On the threshold of international educational forum “E-learning Russia: e-learning possibilities today” and international conference E-learn Expo 2010 we've decided to prepare this review of CIS's actual trends of development in 2010-2013. May be our picture is a bit of too corporative perspective, but it's the consequence of Smart education portal's specific character. While working on the review, with the help of experts we managed to formulate 20 key trends of e-learning industry's development in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).
How did we work? The basis of this review lies in our own experience in observations and analysis of market situation. In addition, we proposed to vendors to comment on the most problematic or provoking trends. For this purpose we've used “Ask the expert” option on Elearn Expo 2010 and Elearning! Summit 2010.
All the trends were divided into 4 groups: social-demographic; rules of play; marketing, and technologies.
Social-demographic trends
These trends are some transitory form between learning and IT. They somehow define the strategic aspects of e-learning;s development in the nearest years.
Trend 1 – Generations Shift
People of different generations tend to different typical attitude towards IT, including e-learning. This trend defines the character of change in this attitude.
1945-1964 Generation – Baby boomers. These people got in touch with technologies in mature age, and they usually have some problems with using it. Immersion of such an employee into digital environment is a long process of learning, with painful adaptation and heavy resistance.
Generation X 1965-1979 – Digital Adaptation. These people experienced the development of IT in their teenage years. They used to master IT in entertainment, e. g. while playing video games. They prefer using IT only for some limited purposes, such as communication and searching for information. Immersion of these employees into digital environment has some short-term problems with adaptation and learning.
Generation Y1980-2000 – Born in the Digital. This generation has clear division between their online and offline activities. Immersion is natural; in the most cases they adapt and master technologies in intuitive way.
Generation V – 2000 - … - Embodied in the Digital, or Digital Avatars. It's presumed that they would communicate, build their personal and professional relations mostly in social networks, virtual worlds, and online games.
There may be some territorial distinctions, but in general this trend shows that generations BB and X are supplanted by generation Y, with all the consequences for digital technologies usage, and E-learning technologies in particular.
Trend 2 – Increase of Mobility in Knowledge
What the percentage of necessary knowledge for the proper working the person can keep in his or her mind?These percentage is constantly decreasing. It was 75% in 1986 , 20-15% in 1997, and 8-10% only in 2008. The tendency towards permanent acceleration of updates in operative knowledge is evident. Questions as “What don't I know and how could I get this knowledge?” is of a key importance for modern employees. The faster they can find the answers for these questions, the faster they will demonstrate proper results in their work. So the means of learning and knowledge management must make the access to the information easier, and shorten the period of access to necessary updated knowledge.
Trend 3 – Immersion of the Workplace into Digital Space.
Communications and information processing is now mostly performed in digital space.
Trend 4 - Increase of Mobility in Human Resources
By now, the average term of working in the same organization rarely exceeds 1.5 years. It means that the time of adaptation and learning for each employee is constantly shortening. In such conditions the plan of perspectives for the employee rarely exceeds 3 years. The main learning workload is shifted from formal structures onto informal: social learning, mutual learning, on-demand learning, sharing knowledge systems, individual processing of information.
Trend 5 – The Development of Collaborative Culture in Corporate Learning
Personnel education is now mostly accented on sharing knowledge through personal interaction, and corporative portals, sites, applications.
Changes in Rules of Play
Trend 6 – Government Regulation
It often happens that the technology must reach some critical level of development in order to be noticed and considered as a channel of impact in the sphere of politics. The next logical step is government regulation in the practice of application of this technology. Then usually follows government financing – and sometimes it causes lobbying of some local favors.
By this time some prerequisites for systemic regulation as legislative initiatives in the field of E-learning were noticed in Russia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan.
The question for vendors: What expectations do you have considering the perspectives of government regulation in the field of e-learning in your country?
Alexey Korolkov, director general of WebSoft company:
The creation of associations or consortium has some sense only in such conditions as great increase of the E-learning market and law regulation of distance education on all levels of educational system. In this case the association will be able of some meaningful lobbying functions.
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”, limited liability company:
Here in Belarus the market of e-learning is just being conceived, and it promises good prospects for those who become founders. However, it is unlikely that the aspect of government regulation will have some influence on our main activities in Russia, because the certification of such services will scarcely happen soon.
Lia Volova, marketing director of “Active” corporation:
Honestly speaking, I doubt whether it has some sense to consider the perspectives of government regulation in the industry of E-learning to be real in the near future here in Ukraine. All the statements from politics are only declarations without legislative basis. And without it the vigorous and consistent development of e-learning in the academic system is impossible. Educational institutions certainly implement, or will implement some elements of distance education. But in order to be systemic, this process needs some official attitudes. But at the same time in corporative sector which is not bound by severe norms of government regulation the E-learning systems will develop much more rapidly, because they perfectly suit to the needs of personnel education's automation.
Yuri A. Knyazhevich, head of department of E-learning systems of IBA (“International Business Alliance”):
In my opinion, the development of E-learning in our country, Belarus, haven't yet reached such level which would make government think of regulation of this form of education.
Dmitry L. Krechman, marketing director of “HyperMethod IBS”:
The expectations are mainly negative. I think it would be just another attempt to rule the process of distribution. But it won't have success, because the main trend in state administration is liberal.
Alexey Vlaskin, “VideoPort”:
Regulation of distance education system will help learners to feel confident and secure in the process of e-learning, to see it holistic and clear. It will provide proper methods and standards of quality. We hope that new regulations in distance education will explain some obscure features for users, e. g. copyright and records of E-learning materials and thus dispel some fears.
Undoubtedly, new legislation will promote the progress and development of video conferencing as a powerful tool of distance education.
Trend 7 – Consolidation of the Field
The growth of number of vendors, specialists, state educational initiatives and financing form a natural need for consolidation of the field. The purpose of such consolidation is not only sharing experience, but also formalization of professional level of the industry and lobbying the interests of E-learning in the state financing programs.
The active growth in the number of specialists who attend professional communities for sharing knowledge and experience is an indirect sign of need for consolidation. At a point in time of writing this review the number of members of E-learning Pro – one of the largest communities – was over 800.
Unfortunately, the practice shows that there are no reasons to expect the appearance of structures, which would be able of making formal standards and lobbying field's interests in the government.
Academic sector and project “Consortium “Electronic University”” may become prime movers of the consolidation.
Also there are some precedents of big business’s participation in development of e-learning industry in CIS. For example, “Lucoil” have given support to Elearn Expo 2010 conference. So may be there are some reasons to expect some initiatives for consolidation of all the industry’s representatives in one or several professional associations from big business.
The question for vendors: What expectations do you have considering the role of associations and consortiums as public organizations, professional associations as informal organizations for E-learning industry’s development? Does the industry need some formalized professional association? What functions should it perform?
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”:
Yes, we need such formalized association! We won’t even need to invent something you, just take as a basis a charters of other professional associations. However, if talking about a structure with some business goals, it won’t exist too long because of permanent rivalry instead of collaboration. For times of extensive market growth and acquiring self-consciousness the variant of my choice is some “club structure” with obligatory regional regulation.
Lia Volova, marketing director of “Active” corporation:
Public organizations, armed with technologies of PR in politics could create some lobby in the government for interests of E-learning market. Dedicated activities in power structures are may be the only means for driving mechanisms of government regulation towards the wide application of e-learning technologies. And as of professional associations, I think that their only function is promotion of new technologies in education. They wouldn’t be able of influencing some important for the industry decisions, political and economical processes. But in forming the public opinion they could be more successful if their activities were not only of an online character.
Dmitry L. Krechman, marketing director of “HyperMethod IBS”:
Such associations do exist, and their very essence is self-regulation. So, they will define their level of formalization just when they need it. So far everything about it seems good.
Alexander Ryabinin, “Multimedia” laboratory:
It’s like if you use your blender for mixing cocktails, you feel pleasure and have benefit for your health and don’t regret for money spent on it, but if you put into your blender some inappropriate things, your blender will be broken and that things will be spoiled.
So I think that appearing of professional associations brought some informational benefits, when various formations as academic education and corporative training, and paid and free systems all have run into each other and a great variety of opinions and, which is the most important, useful practical information has appeared. But there is one disturbing aspect; it is some drift into discussions, useless wrangles, which just clutter up theme sites.
I’m not sure that formalization of these communities may result in something worthwhile. Now people share their opinions, news, and content willingly and sincerely, but the enthusiasm is only incitement for action, and it will run out anyway. But if not onу or two people, but the whole teams of like-minders would lead and move these communities, they can survive.
The principles of such communities should base on Web 2.0 ideas – collective mind: “Share it”, “Comment on this”, “Recommend it”, “Write it down” and so on. So the goals are structuring and classifying of information, technical support and working with people side. People are of superior importance for professional associations if they want to become really valuable for professional interaction.
So I can conclude that the need for professional association in e-learning industry is evident for me, but such association must be headed by really professional and dedicated people.
The question for experts: Is there some structure or group of structures in Russia which provides certification for personnel working in the sphere of E-learning in commercial organizations, educational institutions, and governmental organizations?
Marina E. Weindorf-Sysoeva, director of Open Education Institution, Moscow State Regional University:
There is Agency for Public Control of Education Quality and Career Development in Russia. It provides services of professional end public estimating the quality of education, complex audit of educational institution, quality management, educational business consulting. They are also competent for certification of the personnel working in the sphere of E-learning in joint-development with EFQUEL and ENQA.
Denis Volkov, president of Success Insights CIS:
Unfortunately, by now I don’t know any structures of this kind. Without educational standards for training of such specialists the creation of appropriate systems of certification or at least common requirements for such specialists and criteria of certification is really difficult. Certain educational institutions provide training of specialists in the sphere of e-learning and confirm their qualification with diplomas and certificates, but there is no united system of certification. But I think that many interested organizations are working on it, and soon such a system will be created, and certificating organization will appear.
Voronov A., “Stel Computer Systems”:
Personnel certification is usually based on Russian Federation’s Law on Education. The current version of this law doesn’t regard E-learning as a separate form of education. Only the technology of E-learning is mentioned in it. So the question of certification must some other wording. Specialists in technologies can be certificated: teaching methods specialists in technologies, field personnel for technical supporting, executors for preparing digital content. But integral certification is impossible.
Marketing
The third group of trends describes some aspects of E-learning’s marketing in CIS.
Trend 8 – The E-learning Market Increases
If we had only one word for describing this trend, it would be “Optimism”. Indicators of this tendency are:
* Growth in number of members of professional e-learning communities
* Amplification of services, providing platforms for webinars.
* Wide practice of using webinars for customer learning and sales.
* Appearance of new players on E-learning market in CIS
The results of E-learning market investigation were published.
The question for vendors: How can you comment on Ambient Insight Investigation results, particularly Sam S. Adkins’s declaration that tempos of E-learning market’s growth are more then 20%?
Alexey Vlaskin, “VideoPort”:
According to our observations that’s true. Higher educational institutions using VideoPort software for E-learning admit that adoption of videoconferencing into learning process is easy. Professors and students need 2-3 months for adaptation, and then distance lectures and video seminars become the part of common curriculum. E-learning is generally used for involvement branches of the institute in best tutors’’ lectures. Students from the regions are able of asking questions during such video lectures. Videoconferencing makes E-learning interactive, and students are very satisfied with the fact.
Boost of sales up to 50% was noticed since 2008. And we guess rapid development of this industry throughout Russia.
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”:
We can rather confirm these results. Despite the economic slump, or may be even due to it, the market of E-learning has been growing for 2 years. But we observe rather numerical growth then balanced in number and quality. It means that there is growing number of enterprises, foreign companies and educational institutions that try to implement E-learning for training, informing and testing their employees. But we can see some lack of awareness, goal-setting, consistency, competent specialists. Together with this numerical growth it may cause significant problems for immature e-learning market.
Alexey Korolkov, director general of WebSoft company:
We have no idea, what was the basis of this data for Eastern Europe. No polls or surveys in Russia and CIS are known to us. The share of western vendors in our markets is tiny, so their data can’t form valid information. So these figures were spun out of thin air. Or they did not mean Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus when describing “Eastern Europe”.
Lia Volova, marketing director of “Active” corporation:
The tendency mentioned by Adkins has been evident over last year period. Our observations for activities of educational centers, teaching accountants and financier for international CAP/CIPA and ACCA DipIFR attestations show that enrollment of resident instruction students is slumping. Sometimes these courses even become unprofitable. And at the sane time interest for e-learning analogues is increasing. The number of e-learners on dipifr.com and cap-cipa.com portals has grown up to 79.6% in the period since November 2009 till April 2010. So in separate segments tempos may be even better then those described by Adkins.
Dmitry L. Krechman, marketing director of “HyperMethod IBS”:
Substantially more then 20%! Annual growth in our company is substantially higher, and the number of rivals is increasing.
Trend 9 – Customers become more sophisticated
The question for vendors: What changes in customers’ behavior can you admit in recent 1-1.5 years? How did the requests for software implementation and courses development change? What about change in criteria of assessment of E-learning? What are main fields of industry of your customers in recent 1-1.5 years (choose top-3 industries before August 2008 and top-3 industries for present time)?
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”:
In this year customers became more accurate in choice of their permanent provider or provider for single project. Tenders became more frequent and complicated. Customers began preparation and rewards of their internal authors, programmers, designers; they snow interest in project management and pedagogical design for e-learning.
Lyudmila Brenzey, director, educational center “Active”:
The “Implementation of Innovational Technologies of E-learning for Higher Educational Institutions” conference has shown that the attitude towards E-learning’s effectiveness had greatly changed in academic community. This reaction is caused by the fact many majors are not called-for now. Educational institutions have to look for new forms of learning, or just dismiss some majors. The most progressive ones are ready for considering E-learning as an alternative to traditional education.
Dmitry L. Krechman, marketing director of “HyperMethod IBS”:
Projects became appreciably larger.
Lance Dublin - Chief Solution Architect & Creative Abrasionist at Dublin Consulting:
I feel constant growth of need in accelerated design of learning content.
Customers use ROE tools more and more actively.
Alexander Ryabinin, “Multimedia” laboratory:
Customers became more pretentious, they want to impose their opinion. It’s good for us, because it allows us broadening our horizons, analyzing assessments for our work. People now rarely consider e-learning to be just an entertainment. Assessment criteria remain the same. These are learning results and money to save. As for customers’ fields of industry, state sector became more active. For August 2008 Top-3 industries were Banking, Industry, and Academic sector. Now they are Banking, State sector and Industry.
The question for vendors: What were the changes in pricing for software and courses design?
Alexey Korolkov, director general of WebSoft company:
There was no significant change. Increase in price stopped, or rates for services went down a bit.
Lance Dublin - Chief Solution Architect & Creative Abrasionist at Dublin Consulting:
Nothing changes; customers always want maximum quality for minimum money.
Yuri A. Knyazhevich, head of department of E-learning systems of IBA (“International Business Alliance”):
We used to have the same price on e-University for all our customers. But in autumn 2009 we decided to change this principle, differing customers by their field: state educational institutions, higher educational institutions, other organizations. For state high educational organizations the price is lower. Also we have discounts for our partner organizations.
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”:
The matter is rather in design tools’ development, using existing runners, models and components. This allows optimizing courses development’s costs, and thus cut down expenses.
Roman Shevchenko, IT director, “Active” corporation:
They reduced. Market conditions made us revise project budgets. We now prefer open source software.
Alexey Vlaskin, “VideoPort”, limited liability company:
We’ve revised our pricing policy significantly in recent six months. It’s not a secret that higher educational institutions don’t have much money for buying expensive software. So we brought down the prices for them approximately down to 30% for buying all VideoPort software, and some functions even became free. In addition, we created flexible system of buying VideoPort servers for videoconferencing. Now all the clients can choose necessary functions without paying for other ones. We are testing inexpensive solutions for classes’ equipment and placing them on our site, helping institutes of higher education in effective purchases of equipment.
Trend 10 – New Strategies in Market Entry
Natural market’s development creates new, narrower forms of positioning of new vendors. One of the most successful strategies for market entry is profile positioning in market niche of topical learning and certification.
“Active” company has shown an example of such market entry. The have chosen for profile positioning the most solvent niche – accounting and financial management. Before market entry they have already possessed well-developed base of clients. So providing E-learning format services was a logical step. The decision to produce own LMS “A-learning” as a universal solution was rather surprising.
On the other hand, possessing base of loyal customers, appropriate volume of ready content, together with narrow specialization may allow minimizing expenses for designing and promotion of suit of solutions and thus achieving good results.
We can expect active growth in number of such projects in next years.
Trend 11 – Activization of using e-learning for training potential and existing clients.
Including customer training to the whole E-learning’s development strategy allows rapid spread of necessary content among the clients. We cam consider e-learning to be the mean of market expansion without significant expenses.
Trend 12 – Regional Development
Regional companies will be striving to occupy local markets of educational content, combining it with offline education services.
Trend 13 – International Expansion
There are 2 projects which define the new wave in intervention of external vendors into E-learning market in CIS. These are companies “ICM Ukraine” (the Netherlands) and ARIMA! (Poland). We can suppose that optimistic assessments of market’s growth make it attractive for external providers and vendors.
Trend 14 – Development of New Services Segments
Now there can be observed appearance of the second wave of e-learning specialists, those who have obtained or are currently obtaining their operational experience in educational centers which use e-learning. This segment is not numerous, but it has already become significant. We can admit appearance of the third wave of specialists, who are going to build their career in E-learning area. They need an appropriate education. The both these waves create demand for professional education programs of learning and certification in industry of e-learning. Now only 3 companies provide their own pedagogical design trainings. We may expect growth in number and variety of such programs.
Trend 15 – SaaS Formats’ Development
Recent 2 years became momentous for concepts of SaaS. The share of solutions provided with this option on e-learning markets in CIS verges towards 50%. One more resource for this format’s development is hourly pay.
Technologies
The last group of trends describes technologies’ estimated lines of development.
Trend 16 – Social Learning Abilities’ Development
We should expect appearance of possibilities for internal and external social networks’ usage for initiating and impacting processes of informal learning.
The role of learning content created by learners will also become more important. Thus there will be some tools for collaborative, mass creation of content by users.
Trend 17 – Development and Integration of Talent Management Functions
These functions include selection, competency management, career planning etc.
Trend 18 – Services Consolidation within the Single Platform
Companies tend to use the singe solution for managing learning and development initiatives. This trend will be realizing in 3 ways:
* Vendors will provide solutions for creating an integrated portal which would unite all the learning functions.
* Vendors will provide applications which would be request broker and coordinate the work of various topical applications, even from different vendors.
* The easiest way is creating a possibility of data migration from external sources including HRM applications.
Trend 19 – Communications channels’ Improvement
Improvement of throughput will allow using more and more various forms of content delivery. We should also expect growth in number of households and work stations connected into the network.
Trend 20 – Online Games as Learning Tool
In 2010 there were some declarations about state support for online games with purposes of E-learning industry’s development. It made another actual trend – using online games for E-learning.
The question for vendors: How would you comment on the prospects of state support for online games with purposes of E-learning industry’s development?
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”:
This question is of a great complexity, we should at least clarify what role of online games is presumed, and what support is suggested. We’re glad about any support for E-learning, by anybody and in any format. And we’re constantly promoting the idea of game-based e-learning for kids and adults.
Roman Shevchenko, IT director, “Active” corporation:
I have mixed feelings about it. It all depend on the audience. For kids it is good, but for teens and adults it’s not. We’ve already faced the problem of Internet addiction, so should we aggravate it?
The final question for vendors: What technological, organizational, marketing innovations of E-learning industry in CIS should we expect in next year? What events, technologies, standards can influence it in next 3 years?
Lia Volova, marketing director of “Active” corporation:
Vendors of platforms or separate modules have to take into account economical crisis’s influence on the E-learning market. Customers’ purchasing capacity is declining constantly. And only new products can be adapted to these conditions. E-learning systems based on Windows, which are popular, but expensive, are not very competitive products. They are predominated by new projects built on the base of Linux free platforms. This tendency appeared in 2008 and it will become more significant in next 2 years. The necessity of great investment of money often demotivates potential customers. According to existing trend, we have used Linux for our e-learning projects from the very beginning, including E-learning system A-learning Lite and A-meeting platform used for webinar service webinary.biz
Andrey B. Dusmikeev, director general of “Medium”, limited liability company:
This question is worth of separate investigation. However, I’m the most interested in media development, internet channels’ broadening and uniting media and computers. This tendency allows placing into network really good content, including learning content. Possibilities of courses design are greatly improving, together with audience’s abilities, its mobility and available technologies. Marketing activities will drift to network. The wisest companies will just allow distance usage of their products, instead of advertising their goods and technologies. Oh, Bill Gates has said something like that, too!
Alexey Korolkov, director general of WebSoft company:
Webinar technologies will be used more. They are not innovations in developed countries. Talent Management Suits will become more popular then LMS and E-learning systems.
Dmitry L. Krechman, marketing director of “HyperMethod IBS”:
Mobile technologies.
Lance Dublin - Chief Solution Architect & Creative Abrasionist at Dublin Consulting:
Innovations of this year are mainly concentrated on mobility and flexibility improving. And the most important is leaving common fundamental learning units behind. It would be a kind of miracle cure for technologies.
Alexander Levushkin, key specialist in E-learning department, “Stel – Computer Systems”
We can expect deep integration of learning process with person’s lifestyle in “social” internet when building SaaS E-learning systems. It will bring both positive and negative consequences. Among benefits are closer, informal communication between students and experts, more rapid entering professional or science space. Bu there is shortcomings, too. These are lack of control and learning process’ poor organization. Tutors will have to revise their teaching approaches. Marketing activities of educational institutions will change, too. They would be able of positioning their selves as commercial knowledge provider using social media. But not all the educational institutions can act like this, mixing E-learning with “big Internet”, because of their status or educational standards.
Alexey Vlaskin, “VideoPort”:
We are going to increase maximal number of members, provide all members with HD connection and develop 3D.
