There’s a definite movement towards delivering learning on tablets and mobile phones. It is quite common these days to get client requests for delivering elearning (meant for traditional desktops) or mobile learning (meant for mobile phones) solutions on tablets too. Is that a good idea? I think a more consciously chosen approach for tablets would be better in most cases, while sometimes just publishing to multiple devices may be suitable.

There has been a lot of talk about informal and social learning vs. formal learning. There is so much about it on the internet, that we wonder sometimes if formal learning has any sort of place in the future of learning at all. The fact hasn’t change, formal learning will exist in the future. There are a variety of reasons for it; but let’s just quickly delve into it a bit. With service industries ending up as major consumers of learning, the focus on knowledge is more pronounced, I sometimes feel it is the one key influence affecting the level of service a company can offer and profit from. The knowledge life-cycle is shortening, in some cases, products such as cars took five years or more to develop and roll-out.

HTML5 is adoption for mobile learning is picking up; perhaps the iPad is one driver of change , rapid improvements in regular and mobile browsers rendering HTML5 another. Recently, while speaking to customers, we encountered one of the primary issues that corporate stumble upon when deciding on HTML5 for pilots or technology exploration initiatives. Large companies, especially in the BFSI market need security built into their technology solutions. We have been aware of the security concerns around HTML5 and the mad scramble amongst browsers to implement ‘their’ way of rendering HTML5.

Make haste slowly
– Benjamin Franklin

We’re getting used to instant search, instant news, instant messages, instant updates, instant food, instant banking, and instant everything. In this world of instant gratification sometimes we need to take a moment and think is everything really necessary ‘now’?  Aren’t there things that need more time to be created properly, created beautifully?  While elearning itself helps the instant gratification needs of learners by being available whenever and wherever, elearning development needs little more time to be created well and can’t really be instant.

Recently Amit had written about how the eLearning industry and digital media in general has been driven to HTML5 by the rapid adoption of tablet computers, namely the iPad. To further reinforce that thought, Adobe announced just yesterday that it has ceased development on the Flash mobile browser plug-in. Meaning there will be no updates to those plug-ins and future versions of Android and Blackberry Playbooks may not be able to render Flash content.

I stumbled on the ASTD State of The Industry Report 2011 yesterday – find it here.

The title proudly claims “Increased Commitment to Workplace Learning” and that is indeed heartening to see. Not just because it means constant business for us but also because it means the top bosses recognize the importance of workplace learning more that they did a couple of decades back. It was commonplace to find training budgets be the first ones to slashed when downturn hits.

Many times I come across this typical dilemma my clients face and deliberate upon – should they try to custom build an LMS or buy an off-the-shelf LMS and customize it?

In my experience, I have seen two distinct beliefs that drive clients’ decision making process with respect to the “build v/s buy” decision. At one end is a belief that they can develop (or get developed) everything needed and that no off-the-shelf solution will fit their needs easily. The other side of the coin is the belief that an off-the-shelf package will be more cost-effective and will be able to fit one’s needs.