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The (e)business of online learning

By Dale Spender, ZDNet Australia, 7 February, 2002 17:14

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Training, Australia, E-learning, online learning

NEWS
OPINION: Online learning is a new business model that will create new jobs and will require new skills from developers and content creators. New technologies generally make use of old ones when they are introduced. The first books, for example, were old manuscripts transferred to print form; the first movies were stage plays that were filmed. And, the first e-learning products were often existing courses, lecture notes, and recommended readings delivered by email. It is hardly surprising that so many learners expressed dissatisfaction with this early form of e-learning. Almost everyone who has ever sat at a screen acknowledges the near impossibility of reading reams of dense text online. At the other end, of course, learners who did want to read the material, generally had to print it out anyway. The only plus in the whole process was that the university or training company offering the course saved on photocopying and postage fees. Needless to say, many of the "new" online institutions which were summarily transferring their old products to the new medium experienced costly rejections, and some have even gone out of business. But the fact that learners or users might not like text-based courses delivered online is no basis for dismissing the technology or the learning business. The big e-learning business opportunities are in creating the content and the delivery mechanisms that the new e-learners do like and will pay for. The base line is that in a digital society, all students are online. "Their geographic location isn't important," states Peter Swannell, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland. "They can be at home, at work, on campus. They can be in Australia or overseas." Every student has specific needs and interests--the challenge is to have sufficiently rich resources to meet them. This makes the new learning very different from the old, which was more about limiting and regulating the ordered provision of courses and content. Once the compulsory school leaving age was reach the process of elimination began. Some students were disqualified at college entry, some at university, some more at post-graduate level. Only the very few were left by PhD stage, and even then the educational phase was usually over once students entered their late twenties. Now there is no clear division between the learning stage and the earning stage. Kids in school are selling their Web services, while people in the workforce are on a learning curve throughout life. Most of today's learners are over the age of 25 -- with no established learning system tailored to their requirements. As learning is deregulated and becomes a commodity, the world has millions of learning shoppers browsing through the online markets looking for the best value for their money. Any business, be it a school, a college, a university, or a private company, that can come up with the goods will be looking at an extraordinary -- and early -- business opportunity. But the new e-learning customers will have quite different needs from the old learners. Students aren't quite so interested in qualifications any more -- and are much more interested in skills. "I don't want to do Business I, II, and III," they state. "That can take three years! I just want to do the e-commerce bit of the MBA. That's all my employer needs." This demand for customisation suggests that online learning will come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and brands. It heralds the demise of the standardised product that has been the hallmark of education for the industrial era. But how will this new demand be met? The most likely candidate is a form of a digital object repository. (Or "reusable digital objects" as Cisco calls them.) It's a bit like a digital library where every conceivable learning object -- video, film, sound clip, graphics, and text -- will be available at a keystroke. This is a new business model and will create new jobs and require new skills from developers and content creators who generate the materials, metataggers who index them, learning managers who understand combinations and packaging, designers, presenters, and smart card providers who track and record learning accounts. And of course -- rights management systems and people who make sure the e-commerce side functions and that everyone gets paid for their work. This isn't a prediction for the future; it's the place where technology and business are now setting the foundations for the online learning models for the 21st century. Dale Spender is the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association's (AIMIA) Online Education Advisor. AIMIA is a professional organisation for creators and developers of digital content. AIMIA can be contacted on +61 2 9252 4938 or at director@aimia.com.au.
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