Session 108::Special Session for Learning Suppliers, Vendors, and Freelancers.

Elliott Masie and Cushing Anderson got us (learning vendors) together to give us some of their insights on the industry. Again, more thinking follows, but the biggest thought for me was this (again, paraphrased)

We need to find a way to allow for the creation of contextualized, user created and edited content.

User created isn’t new. It’s not done well yet, but we’re all talking about that already. What’s exciting here is thinking about how users (the source of much expertise) can actually contextualize and edit the content itself. This is so counter to the technical aspects of SCORM. This is why we’re spending a lot of time thinking about breaking down further barriers between online learning systems.

Further comments from Elliott that caught my attention:

  • Users would love to buy content to which they can add the last mile.
  • The level of innovation from us (vendors) appears to be lacking.

Elliott implied that we were innovating, but not marketing it well. I question that. I think the level of innovation in eLearning is lacking. And, we need to market that better when we do it.

Tim is the chief innovation and product officer with our parent company LTG, though he used to be CEO here at Rustici Software. If you’re looking for a plainspoken answer to a standards-based question, or to just play an inane game, Tim is your person.