Asking the right questions of the right people.

George wonders why, "As an industry ... we really don't have a defined process of asking our potential market what they are using to learn."

A couple of thoughts. Podcasting and weblogs are content distribution tools. This plays right into the "learning as consumption of information" model that so many people accept without even thinking to challenge it. 

Much of instructional design assumes that the instructional designers are smart, and the learners are dumb. Many designers therefore see no reason to ask the "dumb" learners how or what they are using to learn.

Understanding the Market.

I think it's safe to say that many organizations don't have a proper read of the elearning industry. As I've stated previously, elearning is an aggregate industry - it relies on developments in various technology and research fields. For example, tools like blogs, wikis, iPods were not developed for learning. They were developed for communication and content creation/sharing. We simply adopted them for learning purposes. As a result, we misread what's really going on if we don't take time to see what people are using for communication and personal learning. I think we have failed to capture the mobile learning market (it's all there, we just don't have a clear vision of how we should do it). We have also failed to grasp the effectiveness of peer-created content (we focus on learners dialoguing about our content, but we rarely involve them in the creation stage). In order to understand what's happening, organizations need to poll and survey their potential market (Duke CE is currently running a public survey on tools used for learning). As an industry, however, we really don't have a defined process of asking our potential market what they are using to learn. I wonder why...

5:07:26 PM    

Moodle becoming larger player among Learning Management Systems.

Moodle and British Open University.

It's hard to overstate the significance of this announcement (and others that I'm sure will follow): British Open University switches to Moodle (.doc). More here.

4:56:38 PM    

Why aren't Open Source LMS gaining more share?

Reading this, I kept having the feeling that some of the interviewees were missing the point about Open Source. Open Source anything, not just LMS. Commercial LMS are "take or pay" -- you get everything, whether you need it or not, and you pay for everything. You are captive to the whims of the vendor's view of what's good for e-Learning. If your vendor merges with another or is bought out, you may just be out of luck and left holding the very expensive bag with no good exit options. With Open Source, you decide what to implement and how. You aren't working with a vendor who may not be here next week. What's not to like about that?

Wake-Up Call: Open Source LMS - Sam S. Adkins, Learning Circuits. There is a growing market demand for Open Source learning management system (OS LMS) products. This demand has attracted the attention of many corporate and government clients. Clients have begun to ask if Open Source LMSs are now viable alternatives to c [Online Learning Update]

2:09:51 PM