An eBusiness does whatever necessary to improve the performance of its value chain . Last year, eLearning was primarily for employees. Next year we ll see a lot more eLearning for customers, VARs, and suppliers. More savvy buyers are going to see through those Rube Goldberg systems mentioned above and demand integration. For large organizations, enterprise eLearning will become the killer app, bringing together a variety of learning methods, content sources, and knowledge objects all aware of who the learner is and what the learner s after.
Groove probably fits in here, too.
In the .edu community, faculty roles will change . Administrators will realize that lecturing on basic topics is not the best use of their resources. Corporate purchasing will become much more sophisticated. A couple of years ago, training was an ordinary annual expense because individual courses didn t cost much or last very long. On the other hand, eLearning infrastructure costs a lot and will be treated as a capital expenditure to be allocated over a number of years.