2009 Predictions

It’s the new year and time to review some of the predictions I had made for 2008.

• PLEs will be shareable – tools shall arrive on the web that shall allow entire learning experiences to be sliced and shared between users. This shall be followed by ratings on which PLE slices are great. Any learner wanting to learn about a topic will take a PLE slice of a person who the community says has mastered it and follow the learning path.

Not much success here! Some notable attempts such as Twine helped in some way, as did others, but the concept of shared learning experiences seemed to be too futuristic or useless for 2008. Better luck in 2009 perhaps.

• Hybrid VLE + PLE systems – LMS/VLE enterprise systems shall incorporate many social constructivism inspired features and organizations will pick up this trend.

Some luck here as major LMS vendors started putting in 2.0 features into their toolkit. But no real effort except perhaps for Mzinga which focused on Communities of Practice. This will pick up in 2009.

• The first classification systems to manage and search the huge amount of tagging will start to surface. Folksonomies will start getting structured in some way.

The semantic web beckoned, and IMINDI was a start. I don’t reckon that this will catch up steam in the near future either, but it is a start.

• The shift to rich Internet applications in e-learning using Flex and Silverlight among other tools, shall become a reality thus providing a boost to gaming and simulations for learning.

Ah! This was perhaps more successful as a prediction. We can see some real movement this year with Silverlight courses being developed and Flex extending in RIAs.

• Learning process outsourcing will get established as a business model for small and medium companies.

Doesn’t seem to be well entrenched, but companies such as Expertus and Intrepid seem to have taken larger strides in the enterprise market.

That sure is a mixed bag. I hope I do better with my 2009 predictions. Here they are:

1. Silverlight (more so) and Flex for learning development and tools will see a significant rise
2. LMS mindshare shall start being significantly impacted by Learning 2.0 solutions such as Mzinga and ELGG. As the adoption starts, enterprise measures/metrics will also start falling into place. Adoption of Learning 2.0 approaches will start in earnest in the second half of the year
3. LPO or Learning Process Outsourcing will gain momentum in 2009
4. The use of the mobile as a learning platform shall see renewed interest – the start of ubiquitous learning being made possible by technological developments in the handset, services and network space
5. The use of virtual worlds for learning will acquire more importance – if things are right, it should mark the beginning of the end for traditional virtual classrooms.
6. Games and simulations will see an increased adoption

The trends in the industry that shall back these predictions seem to be cutbacks on travel spend, need to bring in cost effective approaches to learning, higher engagement provided by games, simulations and virtual worlds and opportunities for enterprises to strategically pause and reflect on systemic changes in the light of the recessionary trends.

That’s my take on the new year. Hope they are borne out by the events to follow!

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