"ELearning Surveys - Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"
Brighton (UK), May 2008 - Last month, Kineo, the well-known eLearning consultancy, reviewed Survey Monkey. As part of this review, they set up a survey on future eLearning trends for their community to take part in.
Since the Survey Monkey effort was just a small sample of a few hundred people from the Kineo community of readers, the firm decided to compare it to the original eLearning Guild survey from which the questions were taken to see how things compared. Then they also compared the findings to the latest CIPD survey on learning developments, which highlighted the difficulty of analysing and interpreting surveys.
Among the questions they asked - and the results - were the following:
- How much will your organization increase or decrease the following activities over the next 12 months?
- Will your eLearning spending increase significantly, increase, neither, decrease, or decrease significantly? (answers in order from left to right).
| % | % | % | % | % | |
| Rapid elearning Design and Development | 39 | 34 | 12 | 5 | 10 |
| Use of elearning to train customers and partners | 24 | 55 | 16 | 3 | 2 |
| Elearning embedded in the learner's workflow | 27 | 41 | 29 | 3 | 0 |
| Elearning to support informal learning | 29 | 53 | 15 | 0 | 3 |
| Use of authoring tools | 41 | 32 | 25 | 2 | 0 |
| Use of content management systems | 36 | 22 | 30 | 6 | 6 |
| Online assessment of learners | 37 | 34 | 20 | 6 | 3 |
(Answers rounded to nearest percentage.)
They took these questions from the eLearning Guild survey in order to compare their own results. The Guild surveys over 20,000 of its members and provides very structured feedback by size, industry, etc. Kineo's was a smaller snapshot, mainly used to demonstrate Survey Monkey, but what fun it was to compare!
Overall the findings were very similar, for example:
In the 2006 eLearning Guild survey, 77% said they would increase or significantly increase the use of eLearning to train customers and partners. In the Kineo survey, it was 79%.
In the 2006 eLearning Guild survey, 79% said they would increase or significantly increase the use rapid eLearning. The Kineo survey results were a little lower at 73.1%.
There were two other questions, though, where the Kineo results differed significantly, these were:
Use of authoring tools - In the survey, 73% said they would increase or significantly increase the use of authoring tools compared to 64% in the Guild survey. This might be due in part to the improvements that have been made in authoring tools, making it ever more possible to do great work in-house.
Use of eLearning to support informal learning - In the Kineo survey 80.2%, said they would increase or significantly increase the use of eLearning to support informal learning compared to 69% in the Guild survey. This might be due in part to developments in informal learning and the increasing use of web 2.0 tools and technologies. In the Kineo follow up questions, several responses focused on how to bring these tools into the organisation and engage learners, so it can be expected that more will be seen in this area.
One to watch: Use of eLearning to train customers and partners: 53% expect moderate increase, 23% a significant increase.
Could this be the sleeper trend of 2010? eLearning for channel partners is well established in the US, with many organisations focused on platforms for delivering and communicating with channel partners - LogicBay is a great example. In the UK it's less well established, but has great potential to grow. This is certainly one to watch, especially if it is combined with some smart use of mobile learning / web 2.0 tools to keep sales and channel partners up to date.
The growth of eLearning for customers is going to be interesting and another one to watch closely in the UK.
