2 billion by the end of the five-year period (Ambient Insight, 2013).
Two major developments in technology are playing a major role in the delivery.
a. HTML5
b. Mobile apps
HTML5
HTML5 – a revolutionary paradigm that has created ripples in the e-learning world. This innovation in the world of web technology is dramatically altering the corporate training landscape. Let us see how.
- HTML5 is not only mobile compatible, but also it supports all the latest version of browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome an Safari.
- Using HTML5, we can develop Mobile Apps easily using which courses can be accessed either offline or online.
- HTML5 supports video an audio elements without the need to install plug-ins
- With HTML5, you can develop interactive mobile friendly games to make your eLearning courses engaging.
- It means we can develop a single eLearning course that can be accessed not only by PCs but alco by mobile devices.
Mobile apps could be used to easily and effectively present the learning content to learners. You can convert your existing PDFs, PPTs, audio and video into mobile applications. There are 3 types of mobile apps viz: native apps, web apps, hybrid apps.
- Native apps: A native app is an app developed essentially for a particular mobile platform and is installed directly on the device itself.
- Web apps: A web app is an internet-enabled application that can be accessed through the mobile device’s web browser.
- Hybrid apps: These apps have the features of both native and web apps, where static content will be in available in the app and dynamic content is sourced from the internet.
Trend 7: Outsourcing of E-learning Projects
According to Bersin by Deloitte, you can save substantially by using the services of off-shore e-learning firms. A $10K – 50K content development project in the US may cost 20 – 40% less in India. In some cases, the cost savings can be much higher (Bersin, 2007).
What are the other benefits by outsourcing your e-learning projects?
Faster turnaround: When you outsource e-learning projects to the experts, you will be able to develop online training curriculums fast. This is because they have a dedicated team working only on your project full-time. Once you standardize the design, you will be able to develop a series of courses at a time.
High-quality deliverables: Good vendors of e-learning solutions will have set processes and competent teams who would conduct a learnability check before they finalize the e-learning project, and hence you would be assured of a good quality product.
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