Obviously, my mind shifted to learning as Nigel’s example got me immediately thinking about how we can apply these same mash-up concepts to traditional instructor-led training materials like study guides, manuals, and presentations. While training departments have been busy spending ridiculous amounts of time and money converting these training materials to e-Learning, Steve Jobs has (surprise!) changed the game by providing us with a new direct channel for ILT materials – the eBook. While eBooks of course aren’t new, the iPad now affords training departments the opportunity to add dynamic and interactive media to textbooks and other traditional learning media. In his insightful Influential Marketing blog post How The iPad Will Transform Mainstream Media (But NOT The Web), Rohit Bhargava provides a great description how the iPad will affect traditional textbooks:

“The one prediction I have heard that I do agree with is how the tablet could change the way that we read books. Everything from integrated links and images to live note-taking, to sharing notes with others in your community are all major shifts in behavior when it comes to reading books. For students, the other major benefit (in time) could be that finally you don’t need to lug tons and tons of books around with you for any class, you can just load them up on a tablet or iPad device. Even more importantly, the ease of sharing notes around a particular book will make reading and studying much more informed and perhaps lead to a next generation version of Cliffs Notes where you can get the context of a certain piece by how others have described it.”

And Aptara, in their article iPad: What Does it Really Mean for Content Publishers, provides an excellent illustration of what learning on these devices might look like (you may click on the image for a larger view):

So here we are. The industry is rapidly reaching a point where eLearning is no longer the center of the universe. Training departments who don’t recognize the tremendous implications this will have on their learning content development strategy risk facing significant consequences in terms of profitability and competitiveness.

Apple’s announcement underscores the fact that we are seeing a rapid shift towards standards adherence and open content formats. If you followed the iPad announcement, you will have noticed that Apple embraces a free and open eBook standard called ePub. This non-proprietary media format provides a way to have your traditional print materials in digital format. This is key opportunity for educational publishers, many of whom have already adopted the ePub standard, to realize an even greater ROI on their eBook investment.

So, in less than five years, Mr. Jobs has revolutionized two new delivery channels. We have all heard the advocates of blended learning, and with the introduction of mobile delivery and now the imminent ubiquity of eBooks, it’s time to ask yourself: Does it really make sense to have multiple tools and multiple copies of the content for each of these new delivery formats? Of course not! The time has come for the training industry to let go of their silos and proprietary formats and embrace a single-source content development model. Bob Mosher, in his PERFORMER Support: Learning @ the Moment of Need blog, provides his view of why single-source matters:

“Single-source publishing seems to be the tie that binds when it comes to effectively designing and integrating PS into an already vibrant learning strategy. Most organizations already use too many tools with redundant outputs and out-of-date content. Single-Source publishing has finally come of age and can do an amazing job of serving outputs for all 5 moments of need.”

Training organizations have to be agile and ready to immediately adapt to these new formats with learning content that is open and future-proofed. Are you ready, or is it time to rethink your single-source strategy?

• Open source software has grown to include […] an adherence to established standards, which is a high priority for open source software development.

• Proprietary software has closed standards that hinder further development.

The debate regarding open source versus proprietary is one that will rage on for a long time and it is not really black or white. However, I think there is one thing that most people can agree upon:

A solution based on standards is the best way to lower costs and protect the return on investment for learning projects in the long run (and, yes, there is an investment whether you use proprietary or open source software).

Having said this, the assertions stated above would lead us to believe that open source is the answer to all of our issues with standards in e-learning. Brent Schlenker, commenting on Michael Hanley’s blog, says: “. . . once people get past their initial fears and the stigma, the Open Source learning development community will grow exponentially.” While I admire the enthusiasm, experience in other application areas has shown us that this is not always the case. (Does your company use an open source ERP system, or perhaps SAP or Oracle? Does your company use an open source Enterprise Content Management Solution, or perhaps Sharepoint or Documentum?)

Let me make what at first blush may seem like a preposterous argument:

Open source has failed to reach critical mass in a number of technology sectors, and may also fail to do so in learning for the foreseeable future. One reason is clearly a lack of robust adherence to standards that negatively impacts functionality and limits a developer’s ability to create sophisticated solutions.

I know, how can I say such a thing? I didn’t believe it myself, so I did the following Google search: “Moodle and standards.” On the first page I ran into the following post entitled On Open Source, Open Standards, and Lock-in. Here’s the salient bit:

Moodle happily ingests those formats, acting to absorb content into what then becomes an inescapable pit of quicksand. It’s a one-way trip. Content can check in, but it can never leave.

If Blackboard did that, there would be villagers marching in the streets with torches in hand. The Blackboard SCORM import/export stuff might not be perfect, but at least they try to let people move content out.

With Moodle, it’s currently a vendor lock-in proposition. The only saving grace is that the vendor just happens to be an open source project. But it’s still lock-in.

So, open source Moodle does not export to SCORM, the most prevalent e-learning standard?

The post is dated March 2008. Its 18 months old, so I did a quick search of the Moodle forums to see what the status of the SCORM export feature is today. It’s marked as major and it seems to still be open. You can read the comments yourself but here is one that caught my attention:

There are people that use the fact that moodle is “scorm compliant” as one of its many virtues. Now I’m realizing that it is NOT scorm compliant – moodle can import courses but not export them in scorm.

This is a big priority for any software that wants to call itself a viable competitor in this field.

Well, according to these posts, at least Moodle can import SCORM – or can it?

Perusing Moodle.org a bit further, I came across the following:

SCORM 2004 is not completely supported in Moodle at this stage. Parts of the API have been implemented, but others such as Navigation and Sequencing have not yet been implemented.

So, open source Moodle sort of imports SCORM 2004, the most prevalent e-learning standard?

I’ll stop here because the point of this post it certainly not to crack on Moodle or say that open source is a bad investment. I don’t believe either. I think open source software can be a great viable solution for many organizations. In fact, we use open source here for our web content management.

The point that I am trying to make is that standards and breadth of functionality are hugely important and to make the assumption that the term ‘open source’ automatically translates into these can lead to uninformed decision-making and projects that don’t reach their expected ROI. Or to put it more simply:

Open source or proprietary? You’re asking the wrong question.