In yesterday’s post, we covered the most notable and lasting e-learning trends from 2018. Today’s post will cover notable e-learning technologies and forecasts you’ll want to know about. Continue reading to learn more.
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E-Learning Technologies and Approaches
VR and AR. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies are changing the way we learn and work in the workplace. Such technology offers simulated environments that allow employees to remain safe and practice their skills in low-stakes environments.
A high number of industries, including construction, parcel delivery, energy, health care, insurance, and retail, have adopted VR and AR technology for their most important training requirements. You’ll want to consider adopting VR and AR technology if you want to keep your employees safe, highly skilled, and prepared to beat out your organization’s competitors.
Offline LMS. Internet connectivity across various global environments is still an issue, with many areas of the globe still not getting continually strong Internet connections. And with the rise of mobile learning and mobile devices in the workplace, it’s becoming more and more important to ensure your employees are still connected to your organization’s apps and platforms even when they don’t have a strong or existing Internet connection.
Make sure your learning management system (LMS) has offline capabilities so that it doesn’t interrupt or interfere with your learners’ progress, data, or records.
Mobile-first approach. Within the next few years, all learning content will need to be accessible and viewable from a mobile device, and L&D professionals will have to use a mobile-first approach.
Mobile learning is now considered mainstream, with a global 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of mobile learning products and services at 11.3% and revenues projected to reach $14.5 billion by 2019.
Machine learning-enabled platforms. From help desk automation to chatbots acting as virtual instructors, the experiments for machine learning-enabled platforms for L&D are in progress. According to Gartner, by 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more each year developing bots and chatbots than developing traditional mobile apps.
E-Learning Forecasts for 2019
As an L&D professional, here are some e-learning trends that you’ll want to watch out for in 2019.
- You’ll want CMI-5 for experience application programming interface (xAPI) inside your LMS. According to a LearnUpon article:
“The cmi part of cmi5 stands for ‘computer managed instruction,’ and it is essentially an extra set of rules that harnesses the benefits of xAPI (primarily to enable the capture of e-learning data from anywhere) whilst also adding focus to its otherwise broad, overly flexible specification.”
- With the rise in on-demand, mobile, and social learning, learners will demand more and more resources. Whether you create them on your own or curate them, have a lot of supplemental learning materials ready for your learners to access and view whenever they want from their mobile devices.
- Cognitive skills assessments and skills-based assessments will be on the rise for human resources and L&D teams.
- VR and AR will continue to rise in their popularity and pervasiveness across industries.
As 2018 ends and 2019 begins, make sure you’re aware of the e-learning trends, technologies, and forecasts highlighted above and in yesterday’s post.