Big Data, Personalized Learning and 5 More eLearning Trends
The eLearning market is predicted to reach $51 billion turnover by the end of 2016. The whole industry is growing by 10 percent from year to year constantly presenting innovations and development. So, what are the main trends the eLearning industry is concerned about this year?
Trend 1
Big Data
The mass usage of big data today has interfered numerous spheres of companies’ life including employee training. eLearning itself provides the opportunity to hold lots of information about employees' educational results, passed courses and internal rating together with an overall level of effectiveness. That enables personalized and employee-oriented approach towards training. Companies now are able to use data from different sources such as CRMs, HRMs and LMSs to reveal employees’ knowledge and skills gaps and provide an individual training to close them.
Trend 2
Personalized Learning
Personalized approach is an ongoing must-have in all fields of training today. Now eLearning is able to link employee individual training with their ongoing needs and tasks. What was impossible even to dream of has already become a reality – different employees get different learning paths. Your sales reps learn everything they really need about closing deals and project managers improve their time-management skills. What’s more, today you can assign employees to pass a fast and easy assessment that makes the overall training effective and aimed to close individual knowledge and skills gaps.
Trend 3
Gamification
You may think there is already nothing new to say about gamification (and there is probably no article on eLearning without mentioning this term). However, elearningindustry.com still considers it as one of the most important trends this year. So, what can we add about gamification?
Firstly, today courses provide a combination of personalization and interactivity. That means a course plot depends on the learner’s answers and chosen actions. Each step can bring both success or failure – absolutely like in real life.
Secondly, what was found out in the research on gamification in learning, it works really effective only with a thorough understanding of employees’ competencies and gaps. This is probably bad news for those who regard training as entertainment and way to escape from work. Only sensibly arranged gamification can be regarded as really productive.
Trend 4
mLearning
The growth of mLearning seems a logical regarding the overall increase in mobile technologies. There is even an opinion mLearning is here to replace an ordinary desktop learning. What adds much sense to such ideas is the convenience of mobile technologies usage with social media integration, QR-codes and GPS working together with mobile applications. That’s why most eLearning providers have already enabled access to their courses via tablets and smartphones. This trend is again connected with personalization in the face of personal devices used as the main tool for training.
Trend 5
Augmented Reality
In the educational field augmented reality allows to put employees into “real-life” settings. That enables users to try everything beforehand and get prepared for real work. Workers can now explore new devices without getting hurt, car drivers can regard all the “insight” possibilities of their automobiles. Even salespeople get prepared for successful deals exercising with virtual customers.
Trend 6
Automation
Automation is now regarded as an eLearning integral part. It allows content providers to make courses saving time and money. We expect that tests, dialog reactions and assessments can be soon generated automatically basing on courses’ content. Templates and algorithms allow courses developers to create new materials much faster and cheaper.
Trend 7
Cloud-Based eLearning Platforms
Most companies using eLearning are already turning to cloud solutions. Even though there are some considerations about insecurity of cloud database storage, today’s suppliers are improving their data security level.
Moreover, cloud solutions are easy to use and support. With no need to provide extra software on each computer, there is no extra money spent on hiring specialists to maintain the system’s work. Finally, you save money on free software updates. That’s why over one-third of companies are learning with cloud platforms in 2016.
As we see, eLearning is getting more individual, well-timed, and technologically advanced. Explore these trends in our courses for free and make your business productive and innovative!
