(Business-Wire) The US market for Self-paced eLearning will reach $16.7 billion in 2009 according to a new report by Ambient Insight called, "The US Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis." The demand for online training is growing by 7.4% and revenues will reach $23.8 billion by 2014.
"In the past two years, the rate of growth for online learning products has slowed," reports Chief Research Officer, Sam S. Adkins. "Yet, despite the recession, and in many cases, because of it, the demand is positive in all the online learning buyer segments. There are distinct revenue opportunities in each of the buyer segments."
This report forecasts e-learning and online training expenditures by eight buyer segments: consumer; corporations; federal government; state and local government; PreK-12 academic; higher education; non-profits and associations; and healthcare. Corporations will be the top online training buyers throughout the forecast period, followed by higher education and the PreK-12 e-learning buyers.
"We see the highest growth rate in the healthcare segment, followed by PreK-12 and higher education," comments CEO Tyson Greer. "The healthcare industry has been recession resilient and online training suppliers competing in that segment have been relatively immune from recessionary pressures. The rate of growth in the academic segments is due in part to the success and proliferation of the for-profit online schools."
"The message from my biennial survey of what annoys audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations is that audiences are fed up with the overload of text on slides and how that text causes presenters to read the slides to them," says Dave Paradi, a blogger whose day job is helping presenters improve their visual presentations. A total of 548 people responded to his survey.
In the survey, Paradi listed 12 annoyances and asked people to select their top three. The top five results are:
The speaker read the slides to us-69.2%
Text so small I couldn't read it-48.2%
Full sentences instead of bullet points-48.0%
Slides hard to see because of color choice-33.0%
Overly complex diagrams or charts-27.9%
"It is no surprise that reading the slides came first again by a large margin," Paradi said. "It has topped the survey every time I have done it."
Perhaps you want to post your PowerPoint presentation for those who were unable to attend or use it as PR for some pesky reporter, myself included. My Brainshark allows you to upload your slide deck; you then call a phone number and narrate your slides. You can also do more than just slide decks-call the number and do an on-the-spot podcast, upload video, etc.
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Why are all the good ideas left behind in elementary school? Remember recess? One of the best parts of the day. We should leverage these decades-old learning strategies to make adult learning more memorable and workplaces more enjoyable.
It might be common sense to figure out your company's goals and then tie training to that-but we all know common sense isn't so common. As a training director in your company, your first item of business needs to be identifying the true business/productivity goals of your company.
Some managers might think that with the economy the way it is, it's not as critical to figure out how to manage the Millenials. After all, aren't they just lucky to have jobs? And the answer to that question would be "no." If the job isn't all they wanted, they'll simply quit - and if they need to, move back home - and that's not such a bad deal.
Beyond that, the Millenials are here to stay - and the boomer generation is not. More and more of them are retiring, and someone is going to have to take up the slack. And those someones are the Millenials. Managers who learn to understand this generation and how to work with them are going to be extremely valuable over the next 20 years. Will you be one of them?
