trend spotting

By Jesper Hundebøl — Mini survey reveals a trend towards featured news on commercial e-learning sites. 80 percent of the twenty Danish, commercial e-learning agencies surveyed (see table) have a news section. Recently four agencies have offered featured news of a general interest. Since July 2002 e.g. Courseware intends to publish a monthly section, and the August 2002 news letter from key2know match those of mmi's in both substance and subject matters treated. This development suggest there is a trend towards enriching content on commercial sites.

news section

Four agencies (courseware, key2know, ims and mmi) offer news of a general interest or featured news that are related to the e-learning sector as such - both commercial and to some degree researchers.

In summary, 60 percent of the Danish e-learning agencies offer ONLY company specific news, 20 per cent offer no news at all while the remaining 20 percent offers a blend of news.

At time of survey - 13 August 2002 - less than 20 percent of the agencies had been updated recently (August 2002), however, almost half of sites included in this survey had been updated within the quarter (June-August 2002).

featured news

In the August 2002 9-page long news letter from key2know (based in Aarhus, Denmark) readers could be informed about, i.a.:

• An editorial and featured article on Content management
• Customer cases on e.g. a new knowledge portal at AMU Syd
• The new MS Content Management Server - Pro's AND Con's :)
• Brief news (e.g. a seminaire on intra nets)

Courseware, in its reently introduced (July 2002) monthly section, offered four different themes

• Danish news
• The trouble of the Danish e-learning market ("News of the month")
• Pedagogy and e-learning ("Theory of the month")
• An article, in English, on ROI or how to measure success ("Montly foreign news")

Evidently these rubriques offer plenty of room for company specific news and product advertisement, however, the intention to publish every month a case or feature on "theory" requires the agency to go beyond plain advertising. Indeed, with the general state of affairs the word "theory" is a welcomed input to commercial websites.

The by now prime Danish player, ims, also circulates a news letter and in its news section you find a mixture of both company specific news and news of a general interest.

The list format is of course less obliging, since in fact any "news" can be published. E.g. is an conference announcements, references to articles in Danish news papers, along with a piece of news on the learning strategy of ims.

nb: Although the site is bi-lingual, English users would not find the news sections at all, because the news section is only published in Danish.

Finally mmi.dk in its recent news letter (June 2002) had a focus on

• the new think tank of HK/Workinthefuture and the aim of establishing a Danish strategy for e-learning
• tutorial on Flash MX
• An end-of-day "Club" meeting on e-learning, HR & IT (networking)

mmi-net published its first news letter in October 2001. The June 2002 is the sixth newsletter. Among other themes treated has been book reviews, advice & tips, and e.g. conference news.

Summary

In short, quite a varied number of issues, with more to come. Evidently a commercial agency has to sell to survive, and the ultimate aim is clear. The whole idea of news letters and featured sections is to generate traffic and to "sell", however, the tendency in the above mentioned cases look promising.

One could judge the quality of the featured articles, however, this has not been the issue here. Certainly the issues are treated without regarding the academic level and few arguments are scientifically proved.

The coming months will show two things:

a. Will more agencies join?

b. Can the agencies continue to publish material on a near-monthly basis?

Expect these questions - along with an in-depth review of the content published - answered here.

Background / Overview

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