Current Trends in Today's eLearning Industry
Growing and evolving are the best ways to describe today’s elearning market.
And the industry is experiencing many advances, according to Docebo, who recently published
a report called Learning Market Trends and Forecast 2017-2021.
These changes include increasing budgets for elearning programs, new developments in technology,
enhancements in virtual training tools, and a surge in social learning as an important
educational tool.
In fact, David Kelly, executive vice president of The eLearning Guild, recommends that today’s
learning and development leaders become educated on digital learning because it will inevitably
become part of their overall strategy.
“Even if your training department is not proactively looking to shift towards this
change in human behavior right now, your organization will eventually be impacted,” he says.
Let’s examine some of the exciting virtual learning trends, which are predicted to significantly
impact the eLearning market throughout the next few years:
eLearning Industry Growth In 2016, the eLearning market’s global size
was estimated at more than $150 billion.
And the number is projected to grow by 5 percent from 2017 to 2024.
This industry growth is driven by several factors, such as the recent demand for eLearning
solutions; allotting a lower budget for eLearning compared
to traditional training; an increase in learning flexibility;
the effectiveness of new, virtual training tools; a boost in employee productivity due
to eLearning services; and a rising interest in distance learning.
Corporate eLearning Development In line with the growth of the eLearning market
as a whole, the global corporate eLearning market is also expected to grow.
This market includes all forms of electronically-supported learning and teaching tools used by organizations
to facilitate the continuous learning and development of their workforce.
Specifically, the market is projected to expand to $31 billion in revenue by 2020.
The reasons for this growth?
Organizations are making the shift from traditional teaching methods (like in-person, face-to-face
classes) to eLearning solutions as a way to reduce training delivery costs and improve
instructor productivity.
Additionally, social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies have facilitated
the adoption of eLearning solutions because these technologies enable organizations to
reach a larger number of students at a fraction of the cost of traditional, in-person training.
Positive attitudes and strong beliefs toward self-improvement and training are other reasons
to consider.
In fact, studies show that: 63 percent of working adults consider themselves
professional learners.
These adults have pursued training to improve job skills or expertise related to career
advancement.
73 percent of adults consider themselves lifelong learners.
89 percent of millennials think it is important to constantly learn at their job.
Millennials value knowledge and experience.
They recognize the importance of continual learning and believe that happiness equates
with learning.
A shift to the cloud IT spending is moving away from traditional
IT offerings (environments used for hosting data, services or applications that are operated
by an organization, such as a data center or mainframe) in favor of cloud services.
Specifically, this cloud shift is estimated to reach $111 billion, increasing to $216
billion in 2020.
And it’s no wonder.
The cloud not only offers a reduced cost of hardware, but a wide variety of applications
and the ability to work from anywhere, saving a great deal of time and money.
When you compare in person training vs. online training, for example, companies can reduce
their training delivery costs between 30-70% by switching to online training.
According to Deloitte’s Josh Bersin, cloud computing and SaaS are the dominant delivery
models in today’s learning management systems.
Bersin suggests that moving to the cloud should be a top priority for organizations.
“While only about 45 percent of companies have moved to the cloud, the trend is clear,”
he explains.
“It can help simplify your life and offer you a far more integrated core system.”
Job-Specific Training Content The most common areas of corporate training
content focus on job-specific training.
According to the Brandon Hall Group Training Study, more than 40% of today’s corporate
training is job specific.
The study found that 27% of training focuses on job-specific technical skills, aided by
virtual training labs, and 13% focuses on job-specific soft skills.
Important Training Goals Productivity and performance are on the minds
of today’s training departments.
In fact, many learning and development teams consider improved productivity and performance
to be a major goal.
In addition, converting training and knowledge into business outcomes, as well as helping
employees grow and learn, also top the list of goals.
Social Learning Learning via observation, imitation and modeling—also
known as social learning—is picking up momentum in the workplace.
In fact, according to 2016 research published by Brandon Hall Group, social/collaborative
tools top the list of learning technology priorities for learning and development professionals.
And these tools even beat out mobile technology.
While social learning has been around long before the development of technology, it is
clearly playing an important role in the future of corporate learning.
Some believe the reason has to do with the fact that eLearning technology is now mature
enough to support social learning.
Another reason for this momentum may be directly related to the millennial generation.
As this generation takes hold of the largest share of the labor market, the needs and demands
of these workers are becoming a priority.
And the social learning experience—part of the millennial generation’s DNA—becomes
very important in today’s workplace.
Organizations that are focused on harnessing the power of millennials are quickly realizing
the importance of giving this generation exactly what they want at work: engagement, interaction,
flexibility and instant access.
Afterall, millennials were raised on social technology.
And as more companies add social learning to their corporate training programs, they
are realizing its importance and value.
The world of eLearning is continuously evolving.
While this can make the virtual training world difficult to navigate, the key to success
is for organizations to leverage these trends and use them to power their training strategy
today—and in the future.
In the words of David Kelly, “The trends that are driving digital learning are here
for the long-term.”