The Xplanation

One of our goals at Xplanation is to share our general research for product planning and design with others in the education, educational technology, and content publishing communities. We believe that sharing our research and insights is both an obligation as a community member as well as an effective manner for participating in the dialogue in this dynamic and rapidly changing arena.

We certainly believe that sharing our research ideas and conclusions publicly helps establish clear product philosophy for Xplana. Even more important, however, is the fact that the research observations we share via Xplanation represent a case of “putting our money where our mouth is.” The conclusions we share via our blog are the same conclusions that define our product roadmap and business decisions around the industry. This does not necessarily mean our research is more accurate than the work of others, but it does signify an additional layer of personal and corporate reflection that goes into our work. In a very real sense, our research conclusions lead to specific investment and product features.

With that in mind, here are our Education and Technology Trends for 2010. We present these trends as broader categories and then point to specific topics within each. We will use these trends guidelines for our daily, weekly, and monthly research over the next six months, and will then issue a revised set of trends for the last half of the year.

Content Subscription

Historically, content in education has been packaged as a premium (for sale) product and has been acquired on a purchase model. A user buys a piece of content and keeps it or returns it for resale after a term of use. As has happened in other media industries, however, the notion of access vs. purchase, and of subscription models in particular, is taking hold. This model is particularly suited for education because most students only use the content for a brief and defined period of time. The subscription model will gain significant traction in 2010, and will challenge publishers’ notion of the value of e-books, production costs, and how they sell to their customers.

Topics

• E-books and e-textbooks
• Textbook rental
• Subscription and licensing models for music and video
• Subscription models for online news

Containerless Education

Today, learning content is still consumed mostly in container formats — books, courses, LMS platforms, classes, and institutions. Increasingly, however, the notion of content is shifting to smaller, autonomous pieces that can be acquired and reconfigured by the end user in ways that are necessarily independent of traditional educational containers. Just as songs have been disaggregated from albums in the music world, educational content in general will be increasingly disaggregated from its containers in the coming year.

Topics

• OER and open content
• Social networking and social media
• Social learning
• Learning communities
• Content standards

Learning Distribution

Both learning and learning content are moving away from traditional centripetal models, in which everything happens at set locations and is controlled at the institutional/publisher level (top-down), and moving toward centrifugal models that are learner-focused (bottom-up) and in which learning happens wherever a student happens to be. This means new platform models for learning (post-LMS), greater mobile access, more flexible e-commerce models, and a renewed explosion in generic online learning.

Topics

• LMS
• Social learning portals and networks
• Mobile technology and mobile learning
• Augmented reality and experiential learning
• Netbooks, tablets, and e-readers

DIY

Compared to other industries, education has been relatively slow to push easy-to-use mechanisms for production and distribution down to the individual user. In the coming year, however, we will see professors and students finally gain access to cohesive suites of tools that enable them to produce and distribute their own content on par with that of major publishers (in terms of production quality — for electronic and print materials). Moreover, the marketplaces for sharing this content will also be available so that intrepid end users can become direct, unassisted competitors with multi-billion dollar content providers.

Topics

• Content publishing tools
• Wikis and blogs
• Web usage trends
• Personal learning tools