“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” Michael Porter, Professor at The Institute for Strategy & Competitiveness, Harvard Business School
When talking about strategy choices are fundamental. In highly competitive markets, like the corporate training one, making wrong choices is just not an option. Bet on the losing horse, and your competitors will get the best of you. Unfortunately there’s not much room for mistakes in a competitive landscape.
This is why it is very important to make conscious choices when dealing with training strategy. In this blog post I will attempt to clarify choices on a certain level by analyzing some of the most popular buzz words in the online training market as seen from a Search Engine point of view. Hottest elearning market trends reflect what people want, are actively seeking, and what will likely resonate with and engage learners – all vitally important factors to consider. To get some ideas about current elearning market trends check the analyst report “Elearning market trends and forecast 2014-2016”.
I will present you with four different cases: MOOCs, Mobile Learning, Blended Learning and Gamification. For each trend I will run a Search Volume analysis using Google Adwords Keyword planner and a Trend analysis using Google Trends. This information will give you a starting point to evaluate your program and obviously you can use the same approach with other keywords and compare with the results presented here.
MOOCs
If you don’t know what MOOCs are, you can check out this article from our blog. Just to give you a brief overview, MOOCs (Massively Open Online Course) were born in academia, in order to give access to information and university lectures from high end universities and professors to a vast amount of people. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Search Volume
Trend
Mobile Learning
Mobile learning allows students to follow courses on their mobile devices. This trend is particularly interesting, considering that last year the number of Smartphones surpassed the number of computers. When dealing with distance learning, the user experience is vital to make sure that the learner is completely engaged, so it’s important to keep in mind that a course developed for a computer will probably need to be redesigned for a mobile experience. Let’s see how Google sees Mobile Learning.
Search Volume
Trend
Blended Learning
To use a Blended Learning approach means to use both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments in order to get the best of both. For example you can create classroom activities or virtual conference, getting the best of personal and face-to-face teaching, and then use an elearning platform to deliver lecture material and evaluate your students. You can read more on this subject in this blog post. As with previous keywords, let’s take a look at the data.
Search Volume
Trend
Gamification
Gamification applied to the training industry means to use game logics and mechanics to learning environments in order to boost learner engagement, for example by leveraging positive competition through badges and achievements. If you are interested in this argument you can read more on gamification in this blog post.
Search Volume
Trend
As we can see from these numbers, MOOCs and Gamification seem to be the hottest words in the training market, but don’t forget that both words are associated with a broader audience than the training industry. Just to give you an example, corporate MOOCs have a much lower search volume, while Gamification applies to other sectors.
Obviously your training strategy won’t be decided by simple numbers according to current trends, as there are many other factors that will influence your strategy such as goals, subject matter, corporate culture, budget, technological issues etc; however it’s important to know – and take into account – what people are looking for and what will resonate (and essentially engage learners) by understanding what is currently trending (and predicting what will trend in the future but that’s for another blog post!).