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Learning on Demand European Meeting Summary Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow July 18, 2002 Author: Rob Edmonds eLearning Industry: Status Report / eLearning & Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Scottish Enterprise played host to this Learning-on-Demand meeting in Glasgow. Scottish Enterprise joined the Learning on Demand program in March 2002, along with consulting group Business Lab and the Scottish University for Industry. Scottish Enterprise joined Learning on Demand as part of its mission to foster eLearning activity in Scotland. A smaller-than-average group (some 15 people) meant much more discussion and interaction than usual. The chairman, SRIC-BI's Stephen Taylor, created extra time to hear the issues and concerns of all attendees and moved the agenda around to allow for extra discussion. As Taylor put it early in the day, "You'll have gathered by now that I've thrown the agenda out of the window!" The day began with introductions from all participants around the room, highlighting their current interests and concerns. Scottish Enterprise was joined by representatives from two other development agencies: Enterprise Ireland and Norway's IT City Steinkjer—both interested in pushing the eLearning market forward. Dave Woolfenden from Nokia described the challenges he faces in scaling eLearning up to deliver it globally—including the challenges of localization and repackaging content for different audiences. Nokia is also moving eLearning to the extended enterprise with the introduction of eLearning for resellers. eLearning vendors Electric Paper, MediaCorp., and T-Systems Multimedia Solutions described a tough market but one that they, as individual companies, were still managing to succeed in. The issue of content quality is a concern with many struggling, lower-quality vendors slashing the price of eLearning content to meet market challenges. Localization provider Transware described a debate that took place in Masie's eLearning conference in Ireland in early July—facing up to the fact that higher-quality content means higher cost, particularly in localization. After coffee, LoD Director Eilif Trondsen and LoD Consultant Rob Edmonds led a highly interactive session on the state of the industry. Slides from the presentation are available at http://www.sric-bi.com/LoD/reports.shtml. Summarizing the current state of the industry, Trondsen discussed the "real" versus the "Wall Street" view of the market. In discussion, most participants agreed that demand for eLearning was growing slowly despite a media and stock market backlash. On the basis of findings from the second-quarter LoD Bulletin on European eLearning, Edmonds briefly described the situation in Europe. The United Kingdom leads the European market and has seen slow growth in the past year. The Nordic regions see a lot of eLearning activity but are relatively small markets. Germany, France, Italy, and Spain are still behind in terms of eLearning adoption. In discussion, all participants agreed that governments are becoming more and more important eLearning customers as corporations tighten their belts this year. The trend toward "eGovernment" sees government departments (particularly in the United Kingdom but also across Europe) adopting eLearning for their own use and funding initiatives to provide eLearning for citizens and businesses. Reports suggest that the United Kingdom's defense sector will soon follow the lead of the U.S. Department of Defense with a major eLearning initiative on its way. Concern arose about the danger of a "dependency culture"—particularly in the United Kingdom. Participants argued that eLearning vendors are becoming overly reliant on government support. After lunch, Kirk Ramsey from the Scottish University for Industry presented a status report on this government-funded initiative to provide a single focus point for lifelong learning in Scotland. The initiative provides learning for individuals as well as companies in Scotland (with a particular emphasis on small businesses). So far, Ramsey reported, Scottish UFI has been successful at raising awareness and getting people to register but Kirk suspects that engagement following registration has been less good (although statistics are unavailable). The Scottish UFI runs entirely separately from the UFI for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Scottish and U.K. Parliaments approached the problem slightly differently. For example, Scotland took a blended learning approach from the outset, whereas the UFI focused mainly on eLearning. Scottish UFI also managed to overcome problems associated with the U.K. Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs)—government grants to undertake learning. The United Kingdom did not monitor these accounts properly, and a large number of low-quality (or even fraudulent) providers cashed in. The Scottish UFI took responsibility for administering the Scottish ILAs and ensured quality early on. Discussion following Ramsey's presentation led to the conclusion "content isn't king, context is." The problem for many of today's eLearning users is not so much creating or buying content, but adapting the content so that it is suitable for different types of people in different situations. Scottish UFI has diverse audiences, from teenagers seeking drugs-awareness education to small companies seeking training in accounting techniques. Ramsey believes that more effort should focus on moving the right content to the right person rather than on stockpiling content. Trondsen presented his views on eLearning for Small to Midsize Businesses (SMBs) based on the First Quarter LoD Bulletin on the same topic. His presentation is available at http://www.sric-bi.com/LoD/reports.shtml. Trondsen described SMBs as a large, unserved market with huge training and learning needs. However, Trondsen argued that eLearning for SMBs is likely to most successful where vendors approach the market through intermediaries (such as Scottish UFI) rather than through direct sales. In the final discussion session, Taylor summed up key issues from the day. These issues included the following: Despite the downturn, new technologies—including simulations and games and mobile learning—came up in discussion more than one might expect. Business Lab is devoting a new research program to games and learning. The project prospectus has been developed by BusinessLab and the University of Abertay—with the support of Scottish Enterprise Tayside, Dundee City Council, and Worldwide Learning. The project will draw upon global perspectives of the potential for successful deployment of games, in particular computer games, in addressing challenging learning contexts—dealing with risk, learning in fast-changing environments, learning among teams, and learning through simulation. More information on "Play2Win" is available at http://www.businesslab.co.uk/learning.html. Nokia is also investigating increased use of simulations and games in its eLearning. Given increasing interest in this topic, Learning on Demand plans a follow up report to 2001's Games and Simulations in eLearning report later this year. Many participants discussed challenges of delivering eLearning to different types of communities or audiences and the associated needs for customization and repackaging. Localization came up several times in this context. Participants discussed balancing the need for high-quality content (such as simulations) against cost—cost for high-end content can spiral, particularly where users need to localize it for different audiences. The need for eLearning users to address best practices was clear—and more examples of best practice are a key research need. Learning on Demand has noted various "best practices" in its research reports (for example in the recent Learning Objects in Practice report) and will continue to examine best practices in forthcoming reports. Of course, uncovering best practice is not easy—many companies are hesitant to reveal their best practices in cases where they believe that doing so will erode their companies competitive edge in the market. The government sector is growing in importance in Europe and particularly the United Kingdom as a key driver for eLearning. Learning on Demand addressed this topic in meetings in Brussels, Belgium, and Washington, D.C., last year and continues to examine the government sector in its reports. Content quality and the definition of quality are pressing concerns for many vendors and users. ASTD and Lguide are now starting work on this topic. Learning on Demand will address the quality issue in various upcoming reports. Throughout the day, participants referred to the need for eLearning standards and interoperability between systems. Although interoperability is not yet a reality ADL and now the IEEE have made significant progress in the standards area in the past few years. The LoD research bulletin A Learning Objects Primer for eLearning Practitioners provides a background to the standards debate. Finally Erik Schoning of IT City Steinkjer described the special location of the next meeting provisionally scheduled for 10 October. Erik will play host to the meeting and lay on a variety of social activities to make the most of the location. We expect to tackle the issue of innovation in eLearning, particularly using eLearning for unusual groups of learners. As one example, Steinkjer is home to perhaps the only eLearning company in the world—Agronett Learning—solely devoted to the agriculture sector. The meeting will also allow participants to learn about the regional network of eLearning companies in Steinkjer. The network allows, for example, smaller players to work together to win large government contracts.

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