Learning Resolutions: Design and Delivery Rule

What will 2015 bring? Let’s face it, predictions are a mug’s game. I'd love to be thinking like this. I’m not sure I can focus on things that widely, instead, I’ll focus on three trends in the learning + development field that I think will continue to evolve into next year.

1. Responsive design – the elearning industry is still trying to catch up to the web development world to responsive design. We focused for a long time on HTML5 as a rallying cry, but now the focus is more on responsive design. It will be interesting to see this continue to mature, as I think it highlights one of the tensions in our industry: design vs development. I think one of the challenges is that right now the power is in the hands of the developers, the technies who know just which snippets of javascript will create the desired interaction. I’m looking forward to the release of Adapt’s authoring tool. In 2014, I’ve focused on learning front end web development (rudimentary, I assure you), with introductory HTML and CSS. With an authoring tool, a javascript library and my rudimentary knowledge, I could create some pretty cool stuff.
2. Goodbye MOOC’s, Hello subscription courses – courses delivered by email in weekly lessons. This seems to have exploded lately. I have signed up for “This Explains Everything” and canva’s design school. I also subscribed to “Creative Instructional Design Lessons” by Ever Learning. I like this model, as it really provides a way to sequence and space the training over time. I think this could become more dynamic as well, with options that stem from whether or not you completed the week before or not. The emphasis on these courses that I’ve seen is a variety of content, but little in the way of “testing.” Perhaps the use of something like Mixpanel will provide some insights to how people are interacting with your content and we’ll see a greater personalization of this. Who said email was dead?
3. Experience API (xAPI) – I’m not sure if this is the breakout year, but it’s certainly continuing to play a role in pushing the thinking of tracking forward. I think the really interesting things will be “quantified self” type of approach to learning. Setting your own goals, using technology to provide progress reports, capture data and then report to you. The more we build sensors into our things (glasses, watches, clothing, etc), the more we’ll want to expand the tracking mentality into our professional lives. Search “quantified self” and you’ll find some pretty interesting thinking about how to harness data for personal growth: these articles on Fast Company, Technori, and ID all popped for me.

I’m not sure we’re going to be using tools like this, but it’s interesting to think about the implications of technology trends on the learning industry. 

What do you think? Have I picked some interesting trends to watch for?