Surveying the Future of Workplace
E-learning: The Rise of Blending, Interactivity, and Authentic Learning
E-learning is becoming a dominant delivery method in workplace-learning settings across organizations of various sectors and of varying sizes. Although many organizations are recognizing the potential of e-learning to bring learning closer to employees, there appears to be some issues to be addressed in delivering e-learning. Learners still face some barriers to e-learning, such as situational, organizational, and technical barriers (Mungania, 2003). Managers are also concerned about cost and technology requirements for implementing e-learning (Ellis, 2004). Moreover, there is a plethora of emerging technologies that have implications for workplace learning. Clearly, e-learning presents training professionals with both potentials and challenges, thereby creating a perfect e-storm with countless emerging technologies, enormous learner demand for training when needed, and ever present erased or significantly reduced budgets (Bonk, 2004) through which one has to navigate to deliver e-learning that truly impacts our work and lives. To effectively navigate through this monsoon of e-learning, an understanding of the current state and the future directions of e-learning is warranted.
To this intent, a survey was conducted of training professionals (e.g., chief learning officers, training managers, trainers/instructors, and e-learning developers) on the current status and future trends of e-learning in workplace learning settings. These survey participants belonged to various types of organizations in the United States, including government, business, and not-for-profit organizations. This 49-item survey was completed by 239 individuals most of whom were active in e-learning conferences or knowledgeable of the e-learning field. This survey took place in January and February, 2004 using SurveyShare, a Web-based survey tool.
In terms of respondent demographics, 67 percent of the respondents to our survey were males. The respondents were employed in organizations of various sizes; for instance, 62 percent of the respondents worked in organizations with fewer than 5,000 employees and 25 percent worked in organizations employing fewer than 100 people. Respondents also varied in their industry types, including communication, consulting, health, IT, government, and non-profit organizations. In terms of the respondents' job functions, about 20 percent were executives (e.g., CEOs, chief technology officers, and presidents) and about 22 percent were at the management level (e.g., e-learning managers, HR managers, or training managers). In addition, 15 percent of the respondents were instructional designers, performance technologists, or trainers/instructors. As indicated above, the survey respondents were highly active in e-learning; 68 percent of those surveyed responded that they attended an e-learning or training conference during the past 24 months.
Findings from the Survey Study
The survey asked 49 questions about the current status of e-learning in respondent organizations as well as their predictions on future directions of e-learning. In the sections below are some findings from this survey study.
Respondents' Perceptions of E-learning
A large majority of respondents of this survey study indicated that they had a positive outlook on the future of e-learning. About 90 percent of the respondents described themselves as being supportive of or optimistic about e-learning. Also, they currently embraced e-learning or blended learning (e.g., typically viewed as a combination of face-to-face and online instruction, though some definitions discuss the combination of technologies or instructional methodologies) to a varying degree; over 80 percent of those surveyed responded that they were using e-learning or blended learning to train their employees. Interestingly, there were additional indicators that the respondents' organizations were making investments in e-learning. For instance, a majority of the respondents indicated that in 2003 their organization spent between one and 60 percent of their total training budget on e-learning. Moreover, 60 percent of those surveyed responded that their organization had a strategic plan for e-learning. When projecting the impact of e-learning by the year 2025, a majority of the respondents predicted that e-learning would have a positive impact on learners in many ways.
Future Growth of E-learning and Blended Learning An earlier survey on workplace learning by the first author (Bonk, 2002) found that most respondents' organizations still relied on conventional, instructor-led training. Our current survey shows that e-learning has become an increasingly important delivery format and may even dominate training in the near future. In fact, 25 percent of the respondents to this survey indicated that in 2004 e-learning was already the dominant form of training in their organization, while another 50 percent predicted that e-learning would become the dominant form of training within their organization by 2010 (see Figure 1).
Interestingly, more than 30 percent of the respondents predicted that their organizations would focus most on the creation of e-learning content in the next few years. Additionally, more than twenty percent of the respondents felt that their organization would primarily focus on the delivery of e-learning and another 13 percent suggested that the focus would be the evaluation of e-learning outcomes, as shown in Figure 2.
Our survey results also project future trends in the delivery method for workplace learning. Respondents predicted that blended learning would become the dominant delivery method in their organization in the next few years, followed by self-paced e-learning, instructor-led classroom learning, and multimedia. More than half of the respondents predicted that the use of blended learning within in their organization will increase in the coming decade (see Figure 3). Another interesting survey result was that not all corporate training has moved to the Web. A vast majority of those surveyed responded that less than 40 percent of their organization's training budgets were spent in e-learning, possibly suggesting the vibrancy of blended learning as well as traditional classroom learning in the present and in the foreseeable future.
