It's About Learning

Elliott Masie’s Learning TRENDS – Learning TRENDS – 785 – Goodbye eLearning? Jane Pauley on Boomers; Wearable Performance Support via kwout

Elliot Masie the prolific author on learning and technology; the head of the MASIE Center, a Saratoga Springs, NY think tank focused on how organizations can support learning and knowledge within the workforce; and the leader of the Learning CONSORTIUM, a coalition of 230 global organizations cooperating on the evolution of learning strategies has noticed that:

two phrases that are decreasing in presence:

“e-Learning”
“Instructional Designer”

Masie is not surprised by the shift away from “e-Learning” to the all encompassing term “learning” or to greater level of specificity offered by terms like: Virtual Classrooms, Webinars, eBooks, MOOCs or Online Courses. Despite being credited with introducing the term “e-learning” in the mid 90’s Masie too has moved to using the term “learning” for all his programs.

Having spent the past 18 years working on the cutting edge of e-learning/online learning/web-based instruction or whatever we are calling it today I agree with Masie that the general term “learning” is much more appropriate. Most recently I have been adding the prefix “digitally enhanced” to the term “learning” differentiate it from its more traditional meaning. Perhaps this move back to the use of learning to refer to what we do all the time and everywhere is most appropriate considering that we have really only limited learning to the classroom for the past 100-150 years.

I am also glad to see that terms like e-learning are going out of vogue and am now waiting in anticipation for the term “mobile-learning” or “mlearning” to fade away as well. It is unfortunate that our society tends to limit or constrain so many things through naming conventions and/or definitions. Learning is the making of meaningful connections and it happens all the time and everywhere with or without technology.