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E-learning trends in practice

Say you work at a company that makes digital learning solutions and a customer asks if you also develop Augmented Reality (AR) solutions. You've been following developments in the market, but you've never done anything with AR yourself. What do you say to the customer? In this article you will read how Précon e-learning deals with questions like this one about following trends.

New techniques and tools for digital learning regularly appear on the market. It is a challenge to invest in the right developments. Précon e-learning realizes digital learning solutions and continuously monitors whether a development has potential or will lead to unnecessary investment. To answer the question, "How does Précon e-learning deal with e-learning trends?", Tobi Boas, educational consultant and Jesse Verhoeven, designer and e-learning developer, were interviewed.

Trends vs hypes

With new developments, one distinguishes between trends and hypes. Typical of hypes is that they do not go through sustainable development.1 Investing in the wrong hype means high expectations but disappointment as a result. A trend, on the other hand, is a persistent movement going somewhere. It often takes a while to determine whether a development is sustainable or not. Take MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, for example. In 2008, the first MOOC "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK8)" took place from the University of Manitoba in Canada.2 More and more MOOCs followed. The MOOC "Artificial Intelligence" from Standford in 2011, was taken by 160,000 students from 190 countries.3 Based on such figures, this way of learning seems to be very popular. However, the question is what will this development look like in the future, for example, will students benefit from it?

Katy Jordan, educational researcher collected data in 2015 on the average number of students who complete a MOOC. This turns out to be 15% on average.4 This number is a lot lower than expected. However, one cannot conclude from these figures that students do not benefit from MOOCs. Perhaps the remaining 85% actually found what they needed in a small portion of the course material.

At the end of 2016, 8 years after the first MOOC, Wilfred Rubens compares Class Central's figures on the number of MOOCs and finds that the number is still increasing (from 2400 in 2014 to 6850 in December 2016 ) and diversity is growing.5 Thus, one cannot speak of hype being unsustainable here. However, neither are MOOCs a trend at the moment. This example illustrates that it can take a long time for the future potential of a development to become clear.

For Verhoeven and Boas, the difference between trends and hypes in daily practice means that it is important to invest in the right developments. If you are too wait-and-see, you will quickly fall behind. On the other hand, it costs too much money and time to go along with everything. The question is also whether you have the expertise and technology to do everything yourself.

Staying informed

According to Verhoeven and Boas, it is important to follow developments to avoid falling behind as a company. The Internet is an appropriate resource for this. You can use sites such as e-learnindindustry.com or social networks such as LinkedIn. Especially with LinkedIn, however, you need good filtering ability. These days there are a lot of people saying something about e-learning, and the ease with which this is blogged on LinkedIn can mean that you still don't get a clear picture. It can help to look for the right authority on e-learning. The advantage of following specific individuals is that they filter out noise. In addition, the companies they work for will also bring you up to speed on new developments. In any case, avoid becoming newspeople due to the sheer volume of offerings, as you are likely to overlook developments.

Fairs, especially on a national level, are often less innovative, according to Verhoeven. Large, international fairs are more innovative, but you often still don't see the latest of the newest here, because developments are not yet far enough along to be exhibited.

Invest vs. wait and see

So in what situations is it better to wait and when do you make an investment? Verhoeven: "It's important that you don't fall behind. If you are behind, you have to take action and perhaps also show extra guts." Also important to Précon when making an investment is whether the new development is for internal or external use. An investment in a new development during an internal project is annoying, but during an external project the consequences can be even greater. "With serious customer requests, investment is often worthwhile," Boas said. Opportunities to then make the investment less risky is to invest jointly with a customer. Try to include an experimentation phase in developments. This way you can first try out whether something works, change the concept in time and the investment is smaller if it does not work.

Pitfalls

At Précon, they believe in a varied approach. "As soon as you bet too much on one thing and throw other things aside you quickly go wrong," Boas believes. As an example, he cites developing a wide range of off-the-shelf training. Some companies bet big on this a few years ago. Now it turns out that it takes an enormous amount of time to maintain the training courses. If too little was invested in new developments alongside such an offer, as a company you run the risk that your entire concept will become obsolete at some point. In addition, according to Verhoeven, one of the biggest pitfalls remains investing in a trend that does not fit the company vision, learning intervention or target group. An example would be a company investing in AR while focusing on a tool for convenient word learning.

Conclusion

So suppose you work at a company that makes digital learning solutions and a customer asks if you guys are also developing AR. You've been following developments in the market, but you've never done anything with AR yourself. What do you say to the customer? You consider whether AR could be a sustainable development and take stock of the pitfalls and whether AR suits your company. In this case, Précon would consider the possibility of investing jointly with the client or collaborating with another party that is already developing AR solutions.

Resources

  1. "Hype." Van Dale. Utrecht: Van Dale Publishers. 2017, vandale.co.uk.
  2. A Short History of MOOCs and Distance Learning. Juliana Marques. Moocs news and reviews. April 17, 2013, moocnewsandreviews.com
  3. Instruction for masses knocks down campus walls. Tamar Lewin. New York Times. March 4, 2012
  4. MOOC completion rates: the data. Katy Jordan. June 12, 2015, katyjordan.com
  5. Are MOOCs dead? Not if you look at the numbers. Wilfred Rubens. December 27, 2016, te-learning.com

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