Epic show report

New Technologies in Learning

31st March 2006, SCI, London
Report by John Helmer, Epic

E-learning at the cutting edge

Who drives the use of technology in learning? Is it vendor push, or client demand? Covering m-learning, podcasts, wikis, blogs, and what are now being called ‘serious games’ – ELN’s latest conference asked this question. And the answer that emerged, for me at least, was...neither.

The format of the day was nicely balanced, with matched panel discussions morning and afternoon revealing the aspirations and frustrations of both vendors and clients.

Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance showed the supplier leading edge. Check out Forterra’s Massively Multiplayer Online Environment for virtual training in asymmetrical warfare. The less military-minded might prefer Foodforce from the UN World Food Programme. Advanced stuff it may be, but this is not blue-sky. What is driving the adoption of MMOG (massively multiplayer online gaming) is not vendor push, however, but enhanced broadband and the widespread acceptance of online gaming with consumers, particularly the young.

Similarly, the Blackberry, that must-have signifier of business status, is becoming a viable platform for m-learning in the financial sector by virtue of its popularity with City slickers. And the rapid growth in market penetration of MP3 players, led by the extraordinary success of the iPod, has paved the way for successful adoption of podcasting as a means of learning by organisations from Cisco to the BBC.

In each case, e-learning follows the market. Once a new technology becomes accepted and embedded in consumer behaviour, it becomes viable as a learning platform. And probably not before.

Laura Overton, Skills for Business Network e-learning champion, showed us an example of Smartforce’s model for e-learning from 1999, which was just a bit too ahead of the curve. Much of what was visualized is now mainstream, but back then the market just wasn’t there. Poor sales and the merger with Skillsoft sent the company ‘back to the knitting’.

Client-side developments often wrong-foot the vendors (blended learning, for instance was never in the original game plan of LMS vendors). Workflow learning, currently ‘sexy’ with the client community, must worry LMS vendors, as it takes place largely outside the LMS.

Of necessity, clients must often make cool-eyed judgements about new candidate technologies for learning. Over-hasty adoption can cause huge headaches, as IT struggles to cope with a proliferation of platforms and standards.

Mark Harrison, ex-Epic and now with Kineo, closed the conference by harnessing the ‘wisdom of crowds’ in a show-of-hands poll: which learning technologies would survive? It was clear from the results, in which newer arrivals such as Wiki, blogs and podcasts did less well than established forms such as e-learning, email and search tools, that our votes were heavily influenced by how acceptable the underpinning technologies in question have so far proved to be.

What we are witnessing with new learning technologies is an evolutionary process: survival of the fittest. In the long run, whichever technology best fits human behaviour will probably be the one that best helps humans learn.

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