September 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of a very important report by equity analyst Howard Block, Ph.D. Entitled The e-Bang Theory: Education Industry Overview 1999 Illuminismo, Volume 2 (San Francisco: Banc of America Securities Equity Research, Montgomery Division, September 1999), this report is credited with igniting the explosion of interest in financial markets that legitimized what is known today as eLearning.
Note the careful use of language. It's not that 1999 is the year when elearning first started being deployed, nor was it the first time that the phrase was seen in print. Rather, 1999 is the year that Block outlined the tenets of his theory that explained why and how investing in businesses that featured technology to facilitate online learning would probably make investors and the companies in which they chose to invest a lot of money.
I attending a meeting at the SRI International campus in Menlo
Park, CA in
September, 1999 just after this report was released. Probably tells you a lot about the times that everyone devoured
anything from analysts that talked about
investing opportunities using web technologies and the related products and
services that accompany them to market, to school and to work.
Remember, this was back in the day when we were ALL putting an "e" at the front of
what we were doing - ecommerce, ebusiness,
and so, naturally, elearning. And we learning technology types, the instructional designers who were FINALLY gonna get some cool new technologies to work with, were jazzed.
In making the case that 1999 was the time for a new model of learning to appear on the horizon, Block noted that...
- "The economy is quickly becoming dependent upon human capital, which forces all of us to increase our aptitude at managing and productively employing human capital, a task incumbent upon all of our learning systems.
- "Political initiatives are inviting more businesses inside the school house door than every before in the history of public education. these initiatives include charter school legislation and voucher programs.
- "The inexorable technological revolution continuously overhauls the workplace, thereby forcing workers to treat learning as a basic part of their job description. Technology is not only a driver for more learning but it is also an enablers of electronic learning (e-learning). The intellectual demands of the economy are outstripping our capacity to satisfy it. (Block, 1999, P.3)
Wow, I thought to myself from my vantage point ten year later - This is sounding strangely familiar. Deja vu, all over again. Could it be that the universe has realigned? Or maybe we didn't get as much work done as our rhetoric would have suggested?
Block went on to define elearning as the convergence of the internet and education and identified 15 unique benefits associated with it:
- Available at any time. "It's always there!"
- Accessible from any location "I can always get to it"
- Multimedia content: use of audio, video, interactive chat, text, etc.
- Accommodates individual learning styles: self-paced, asynchronous collaborative, synchronous collaborative.
- Hyperlearning as contrasted with static text, elearning has the capacity to link with the other resources (simulations, other content, study groups, etc) that can enhance the learning experience and avoid the linear learning dictated by textbooks. The self-directed nature of elearning allows hyperlearning.
- Blindness of the learning engagement: some learners who are inhibited in a classroom may increase engagement online
- Learner-centered learning: The learner is not a passive participant but a proactive searcher and finder of information.
- Modularity of presentation: The content's architecture is modular, which facilitates different construction of learning design in both design and length.
- Manageable structure: The electronic infrastructure supports managed and measurable interactions between advisers and learners
- Ability to measure the effectiveness of the program. eLearning software empowers administrators to track performance and measures ROI. IN addition, monitoring usage by user is simpler, i.e., the number of downloads per user can be measured. This helps training managers to evaluate cost-effectiveness and provides assistance with license negotiations based on estimated use.
- Simpler data management, The rapid rate with which new learning products are introduced and older products become obsolete creates a challenge for individuals charged with updating libraries. However, if a single version of each product is kept on a host, users get instantaneous access and updated components.
- Cost savings: provides and efficient and cost-effective model for education
- Revenue enhancement: provides a way for campuses to expand classroom enrollments without using bricks and mortar.
- Greater storage capacity. The Internet has so much great capacity than most physical locations or a user's hard drive. This allows learners to access more products and lets the adviser mix and match courseware activities to fit specific needs. Learners can preview presentations of different courses prior to selecting one, or they can access a specific slide from thousands.
- Individual education programs (IEP) can be generated from a combination of the historical record of the student's prior learning (from monitored usage) and the vast data stored on the server. As student's progress, information is delivered based on what they learned and how they've performed. For example, a student would log on to the learning server and a customized course would be generated from the content data base that knows which courses the learner took, how well she did, what her job description is, what problem is most pressing. This dimension serves to focus the curriculum on skill gaps, saving organizations both time and money. A by-product of IEPs, in our view, is increased motivation from the self-centered nature of the experience.
Whoa. This is sounding REALLY familiar...so familiar, in fact, that one has to wonder if maybe our agenda for the next gen of elearning, the Web 2.0 era, should be aimed at delivering on some of these promises that Block and the investment communities were making on our behalf as long as ten years ago. Because when I think of some of the cool things that I heard from Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle in Web Squared (please see my blog post from a few days ago for details), and I think of how far we need to go to deliver on these 15 promises described above...well, I have to say, I am STILL excited about all the opportunities.
The good news is that we're still somewhat on point, and continue to navigate our way through the 15 value propositions that Block proposed. The better news is that the infrastructure and capacity of the technologies we are to work with have greatly improved. The devices and networks need to connect the pieces have become common-place.
Perhaps the best news of all is that we learning technologists are STILL jazzed about the new technologies just waiting to be leveraged in the service of teaching and learning. Conditions are right for pushing out old tired paradigms, and adopting the parts that make sense for true "anytime, anywhere just in time just for me" learning. Smart companies that are ready to invest in the "eBang Re-Boom" are starting to gather, much in the same way they did ten years ago. And there are more of us than ever before...all looking for a way to reignite the explosion.
People, get ready.
