Moreover, terms such as "eCommerce" and "eBusiness" have dropped out of common usage as the "e" has been dropped. When people order a book on Amazon, for example, they don't talk about it as an "eCommerce experience". They just order it.

Elliott Masie's first point - the 20 per cent decrease in overtly "eLearning" job vacancies could be because there are fewer jobs about, courtesy of the current economic conditions, tightened budgets and so on. However all of the nine points he makes have the ring of truth - and could be equally applicable to both sides of the Atlantic, as well as elsewhere in the world.

Way back in the final years of the last century, when the term "eLearning" was in its infancy, there was general agreement that the term wouldn't last. It was said, then, that either eLearning would be subsumed into the general corporate learning tools armoury and, thus, would lose its "special" nomenclature to just become part of "learning" (which appears to be the case) or it would be superseded by other, more advanced means of technology-delivered learning. This could also be true, as mobile learning grows both in popularity and technological capabilities.

Faced with this situation, the key issues appear to be:

• Can eLearning specialists reinvent themselves to become specialists in several - or all - forms of corporate learning delivery?
• Can technology-delivered learning continue to maintain its own separate sub-sector of the corporate learning world?
• Will it be completely subsumed into "corporate learning" - itself a sub-set of the HR/ training function - or will it ally itself with technology specialists, perhaps becoming a sub-set of the gaming/ virtual reality sector or even the web-delivered applications sector?
• What will the UK's eLearning Network (eLN) - known as The Association for Computer Based Training (TACT) until 2000 - rename itself now?

For over 20 years, Bob Little has specialised in writing about, and commentating on, corporate learning - especially elearning - and technology-related subjects. His work has been published in the UK, Continental Europe, the USA and Australia.
You can contact Bob.