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| RSS Review Article (On September 16-18, we attended the "Innovations in Managed Learning Services" conference in Clearwater Beach, FL, sponsored by the Trainingindustry.com.) Date Published: 9/23/2008 2:12:00 PM by TelSim Software Innovations in Managed Learning Services conference |
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Innovations in Managed Learning Services Conference
On September 16-18, we attended the "Innovations in Managed Learning Services" conference in Clearwater Beach, FL, sponsored by the Trainingindustry.com. It was a small conference, but the attendees were a great mixture of exciting vendors and corporate training executives. We saw presentations of new technologies and new ideas as well as ways people are using established technologies. Many discussions included the direction of training in corporate America, how learners are changing, and how learning providers must change with them. A couple of things became evident when talking about changing learning processes to match the learners. First, as learners become farther apart because of travel expense, etc., distribution and management has to be more sophisticated. Secondly, with younger learners being more computer-game and MTV-oriented, they don't respond as well to traditional learning environments. Text-heavy pages and PowerPoint slides are not working as the learner population gets younger. What many companies are investigating in are virtual-world, avatar-based learning environments, like, on the extreme range, Second Life islands where learners and instructors gather, and on the more realistic side, like the integration of animated character technologies, such as the NOAH software system (http://www.NOAHx.com). A speaker quoted a finding from Gartner Group projecting that in 2016, 50% of learning will involve avatars or animated character technology of some sort. All in all, driven by the technological advances in bandwidth and interactive software, the world of e-learning is evolving quicking into one that is more like a virtual classroom or at least where virtual instructors or avatars conduct the training. All exciting stuff. As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com |