The e-Line #4:
Lamenting Some e-Learning Losses

Lamenting is not something I do often, but lately I have found myself lamenting the disappearance of some of the support services that made the e-learning market just a bit easier for corporate consumers.

The now defunct Online Learning Magazine was one of the most outstanding publications on the market. I say market loosely, as the publication had a free subscription model and was supported entirely by advertisers. But it was packed with informative articles and case studies. It has been merged into Training Magazine, a fine publication, but it's going to mean about a third of the focus on e-learning that was previously provided.

Long gone are the course portal concepts that allowed organizations to pick and choose off-the-shelf e-learning courses from a variety of vendors. From the corporate perspective, this concept gave organizations a lot more choice and control than buying suites of courses from just one or two vendors. Corporate consumers are frustrated, as illustrated at the June ASTD conference. At a State of the Industry panel session a corporate training manager lashed out, "You are making my job much harder!"

Perhaps this trend has a lot to do with the demise of Lguide. Lguide would review most off-the-shelf e-learning courses from an instructional design perspective. Subscribers could search and sort the reviews to see which ranking a vendor's product had received (for example, five stars). While handy to look at when contracting a suite of courses (to check your short-listed vendors), without course portals the value of Lguide's service declined.

I had an interesting chat with an Lguide's executive after the previously mentioned ASTD session, and asked his perspective on whether the course portal concept might be resurrected. He said that the concept still made sense but that no one had been able to make the business model work. Little did I imagine that he could have been describing his own company.

E-learning conferences are an interesting barometer. When I attended the OnlineLearning conference in 2000 there were 7,000 delegates. In 2001 attendance was about half, though not surprising considering it was held two weeks after September 11th. But I understand it hasn't bounced back: in 2002, attendance was about 2,500. Similarly when I attended the TechLearn 2001 conference in October last year, I was one of 1,600 delegates, about half of the usual. Time will tell how attendance at the 2002 conference goes.

Is all this bad? No, not necessarily. What it is an indicator of, perhaps, is that the early hype has worn off (thank goodness!). The early adopters are all underway and as these organizations improve their e-learning efforts we can learn from them. As other organizations are entering the e-learning arena, they are doing their homework and not rushing in to the first solution offered. Most definitely not a bad thing.

Maybe we are moving towards a more balanced model, one that begins to view e-learning where it belongs: as potentially a very powerful tool that is just one aspect of an overall corporate learning and development strategy. I tend to think that's healthy, as slicing off e-learning into its own little empire had some risks.

Here are some good e-learning resources that haven't yet bitten the dust:
www.elearningpost.com - elearningpost is simply one of the best resources for e-learning intelligence.
www.elearningmag.com - e-Learning Magazine appears to be still going strong.
www.learningcircuits.com - Learning Circuits is ASTD's Web site dedicated to e-learning.
www.meta-time.com/enew.htm - Jay Cross' e-learning jump page.

Post Script: Since writing this column, the latest issue of Training Magazine came out. The editorial cited the reason why OnlineLearning Magazine had been folded into Training Magazine as being the movement towards blended learning made the second publication redundant.... As much as I believe that a blended umbrella is the future, I frankly don't think we're there yet. I think it sounds like a good cover for declining advertising revenues. I am still waiting for my Training Magazine to get fatter as a result... OK, the good news is that they have put all the archives of OnlineLearning Magazine on the Training Magazine website (www.trainingmag.com), and for that I am grateful. - RLW