The Future of e-Learning Models and the

Language We Use to Describe Them

Final Report

By
Mark Oehlert

October 2003

Research for this report was supported in part by a grant from The MASIE Center with funds provided by
the e-Learning Consortium. None of these organizations or individuals is responsible for the views
expressed, which are solely those of the authors.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. KEY FINDINGS

II. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

III. INTRODUCTION

IV. METHODOLOGY

V. RESULTS

VI. ANALYSIS

VII. CONCLUSIONS
 I. KEY FINDINGS

While a more expansive definition of e-learning has been much discussed,

requirements are now emerging that seek to make real some of those ideas
(e.g. performance support, augmented reality, on-demand personalized
instruction).

While cultural change continues to be cited as one of the main hurdles to

successful implementation of e-learning, no e-learning vendors seem to be
packaging change management with their products.

M-learning continues to gain buzz and momentum with the following as

particularly visible interest points:

“M” means mobile – it doesn’t have to mean connected.

People are looking for content beyond simple Flash
Device selection questions continue with much confusion around
features
Multimodality and its design implications
The falling boundaries between, learning, training and performance
support
How to sell the idea up and down in your organization
Security – but not sure what that means
• Transmission
• Data
• Physical security

Economic models for selling e-learning will have to shift away from ‘catalog’
shopping to a service-oriented model.

Gaming and simulation are poised to make huge impacts in this market space.

Copyright and other legal issues pose potentially great problems for the
future of e-learning.

The ‘course’, as a meaningful unit of instruction, may well be doomed.

The cell phone is almost universally considered a learning device.

A continuation of the move toward “pay as you go” could actually allow
smaller shops to get up and competing by providing lower barriers to entry.

Globalization is forcing a hard focus on US-centric practices and content.

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 II. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following companies, organizations and

individuals without whom this report would not have been possible.

• Bill Pike, US Army Research, Development & Engineering Command

Simulation & Training Technology Center (RDECOM STTC)

• Murry Christensen, Vice President/e-Learning Research Director,

Goldman, Sachs & Co.

• Catherine Thompson, Director, Life Product Education; Prudential

Financial

• Stephen Downes, Senior Research Officer, National Research Council

Canada

• Dr. Mike Freeman, Deputy Director, Advanced Distributed Learning

initiative

• Sam Adkins, Founder, Samadico

• Donald Clark, CEO, Epic group plc, UK

• Marcuss Oslander, Sponsoring Editor eContent, McGraw-Hill-

Dushkin

• Dr. Ralph Ernest Chatham, Ph.D., Program Manager, Training

Superiority, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

• Sanjeeb Samanta, Manager - Worldwide eLearning Initiatives, Texas

Instruments Incorporated

• M.V. Sita Rama Rao,, Programmer, Satyam Learning Center, Satyam

Computer services ltd,

• Tom Crawford, Director of e-Learning, Root Learning Inc.

• Chris Connolly, Pearson Performance Solutions

• Gaurav Chadha, Solutions Architect, NIIT - Knowledge Solutions

• Michael Fitzgerald, Project Manager, e-Training Initiative, Office of

Personnel Management

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• Gary Dickleman, Boise State University Adjunct Faculty and owner,
EPSSCentral.com

• Harvey Singh, Founder, Navowave

• Ken Steinman, Manager of End User Technical Training and

Performance Support, The Regence Group

• Steve Case, Vice-President, Business Development, Knowledge

Management Solutions, Inc., USA

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 III. INTRODUCTION

There is currently a game available called Wild Divine. The game is

described as “inner-active” and uses a biofeedback system to test how well
you can control things such as breathing and heart rate in response to certain
events. There is a new P2P program called Skype that allows you to make
Internet-based phone calls from computer to computer anywhere in the
world. SMS (short message service) traffic for the United Kingdom during
February of 2003 passed the 55 million mark for average daily traffic. The
NPD Research group reported that total U.S. retail sales of video game
hardware, software and accessories grew 10 percent in 2002 over 2001and
that the video game industry generated $10.3 billion in sales, surpassing the
previous record high of $9.4 billion in 2001. IDC reported in July of 2003 that
“World stock markets will continue to languish in 2003…investment in
training companies will remain soft and mixed, reducing "hype" and putting a
premium on capability.” So, markets are uncertain, new technology is
emerging which could re-shape the way in which people communicate and
sectors of the market which have long been marginalized are approaching
dominant levels of financial success. Sounds like a great time to look to the
future.

A very wise professor once said that there are no perfect papers, only
good papers that are on time. This little gem is never truer than in the
instance of writing about the future. The possibilities are endless and there is
such a potential to bring in a wide range of resources and ideas that it can
become almost addicting and an intervention - in the form of a deadline – is
required to force your attention back to the matter at hand. The action is
required but painful; the writing must be done but there is awareness that as
soon as you stop researching the future and start writing about it, events
begin taking place which will date the work and push it off the bleeding edge.

There is also awareness that you could be incredibly wrong. Even if

you have not done research into the future, you have probably heard or read
such quotes as:

"The Year-2000 phenomenon is clearly such a jolt, and we believe that it will be much more
pervasive and serious than most of the [disasters] we've experienced in modern history." --Ed and
Jennifer Yourdon in Time Bomb 2000

or

"Plague will follow shortly. Most of the inhabitants of the northern cities will die within a matter of a
few weeks, from cold, disease, fires started in an attempt to keep warm, or random violence. This is
bad enough, of course, to qualify as a disaster ranking with the Black Plague, if not the extinction of
the dinosaurs." --Consultant Cory Hamasaki's newsletter, July 1999

These grossly wrong predictions are sure to give the budding futurist
pause. The comforting thought being however, that these people were

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writing about discrete events not large-scale trends. Then the novice futurist,
continuing their research, comes across trend analysis miscues of the highest
order:

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.
The device is inherently of no value to us." (Western Union, internal memo, 1876)

"Computers in the future may weight no more than 1.5 tons." (Popular Mechanics, forecasting the
relentless march of science, 1949)

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation, 1981)

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." (Decca
Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962)

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." (Charles H. Duell,

Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899)

All this is to say that the researcher endeavoring to look into the
future treads a path wrought with peril; oddly enough though, a path trod by
thousands. A Google search on the terms ‘future’ and ‘e-learning’ returned a
dizzying 912,000 results! Given that, it should be noted that this research
seeks neither to be definitive nor necessarily complete. It does however seek
to identify some important trends shaping this space and some challenges
confronting it. Most importantly, it seeks to contribute to and help further
the global discussion of the future of e-learning – the sheer scope of which
should hearten those who consider learning a most important human activity.

Whither the beleaguered researcher then? Having witnessed some of

the greatest minds expound on some of the worst predictions, the last refuge
is of course, one last quote: ““Once more into the breach, dear friends, once
more…” (Henry V, William Shakespeare).

Beginning with one of the most exciting developing areas in the field,
the building buzz around game-based learning is a topic that will be discussed
later in this report but which could survive as a topic all on its own. While
there are many indicators of the growing convergence of learning and gaming
as industries, there is one sign that could not be clearer:

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 This site and what it may mean for e-learning will be discussed later
but for now it is enough to know that the learning on the site is top-notch,
paid for by a gaming company and is being given away at no cost to the users.
It has also been noted [by the author who attended both conferences] that a
recent e-learning conference was held in a portion of the physical space that
was occupied by E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo). Not only did the
gaming conference occupy orders of magnitude more space (as could be
expected), an oft-heard topic of conversation was game-based learning. On
the other hand, there were few if any such discussions of this topic at the e-
learning conference. This is an important vector.

Another powerful factor that was revealed in the great majority of the
research should really come as no surprise but dealt with the increasing
importance of practicing e-learning in an ever-smaller world. Powerful forces
of globalization are at work and whether the answer to dealing with or
harnessing those forces lies in growing companies such as WeLocalize,

or in some other fusion of content with culture, these forces will have
to be dealt with.

Technology is also fusing more deeply into our daily lives and future
e-learning scenarios will have to address this tighter coupling of humans and
technology if for no other reason than future e-learners will expect/demand
it. M-learning has continued to also have exposure at major conference
throughout the past year. ‘Intel’ gathered from the floor of some of these
conferences sheds some interesting light on the future of this field and will be
discussed later.

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(frog design and Motorola Launch Prototypes of Next Generation Wearable
Wireless Solutions)

The SCOTTeVest

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 IV. METHODOLOGY

“Common to most anthropologists is a contrarian readiness to search out diverse,

improbable kinds of patterning, to be skeptical of commonly accepted categories or
boundaries, and to employ varying temporal and geographic scales as tools of
inquiry.” Robert McC. Adams, Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist’s Inquiry Into
Western Technology, 1996.

This research could be troubling to some. Not for its content per se
but for its methodology. A statistically significant group was not a goal of this
project. The e-learning space is so varied and includes so many different
audiences representing myriad interests that statistical studies typically only
represent narrow or less than complete slices anyway. The way in which the
interview portion of this research was conducted then had more to do with
being able to add some depth to the more 2D pictures typically presented.
The research methodology itself was also intended to be part of the project
in a way not normally done.

The methodology used to conduct this research should also be

considered – and was intended to be – as part of the project. If we are to
master or harness in some degree the potential of these new technologies
and the possibilities they bring, then we must begin to use them.
Anthropologists believe in “living in the village” to truly understand it; thus
the idea behind using a blog as an organizing schema for this project. The
experience of interviewing subjects in a blogging environment begs for
further practice-based research. An example of a new dynamic here would
not only be the ability of the general public to view the research as it is being
conducted but to actually comment on it and potentially alter its course by so
doing. It is certainly not beyond the pale to think of this as a new cousin to
oral histories or ethnographic studies. The day is probably short in coming
when we use SMS or moblogging in similar fashion.

The specific focus of this research has behaved much like its subject in
that it has been evolving even as it was being studied. While the original
proposal called for the establishment of a baseline model of current e-
learning what was discovered was some of the more prominent vectors at
work in the e-learning world. The research led to an early conclusion that
attempting to build these forces into one or more coherent models would be
counter-productive and instead the focus would continue along the lines of
discovering those powerful forces at work in this space.

The original plan also included a segment proposing an examination of

the language used to describe current models. That piece is not gone but is
rather slated for a separate piece of follow-on research. What remains is an
honest and at times uncomfortable examination of e-learning, its assumptions
and potential for the future. This research and the blog that contains much

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of the data and will serve as a continuing rally point for this topic, and there
are some incredibly interesting ideas to rally around.

The two main methodologies employed in this research will be

interviews and literature review. Describing the latter first, this will be
conducted in the broadest sense possible - that is as a discussion of
prominent themes in the extant research and not simply as an annotated
bibliography. The base from which sources for this review will be drawn will
also be as broad and rich as possible. This research project is strongly
informed by a belief in the strengths of interdisciplinary work and will engage
topics ranging from instructional design and educational psychology to
anthropology and virtual reality. The literature review and the interviews will
also serve to inform each other as the research dialectic goes forward.

The interviews will also be drawn from a large and varied pool of
subjects. The pool will include subjects from the above-named fields as well
as representatives of hardware and software manufacturers, leaders from the
corporate sector, a range of educators from all levels, as well as government
leaders. The research plan also includes international subjects and would
likely seek to draw on the Masie center Consortium as well. A number of
various interview media will be employed in order to maximize the number
of subjects interviewed. These instruments include, face-to-face, telephone,
and Web-based.

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 V. RESULTS

This section represents an integration of the literature review with

the results of the interviews conducted for this project. The topic headings
group loosely around focus points which emerged from the interviews.
Individual respondents are not currently identified by name since not all
respondents have given explicit permission for their names to be used – once
all permissions have been obtained – the record will be updated.

Current Deployments, Problems and Cultural Issues

When asked about why their particular organizations had currently

deployed e-learning in some form, survey respondents’ answers ranged from
those groups producing e-learning to those who view its power as
transformative to those for whom e-learning fills what has come to be the
more expected roles of extending the reach of training.

A respondent from the U.S. DOD stated that “The Army realizes that
to make the transformation from the current force to the Future Force,
training must be transformed. Embedded training, a key enabler for Future
Combat Systems (FCS), can be considered a subset of “e-learning” – it is
training available anytime, anywhere (albeit tethered to a combat vehicle), and
is becoming more and more tailored to an individual learner’s needs.”

One cultural/organizational problem that was mentioned was a

difference in thinking about how to use the e-learning system. A respondent
mentioned that employers wanted to “use the technology to control and
track learners, rather than motivate learners.” This sounds like a common
complaint heard regarding the design of LMSs in the first place – namely that
these are systems built to administer courses not provide learning. This
design seemingly flies in the face of users’ experience with the Internet and
the Web in general – the norm being one of almost complete user control
over a process.

One unmet need that was identified by multiple respondents deals with
the cultural problems which often accompany implementations of e-learning.
Some responses to this question; “What problems do you see for your
employees in reference to distance learning?” with:

• “Cultural resistance. Training has never been under scrutiny on

performance. Employers want to use the technology to control and
track learners, rather than motivate learners.”

• “Cultural change is one issue.”

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 • “How dl provides value within the context of what's traditionally been
an apprenticeship culture, with a lot of social overlay, where "face
time" is highly valued”

• “As for the culture, I think some vendors offer marketing help, but
they don’t do much to address cultural issues. The real issue is
whether the company truly has a learning culture, not just an e-
Learning culture.”

Interestingly though no respondents identified e-learning vendors who

were attempting to package cultural or organizational change management
with their traditional product lines. Most respondents, in discussing this issue,
mentioned that vendors were only providing marketing help for internally
launched courses. One respondent hammered this point by asserting that
“trainers don’t know how to do market research…they wait until the course
is launched and then complain about drop-out rates.”

Speaking possibly to the political resistance that can be found in some

organizations with strong training departments built around traditional modes
of instruction, one respondent stated that “ E-learning must be sold as
augmenting both the classroom instruction & live training phases, not
replacing them.”

Economics and Law

The lead question is this category dealt with respondents’ feelings in

terms of what would be the dominant economic model for selling e-learning
10 years in the future. The majority of respondents agreed that the model of
the future would resemble the Web services market much more than the
current situation. The downfall of the current models focusing on numbers of
users or number of courses purchased was predicted multiple times. Key
phrases here included “pay-as-you-go” and “transactional models.” One
respondent described vendor pricing models as a “pet peeve” and stated that
vendors “still want to sell butts in seats and sell their entire library” but that
their model needs “to be something like how many clicks do we pay for, and
how do they sell things by the chunk.”

Other respondents indicated that they were already seeing shifts of

this nature and that some companies were already benefiting from them.
“Many of these new vendors do not call their products learning technology
and consequently fly in under the radar of the established companies” was
how one description read. This “new breed” of “Business Process
Management” vendor is starting to take over ground typically held by training
and e-learning companies. Product offerings from these new companies offer
what Sam Adkins refers to as “workflow-based e-learning.” Features integral
to these products include embedded learning, and the integration of
simulations into the actual workflow. One respondent indicated that feedback
from these new companies’ customers cited reductions in “the need for
formal training” as one consequence of their implementations. As Sam Adkins

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notes, with this kind of integration of e-learning into the workflow, the status
quo of “just in time is now too late.”

As far as what exactly these product offerings would look like and
who was already walking down this road, suggestions were made to look at
such companies as Element K, Blackboard, eCollege and VCampus. These
companies were cited as having embraced a more modular design style which
allows them to offer a more customizable set of products to the end users.

Regarding the pricing of e-learning, one respondent asserted that

while “the cost of developing an hour of DL must go down” so too must
“companies must work on ways of producing effective & engaging content,
and interfacing to new technologies (e.g., simulations, PDAs, embedded
training.)”

Some respondents also noted that the corporate/institutional

timelines for purchasing decisions related to e-learning were stretching out;
“Very senior managers have been suspicious of training for a long time.
They’re now downright hostile. Training departments may not exist in a
decade as the general management of knowledge takes over.”

This next section is related to future visions of how e-learning is sold

and was instigated by a comment Elliott Masie had made during a summer
meeting of the Consortium. Elliott remarked that he thought one future look
for LMSs might resemble that of Amazon.com That is - an interface that
customizes itself on the fly to the learner based on needs, past performance,
etc. Respondents were asked what they thought of that as a potential model
and if it seemed feasible in the short run. Their answers ranged a wide
spectrum.

One group of respondents felt that the model was worthwhile but
perhaps would occur at a longer range. Exemplar quotes included the
following; “that model must succeed in order to realize the dream of training
tailored to individual learners’ needs. I think it is more of a long-term thing.”
Another noted that while desirable there was a set of details that would have
the potential to be showstoppers unless adequately answered; ““Desirable -
yes, but as the lady sez', the Devil's in the details. Feasible in the short run -
depends on what "short run" means. Actually making it work is, as they say, a
non-trivial task. Lots of questions will need to be resolved:

¾ where does all this data come from?

¾ how will people react to the sense of "nagging" that could result?
¾ who "owns" the data?
¾ are people going to be comfortable knowing that their employer is
logging all this?
¾ is it portable across employers?”

The other end of the spectrum, the side which disagreed with – not
with the possibility of such a model existing but the added value in such a
model, made their feelings clear. One response began with “absolute

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nonsense.” This model would fail because “users like to be in control.” The
Amazon.com model is cast as too given to surveillance and control to be
accepted in the online learning world.

Somewhere closer to the middle of this range was the opinion that
the answer here was yes and no. That yes, this model - in the sense of a
“fluid, personalized interface” would be the “way of the future” but only if
one continued the analogy to view e-learning as the same essential activity as
selling books. The true problem here seemed to be one of timing. There was
some acceptance that this type of personalization pointed at a way ahead but
that there were dangers inherent in this approach. One danger would be that
much as the constant comparison of e-learning to classroom-based
instruction has hampered exploration of e-learning’s potential as an
instructional medium - different than the classroom, so do does the
Amazon.com analogy limit our vision of future e-learning environments.

At least one respondent asserted that the analogy indicated “an

ineliminable customer- centric focus…, that is, one that depicts the learner as
a sort of customer, and therefore, a type of consumer, someone who would
be 'provided' with choices, options, customizations, etc.” and that the
language used in that instance “is a very different point of view than one
would use when saying, say, that the learning is something that is created by
the learner, that the environment is created, shaped, and even owned by the
learner.” This “learning environment” would resemble other analogies in part
because it envisions learning as part of the infrastructure; as indispensable to
a house as water or electricity but also as invisible.

“It is now possible for companies to get up and running with very little up-
front costs. Look at Amazon’s Web Services business model. They allow
“associates”, small Mom and Pop shops, to integrate the entire range of
Amazon functionality into their little specialty shop. Not a dime in
infrastructure beyond having a web site capable of “consuming” granular Web
Services. In the Amazon model, the little shops carry no inventory, has no
distribution costs, and requires no IT support (a little SOAP expertise is
needed to get up and running). Amazon does the real work once a customer
buys. In this model, Amazon (so far) gives the Web Services away for free
and gives the “associate” a small percentage of the sales, a higher percentage
for higher sales. The point is that a small company can make money with very
little up-front investment.” As mercurial as the current economic situation is,
the legal atmosphere surrounding e-learning may well hold even deeper and
more numerous pitfalls.

The majority of respondents in this research were nonplussed on the

issue of legal challenges which may impact this market; perhaps due to facing
other, more seemingly immediately pressing issues. The respondents who did
voice opinions on this topic however, did so at length and with passion. Two
main issues occupy the space in this camp; those related to copyright and
those related to patents.

One respondent clearly laid the blame for much of the current
enlargement of copyright laws on the American doorstep. “The current
copyright and patent crisis gripping the online world in general reflects more

15
American efforts to stifle development and innovation overseas than it does
any particular effort to reward creators and inventors.” Others outside the
e-learning world such as Lawrence Lessig, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
and Declan McCullagh have made it their lives’ work to point out the dangers
in allowing copyright laws to expand with balance or check. One respondent
characterizes it as “the clash as that between those who favour world trade
agreements as they are currently proposed and those who do not, between
those who favour copyright and patent regimes as they are currently drafted,
and those who do not, between those who favor the increasing restrictions
on freedoms and liberties, and those who do not.”

Examining the issue of content production in particular, one

respondent argues that;

“The debate about copyright isn’t about making people pay for
content. It’s about keeping the free content out. So the restrictions on
distribution and the threats against producers of free content must escalate.
That is why, in the current environment, producers attack distributors such
as Napster or Kazaa, rather than the people who actually do the copying.
That is why there is today a sustained legal attack against Linux from SCO
and its silent partners. If free content gets a foothold, then the bottom falls
out of the content market, and the market failure occurs: and if the
producers are right, we would then see widespread shortages as the pricing
model pushed producers out of the game.”

Advocates for the true creation of object-oriented building capabilities

in e-learning would be well served to educate themselves more fully on the
building body of copyright law which could well impact their future plans. The
impact of such things as the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act and the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the TEACH Act will be extensive and
difficult to correct for if organizations wait for them to become absolutely
entrenched. Copyright issues even impact the Amazon.com model in one
respondent’s statement that “in the field of educational content you see
much the same trend: control not merely of the content, but of the market in
which the content is distributed. This is why we see specialized content
repositories, such as Elsevier or Emerald online, rather than an Amazon-style
open market for academic papers. This is why we see exclusive content
agreements signed between LCMS companies and publishers such as
McGraw-Hill.”

Another head on the legal Hydra is patent law. One respondent

argues that “the biggest legal issue facing learning technology vendors is
patent lawsuits. This is not just isolated to learning companies, but now a
thorn in every vendor’s side. There is a whole new breed of patent holder
now that sells no product, does no research, develops no technology, has no
staff. They write up patents, or buy patents from individuals, and go after
major technology vendors one at a time. Lawyers work on commission.
These patent litigations all revolve around developing and tracking
conventional courseware products (tools and platforms), so far.”

That same respondent reports on a patent case which deals with the
realm of “process” patents (e.g. when Amazon.com patented its ‘one click’

16
practice). This case however, involves the ISD process and could possibly
touch almost everything in the e-learning market. He notes that “If that
patent is granted, every classroom and elearning course created or sold that
includes objectives, assessment, etc. and was developed systematically, will
owe the patent holder a fee. Since courseware based elearning is on the
decline in the corporate market, I can see vendors migrating rapidly to the
other form-factors. Until then, the existing patent litigators are concentrating
on platforms and tools.”

This area is clearly one in which e-learning vendors, purchasers and

users should all develop, at a minimum, a higher awareness. One could look
at the schedules of the recent e-learning conferences and see a dearth of
sessions addressing this important vector.

Globalization

An area which generated a great amount of heat was clearly the one
which dealt with issues of globalization and the problem of U.S. centric
content. One respondent recounted a story heard at TechLearn in 2001 of
“Centra sessions run by a US oil company into the Middle East using
synchronous learning on a Friday when everyone was in the mosque.”
Translation also continues to be a problem. The white hot core though of
this area is the light in which U.S. culture is view from an international
perspective. It was described by various respondents as “inflexible”,
“arrogant”, and suffering from hangovers from the current U.S. foreign policy
and from an ignorance of international legal issues.

The original question posed to respondents was; how does your

organization deal with e-learning in a global environment? Is it even a
concern? Are there prominent issues that surface outside the U.S. that the
U.S. market is largely unaware of? It was recommended by one non-U.S.
respondent that this question should be re-phrased and so it became; In your
opinion, what are some of the global issues confronting e-learning today? Are
you aware of any cultural or legal issues that could serve as road blocks to
organizations trying to implement e-learning globally? Have you noticed that
different issues get different levels of attention in varying parts of the world?

One set of responses touched on the previously addressed issues of

copyright and patent law. One respondent pointed to an article in Darwin
magazine which stated that “we are in the midst of a cultural war over
copyright, in which the salvos show the complete disconnect between the
colliding copyright regimes of statute and practicality, law and life."

Clarity on the issue of U.S. cultural hegemony was offered by one

respondent when he stated that “in a previous version of this answer I
characterized the issue as being one of American dominance over the rest of
the world, of the rise and coming fall of what has been widely described as
the American Empire. And there is a lot of truth to that observation, but I do
not want nationalism to obscure the main point, nor do I want it to mask the
nuances. It simply happens that most of the power in the world in centered in

17
the United States, and therefore when these issues come to the fore it is
very frequently the United States against much of the rest of the world.”

Organizations also responded to the idea that even within their own
domestic borders, they were faced with an increasing array of issues related
to a multicultural workforce. Although voiced with less passion and in fewer
numbers than, respondents made it known that their organizations were
faced with an increasing array of cultures and languages – within their own
corporate borders.

One respondent offered a clear warning to America on the issue of

continue to confront the disjuncture between American ideas of copyright
and intellectual property and the rest of the world.

“America is at a cross-roads: if it embraces the new America, it can

survive the globalization of knowledge and control; if it rejects it, the
new Americans will increasingly flee its shores. The old America is
clinging to power with increasingly desperate measures (the War on
terrorism is a desperate measure, the Patriot Act is a desperate
measure, the DMCA is a desperate measure). If the new America can
survive the lawsuits and the imprisonments and the loss of safety and
security, a renaissance is possible. But history does not auger well:
what we have traditionally seen, as the rise of America itself
symbolizes, is a rebirth in a new land, and the increasingly desperate
death throes of the old. Then irrelevance.”

e-Learning and the University

Respondents were asked to consider whether they saw a

convergence or divergence between the worlds of corporate e-learning and
e-learning in the higher education field. One was particularly frank, stating
that “the corporates [sic] see the word ‘university’ as aspirational [sic], yet
universities have little to offer in terms of content, pedagogy etc. Higher
education is driven by people who don’t really want to teach – they’re
normally introverted researchers – that’s why they’re in Higher Education!
Both sides will wallow in their own primitive ideas, while the kids get on and
use the technology.” Other responses focused on the partnerships between
the corporate world and higher education. One respondent made the point
that while an ever-increasing “numbers of students are attending non-
traditional institutions, such as the University of Phoenix” there have also
been some high-profile miscues such as “California Virtual University,
Columbia-Fathom, and Open University U.S.A.” and some such as Universitas
21 and WGU, which “live on life support.” This could be seen in several lights
including a clash of cultures or simply a reflection of the larger tech bubble
which gave rise to some of the more prominent mis-marriages in history.
The success of an organization like University of Phoenix however, argues for
more research into the factors which make this particular business so
attractive to so many students.

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 Another respondent warned of conflating some of the vectors
operating within this debate. This response in particular discussed the
tendency to equate the further commercialization/commodification of
education with the deployment of new technologies. The respondent stated
that while new technologies do “assist in the commercialization of education
…the greater part of the reason is that the private sector is more swift [sic]
to adopt new technologies.” The explanation goes on that while “the
deployment of new technologies can connote the commercialization of
learning, it need not do so, and were new technologies more widely adopted
(or more widely seen to be adopted, as colleges and universities have actually
been at the forefront in many cases) then this association would not occur.”

e-Learning in general was seen by others as having a transformative

effect on higher education. Although one respondent granted that traditional,
residential universities will continue to exist, they “will do away with classes
and lectures and formalized instruction, but they will continue to develop and
emphasize what really makes them valuable.” Te prospect however, was
offered up by several respondents that the more accessible nature of e-
learning to a wider population in the future might trend universities to having
even more financially elitist populations. One future scenario brought
forward was the idea of “new, specialist universities.” The model here would
be something like a religious university but could include “the ‘ecology
university’… set in the British Columbia wilderness…the ‘oceanic’ university,
set in Hawaii…universities dedicated to music, to sports, to world
development, to public service.”

One portion of the survey pursued the idea of what being a ‘lifelong
learner’ might look like in the future. The jumping off point for this line on
inquiry was the following quote from management guru Peter Drucker:

“Increasingly, an educated person will be somebody who has learned how

to learn, and who continues learning, especially by formal education,
throughout his or her lifetime. There are obvious dangers to this. For
instance, society could easily degenerate into emphasizing formal degrees
rather than performance capacity. It could fall prey to sterile Confucian
mandarins--a danger to which the American university is singularly
susceptible. On the other hand, it could overvalue immediately usable,
"practical" knowledge and underrate the importance of fundamentals, and
of wisdom altogether.”

The following questions were then asked:

Do you think Drucker is right?
How can this impact e-learning?

While one warning was to not let “e-learning be hijacked by the

Higher Education model” so as not to address the skills gap but rather a
qualifications gap, the most passionate and poignant response once again
highlighted the U.S. centric thinking implicit in the question.

One respondent pointed out that even within the U.S. there are still
children that go hungry and that he had seen “several studies conclude that
the program that would have the single greatest educational impact today is a

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hot lunch program…it doesn’t matter whether you are living in the Dark
Ages or in the Space Age, if you are not getting enough to eat you are not
learning: you are not learning the traditional material, nor either are you
learning the new.” This is a powerful point from a humanitarian perspective
but even from a less benign standpoint, companies would do well to consider
the minimal levels of personal well-being that are necessary for populaces to
consider using their products.

As a follow-on, another respondent noted that “from a cultural

perspective, e-learning is the only way to establish educational parity quickly
in developing nations.” The implementation of e-learning as asserted by this
respondent, would “allow the planet to leapfrog 30-50 years of sequential
technology phases” and that “wireless technology will be the delivery method
of choice (if not necessity)…there is simply no time (or point) to laying
landlines or fiber in developing nations or trying to sell desktops to billions of
people without landlines.” While seeming a social issue, this last answer
should encourage companies to more closely examine content production
issues related to multi-modality of content – that is the ability to produce
content once and have it customized on the fly for delivery to a variety of
devices.

Technology

This section examined potential areas of concern in the e-learning

world specifically related to new and emerging technologies. One question in
the interview focused on how the people that Marc Prensky refers to as
“digital natives”, will change the face of e-learning. The question was; what
will happen to training departments when kids who have been raised with a
PS2, broadband access, Pocket PCs, as their baselines hit the corporate
world?

A stage-setter here is this screen shot from a second grade class’s

blog.

One respondent offered a reflection that depicted a measured change.

As an e-learner himself, this respondent described how his graduate
experiences had changed from using taped sessions of class to watching live,

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streaming Webcasts and Web-based collaboration tools.” Another response
offered a personnel-based solution to the issue exclaiming - “the same thing
that will happen to the rest of the boomers, they’ll retire!

Other respondents offered more acute, provocative predictions:

“They’ll be despised. But these kids will inherit the earth and change it
anyway. This is simply a generational thing. HR is dominated by
techno phobic people who want to keep themselves in employment,
no matter how inefficient the process turns out to be. These kids will
have gone through 13-18 years of dull classroom teaching and know
what a waste of time most of it can be.”

and

“As you can imagine, it won't be pretty. I am wavering - either the

training departments will be completely changed or they will be
ignored. It's hard to think of learning in the future as something that is
packaged and delivered by a corporate training department.”

The consensus among all the responses is that training departments

will certainly be changing probably drastically and perhaps being absorbed
into other parts of the organization completely.

Questions which arise from these answers beg for further

investigation. Is the e-learning world, in a fit of mass irony, actually suffering
from a good case of technophobia? While we hear a good bit about the need
to back up any technological implementation with sound design, is that just an
excuse to ignore the amazing fast pace at which technology is changing and
the opportunities and problems that represents for organizations?

One thing which can be concluded is that to continue to have

technology, pedagogy, business requirements and user needs all living in
separate camps, only coming together to negotiate some temporary treaty is
a path destined to fail. The failure may be outright or more likely, will take
the form of a slow, cancer eating away at the potential for change that e-
learning holds. Not with a bang but a whimper.

M-Learning

This is one area clearly receiving much attention. The future of this
area however, is probably murkier than almost any other since it is my
definition, more technology dependent than other areas. It is also an area
that is open to a definition of its parameters. One respondent describes a
future e-learning “environment” as something approaching the Matrix:

“The environment is not a piece of software. The environment

surrounds us, literally, physically, as well as cognitively. The
environment hangs from our living room walls, is embedded in our
microwave, travels with us in our communicators and in our clothes.
Our environment is in a constant state of interaction with the

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 external world and with ourselves; one of the many functions it
provides is learning, and learning is now something that can't really be
separated from its other functions. Think of learning, on this picture,
as like writing. Imagine, in the pre-textual (or even the pre-printing)
era, the surprise and uneasiness people would have felt with the idea
that text, writing, is something that could appear anywhere and
everywhere it is needed, that it is portable, would travel with us,
would be sewn into our clothing, would guide us, would be, indeed,
our primary form of interaction with the world and with others. This
is the future state of learning. Where once we would affix or embed
some text, now we affix some content, some interaction, some
learning. These 'digital objects' (a bad term) become the new
vocabulary, they become the new form of expression, and define (as
Wittgenstein would say) the new form of life.”

While this future may not be available in the short-term, the pictures
in the introduction section of this report begin to offer clues as to its coming
by indicating ways in which people are literally weaving e-learning access
points into their lives and in such a way as to create a seamless environment.

A sampling of “floor talk” gathered from several e-learning

conferences this year, in relation to m-learning reveals some interesting areas
of focus, mainly from the end user or corporate implementer perspective.

• “M” doesn’t have to mean connected.

– Discussion here sought to define what the “M” really
stands for. Does mobile mean always connected or
sometimes connected but always portable? Concerns
focused on the ease, stability and availability of wireless
connections as well as the ability of various devices to
replicate the capabilities found in laptops and desktops.

• Content – Beyond Flash

– We’ve heard that context is becoming the defining
characteristic of the presentation of appropriate learning
content and the mobile world takes that to a new level.
Thus questions and concerns focused on what learning
content was being created that would not only be able to
be delivered via a mobile device but also the availability of
location-based services to contextualize the delivery of
that content. There was also a focus on how well
programs could sync back up information that had been
entered in an offline mode.

• Device questions
– The perennial question – what device do I get? Never has
the retort ‘what do you want it to do?’ been truer. The
range of mobile devices available to individuals and
organizations has never been greater and the variability of
feature sets is both becoming richer and narrowing. The
narrowing aspect indicates that more and more platforms

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 from all price points are being produced with similar
capabilities. Concerns here focused on pricing, stability,
and features.

• Multimodality – design implications

– The issues here center on deployment and development.
How can organizations develop content once and yet
deploy a range of devices required by the multiple needs of
their users and not wind up developing the same content
over and over for the entire spectrum of devices?
Companies such as Mobile Web Surf are beginning to
address that need by creating software which will
automatically re-purpose your content depending on which
device is accessing it.

• Learning v Training v Performance Support

– Almost a multimodal concern again but from a design
standpoint rather than delivery. Questions here dealt with
whether or not the software/devices were oriented
toward one of the three areas noted above. Various
organizations can actually have separate internal groups set
up to hand each area and the deployment of m-learning
threatens to cross-cut those boundaries.

• How to sell the idea up and down in your organization

– This area was a near-universal concern. The idea is not so
much one of internal marketing (that’s a part) but echoes
the need, already reported on here, for organization
change to support m-learning deployments. The “up sell”
must include ROI and other metrics as well as an
educational campaign to help senior decision-makers
clearly define expectations and requirements. The “down
sell” must take into account the workflow of the end users
and not add complexity/difficulty to their day. They must
also be convinced of top management’s buy-in.

• Security – but not sure what that means

– A prominent concern and one accompanied by much
confusion. Three areas of security were defined:
• Transmission: The security of data being sent to or
received from a device.
• Data: Whether or not the data on a device is
encrypted.
• Physical security: Deals both with the security of
the device itself against loss, theft, damage, etc. but
also with the security of corporate facilities and
information in the presence of mobile devices.

When respondents to the survey were asked about the m-learning

potential of such a ubiquitous device as the cell phone and if such a device
could be a learning platform, the positive response was nearly universal. On
respondent not only addressed the a priori nature of a positive answer by

23
stating “wrong question... it already is…in Europe text messaging is much
bigger than in the US…like email, text messaging is already a learning
medium.” He then added that this situation flew in the face of the traditional
training paradigm in which “trainers are trapped in a definition of learning
that depends on teaching” adding that “teaching is not a necessary condition
for learning…if you use email or GOOGLE, you’re an e-learner.” Another
respondent echoed the positive potentials by adding that this would work
“especially for just-in-time operator/maintainer training…the possibilities for
reachback training are enormous.”

Gaming and Simulations

Given that gaming, game-based learning and simulations are highly

visible memes currently, respondents were asked to discuss their impact on
the world of e-learning.

“Fundamental” remarked one respondent. A DOD respondent noted

the power and at least potential pitfall in the employment of this technology;
“They are close to making a major impact, but developers & R&D types need
to realize we don’t let Army second lieutenants loose in live training events
without observer/controllers – yet if we don’t put some sort of AI O/C into
game-based simulations, we are in essence doing just that. We are in danger
of endorsing negative training.”

There is a growing body of research being published on the positive

aspects of video/computer games. Recent articles which outline positive
health benefits of gaming are accompanied by recent books such as those
authored by Clark Aldrich, James Paul Gee and Marc Presnky which detail the
positive educational and cognitive aspects of learning through games and
simulations.

Another aspect of the gaming and simulation world as it relates to

e-learning lies in the fact that it is not just e-learning that is thinking about
using gaming but also gaming that is already using e-learning. The greatest
example of this is from a contest involving a game known as Unreal
Tournament. This is a first-person, multiplayer shooter and runs on one the
most cutting edge gaming engines available today. Released earlier this year,
the game currently has 233,270 players registered in its online 7,171 servers
playing on 5,838 maps and who have completed 1,384,750 matches in
1,541,842.2 hours.

As with virtually any game sold on the market today, Unreal was
created to be edited. That is, the company actually designed a program that
could edit various parts of the game world and released it right along with
the game. This has become standard practice in much of the computer game
world since the power of the “mod” (short for modification community)
became so evident. The mod community regularly creates new content for
the game for free. One instance has a free mod of the game Battlefield 1942
being downloaded over 500,000 times in a period of months.

24
 The case of Unreal Tournament 2003 is unusal however in that the
companies behind the game (Digital Extremes and Epic Studios), decided to
hold a contest to determine who among their user community could create
the ‘best’ mod. They obtained some additional corporate sponsorship and

began soliciting entries. They also did something else that had not been done
before – they created an entire Web site with over 120 hours of video
training modules to teach people how to create the mods – and then they
made it free. The company that created the training site, 3DBuzz, added
another twist. Each student would begin each class with 1,000 points. Those
points could be ‘spent’ mainly on getting questions answered by your
classmates. That would mean that if you really needed a question answered,
you might feel you needed to spend 500 points to get the answer. When a
classmate provided a satisfactory answer, he/she would then have 1500
points to pursue his/her questions.

Providing users with the ability to create their own content in their
own environment is a potentially powerful tool that the e-learning market
would do well to study further.

e-Learning and Design

A quote from William Gibson’s latest book, Pattern Recognition, was

used to focus respondents’ attention on the place of instructional systems
design (ISD) in a future that feels as if it is moving at an ever-increasing pace.

''Of course,'' he says, ''we have no idea, now, of who or what the
inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future.
Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they
did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day,
one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course,
things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures
like our grandparents? We have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We
have no future because our future is too volatile.’’.''We have only risk
management. The spinning of the given moments'' scenarios. Pattern
recognition.''

25
 The following questions were then asked:

• How do you see ISD surviving in a world with very little 'now'?
• Do you see the 'course' surviving as a meaningful unit of
instruction?
• How can ISD survive / add value in an environment that
demands dynamic updating?

One respondent offered a measured response indicating an

evolutionary shift versus a revolutionary one.

“It’s hard for me to just “assume” he’s right. Our grandparents saw
MANY changes to their future. Likewise, the technology we see
today in e-learning will NOT be the technology our children see. I
believe corporate & military training will be “chunked” into small, just-
in-time modules, but more academically-oriented education will stay
course oriented for some time. Too much tradition to overcome.
ISD will need to become more user-oriented or it will go the way of
traditional CBT.”

Others offered less sanguine views, the briefest reply to the question
of whether ISD will survive being; “it won’t.” Some stated that it would
survive but not outside of a 5-10 year window; “but it won't simply die, it
will morph imperceptibly…its decline will not be seen equally in all places; it
will linger on much longer in rigidly structured cultures and learning
environments…corporate and military learning, the first to really embrace it
with open arms, will be the last to let go.”

Another respondent offered a chance for survival but in a shifted form. The
chance, according to this answer, depends on how well can change some
rather well set practices. The respondent notes that “overall, the amount of
analysis usually associated with "hard ISD"---takes up too much time, is too
monolithic and assumes a static environment into which to deliver the end-
product.” This will have to be replaced he continues, with a more agile
approach, something currently resembling “extreme programming” which
advocates rapid iterations and small releases versus the current approach
“where you keep interating the design until the customer says OK (or the
budget runs out).”

26
 Other also offered chances for ISD, in some cases, focusing on the
risk mitigation aspects of the process although allowing that even that will be
“compressed and quick.” The “course” however, was given few chances to
survive.

When asked if they saw the ‘course’ surviving as a meaningful unit of

instruction, respondents quickly returned with answers such as; “it won’t”
and “with nobody to offer the course, how can the course survive?” Other
provided an alternative stating that “it will be the chunk!” Others described
the death of the course in light of the dawning of an e-learning environment
and that a major characteristic of that environment would be that “anything
static is dead…that's the new reality…that's Gibson's point…we need to
become used to perceiving what we perceive as something that is itself,
essentially, dynamic…this is not merely a change of perception; it is a change
of world view.

One respondent explained that this shift is logical in that ISD and its
main output, the course were creations birthed “created at the apex of
industrial society (WWII) and inevitably reflects the conceptual models of
that world” and that “the ‘new ISD’ will grow out of the worldview of post-
industrial society.…obviously…the praxis of a post-industrial ISD is about
different kinds of systems and different end results.”

This section and its results should obviously hold great interest for
e-learning vendors. The ideas put forward in these responses, if put into
action, would represent a sea change on the e-learning market.

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 VII. CONCLUSIONS

The narrative that emerges from the research as a whole and the
respondents’ information in particular, points to an industry and an idea at a
crossroads. While crisis is probably too strong a word to employ, it is useful
to observe that the picture of e-learning depicted here has many of the same
characteristics as the Chinese pictogram for crisis.

There is truly danger and opportunity represented in the future of e-learning.

The danger it seems comes mainly from ignoring the powerful vectors now
acting either closely or at a distance on the e-learning market. These range
from the need to shift pricing models, to the increasing pressures of a global
economy to issues concerning copyright and patent law – the effects of which
may not fully manifest themselves for years.

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 The goal of this report was not to provide a clean ending to the story
of this research but rather should be viewed as a progress report.

As is the case with almost any research, there are multiple

conclusions that may be drawn from the data; however, a difference inherent
in this research must be noted. As stated earlier, the process of conducting
this research was intended to be as much a part of the project as the other,
more traditional parts. This was done out of a concern that much as with the
continuing usage of broken analogies in e-learning (e.g. comparing the
classroom to online experiences), continuing to research something like the
future of e-learning using traditional tools would result in a less
contextualized result.

There is still a world to be covered. Recently the BBC has recently

released plans to digitize and make public its entire archive of content.
Programs like ‘bit torrent’ are offering new ways to distribute content while
minimizing the impact on bandwidth. Movements like machinima are
re-writing the precepts of content production. The surface has also just been
scratched on such technologies as RSS, wiki, augmented reality, IM, and the
power of an iPOD as a learning device.

More than ever, what you say about the future of e-learning depends
on how you define it. Seemingly for the traditional attempts to replicate
classrooms and courses online, the future is fairly bleak. If however, you
define e-learning as an environment, rich in context, interaction and
opportunities for collaboration - then the evidence seems to point to a
bumpy road but with a worthy destination.

“The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only

what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those
whom we love the most.” Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949)
Joyzelle. Act i.

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List of sites – include here and on the blog
Bibliography
Web Bibliography

30
 WEB BIBLIOGRAPHY

Copyright and Patent Law

Distance Education Clearinghouse from the University of Wisconsin

Extension
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/intprop.html

Distance Education and the TEACH Act from the American Library
Association
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Distance_Education_and_the_TEA
CH_Act&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=
25939

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Study from the Copyright Office of the
Library of Congress
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_study.html

The Copyright Cage: Why we should care who gets the merchandising deal
from a movie or the song tie-in on a variety show.
BY JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/090103/copyright.html

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