Over the last five years changes in the e-learning market have been quite substantial. The breakthrough of rapid e-learning has changed how customers think about e-learning content. I believe the past trends we can see when we look in the rear view mirror help indicate how the road will be going forward.
Looking back
Five years ago the e-learning content market was dominated by two kinds of solutions: off-the-shelf content and bespoke content. Off-the-shelf content was sold to a large number of customers in the form of standardized courses. The bespoke market was positioned at the top end of the sector as content creators worked with specialized authoring tools. The technical experts, flash animators and developers, graphic designers and multimedia heads, were involved in building the content. The sheer number of people needed to produce an hour of high-end content meant that bespoke consultancies were employing the largest number of people in the industry.
Bespoke content projects were, and still are, projects with long timelines and required significant budgets. The cost involved means that bespoke developments are mainly used for flagship projects. Bespoke content was therefore more about showcasing the potential value of large-scale e-learning, than really unlocking the potential of e-learning.
What is currently happening
Today the whole content landscape is in the middle of a radical shift – content is not seen as something that is created outside of the business, but rather a result of internal knowledge transfer. Part of the driver for this change has been the software tools that have continued to improve and become more intuitive and efficient. Alongside these improvements, customers are now more experienced with e-learning and this combination has resulted in companies being empowered to develop significant volumes of quality courses. This revolution is known as rapid authoring.
The most important point to make about rapid authoring is that it focuses on the “quality of the courses” and has allowed the job of course development to move away from technical experts, and into the hands of the people that really matter, the Subject Matter Experts.
The question companies are asking themselves today is not "who can do this for us", but “how can we leverage the possibilities that e-learning offers”. So today’s businesses are able to unlock their e-learning potential in high volume areas. In addition to the added value of improving the human resource skill base, other noteworthy cost efficiencies have also evolved. For example, course development has been reduced down from months to weeks or even days.
What does this mean for the bespoke segment? Currently the segment is shrinking as vendors are disintegrating and customers are looking for more efficient solutions. We believe that there will always be room for multimedia events and one-off high-end bespoke e-learning courses, but the glory days for the large number of vendors are definitely behind us.
The future
Rapid e-learning presents some infrastructure challenges and opportunities for customers in terms of quality and reusability because as customers begin to see the benefits of high-volume e-learning, they begin to look for scalable solutions.
As such they will move away from content being a secondary, single project, low volume delivery, to becoming a more strategically focused activity. Companies will be able to continuously develop content, delivering a constant ´flow of information across the organisation.
This is already beginning to emerge in the enterprise space and will continue to expand. Already many best in class companies now believe the content creation solution is just as important as the LMS. It’s become a natural part of the e-learning and performance infrastructure.
To bring this flow of information to fruition, these enterprise customers are already demanding that content creation solutions not only provide an intuitive interface, but also have advanced workflow capabilities, content management capabilities and other features such as built in translation, the ability to easily deliver content in different formats. And all these features are expected to be 100% trackable on the company´s LMS.
As this evolution expands, preferences will continue to be based on content creation solutions that are scalable and able to handle increasing volumes as well as deliver incorporated workflows that can seamlessly integrate with internal processes.
Our Promise
So even though the learning landscape is constantly shifting and evolving, since its inception in 2001, Mohive has continued to deliver an enterprise rapid e-learning platform that enables many large companies to unlock their e-learning potential. And we are committed to continuing to deliver features that best in class companies demand.
Lars Unneberg, CEO.