The learning business changes continually – and we’ve seen some big changes over the years.
Tagoras, the parent company of Leading Learning, recently turned 15 years old – we were founded in May 2007. During those 15 years, we’ve worked with a lot of organizations, done a lot of research, published hundreds of articles and podcasts along with numerous reports, hosted more than a hundred Webinars, and run multiple events, online and off.
Basically, we’ve managed to accumulate quite of experience in the business of continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning. Having now reached a very significant milestone (only about 25 percent of new businesses make it 15 years), it seemed like an appropriate to step back and reflect on what we have seen change in the learning business landscape over the past decade and a half, and what the implications are.
This is not intended to be a scientific or data-driven analysis of the changes. It just reflects some of the biggest ones that jumped out at us as we looked back over the 15 years that have passed since Tagoras got its start. We would certainly welcome your perspective on any of these, or your suggestions for others that should be added. Just use the comments section at the end to share your thoughts.
Now, in no particular order, here are the 15 changes.
Table of Contents
1. The Surge of Video
When Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006—about a year and a half after YouTube was founded—we all should have known something big was a foot. It would be hard to exaggerate the impact that the proliferation of digital video has had since that time.
Part of our pre-Tagoras experience was with University Access (later Quisic), a company that captured video of top business school professors and attempted to distribute it across the Internet. That was in the mid-1990s, and the entire proposition was costly and time-consuming. We were, to put it mildly, a bit ahead of our time. These days, most of us carry around a high-quality video camera as part of our smart phones and uploading the video we capture into a distribution network—whether that’s YouTube, Vimeo, one of the major social networks, or something entirely—is a breeze.
As a result, roughly 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube alone every minute in 2020.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The drop in the cost and effort required to capture, edit, and deliver video has dramatically increased our ability to use it for developing educational content. And, while microlearning is not limited only to video, the ability to easily create and distribute short videos has certainly been a big factor in the rise of microlearning.
Of course, as will be the case with a number of the changes we discuss here, the ease with which video can now be produced and distributed means there is a lot of it out there, so the stakes are much higher to create video that stands out and is truly effective.
2. The Spread of Social
Facebook (founded 2004), LinkedIn (2002), and Twitter (2006) were still in their infancy at the point when we founded Tagoras, and sites like Instagram (2010) and TikTok (2016) had yet to come along.
What’s happened over the past 15 years, of course, is that social media has become a deeply ingrained part of everyday life for billions of people globally. It’s spread has, admittedly, led to a lot of misinformation and mental health issues but also a lot of meaningful opportunities for forming connections and fostering communities where knowledge and skills can be shared.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
As with video, it would be hard to underestimate the impact of social media. For learning businesses, it represents a tremendous opportunity for supporting social and informal learning, both of which are generally regarded as responsible for much, much more of our learning than formal education and training experiences are Informal learning.
Social networks also give learning businesses the ability to reach many more of the potential learners in their in their audiences and support them in ways that often not possible in the more structured environments provide by traditional learning platforms.
3. The Growth of Mobile
The spread of both video and social—often in tight combination—has gone hand in hand with the widespread use of smart phones and the ever-increasing speed of mobile communication networks.
At this point, smart phones and tablets seem so entrenched in our lives that it may be hard to believe that the iPhone was not actually introduced until 2007, only a month or so after Tagoras was founded. Roughly a year later, the App Store was launched, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Most of us now carry around a huge amount of computing power along with the ability to consume massive amounts of digital media, play games, and interact with people around the world in myriad ways.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
Mobile has been a key factor in the spread of social and video (and vice versa), and it has made the achievement of “anytime, anywhere learning” – a goal of learning professionals for as long as I can remember – a reality. It can provide significant support for social and informal learning, and it opens up access to learning opportunities by people who may not have great access to traditional computer and computer networks.
4. The SaaS Explosion
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) was established well before 2007—Salesforce, the company that put SaaS on the map, was founded in 1999—but it took a while for its impact to really be felt broadly, particularly in learning businesses. In our earliest learning management system selection projects, whether to host an LMS yourself or have the vendor host it was still a legitimate question, and more than a few of our clients did choose to host the LMS software on their own servers. I can’t remember the last time that happened.
As SaaS has grown, the ability for platforms to communicate with each other across the Web through standards-based application programming interfaces, or APIs, has also grown, making it much easier to leverage “best of breed” software to address specific business needs.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
For learning businesses, the rise of SaaS has meant better, lower-cost access to a wider variety of learning platform options.
It has also meant that integration between learning platforms and other platforms like customer relationship management systems, association management systems, Webinar platforms, and marketing automation systems has become dramatically easier and less costly.
Finally, SaaS has also driven the evolution of e-learning standards as the SCORM specifications introduced in 2000 slowly give way to xAPI and other standards that provide for handling of data that is generated outside of a specific learning management system.
5. The E-learning Cost Cliff
We haven’t been able to track down data that show how the costs to create online learning have dropped over time, but we know from our own firsthand experience that high-quality e-learning courses could easily end up costing well over six figures back in the mid-1990s. That’s just not true anymore. (More on current costs to produce e-learning here.)
While it is still possible to spend quite a bit on highly interactive e-learning courses, it’s become rare to see them surpass (or even come close to) the $50K-per-hour mark. When you combine the built-in tools in most off-the-shelf e-learning authoring packages and course platforms with what is now possible with video, it’s relatively easy to produce an hour of reasonable quality e-learning content for well under $10K.
No doubt there are many professional instructional designers and developers who will object to that assessment, but it is undeniable that the drop in costs has dramatically changed the e-learning landscape.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The huge drop in costs is one of the main factors fueling the growth of e-learning and the ability of more learning businesses to provide it. It is also one of the main factors that made it possible for organizations to pivot their education and events online when the pandemic hit full force in March 2020. Of course, the fact that producing e-learning has become so much less costly and time-consuming has also meant that there’s more competition in many markets—and there is also a lot of very poor-quality e-learning.
6. The Creator Economy
All the factors above have led to the emergence of what has become known as the “creator economy,” basically a technology-enabled business environment in which individual creators are able to generate revenue from their content. That “content” may include everything from social media posts to on-demand and livestream videos, to podcasts, to e-books, to online courses, and more.
While much of this content is purely intended to be entertaining, a large percentage of it is educational in nature – and there has been a huge surge in the number of course creators and online courses in the past decade. (See e-learning stats for the course creator market here.)
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The rise of solo edupreneurs and small, entrepreneurial learning businesses is one of the key factors that has altered the landscape for traditional learning businesses. As I first noted more than a decade ago, entrepreneurial subject matter experts can now go directly to their prospective students, and that changes the underlying relationship with traditional intermediaries like trade and professional associations. It also, of course, fuels more competition.
7. The Algorithm-Data Dance
Largely because of the proliferation of software and connectivity across the Internet, there has been a tremendous surge in the amount of data we generate, and, more importantly, the amount of data we are able to capture and analyze. At the same time, we have major advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other algorithm-driven forms of computing.
These two topics—data and algorithms—could easily be talked about separately, but it’s really in combination that they have the most power. Machine learning and artificial intelligence give us the power to harness and make use of all the data we generate, and, in the process, they continue to generate—and learn from—new data. There are all sorts of potential issues with this that we, as a society, will be wrestling with for years to come, from privacy concerns to concerns about biases in the algorithms.
Even so, the potential to effectively process, analyze, and take action based on very large sets of data has enormous potential for helping us to address major issues like climate change and global pandemics and for enabling machines to do work that humans simply can’t or don’t want to do.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
A major upside of the algorithm-data dance for learning businesses is the potential for highly personalized learning experiences that better help individual learners with their individual learning needs.
A potential challenge—along with the privacy and bias issues already mention—is that the algorithm-data combo is directly responsible for what could be called The Amazon Effect – basically, the expectation that a good e-commerce site will actively guide us to the options that best fit our needs and make it possible to easily access them with a single click. Most learning businesses, of course, are a long way from rising to that standard.
8. The eXtension of Reality
With all the recent talk about the metaverse, it’s easy to forget that the virtual reality program Second Life was introduced in 2003, and the term “metaverse” was applied to it at the time.
Efforts in virtual and extended reality (XR) date back to the 1950s. Still, it’s hard to argue that any of these earlier efforts were very satisfying. It wasn’t really until advances like the Oculus Rift headset came along in 2010 that truly immersive virtual reality experiences started to seem like a reality. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014. Google introduced Google Cardboard—basically a no-cost virtual reality headset—in 2015. Virtually reality still has not gone mainstream, but it’s making significant progress, and the tools and skills need for creating VR experience are becoming much cheaper and easier to use.
Notably, popular e-learning authoring tools like Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and Lectora are starting to incorporate tools for creating augmented reality and virtual reality experiences – a significant step toward them becoming more mainstream.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
We know from a significant body of research that practice and being able to apply new knowledge and skills in context are key to more effective learning. Extended reality provides opportunities for immersion and real-time application that would be risky, expensive, or simply not possible in “real” life. It is, in short, a tremendous opportunity for learning businesses – and the tipping point for it seems likely to sneak up on us faster than we all think.
9. The Call of Alternative Credentials
Underlying—and in some cases because of—all the changes discussed here is a fundamental shift in the nature of work and what it means to be prepared and stay prepared for gainful employment. That shift is one of the key factors that has driven interest in alternative credentials over the past decade or so.
Another key factor is growing criticism of the cost of traditional higher education and increasing doubts about how well it prepares students for the world of work. While credentials like certifications and certificates have been around for a long time, there is now rising interest in them as approaches that require less time and cost significantly less than traditional degree programs. Google, for example, has introduced a portfolio of certificate programs designed to get potential job candidates up to speed quickly in needed skills in the tech industry.
And, of course, traditional certificates and designations are no longer the only way to signal that a learner has acquired specific skills and knowledge. In September 2011, the Mozilla Open Badges (now part of IMS Global) initiative launched, and digital badges have since evolved rapidly to become an important part of the credentialing landscape.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
We’ve known from the earliest days of our research at Tagoras that learning experiences associated with a meaningful, valued credential tend to attract the highest levels of demand. This plus the current demands for alternative forms of credentialing means there is a huge opportunity for learning businesses.
10. The Maturing of Marketing
So many of the changes discussed here have had an impact on the world of marketing, and, by extension, those changes have impacted learning businesses by changing people’s expectations (usually unconsciously) for what it means to interact with the product and service providers they rely upon.
Marketing today is simply not the same game it was back in the Mad Men days. Marketers now have to have deep understanding of how social networks and search engines work and how to leverage them through content marketing and other approaches. Marketers today need to understand, much more deeply than their predecessors, the subtleties of influence and persuasion and how to provide for a user experience and customer journey that will lead to initial conversion of prospects into customers and then retain those customers over time.
In short, marketing is a much more sophisticated practice than it was in the past. As a result, we have seen the rise of the chief marketing officer in the corporate world, a position that now is equal to or often outranks the top sales position. We have also seen increasing specialization as different components of marketing – from SEO, to social media, to video – require ever increasing knowledge and evolving skill sets.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The evolution of marketing impacts learning businesses in at least two ways. First, as marketers become better and better at what they do, organizations that don’t have good marketing resources will find it harder and harder to compete.
Second, as we have said again and again, marketing has a lot in common with education. Both are fundamentally about creating behavior change. As a result, much of the skills and knowledge that marketers have developed is equally applicable to educators, and trends in the world of marketing are very often a bellwether for changes in the learning business landscape.
11. The Leap in Learning Science
Interesting things have happened pretty much every year of our 15-year history, but 2014 stands out in many ways. That year saw the publication of Make It Stick by Henry Roediger, Mark McDaniel, and Peter C. Brown and How We Learn by Benedict Carey, two very popular books that focused on how human beings learn most effectively. (Access our interview with Peter C. Brown here.)
That same year saw the launch of Barbara Oakley’s massive open online course, or MOOC, Learning How to Learn, on Coursera. That course has since gone on to enroll more than 3.2 million learners. Learning science had hit the big time. (Access our interview with Barbara Oakley here.)
Of course, in many ways, this was the culmination of work that started decades before with people like Ruth Colvin Clark (interviewed here) and Richard Mayer, who published the first edition their classic E-learning and the Science of Instruction in 2002. It wasn’t like learning hadn’t been studied before, but wider dissemination of knowledge about learning and popular interest in it has really only taken off in the past decade or so.
That may be partly because social and behavioral science-type topics have been popularized by writers like Dan Pink and events like TED.
It may be partly because we have also seen significant gains in the related field of neuroscience as better imaging techniques have become available over the past couple of decades.
And it may be partly the broader appreciation for lifelong learning that has accompanied shifts in the world of work.
Whatever the causes, it seems clear that many people know much more about how learning actually works than they did 15 years ago.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
For the people who develop and deliver learning experiences and the learners who participate in them, a better understanding of how learning works is a tremendous asset. Need I say more?
12. The Attention Crisis
As costs drop and quantity of content skyrockets, it gets harder and harder to garner and maintain learners’ attention and form meaningful relationships in a highly transactional world that prefers convenience and friction-less exchanges.
With COVID, we’ve seen life expectancy drop for the first time in decades. There’s a palpable (and justified) sense that time is short. People are busy. That’s a huge barrier to learning, when they now have to spend more of their precious time than ever before choosing among the profusion of options.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
While it’s really not true—in spite of the popular Internet meme—that we all now have the attention span of a goldfish, it’s clear that we do have to take into account the many demand that learners have on their attention.
That applies not only in the delivery of learning experiences but also in the marketing of learning experiences. If we cannot effectively capture attention and then build that into interest and motivation to take action, we will not get prospects to enroll in, much less engage with, the learning experiences we offer.
13. The Rise of Big Learning
While there have historically been businesses like The Teaching Company (now The Great Courses) and The Learning Annex that have marketed courses and seminars to adult learners, the maturing of the Internet and digital technologies has created a whole new level of opportunity.
As a result, we’ve seen the emergence of what we have labeled “Big Learning” – companies likes Udemy (2010) and Masterclass (2015), of massive open online course providers like edX and Coursera (both 2012), bootcamp providers like Codeacademy (2011), and Lynda.com—which is now LinkedIn Learning, after a $1.5 billion acquisition in 2015. Even The Great Courses is now primarily online and has rebranded its streaming offerings as Wondrium.
That’s just scratching the service. In general, learning has become big business.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
Big learning is a source of competition, more or less directly, to many learning businesses. Perhaps more importantly, the big learning businesses are changing the expectations and standards for online learning experiences.
14. The Second Migration
It’s unfortunate that tragedy is often the catalyst for major change, and that has certainly been the case in the world of online learning. One of the first big migrations online came in the wake of 9/11, when many people became fearful of travel and travel, with creation of the TSA, started to become much less enjoyable. Webinars, in particular, surged after that tragedy.
While we don’t have hard data, the recent COVID pandemic likely had an even more dramatic impact. Pretty much all learning businesses were forced to move their events and educational programming online, including those who had previously resisted making virtual a substantial part of their business. At the same time, people who may have been resistant to e-learning and online events in the past or who participated in them only sporadically were pretty much forced online.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The upside of the Second Migration is that many learning businesses were forced to do what they should have done long ago—move a substantial part of their offerings online.
The potential challenges are that a lot of what was moved online was not of high quality and needs to be reexamined as the pandemic wanes. Learner expectations have shifted upward as more people have experienced online learning and events and have a clearer idea of what they want from them.
Additionally, in many cases organizations moved event content online that now competes with and potentially “cannibalizes” Webinar and e-learning content they already had online.
In general, it is time for most learning businesses to rebalance their portfolio of offerings across virtual and in-person, better define the purpose of each offering, and raise quality across the board.
15. The Mainstreaming of Lifelong Learning
Last, but far from least—and as many of the previous points suggest—the whole concept of “lifelong learning” has gone mainstream in combination with tightly related buzz terms like “upskilling” and “reskilling.”
One watershed moment in this shift was when the venerable business publication The Economist ran a special report in 2017 proclaiming that “Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative.” We took issue with the word “becoming” at the time, but what was more important was that a major global publication saw the need to highlight lifelong learning as a major societal issue. You also now regularly see columnists in major media outlets argue for the critical importance of lifelong learning in all its various forms.
Impact on the Learning Business Landscape
The receptivity and—at least in theory—the perceived value of what learning businesses provide and the role they play in society has never been higher.
It is important, however, that leaders of learning businesses embrace and take advantage of this shift. As we’ve noted, there are some important players in the learning business landscape who are not doing this to the extent they should, and there is even resistance in some quarters to embracing the term “lifelong learning,” as if continuing education and professional development are not, in fact, forms of lifelong learning.
If there has ever been a moment that learning business leaders need to seize, this is it.
Jeff
Title image by SimsalabimSabrina from Pixabay
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