What’s Trending in the Education and Training Industry? Your Fix for eLearning Industry News

Learning and continuous development are important for humans to understand and discover their true potential. Previously, humankind had no way of lowering their work burden as everything had to be done manually. This was before the first computer was invented. Now, we have the internet and electronic devices to learn about the world with a single click. Isn’t that amazing?

As we move closer to entering the next decade, new challenges come up every day, and to tackle those challenges, the IT industry is taking extremely important steps. Learning and training is a continuous requirement that needs to be fulfilled to progress further in life. As the population of the world grows, and competition also rises, the demand for cost-effective and less time-consuming methods of learning also increases. In the fast-paced world of today, everyone is in search of success and it can knock on anybody’s door if he or she is willing to learn. Your gateway to the current eLearning and training trends is eLearning industry news from eLearning Inside.

 

From Brute Force to Voluntary Participation

As we arrive at the year-end and prepare for new beginnings, several people around the world prepare their New Year resolutions. According to feedback from eLearning users, people are now more inclined towards developing a better future than staying in the present and resisting change. Putting it more clearly, people as well as businesses are now embracing change and welcoming technology with open arms to turn their lives around.

eLearning industry news has always enlightened the eLearning community by updating them on the current trends and what they can look forward to in the coming years. While educational institutions and the corporate sector have already adopted eLearning management systems on a large scale, there are many institutions that are still to recognize eLearning as the more dominant mode of training in today’s age. The fact that eLearning is faster, interactive, efficient, and scalable for different platforms makes it more easily deployable. It also offers the benefit of cost reduction in training and development in the long run. 

Moreover, voluntary participation has also increased greatly after education has become mobile. Learning on the go has not only developed an interest in the users, but it has also promoted learning and training as a hobby to enhance knowledge and understanding of different fields. Just take those 9-5 employees as an example, who did not have time to even think about doing an online certification previously, but are now able to progress further in their career since they decided to do something productive online, on their way back home from work or after dinner.

 

The Change in Content

If you go online often, you must have noticed the difference in the content that is being published. The website you were visiting years ago may still exist but the information on that website may have shrunk. This is not because writing more words has become even more expensive today, but the shorter the content, the greater the retention. If you haven’t heard of it previously, “micro-learning” has now become a thing, and shows evidence of an enhanced learning and training experience. This is the very reason online content is now broken into points and very short paragraphs so that concepts can be grasped easily.

 

Investment in eLearning – Hot From eLearning Inside’ eLearning Industry News Desk

In North America alone, the revenue generated from self-paced eLearning products in 2016 amounted to over US$23,000 billion. The second-highest revenue-generating continent was the Asia Pacific, with almost US$11,000 billion. Even though the compound annual growth rate for five years to 2021 is showing a significant drop of an estimated 6.41%, which means revenues are falling as people are switching to more effective methods of acquiring knowledge, 15 countries out of 122 show a growth rate of over 15% in self-paced learning. Moreover, funding for education technology is increasing worldwide, with the focus mostly on the United States, whereas India, China, and the United Kingdom drop in rank accordingly. Almost 1.7 billion US dollars were invested in education technology in 2016.

Source: Ambient Insight Research.

 

Dormant, but Upcoming Trends in eLearning

Although many new methods of learning and training have been introduced in the US, these are yet to be deployed on a larger scale. Other concepts are still dormant, i.e. inactive due to the search for an optimal plan to introduce them into the market as needs rather than wants. Another reason for their dormancy is their cost, which the corporate or education sectors are not willing to bear in the current economy.

Resistance towards technology has always been present, somewhere in abundance whereas somewhere in scarcity, however, it is present which makes introducing new technology into an already saturated market a risky idea. The education and training sector is already suffering budget cuts worldwide, but what businesses do not understand is that learning new technology will also require training and development, and therefore costs have to be cut elsewhere.

Nevertheless, eLearning industry news brings forward game changers in the eLearning industry that you will be excited to hear about. The game changers in learning and development include:

•        Game-based Learning

•        Wearable Technologies (Augmented Learning)

•        Gamification

While game-based learning is as clear as the name states and you must have heard about it before since it is no longer dormant, it is often confused with gamification. Gamification is actually channeling and enhancing the experience from games into real-world scenarios. Using the motivation from gaming to interact with customers, partners, and employees can result in stronger collaborations, more sales, increased ROI, higher customer loyalty, etc.

Wearable technologies include gadgets that create a virtual world around you and allow you take decisions, and learn from experience. Taking this concept to an extreme level, augmented learning is specially designed for medical, engineering, and other technical students to understand structures and mechanics more closely, as if they are physically present inside the structure. This technology is not yet common due to its high costs.

In addition to the above, more sophisticated eLearning management systems are now in works which will make data entry, data management, dashboard administration, and management of tasks easier, faster, and more cost-effective.

Stay tuned for more eLearning industry news from eLearning Inside.