E-learning is dead. Long live online learning.

Looking back, the elearning course will be viewed pretty much as the fax machine: there will still be times when we need to use it, but the days when it seemed ubiquitous and something everyone needed to have are over. The demise of both have similar roots: overtaken by a flurry of smaller, more agile technologies.

So what comes after the course? The resource. I have been talking about the shift from courses to resources for some time, and it might seem that the point is merely a semantic one: 'courses/resources, whatever - we still do online learning'. But what has struck me in recent months is just how different the two ambitions are - affecting every stage of the ADDIE model. We approach the analysis differently, we approach the design and development differently, we implement differently and we evaluate differently. As a team, we've been on a bit of an adventure: trekking through the uncharted realm that lies 'beyond elearning' and I'd like to tell you a little of what we've discovered. It's a story of the journey from the world of formal elearning courses to the world of informal online learning.

Analysis:  I tend to sum it up in the phrase 'the care curve'. Conventional learning projects were very 'top down' - more often than not we would start with a message that needed to be communicated across the organisation, or the materials developed by an expert trainer. (see weneedacourse for an amusing cartoon) The model was 'broadcast' in other words. Where a TNA was involved, it would often confirm expectations about broad knowledge/capability gaps and the solution would be left up to us.

Building resources works differently: it's a much more 'bottom-up' approach starting with identifying those things that the audience really cares about and the specific goals and tasks that they have. There is then a process of matching resources and resource types against these granular needs, giving rise to a much richer variety of resource objects, typically in much smaller form, sometimes distributed across a range of platforms. In order to get going with their IT equipment, a new starter may need a simple, printable guide. Authentic engagement with the culture of an organisation may require videos of peers. Often the resources already exist, or are best generated by the problem-solving community itself (we used to call this 'crowd-sourcing'). So instead of the TNA (adapted for level 2 stuff) we run focus groups, develop user profiles, seek to understand 'tribes' and - most importantly - pinpoint challenges. The end result is an array of different 'assets' matched to specific needs, to be called upon as the need arises - i.e. when people care. Resources is a broader category than performance support, subsuming it.

Design: in the days of learning we would employ the dark arts of instructional design to improve the interactivity of our learning courses, essentially in order to put distance between them and the powerpoint presentation. The end result would be some 40 minutes long, broadly 'teacherly' in tone; typically a mix of text, images and interactions. There was probably never really any hard evidence that any of this stuff worked. We know that level 2 outcomes were better than classroom - but that's not saying much.

Meanwhile the way in which actual people learn online took different direction: people Googled stuff as they needed to know it, generated low-grade short form video of everything from dance-moves to cake-baking, from computer skills to people skills. Created Wikipedia. Once again the people who contribute are the ones who really care, with content typically consumed at point of need. Ever wonder why nobody is spontaneously creating elearning courses? (the closest is probably slideshare). A familiar theme I grant you, but designing in this space is very different. Last year we created infographics, short video stories, animations, portals for content sharing, decision-support tools, scenarios and simulations. Each asset needs to be a good fit for the audience and the need. They may need them on laptops, phones or paper. Sometimes production values are critical, sometimes they are not.

Development: I've had some very weird meetings over the course of last year - new conversations with old development partners, and new conversations with new development partners. The elearning industry as a whole is at risk, even as online learning grows. what happens to the fax companies when people stop buying fax machines? Would you buy your email system from them if they persuade you that they are 'branching out'? Can they really do infographics, portal build and film for example? Some suppliers are already repositioning around the world of resources, some are not. From my perspective, it's hard to know who to talk to anymore - I used to think I knew, now I'm not so sure. For those companies not content to retreat into the low cost compliance space, this repositioning will be vital.

Implementation: For a long time, success of an elearning course was predicated on implementation: implement well and it would succeed, implement poorly and it would fail. In practice this often meant a big launch, plenty of marketing - and most importantly an aggressive stance on chasing completions. Why? Because we were telling people things they didn't want to know, maybe didn't need to know.

Resources are different: if you have properly mapped the needs and the audience and positioned correctly they will be used. If not, they won't. 'The learners will tell you if your learning is any good' is how Cathy Moore put it, I think. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of resources. As a result there is often no 'big launch', no chasing of completions. Instead the awareness level of the target audience needs to be raised as the resources begin to appear. Remember the old world of blended learning and pre-work? Resources allow us to work in three new areas: embedding and sustaining classroom learning, performance support and peer-to-peer sharing.

Evaluation: the big question. Most of your resources won't even be tracking into your LMS? Why? because they are used not completed. Videos are viewed, checklists are printed off, simulations are played repeatedly. They are not the sort of things that one 'completes' - we are not doing level 2 analysis here. Instead we are genuinely hoping to support and develop people's performance in a more direct way - i.e. we are doing informal learning. One answer might be to actually ask people if the resources are useful and to monitor their usage. If no-one's using them, either they don't know they are there or they are not useful. Is Google a useful learning tool, in your experience? Is Twitter? Is YouTube? There aren't any fruitful Kirkpatrick/ROI type conversations to be had here. This may feel like a step backwards in conventional terms, but the things that most strongly impact performance are rarely knowledge, so it somewhat pointless evaluating learning in those terms.

The future focus will be on resources and peers - that's where the action always was, only now the mechanism is visible, tractable. Peer evaluation, peer learning are increasingly at the core of our new projects.

Elearning will continue to linger on in the corners of our offices for many years to come, no doubt. But for me I think perhaps now is the time to bid it a fond farewell.