Technology Challenge and Industry Commitment. Both the public and private sectors stand to benefit from enhanced learning performance, and a vast storehouse of technologies that could support learning is available. However, commercial solutions remain elusive. Many technologies swiftly incorporated into computer games and entertainment could apply equally to instruction, yet learning technologies have reached the market much more slowly. Entertainment, publishing, and broadcasting companies, and other potential developers and producers of instructional software, have shown minimal interest in the underlying work needed to develop learning technologies.
Several factors are at work.
Educational software and systems are not easily usable for many learners and educators, and for that matter present obstacles for educational institutions. Educational systems are increasingly interactive and difficult to manage at the institutional level. While this problem is not unique to educational markets, it presents an unusually high barrier given the skills and organizational dynamics of today's education and training organizations. The necessary business models and key transactions that enable the missions of knowledge-driven institutions are not yet adapted to computers and distributed systems. In the current environment, end users will have to wait some time yet until many technological advances such as virtual reality and distributed simulation become preferred tools among trainers and educators.