Is E-learning dead?

We've all probably tried them. What I'd call the classic online courses, which tries to teach you something through pages of click-n-read.

When I find myself in the middle of such a course, I have to restrain myself from force-feeding the "Next" button with a lot of mouse clicks, just to get this over with. Perhaps you recognize this experience?

Do as you are told

One could argue this type of E-learning uses what I might call a behaviouristic view on teaching and learning. That is, if you present a certain input to learners, the outcome is known or predictable. For example, if the course has content about how to drive a car, we expect you'll learn how to drive a car by going through the course. Most people even outside learning and development probably agrees, this isn't necessarily a given outcome.

E-learning and ROI

As much as the actual learning value from the above mentioned type of E-learning can be debated within certain subjects or content areas, there is another angle which in my view is becoming a problem to the E-learning industry itself: The costs of creating and maintaining content. When SCORM-compliant E-learning courses became an industry standard, it created a type of product, which was easy to standardize. If an E-learning vendor created one level 1 English-German language course, this course could be sold a number of times to many different customers. And the main buying arguments where (and still is): Low costs compared with a Face-to-Face training program & learn-at-your-own-pace-and-schedule. Today organizations with internal (or external) E-learning programs struggle to find lean, streamlined and cost-effective processes for producing and maintaining SCORM content.

When Steve Jobs killed Flash

Since Steve Jobs effectively "killed" Flash, it's been a known fact in the industry that E-learning had to move from Flash towards HTML. Thus, organizations are starting to compare costs of producing SCORM content in HTML with what can be done already in their other web content management systems. If the organization is already familiar with Wordpress or other similar open source technologies, this becomes even more apparent. And one is to look at costs of creating new content, another is to look at the costs of maintaining content. Again, compared with other web technologies, the E-learning industry is hopeless lagging behind.

What's next?

There is no doubt E-learning in a broader sense or as I like to call it "digital learning" is here to stay. The advantages are just to great compared with the Face-to-Face or classroom training model. And within certain topics or content areas, the classic E-learning courses still have relevance (just think compliance). But the learning needs of businesses and organizations can no longer be addressed by the standardized approach, and the need for customization has never been greater. And at the same time, because the world changes so fast around us, there is a great need to be able to quickly and easily update and maintain content. And I don't see SCORM as being able to deliver in this aspect. Creating effective SCORM content can sometimes be impossible, and once you've launched your training initiave, change management with SCORM content is hard to master, time-consuming and cost-ineffective.

A can made of tin

Tin Can, the Experience API or xAPI, is often mentioned as the successor of SCORM. I'm not sure it will replace SCORM, but it certainly holds promise. Most organizations I've talked to who know of the concept, agree it holds great opportunity. I mostly agree, but also feel the technology is yet to be fully adopted by the industry. In the meantime, I am fascinated by the fact that open source platforms like Wordpress offer fully functional learning management systems for under USD 100$!

Anyway, what do you think? I'd love to hear from you!

-Per