Bridge between e-learning and Personalized Learning

Corporate e-learning has historically centered on the Learning Management System (LMS) to harness the power of the Web. A key to e-learning was content interoperability standards, which work to populate each LMS with a variety of content for learners. Massive Open Online Courses, better known as MOOCs, came along later as several consolidated LMS-like platforms began focusing on producing videos of professors teaching for their content. Currently, investment in personalized learning seems to be the driver of product innovation — trying to do better than Google and YouTube.
The Khan Lab School and Western Governors University show the refreshing side of personalized learning when online tutorials are surrounded with mentors and teachers. Such a combination of key resources is far superior to the isolating experience of a user with a single technology product. Indeed, I believe it is this ability for learners to move easily between products and people, with everyone focused on clear competencies and progress, that increases time on task amid increasing distractions. I suspect time on task, because of content variety and clear competencies, accounts for the better results RAND researchers found when studying personalized learning schools.
I see the competency focus in personalized learning and corporate Learning & Development being fundamental to success in both sectors. That shared focus enables common technology innovation to be shared, which is important when tens of billions of dollars is being spent. Rather than choosing a single winning product, let’s ensure products play well together and share data about how learners are progressing towards competency. That requires choosing products and partners that understand technical standards like the Experience API and the Credential Engine. I see these two standards as key to sharing data about progress, competencies, and credentials between product applications. It’s no fun to be stuck using just one application. Let’s instead ensure learning is a festival of content, applications, mentors, and teachers where those that help most are invited back.
