Mr. Lea, how is the eLearning market positioned at the moment: Are companies tending to invest more or less in learning technologies than last year?

Piers Lea: The general trend is that there is an increase. In different parts of Europe, companies have faced varied circumstances. We have an office here in London and Sheffield and also in Switzerland. There was some cutback in UK-based businesses before 2012. As far as we’re concerned that recovered at the end of last year and into this year. The economy in the US and Eurozone seemed to have an effect on people’s confidence. And when people are unconfident, they don’t tend to spend money!

We are potentially at a mayor tipping point at the moment with both commercial training and higher education. There is a very big impetus to change things. And this is a functional change, which is on one hand pushed by the availability of technologies and the different ways of conducting business. On the other hand, it has prospered due to the fact that the world is increasingly moving faster and becoming more complex at the same time. This means the old models of wide trainings simply don’t work anymore. The complexity is creating massive specializations that strive for deeper and deeper learning. The speed at which things are changing and developing is across the board. We have seen this in government with its legislation, in defence with new and different priorities, and in the major universities as well.

Could you give an example?

Piers Lea: We work for Jaguar Land Rover. Automotive firms are producing more cars with more complex technology more frequently than ever before in history. They have about 50,000 customers facing dealer-staff around the world who need to explain the changing technologies. It is happening in a way that no one’s seen before. Organisations in all kind of sectors are changing priorities and are shrinking workforces, whereby people have to work more flexibly. They have to be able to handle really highly complex technologies and new ways of thinking and working.

What are the main technological trends that have influenced eLearning recently?

Piers Lea: The advent of mobile will have a major effect on the way of learning, using technology very profoundly. This is not so much because the technology is so very different; it’s because of people’s relationship with mobile. It is a very different one than it is with a laptop, desktop, or PC: mobile devices are personal. It’s ‘my’ mobile, whereas the laptop is probably my business’s. The desktop is associated more with work than with learning, which is much a more personal activity. It’s just an interesting switch that has more to do with the perception of the technology than with the actual technology itself. Additionally, let’s not forget that the advent of mobile – phones and tablets - is the fastest-growing technology we have ever seen, so the promise of ‘ubiquity’ is strong. Not all workforces have PCs or sit at a desk. ‘Everyone’ has a mobile phone, and if they don’t now, they will soon.

If mobile devices are more personal, does this also mean that eLearning is getting more personal?

Piers Lea: Certainly that’s the aim. The potential for technology is to be able to really meet people where they are in terms of their learning, so they’re not learning things they already know or that aren’t relevant for them. Mobile devices bring learning directly into the workplace without the traditional time lag between acquiring knowledge and applying it. We should be starting to establish learning as a process. The aim for everybody now is to make sure that we’re really getting instant technology that’s more personal. Is the industry achieving this? No, not yet. But we are trying? Definitely!

There are huge differences between mobile systems and software. How much should these differences be included in the production of eLearning technology?

Piers Lea: We have invested very heavily over the last couple of years as an organisation in order to stand up and meet the mobile revolution that we see happening. As a result, all our frameworks and the technologies for fast building of eLearning and similar sorts of learning are oriented towards multi-platforms. They will have PC devices on through all types of mobile devices, with a particular focus on the iOS and Android platforms. We have created a whole system called LINEstream that is actually a method for organisations to develop apps not only for mobile and web, but actually a whole mobile application that literally delivers learning into people’s hands.

Is this still some kind of broad learning-management system, and if not, what is the difference?

Piers Lea: LINEstream is distinct from learning-management systems. The idea is to plug into companies’ traditional learning-management systems so that we can add multi-platform capability. Organisations have a technical learning infrastructure for all different types of learning they want to deliver. There is a place in this structure for mobile learning and learning management. This means it’s a much more complex picture. It’s not an ‘either-or’ argument. It all depends on what organisations need to do.

A lot of experts predict a trend to informal learning. How well are companies prepared for this?

Piers Lea: There are some organisations that are using informal systems very well, but again it’s not an ‘either-or’. The systems are part of the learning structure for an organisation. The concept of “70-20-10” is a view that was pushed into the world by Morgan McCall and his colleagues at Princeton University in the 1990s. What they were saying was seventy percent of what you learn is from the job that you are doing, twenty percent is from the relationship that you have with your colleagues and peers, and ten percent is from formal learning. And this 70-20-10 model gives a credible notion about the way people learn in the workplace. Now, if you think of eLearning as just a percentage of the ten percent of the formal learning, it is not particularly interesting. The idea of using technology and learning in large organisations is to push the network across the whole of the 70-20-10 picture.

Could you give an example of successful projects in companies that support the 20 percent with networking?

Piers Lea: The obvious example of an organisation that has been doing this is, of course, IBM. Different parts of the organisation do it differently. They are approaching this as a fully blended delivery; it is just a plug-in blended programme. Some of the ‘Big Four’ professional services firms are achieving this. A very large band of the process is online, and this online delivery is again very blended between achieving support, coaching, and eLearning. Through this we see the process of learning becoming very efficient.

What is more important for informal learning - new technologies or a cultural change?

Piers Lea: There is a very strong role for leadership. Leaders must see the need for technology and that learning is a strategic imperative. There are actually a very few organizations that emphasize this, mainly because the source of all these kind of discussions used to be called ‘training’. And training is often seen quite low down on the list of priorities. Certainly in the UK, fifty percent of the PLCs (public limited companies) don’t even have learning and development on their board agendas. This means it is really difficult for those kinds of organisations to get the benefit from the strategic benefit of learning technologies. You can’t do this all on some kind of piecemeal basis. If an organisation really wants to get the benefit from this, it has to be a company-wide or at least a division-wide strategy on their scale. And this lack of priority and lack of written strategies around learning in large organisations is the biggest blocker for informal learning and new technologies.

How will informal learning change the content of learning?

Piers Lea: The move from teaching knowledge to ‘learning to learn’ is key. People need to learn how to learn on a new basis because you can’t do your education and then go to work and think that education is over. Those days are completely gone. But we are not very good at this yet. We have to get education into the workplace. As far as the workplace is concerned, you often don’t need to learn something just in case something might happen. You can move to ‘just in time’. Employees don’t need to learn things three weeks or a year before they do them; they just learn while they are trying to do things using desktop or mobile performance support. This is a major shift that is going on at the moment.

Recently, you have been appointed to the board of ELIG, the European Learning Industry Group, so you are also involved in the discussion about the role Europe will play in the future of learning. What impact does Europe have on trends like massive open online courses (MOOCs)?

Piers Lea: The question is whether MOOCs mark a trend that is sustainable. I was at a conference at the London Business School a couple of months ago where there was a lot of discussion about this. The question is how to make MOOCs commercial, but the answer is not obvious at the moment. There are some exciting new organisations in Europe that could achieve this, and there is no question that it will have an affect on the use of technology and learning because it is opening people’s eyes to the possibilities. In the UK, we have tuition fees, so higher education is no longer free at the point of delivery. And therefore, organisations like the Open University are doing well. We are seeing an increase in people who work and do their degree at the same time. But with the US offering any kind of degree you want online to other parts of the world, European universities need to move very fast. There is a very real threat. On the other hand, I believe it will be the conventional to universities that will be able to take advantage of the impact the MOOC is creating, but only if they have all benefits in terms of funding, material, expertise, and faculties. There needs to be a lot of action taken by forward-thinking universities for Europe to play a part of what is undoubtedly going to be a worldwide phenomenon.

Do you think that the evolution of eLearning in Europe may be different from the evolution in the US?

Piers Lea: There is a lot of innovation and ingenuity in Europe. We have had to be more ingenious because we have smaller markets separated by language and different cultures. All we need to do is to follow this through and invest in it properly. We have the best ingredients to take part in the global market. This is one of the reasons why I got involved with ELIG: in order to help by being a voice among people talking about the use of learning and technology. It’s not a small thing. In my view it is fundamental to how Europe can be competitive in the future, and unless people seriously wake up and do something about it, we will get left behind.