2010年预测 eLearn: Feature Article - Predictions for 2010

By eLearn Magazine staff and contributors

January 7, 2010

Back to Basics
My prediction and hope for 2010 is that education will go back tobasics: learning and mastering the skills of 1) how to learn, 2)reflection, and 3) digital literacy. With smart phones finally breakingthe barriers of screen resolution and access, and social mediaconnecting more people, knowing how to search for information andexpertise and how to utilize them is necessary for all education, notjust online. Just imagine the impact if all educators encouraged theseskills in learners of all ages across all disciplines. I try to do thatmyself with my students in the classroom, and know I've been successfulwhen they demonstrate their mastery.
—Lisa Gualtieri, eLearn Magazine editor-in-chief, and adjunct clinical professor at Tufts University School of Medicine

Economic Adaptation
2010 will be the year the economic crisis hits the education sector asgovernments across the board address the deficits accumulated through2009. Corporate e-learning will benefit a bit from the decrease inbusiness travel. But otherwise, institutions will look to save money byshedding positions and increasing class sizes. At the same time, thedemand for learning opportunities will increase, leading to a varietyof commercially motivated online learning schemes from both the privatesector and, increasingly, from traditional institutions. There will bea lot of support for lessons offered through the new proprietarye-reading and internet tablet platforms. It will be difficult to sellaccess simply to learning content, but 2010 will be the year of thesynchronous online learning event, and a banner year for synchronousmedia and desktop conferencing generally.
—Stephen Downes, National Research Council of Canada

Bye Bye, Phone
Mobile e-learning will go away. There is always the latest thing ine-learning that everyone must do. One of my least favorite of these ismobile e-learning. E-learning will not happen, at least not seriously,on mobile phones. Why not? Because it takes time to learn something.You have to really understand a situation. You have to practice askill. You have to consider alternatives. You have to createdeliverables. At least you do for the e-learning that I build. Thistakes time—a lot of time. It was seriously suggested recently in a fullyear all day every day course I was building, that we needed to make itavailable on mobile phones. I don't know about you, but staring atmobile phone for an hour makes my eyes hurt. Try doing it all day for ayear. It makes no sense. We don't learn anything instantly. Reallearning is not done on a train or a bus. The kinds of courses that canbe delivered that way will be shown to not be particularly useful.
—Roger C. Schank, Socratic Arts Corp., and eLearn Magazine opinion columnist

Twitter Thrives, GoogleWave Languishes
Economic softness and greater familiarity nudges higher educationinstitutions toward open source solutions, with at least one new majorcollaborative effort in community source development continuing thetrend of Sakai and Kuali. New and improved products in the eReaderspace lead more colleges to experiment with eTextbooks. Kindle leadsthe special purpose devices, but an offering from Apple pushes themarket towards general purpose computing devices with book-like formfactors and multi-platform (phone, eReader, PC) delivery of materials.Twitter thrives; Wave languishes in techie backwaters.
—Mark Notess, development manager Indiana University

Wave Crests
Google Wave is already set to become a very popular tool this year, andI think it represents the way that tools are going to evolve in thenear future, that is that the social functionality found in standalonetools is going to merge and become amalgamated into more integrated"learning" tools. Also I think (and hope) we will see learning systemsmoving away from managing or controlling users and instead providingopen learning environments that enable both formal and informalpersonal and group learning to take place.
—Jane Hart, social learning consultant at Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

More Games, Fewer Books
In the realm of educational technology, first, educational games willincreasingly appear in the market but to be effective they will need bebased on clear instructional goals and research-based pedagogicmethods. Second, textbooks and other commercially available coursematerials will increasingly migrate from print to electronic formatsbut to be effective they will need to use appropriate instructionalmethods and interfaces that take advantage of the new medium. Third,presentation software will increase in sophistication but to beeffective slide presentations should be based on the science oflearning and research-based principles of multimedia instructionaldesign.
—Richard E. Mayer, professor of psychology at University of California-Santa Barbara

Move It or Lose It
This is the decade of time.Time-to-performance will become the dominant metric for learning.Businesses in 2010 will become faster-paced and more unpredictable.Quick and agile companies will overtake hide-bound traditionalorganizations. Speedy change requires rapid learning, workers willincreasingly set the pace. Mobile, geo-aware, smart phones will provideperformance support. We'll focus more on nurturing learning ecosystems("learnscapes") than on finger-in-the-dike point solutions. As ElbertHubbard warned, "The world is moving so fast these days that the manwho says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doingit."
—Jay Cross, chairman of Internet Time Alliance

Students Outpace Teachers
Some key trends in Web technology for 2010 are moves towards semantic,real-time and/or social-based searches (supported by a combination oflanguage, knowledge, Semantic Web, and online-data technologies). I'velearned, however, through tracking this column the past few years, thatonline education lags behind these leading edges. So I predict in 2010students will be using these more and more, especially coupled withTwitter, but that very few instructors will yet understand or use thesetechnologies - in short the technology gap between the students and theeLearning world with respect to "new media" will widen greatly.
—Jim Hendler, tetherless world professor of computer and cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Design Before 'Cool'
2010 must be the year for Learning Design. We must take the "cool"technologies (gaming, social media, video connections) and do the hardwork of designing learning methodologies that can cost effectivelyscale. Leave the hype and fascination about 2.0 or 3.0 and let'sdesign! 2010 is also the year of the Story! Our learners want storiesthat have high credibility, actionable content and rich field context.Stories captured on video, stories shared in the classroom and storiesembedded in our organization. Leaders (in person and virtual) willincrease their storytelling, story gathering and yes, story listeningskills in 2010.
—Elliott Masie, chair of The Learning Consortium, and CEO of The Masie Center

Not Quite 2.0
We know there is moree-learning, but it isn't what you expect. Is it lessons in a virtualclassroom? PowerPoint slides with an audio track? Scenario-basede-programs? What of 2.0? After an opportunistic study of nearly 1,000practitioners, Jim Marshall and I were surprised. Instructional designpractices made a strong showing. Tutorials, scenario-based learning,and problem-solving strategies were popular. Testing online was mostfrequently reported. On the other hand, e-coaching and the use ofmobile devices were rare. 2.0? Not much, not yet. For more on this, seeforthcoming issue of T&D.
—Allison Rossett, San Diego State University

e-Books e-Books e-Books!
e-text Books (and periodicals)! 2010 will be to publishing what 1998was to e-learning. The move from printed to digital content won'thappen overnight, but could be rapid thanks to Apple's iSlate. Forauthors, it means adapting those online teaching and writing skills totext books and receiving payment through entirely different royaltystructures. For publishers, life could resemble life for musiccompanies after the iTunes store. For teachers, it means assemblingbooks from articles, chapters, and other digital resources. And forstudents, e-books could mean significantly lower textbook costs (andfighting Facebook and chat temptations while studying).
—Saul Carliner, Concordia University

Social Learning Achieves Adulthood
It seems that almost every learning conference, during the previousyear was centered around Web 2.0, social learning, and user-generatedcontent; yet there still are only a handful of companies that haveactually established social learning as a practice. We have some greatexamples from companies such as Sun Microsystems, Pfizer, MotorolaUniversity, and the Peace Corp on the benefits and results ofcollaborative learning, communities of practice, and informalknowledgebases. Based on the number of client requests alone, I predictthat 2010 will be the year that we start to see some tactical movementtoward "real" implementations at the enterprise level (still earlyadopter stage).
— Bryan Chapman, chief learning strategist at Chapman Alliance

Corporate Giants Get Virtual Worlds
Virtual immersive environments (VIEs) for corporate use gains tractionin 2010 with major announcements concerning integration withtraditional enterprisewide software, such as MS SharePoint. Even thoughvirtual worlds still are in the "trough of disillusionment" in thetechnology hype cycle. VIEs will pull out of the trough in fourthquarter 2010 as productive uses of these worlds begins toproliferate—fueled by breakthrough examples of productivityimprovements. These implementations will capture the imagination ofmany and activity around VIEs increases. The VIE industry encounters ashake up of player consolidation, new player arrivals and existingplayers seizing larger market share.
—Karl M. Kapp, assistant director at the Institute for InteractiveTechnologies, and professor of instructional technology at BloomsburgUniversity, and co-author of Learning in 3D

Augmented Realtiy, Oh Yes, It's Coming
We will see more "platform as a service" (PaaS) solutions with furthercomputing enhancements to support the "micro" movement. Aggregators,mobile support, and real-time collaboration will bring a new level ofcomplexity to the increasingly distributed, knowledge-driven workplace.As we process more fragmented information and sources, content curatorswill be needed to support transfer of learning. Tight budgets andrenewed fear of travel will bring more innovative blended learningsolutions that include online presence support, 3-D immersiveenvironments, and gaming solutions. "Rogue" will give way to acceptanceas companies reconcile the privacy and productivity concerns associatedwith social media. As a result, we'll see the formation of richeronline networks and communities. On the horizon ... augmented reality.
—Janet Clarey, Brandon Hall Research

Break Out!
I'm hoping this will be the "year of the breakthrough." Severaltechnologies are poised to cross the chasm: social tools, mobiletechnologies, and virtual worlds. Each has reached critical mass inbeing realistically deployable and offers real benefits. And eachcomplements a desired organizational breakthrough, recognizing thebroader role of learning not just in execution, but in problem-solving,innovation, and more. I expect to see more inspired uses of technologyto break out of the "course" mentality and start facilitatingperformance more broadly, as organizational structures move learningfrom "nice to have" to core infrastructure.
—Clark Quinn, executive director of Quinnovation

Gadgets Invited to Classrooms
In my opinion, 2010 will be the year of experimenting with AugmentedReality in the classroom using portable devices such as Smart mobilephones and Nintendo DS terminals, and exploring the potentials of thistechnology in teaching and learning. The pedagogical expectations ofusing such a technology in the classroom, will greatly impact students'learning and kick start a new learning experience!
—Hend S. Al-Khalifa, assistant professor, Information Technology Department at CCIS, King Saud University

The Collective
Cuts in public funding will create pressure for provision to beorganized on a larger scale than individual schools, colleges, anduniversities can manage. There will be a resurgence of interest ininteracting face-to-face. Web-accessing and location/context aware"always on" devices will continue to grow in importance as tools forlearning, with designers adjusting (or not!) to the constraints ofsmall screens, slow keyboards, and, for now, slow connections. Userswill want to understand how what the "cloud" knows about them(location, search history, past interactions and so on) affects whatthey find in the cloud.
—Seb Schmoller, chief executive of the U.K.'s Association for Learning Technology

Army of One
The same three trends of 2009—connectivity, globalization, and DYItools—will continue in 2010. Pervasive access to the Internet andconnectivity will affect how training is designed, developed, anddelivered. Connectivity will change who creates training and how it isconsumed. Globalization and the 24/7 economy will shape how we operateby making trainers more reliant on global resources; shortening thetime from concept to completion; and increasing dependency on DYItools. These factors will drive trainers to assume new roles supportingsubject matter experts, acting as an army-of-one, and piloting newstrategies. The line between training and information will continue toblur, while SMEs and line of business will assume responsibility forcreating and delivering materials.
—Margaret Driscoll, IBM, Business Process Delivery

Learning With a Capital L
In 2010 the learning focus will favor pedagogy over technology ininnovative learning discussions. Distinctions between eLearning,TELearning, mLearning will fade and give rise to Learning. Augmentedreality will be the technological rave, enabling us to use our mobiledevices to get in-depth knowledge on a variety of topics (whilestanding in front of the Eiffel tower, for example, you could see onyour mobile screen how Paris has changed over the years). Educationalinstitutions will reinvent their curricula realigning them with the newlearning possibilities, for example Quest to learn. Ubiquitous learningwill flourish!
—Ignatia "Inge" de Waard, e-learning coordinator and researcher at Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp

mLearning Strengthens in Developing Countries
The same old challenges will exist in the world of education. We sadlyrealize that the economic budget is getting smaller for the highereducation institutes that are working harder than ever to dissipate itslimited resources to learners. On the other hand, developed countriesallocate huge amounts of their budget in order to increase theirtechnological force over the less developed ones by defendingtechnology that is believed to be the greatest opportunity. In thisconnection, mLearning can be a primary factor for effective learningfor developing countries in due course.
—Ugur Demiray, editor-in-chief of the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, Anadolu University

(Please Let's See Some Improvements?)
Instead of predicting what I want to happen and being disappointed, I'm going to predict what I don't want to happen, and then if (when) I'm wrong, I'll be very happy. People and organizations will continue to:

1. think of "social learning" as something related to technology
2. confuse learning, training and education
3. "design" by using 50 year-old models, based on largely unexamined science and bereft of any modern, interdisciplinary context
4. think of virtual worlds as ways to design virtual classrooms and wonder why people hate them (see recreation of "next" button)

Lesson Plans for Sale!
High school teachers will discover scalability of the web andincreasingly offer (both for sale or for free) lesson plans for theirclasses. Market forces based on quality more than price will thenfacilitate expansion of best-practice lesson plans throughout manydispersed high schools, first in the U.S., and eventually worldwide.This will be an essential step in lifting secondary school teachingfrom a 19th Century craft industry to a 21st Century knowledge-sharedindustry.
—Richard C. Larson, Mitsui Professor of engineering systems, Massauchessets Institute of Technology

Moving Pictures
Higher education and corporate training will continue to developinteresting and effective ways to incorporate video (meaning real, NTSCvideo rather than screencast "videos") into LMS-based e-learning.Teachers and trainers will become more aware of when and how to use"cool" social media video aesthetics and when and how to use "credible"traditional video aesthetics.
—Peter J. Fadde, associate professor of ?nstructional technology and ?nstructional design, Southern Illinois University

Users Trump Designers
I've been a broken record on the subject of user-centricity for thepast 10 years, but in 2010 the tectonic plates are finally beginning tomove. The intelligence of the users—individually andcollectively—trumps the intelligence of the designer. Online learningwill become much more adaptive and collaborative, more dynamic and lessstatic in design, leveraging and activating the collective intellectualcapital of the organization. Semantic technologies, taxonomies andontologies will become critically important as filters foruser-directed learning that bends time and space, allowing the learnerto assemble needed knowledge, data, tools and ideas in real time."Expertise" will extend beyond the individual to the group, fromsomething one has, to something one uses. This shift impacts the designof online solutions more than any time in the past.
—Jonathon Levy, president and chief strategy officer at LeveragePoint Innovations

New Mode for 'Learning'
The increasing awareness that learning is the result of experiences,practice, conversations, and reflection rather than a demonstration ofacquisition of information will mean focus and effort moves away fromthe development of structured learning content and towards theimplementation of new approaches for facilitating interaction andexperiences through learning in the workplace. This will challengetraining and L&D departments to the limit, who will realize theyneed to change their modus operandi, get closer to their stakeholdersand become more responsive or cease to be relevant. Speed-to-competencewill become the key driver.
—Charles Jennings, director of the Internet Time Alliance and Duntroon Associates

Predictions for eLearning
from Years Past Predictions for 2009 Predictions for 2008 Predictions for 2007 Predictions for 2006 Predictions for 2005 Predictions for 2004 Predictions for 2003 Predictions for 2002
More Open Source
International economy downsizing will foster the adoption and use ofopen source platforms and open content from public bodies. With respectto the installed basis of proprietary systems, these will be enhancedwith talent management and informal learning capabilities. Increasedavailability of cultural digital content will facilitate the creationand sharing of school-level education material, accompanied withuser-generated content. This will be based on raw content, which willserve as the basis for commenting, discussing and evaluating theoriginal resources, or as the launching pad for the creation oflearning communities accompanied with appropriate educationalactivities. Additionally, the proliferation of open-source vertical andhorizontal social applications will facilitate the formation ofinformal learning networks, and foster the creation of resource-based(learning) initiatives. Last, the wide adoption of game consoles willallow and motivate the creation of learning-oriented games for thefamily.
—Spiros Borotis and Angeliki Poulymenakou, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece

ROI
Organizations implemented e-learning methodologies will look into both tangible and intangible return on investment.
—Badrul Khan, president and founder of McWeadon Education