by Steve Wexler
I’m toying with the idea of building a mechanism to determine which industries are the “best” in terms of opportunities for e-Learning professionals.
So, what data points should make up the foundation of this type of assessment? With the understanding that this is very much a work in progress, I plan to look at the following three elements:
- Working with fun, challenging, and leading-edge approaches to learning
- Compensation
- Satisfaction with current job
We already have a TON of information for the second element, and know that e-Learning professionals in Pharmaceuticals/Biotech, Consulting/Business Services, and Computer Manufacturing lead the way (for a complete run down on this, click HERE.)
So, what about the first item? Like compensation data, the Guild has a TON of information on which learning approached Guild members use. What we have not defined is just which of these approaches are fun, challenging, and leading-edge approaches to learning. So, my question to you is, which of the following would you put into this “yes, that is indeed hip” category:
Blogs
Chat rooms
Classroom instruction
Communities of Practice
e-Learning (asynchronous)
e-Learning (synchronous)
e-mail
Electronic Performance Support Systems
Games
In-person mentoring / tutoring
Instant Messaging
Knowledge management systems
Learning content management systems
Learning management systems
Mobile Learning
Online assessment and testing
Online mentoring / tutoring
Online references
Podcasts
Portals
Print-based materials
Simulations
Social networking
Video broadcasts
Virtual labs
Wikis
Note: You don’t have to pipe in how classroom instruction or other more traditional approaches can be fun, challenging and leading-edge. I’m seeking things that our community, as a whole, regard as inherently more interesting/hip.
Oh, as for “satisfaction with current job” I suppose this is something we should add to our member profile data page or perhaps create a dedicated survey to the issue as I would like to know just what it is that organizations that have satisfied workers do differently than organizations with dissatisfied workers. But for now, let’s just focus on the “which of these approaches are hip” question.
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August 24th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
The team working on the upcoming e-Learning 2.0 report has been having A LOT of heated exchanges regarding this question and some of my co-authors take issue with the survey results we’ve received so far. Consider the chart below, based on responses from 1,060 Guild members:
The number one spot is occupied by member that believe that they will drive this adoption. At the bottom of the list is the idea getting on a train that is already moving (i.e., existing or soon-to-be-implemented Web 2.0 initiatives).
Before chiming in, let’s see what happens if we break the data down by organization size:
Some interesting differences, no?
So, are e-Learning professionals leading the charge as these charts suggest, or are they in fact unaware of larger initiatives within their organizations? What do you think?
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August 18th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
Again, I’m working with a great team of e-Learning professionals on The eLearning Guild’s upcoming 360-degree report on e-Learning 2.0.
I’ve just finished reading a first draft of an essay by co-authors Michele Martin and Sanjay Parker and one of their theses is that the so-called digital natives — the millennial generation that grew up with the Internet — will DEMAND Web 2.0 approaches to learning in the workplace. Indeed, in our survey we ask Guild members to indicate the degree to which they agree/disagree with various statement and the statement they agree with most is that younger workers will demand 2.0 approaches to performance support:
Jane Hart ,who is working on a killer essay on learner preparedness for the report, wanted to gauge Guild member preparedness for Web 2.0 approaches by seeing to what extent members use these approaches themselves. Here’s a snippet from the survey:
I decided to combine Jane’s question with Michele and Sanjay’s thesis and compare use/preparedness of Guild members 30 and younger with members that are over 30, and we get the following chart (note: I hope that now Guild members understand why we ask their gender, year of birth, industry, etc.):
Note: If you are a Guild member and have not taken the survey, take it today! You can access it here: http://www.elearningguild.com/profiles/surveys/?sid=113.
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August 13th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
I’m working with an absolutely killer team of e-Learning professionals on the Guild’s upcoming e-Learning 2.0 report (due out in late September).
Mark Oehlert, one of the report authors (and a true uber-geek) wanted to compile a white list / black list of social networking sites.
Here are preliminary findings, based on responses from 825 Guild members.
I’m aghast at how many "no"’s there are, especially in larger organizations as these companies are unwittingly doing themselves great harm.
Note to Guild members: This is one of the reasons why we ask you for all the demographic stuff when you join/renew your membership; it allows us to break down the information in meaningful ways.
Further note to Guild members: If you have not taken the survey, please do so TODAY as we’ll be taking snap shots of the data for the report soon. You can access the survey here: http://www.elearningguild.com/profiles/surveys/?sid=113.
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August 13th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
The Guild just published its latest 360 report, this one on Mobile Learning. Over 1,350 Guild members completed the survey, so we definitely have great data to tell you where things are and where things are going with respect to m-Learning.
So, where are things? 17.3% of Guild members use Mobile Learning sometimes or often within their organizations, and 8% have personally been involved with creating m-Learning content. While this may seem like a blip on the e-Learning radar, think about where synchronous learning was five years ago and where e-Learning as a whole was ten years ago.
And where are things going? Here are Guild Members’ plans for the next 12 months:
How to get a free copy of the report.
If you are a paid member of The eLearning Guild you can download a copy of the report by clicking HERE:
And if you are an associate member you can download a free copy by completing the Mobile Learning survey. You can access the survey HERE.
Finally, I’ll be presenting a free webinar along with two of the report co-authors (David Metcalf and David Rogers) on July 31 at 8:30 AM, Pacific Time. The webinar is open to the public. You can register for the webinar by clicking HERE.
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July 17th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
I’m working on the 2008 edition of the Guild’s 360-degree report on Mobile Learning. We added a new question a few weeks ago.
Here’s the question:
If you selected either "Mobile phones" or "Smart phones" in the question above, please indicate which platform would be your primary target for development?
Here are the responses, so far…
Do realize that only 205 people have responded to this question (so far). We have over 1,300 responses for the rest of the survey, but this is both a brand new question and its dependent on respondents who plan to do some form of m-Learning (and 37.5% of all respondents have no plans to do m-Learning).
If you’re a Guild member you can contribute to the survey at any time by clicking http://www.elearningguild.com/profiles/surveys/?sid=93.
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June 17th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
A Guild member contacted me recently and asked me to drill down on two questions pertaining to LMS use in educational institutions. Here’s a question from the Guild’s LMS survey:
So, what does "Departmental/Divisional" use mean in Education? Does it mean that the elementary school uses one LMS and the middle school uses a different one? Does it mean the engineering school uses one system and the liberal arts college uses another? How would you explain the 24.1% of respondents that embrace using different systems?
Here’s a related question:
So, what is the role of a dedicated Training department at K-12 and higher education institutions, and why do 16.9% of organizations indicate that his dedicated department owns the LMS? Yes, this is much less than the 44% response we see across all industries, but it’s not a trivial number.
Your thoughts?
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June 13th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
The eLearning Guild has just published its 360-degree report on Synchronous Learning Systems (SLS) for 2008 (You can find out about the report by clicking here.)
In the figure below we compare market share for various synchronous learning tool providers for June 2007 and June 2008 (This is based on 1,987 responses from 1,987 unique organizations in June 2008 and 2,006 unique responses in June 2007.) WebEx shows a modest increase (42.98%, up from 41.31%) while Microsoft and Adobe show modest decreases.
Of the tools with greater than 10% market share, Citrix enjoyed the greatest relative increase (21.35%) growing from 9.61% to 11.73% market share.
In the next figure we see the internal gain/loss in market share. Linden Research’s Second Life enjoyed the greatest increase (187.5%), jumping from a .80% to a 2.32% market share. Saba shows the greatest decrease (-36.7%), going from 13.77% to 8.76% market share.
In the published report we also look at this when we filter by organization size and industry.
Some interesting trends, no?
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June 12th, 2008
by Steve Wexler
One of the coolest aspects of analyzing data is "connecting the dots" and seeing relationships among elements that may not be obvious.
Consider this question from the Guild’s Synchronous Learning Systems Survey:
37.3% of the 1,200+ members strongly agree with this statement, as shown below:
So, what do these 37.3% do differently from the others that they maintain that synch learning is as effective as good F2F classroom sessions?
Well, here’s one finding:
Members that invest in more formal instruction on how to deliver synch learning indicate better results (they also indicate that they’ve received a better ROI, too).
More to come…
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May 30th, 2008
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