In January this year we asked various industry experts for their predictions for 2007. Now it’s time to revisit those Ghosts of E-learning future to see if they rattled the right chains. Let’s see how they did – and there’s still a few days left in the year so a few might come good yet….

Rise of Open Source

Jane Hart predicted that “Free and open source tools and systems will become mainstream as purchasers decide that proprietary tools are just costing too much in purchase, licence and upgrade fees.”

Reality check: Jane turned out to be spot on as the corporate sector got the open source bug and the Moodle bug in particular. The E-learning Guild survey this year showed that 25% of small and medium sized companies in the US had implemented Moodle LMS.

Informal Learning

Laura Overton surveyed 200 companies in the UK and found that 79% of organisations said they would place greater emphasis on supporting informal learning within the organization.

Reality check: This appears to be gaining pace – hard to say if 79% more organisations are doing it though. Often in our experience it is not always through e-learning, but resources such as ebooks, web access and greater intranet resources. We do expect to see more of this in 2008 though.

Embedded learning

Charles Jennings forecast an increase in embedded learning provision - where learning is built into the normal daily workflow and, often into applications/environments. From simple personalised 'for me' learning to complete embedded learning environments supported by electronic performance support systems. Donald Clark agreed that work will be seen as the right context for corporate learning.

Reality check: Both of our experts were on the money as we have seen a significant move to just in time learning, practical tools and short task focused learning resources.

Performance solutions

Embedded learning is closely related to Jane Hart’s prediction that organisations would begin to concentrate as much on creating performance solutions as on formal learning solutions, particularly as performance solutions are often more easily, quickly and cheaply

Reality Check: Right again, Jane. We are seeing this in many forms with micro sites and tailored resources being created for specific staff groups to improve performance. These are again task focused and often use Moodle LMS as a cost effective way of creating a tailored site.

RSS and personalisation

Most of our experts predicted that in 2007 individuals would appreciate the power of RSS, tagging and social bookmarking as the underpinning technologies become almost transparent in productivity tools.

Reality check: Absolutely. We think this is one of the most exciting areas of development. What do you mean you still have an MSN home page? Get a customised Google home page, add widgets to your web pages, set up your own personalised RSS feeds to manage the latest news, or try the BBC’s new personalised home page. It’s the future. Actually it’s the present.

Rapid development

Mark Berthelemy forecast that organisations would adopt more rapid development and publishing tools.

Reality check: You only have to look at the growth of tools like Articulate to see that this was a very accurate prediction. Articulate is now one of the fastest growing companies in the US. Might we humbly suggest we’ve helped to make this prediction a reality in the UK through our focus on quality, cost-effective rapid e-learning for clients including BP, Google, Cable & Wireless and others. Rapid development really is a hot topic. Extra bonus points to Mark.

So overall some pretty impressive crystal ball work from our experts.

But did they miss anything? Let us know, we would love to hear from you. You can also give us your predictions for next year.

We will also be asking another set of experts, including a few Kineo ones, for their predictions for 2008. Look out for their new year missives in our January newsletter.