E-learning: across the great divide

A discussion the Semantico team had recently with David Worlock of Outsell highlighted areas of convergence between online publishing and e-learning, two worlds that have previously seemed oddly sealed off from each other. I go regularly to the Learning Technologies exhibition in January, where the great and the good of UK e-learning gather, and also to more publishing-focused shows such as Online Information and BETT – and I’m often struck by the lack of overlap both in exhibitors and attendees.

What we’re looking at, in market terms, is two quite distinct industries; of very different scale (e-learning is much smaller), structured differently, and with their own dynamics – each possessing its own distinctive terminology, guru community and media universe. There ought to be more points of contact in the area of education; but in many ways this is where the differences are most marked. If I were to point to one philosophical sticking point that underlies this difference, it would concern an issue close to every publisher’s heart: the status of authoritative texts.

Learning without books

To put it crudely; for one of these communities, learning is all about books; for the other it isn’t.

The e-learning world – as represented at Learning Technologies – is largely focused on organisational training for corporates and large public bodies – that’s where the buyers are. In content terms this tends to involve recycling the knowledge of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) within an organisation rather than relying on external texts, which are more likely to feature as source material for courses than to be directly accessed (I’m generalising a bit here, but in its broad lines this is the picture). This knowledge is served up to a diverse end-user employee population, ranging widely from call centre employees to barristers, that lacks either the basic skills, the motivation or the time to engage with getting their learning from books.

Bespoke content development has historically been the strongest part of the UK e-learning market, with buyers tending to be content-focused (e.g. an HR Director with a brief to improve leadership across the board within her organisation) rather than platform and infrastructure focused. Significantly it is HR that will tend to own e-learning within an organisation rather than IT. In this sense the UK e-learning industry replicates in large part the buying structure of the old-world Training Industry.

In the more supply-side driven worlds of online publishing and the Education market, on the other hand, authoritative texts loom larger. Here the game is more about providing access, platforms and discoverability for a body of available information. Content generation is the job of educators and specialist authors; users are presumed to be more active searchers, and to be less spoonfed, less corralled by instructional events than their organisational counterparts.

However, forces within each of these markets are driving towards more convergence.

Workflow and the Holy Grail

There has been a perception in the e-learning world for quite a while that the current dominant model of e-learning content production – hermetic units of self-paced instruction – has to dissolve into a less directed, more user-centred model in which the learner is placed at the centre of an information-rich online environment encompassing inputs across the whole spectrum from raw data through information to instruction.

There are strong drivers for this trend. Learning within organisations is increasingly moving to a ‘just-in-time’ rather than ‘just-in-case’ basis, motivated by faster product launch cycles, increasingly rapid skills fade and ever-faster expectations around time-to-competence. It’s all about embedding learning within workflow. Indeed, it has become reasonably commonplace for content developers such as Epic to provide tactical, subject-area specific learning platforms as ‘homes’ for e-learning modules which also include content libraries of pdfs for reference materials, RSS feeds and links to other information and data both external and internal, as well as Web 2.0 community features, and so on.

In a separate but perhaps parallel development, thinkers on the ‘e-information’ side of the fence (notably, within Outsell) have been saying for an equally long while that the holy grail of online information provision, for academic and professional publishers at least, is the embedding of timely, relevant information within workflow, and that the future lies with systems which will enable this (see the similarity there?). Reference lies easily alongside instruction in such a user-centred model.

As a result of this parallel movement, where required texts form a part of the learning/reference requirements (e.g. in Law, and in any other professionally certified, qualifications-driven or regulated professional environment), publishers are likely to find their content rubbing very directly up against e-learning content products. The result of this is liable to be a new area of competition (or collaborative synergy) over the issue of who provides the platform – given that the e-learning market encompasses a wealth of developers of learning portals, VLEs, Learning Management Systems etc.

How to get out of the library

This has significant implications for both online publishing and e-learning markets. In the case of Law firms, Worlock sees this convergence bringing learning/compliance within the administrative systems of the firm, and provides the organisation with opportunities to leverage the content resources they already have access to within their tied-in subscription environment. It also provides an opportunity for professional and certifying authorities (such as the FSA, in Financial Services) to tie themselves in with those systems from the point of view of audit and oversight. And the implications are spread out much further than Law. Compliance is on the increase in organisations. It is also one of the most resilient drivers for the growth of e-learning in recent years, as well as being recession-proof.

Perhaps the biggest win in all this, for learning, would be getting out of that Training ghetto and into the organisational mainstream. E-information wonks may feel similarly about getting out of the corporate library!

Across the divide

In David’s opinion, publishers tend to see this picture opportunistically rather than, as he does, philosophically – the implication being that publishers need to take a more strategic view of the opportunities. In Semantico’s opinion the two worlds badly need to start talking to each other. Going forward, this is a conversation we will be doing our best to facilitate and encourage.