Introducing Adaptive Learning for Enterprise

8/12/2019 Introducing Adaptive Learning for Enterprise

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INTRODUCINGADAPTIVELEARNINGFOR ENTERPRISEWhat it is, why it matters, andhow it will change the corporate

training landscape

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Introducing adaptive learning for enterprise WHITE PAPER|2

Adaptive learning is not some distant, science fiction fantasy .. [it] may prove to be exactly

what we need most right now practices and tools that enable maximum learning gains for

a diverse and broad array of students irrespective of their prior educational performance and

preparation. Fasten your seatbelt for a ride to tomorrow.

- Jumpstarting Adaptive Learning, a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

IntroductionErudify makes you better than yesterday our enterprise learning platform helps companies train their people more effectively. We

started in January 2012 with two things: an invention and an insight.

The invention was a blueprint for a new type of learning software one that emulates great human tutors and how they

teach.

The insight was an observation: practically everyone dislikes e-learningthey do at work, yet things dont seem to be getting

any better.

Since then, weve been working with some of the largest companies in the world to design a product that everyone involved

learners, authors, managers, and administrators would love to use.

set out our visionfor a better learning platform to support corporate training

summarise what weve learntabout how companies currently use e-learning

and why it is so unpopular

outline our perspectiveon why legacy e-learning has not delivered on its early promises

describe what adaptive learning isand why it solves many of the current problems

discuss applicationsof adaptive learning to corporate training and its likely adoption curve.

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Adaptive learning

refers to building

learning software

that emulates

the best teaching

method we know:

1-on-1 instruction

by human tutors.


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Venture capital

funds invested

$1.1bn in educationstart-ups in 2012

alone.

There is change in the airFor the past few years, an EdTech revolution has been underway in many parts of the world, and

in the United States in particular. Incumbents and start-ups have both been taking advantage

of new technological possibilities to introduce better learning and teaching software to schoolsand universities.

Unlike in previous EdTech bubbles, however, the products have now begun to actually work.

Opinions vary, but feedback from teachers and students is positive and has been improving

steadily. Actual usage is growing at exponential rates, whether measured by engagement, time

spent, number of students, or something else. Venture capital funds are more comfortable

backing education startups, with $1.1bn invested into the space in 2012 alone .

This revolution isnt quiet anymore either its speed and magnitude have attracted coverage

from major newspapers and magazines all over the world, including The Economist, Time

Magazine, The New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, etc.

Amongst the incumbents, all major publishing houses, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and

Macmillan, have been both starting internal projects and investing in or acquiring start-ups.

According to Robin Freestone, Pearsons CFO, .. the company spent almost $1.4bn on 10 deals

[last year] and has the headroom to do more than that this year .

On the other side of the fence, education start-ups, including the likes of Khan Academy, Coursera,

Udacity, EdX, Kno, Knewton, Grockit, Minerva, 2U, and others have attracted millions of students

and tens of millions of dollars in backing from venture capital funds .

As new learning technologies reshape our schools and universities, it is only natural to ask what

will this mean for corporate training? What does a better future look like there?

Tomorrow in corporate training

Technologically, products required to support the following scenarios are entirely realistic by

2015. Whether business processes, regulators, and other constraints enable such development is,

of course, another question altogether.

Nevertheless, for now, please entertain our imagination, and lets fast forward to 2015. Thefollowing five scenarios describe what we believe will, by then, be the day-to-day training reality

for companies that move fast and embrace the upcoming revolution in learning technologies

early on.

More fodder for bubble debate: ed tech startups get $1.1B in 2012, GigaOm, 21 January 2013

Ed Tech Pulls in $1.1B of Funding in 2012, CB Insights, 31 January 2013

E-ducation: A long-overdue technological revolution is at last under way, The Economist, 29 June 2013

The Adaptive Learning Revolution, Time Magazine, 6 Jun 2013

EdTech Market Is GrowingIf Youre Disruptive, Forbes, 28 August 2011

Pearson Skips University to Hunt for Deals in Africa, Bloomberg, 29 March 2012

One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education, Forbes, 29 November 2012

Is Coursera the Beginning of the End for Traditional Higher Education?, Forbes, 7 July 2012

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As new learning

technologies

reshape our schools

and universities, it

is only natural to

ask what will this

mean for corporate

training?


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One-size-fits-all

e-learning is gone,

replaced with

products that

dynamically adapt

to each individual

learner.

Everyone gets their own tutor

Its 2015; learning systems now model what each individual employee knows, how they

forget, and how they learn best. By leveraging this information, adaptive learning systems

deliver a personalised path through learning materials to each learner and ensure that thismaterial is repeated and revised with optimal frequency.

Of course, it never made any sense that e-learning was a one-offevent without any systematic

follow-up. Now, the tools finally allow course authors and managers to automatically turn

e-learning into an ongoing process .

This allows companies to finally run training in a principled, evidence-driven way, saving

employees time and effort, rather than forcing all staffto mindlessly go through the same material

once (before proceeding to forget it).

The new process is simple. Course authors define what skills and knowledge are needed, and howwell the learners should know them; for example 90% probability that staffknow each of these

important principles. Once agreed upon, both managers and course authors can then rely on

learning software to do the work.

When relevant forgetting thresholds are triggered, applications like Erudify automatically ask

the employee to come back for a refresher which is dynamically created and tailored for each

individual employee, covering only those areas they may have forgotten.

Of course, now that the employee has signed into Erudify to learn, the system aims to make the

best use of her time. To do that, it reviews her other learning goals and seamlessly pulls together

materials and exercises that should optimally be reviewed and practiced right now.

It doesnt matter whether the other courses cover soft sk ills, sales training, product knowledge, or

compliance everything is integrated into a single, smooth interaction between the learner and

their own automated tutor.

What does this mean in practice?

New employees use e-learning frequentlyduring their first year, both to acquire new skills

when needed and to ensure that these skills are remembered and stick.

Conversely, senior staffsave time- those who have been with the firm for a long time and

know things well are only asked to revise certain areas every few years or when something

changes.

Continuous Learning and Capability Development will likely replace the buzz around Informal Learning, Bersin by Deloitte

Predictions for 2013: Corporate Talent, Leadership and HR-Nexus of Global Forces Drives New Models For Talent

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Online learning,

classroom

instruction, and on-

the-job training are

integrated through

common learning

goals.

Big data finally arrives to corporate training

Its 2015; analytics and dashboards are now integrated throughout the company. Adaptive

learning has introduced big data to learning management and with that turned training and

education from a black box into a transparent, evidence-driven process .

Relevant learning data points are now captured with high precision, from individual exercises

to the overall activity patterns, aggregated, dynamically analysed, and turned into analytics,

visualisations and dashboards that bring insights to authors, managers, administrators, and the

learners themselves.

Learners receive continuous feedback throughout the learning process the training software

allows them to track their own progress, compare themselves against their peers, or review

areas they seem to have particular strengths and weaknesses in. In addition, the software helps

them better fit learning activities into their busy schedules, e.g. suggesting that they learn most

effectively early afternoon.

Course authors automatically get anonymised feedback from learners on anything from individual

exercises to their courses overall. Even more importantly, authors activity dashboards give them

insight into how exactly learners use their courses. The dashboards show how learners spend

their time across the course, common mistakes, and frequent misconceptions. These can be

used by the authors to fix problems or improve courses, with the changes propagated to the

learners automatically in real time.

Managers, similarly to authors, get access to a variety of dashboards and visualisations theirs are,

however, tailored to answer a different set of questions. Whereas authors want to know how to

make their course better, managers care about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of

their staff, and how to help them get better.

Thus, analytical tools for management answer questions such as: are there patterns of missing

skills in our workforce? Whats the biggest limiting factor for career progression for this person,

or people in our company in general? Do our staffhave any misconceptions or gaps that are

impacting productivity, safety, or security?

Integrating online & offline learning

Its 2015; online learning, classroom instruction, and on-the-job training are integratedthrough common learning goals.Adaptive courses include rigorous, testable definitions of

what it actually means to know Customer Service Fundamentals.

Learning goals have thus finally become well-defined and testable concepts. With enterprise

learning platforms built to support the corresponding online and offline workflow, learning and

personal development can finally be organised around goals in a way that makes everyone more

productive: authors, managers, administrators, and learners .

Training measurement continues to be a challenge, but today standalone learning measurement is becoming less interesting.,

Bersin by Deloitte Predictions for 2013: Corporate Talent, Leadership and HR - Nexus of Global Forces Drives New Models for

Talent

Forget me not: So what is goal-based learning?, Training Zone, 14 May 2012


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Complete cross-

device compatibility

and seamless

mobility on a single

platform, designed

bottom-up, rather

than through ad-hoc

extensions.

Once properly defined in the software, learning goals automatically take into account

multiple inputs, be that completion of online courses, human assessment from classroom

trainers, or feedback from line managers.

For example, to earn the accreditation (or perhaps a badge) for being able to sell a

new product line, sales associates must now:

prove broad and stable product knowledge (through a series of online courses)

demonstrate skill in presenting the product (through feedback from classroom

instructors)

show ability to actually sell several units (through feedback from line managers)

All of this evidence is gathered through a unified learning management system, and automaticallyaccessible to all participants in this process, plus the relevant stafffrom L&D, HR, and executive

management.

True mobility

Its 2015; learning software now offers complete cross-device compatibility and seamless

mobility on a single platform, designed bottom-up, rather than through ad-hoc extensions.

All of the applications described above are of course SaaS-based and running in the web browser.

This means that they can be accessed from any device, anywhere, anytime, without the need to

install anything. This isnt just true of the learning application, of course the same applies to

authoring and management tools, including their respective analytics suites .

For learners, this means that they can start learning something new on their computer at work,

seamlessly pick up where they left offfrom their smartphone on the way back home, and review

their progress from a tablet on a business trip the next morning.

Whilst authors will probably continue doing most of their work from a desktop, if they need to fix

any urgent problems or update something on the go, they can do so. Of course, if they want to

access analytics to share with others during meetings or conferences, these are fully accessible

from a tablet.

For managers, the software supports whatever workflow their role requires. A compliance

manager that needs to assign courses to or review analytics for 50,000 staffmight still prefer to do

so from a computer. On the other hand, a sales manager using Erudify to customise learning for

each of his individual sales reps would mostly use it from a smartphone or tablet when traveling

and speaking to the reps.

It is now estimated that 27 percent of all U.S. workers are part-time with as many as 40 percent of all employees work ing part-

time on a contract basis ... so many elements of talent management, recruiting and management are being extended to the

mobile free agents., Bersin by Deloitte Predictions for 2013: Corporate Talent, Leadership and HRNexus of Global Forces Drives

New Models for Talent


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Course authors can

stop worrying about

colours, templates,

and animations, and

instead focus

on teaching and

instruction.

Importantly, the above doesnt rely on a system of native applications built and customised

separately for each device and platform instead, these web apps run in a web browser,

responsively adapting the user interface to the device thats signing in.

The same is true of courses since these are now encoded in a semantic rather than graphical

way, mobile e-learning is no longer a separate investment. The software ensures that the same

courses can now be used on any device, instead of having to build mobile versions of existing

courses.

Course authors can now teach rather than present

Its 2015; course authors can now stop worrying about colours, templates, and animations,

and instead focus on teaching and instruction.Course authors no longer worry about how

to create courses that look good instead, they focus on building great, well-structured courses

that get the skills and knowledge across.

Similarly to what great tools for type setting or textbook publishing did for writers and educators,

adaptive learning tools finally disconnected content from design and graphics.

The course authors job is now primarily focused on the following issues:

Defining goals. They work with subject matter experts and managers on understanding

and specifying goals, i.e. defining what does it mean to be proficient in a given area know

something or have this skill.

Describing the domain. What content is there to know in this domain? How do different parts

of it relate to others, both within the domain, and outside of it? Which parts are important and

which ones less so?

Describing instruction principles. How do we teach this course to someone completely

new? What if they already know part of the material? How often do we repeat it? How do we

hint?

These tasks are challenging and to build truly great courses, the goals, domain, and instruction

principles need to be understood and encoded in more depth than what was previously required.

Fortunately, course authors no longer need to waste their time on deciding which font to use,

whether to highlight by using bold, cursive, or underlining, what font sizes to use, what template

to use, how to align the images, and how to incorporate different backgrounds.

Instead, they can now focus on the semantics, and leave it to the software to make such semantic

courses look great and do so in a way thats uniform across courses. That way, learners benefit

from the same user interface regardless of which author (or even which company) built the

course.


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A learner presented

with two courses,

one built in 2003and the other

in 2013, would

typically struggle to

tell them apart.

Corporate e-learning todayThe future is bright and were incredibly excited to be working on it. There is so much

improvement just waiting to be invented and then applied to solving real problems. To compare

this vision against status quo, i.e. our starting point, lets now look at where we are today, as anindustry.

Whats the current state of corporate e-learning? In essence, not very different to what it was 10

years ago. Indeed, a learner presented with two courses, one built in 2003 and the other in 2013,

would typically struggle to tell them apart. E-learning is one of the few software applications used

by virtually everyone inside most large companies. Yet, due to several structural factors, there has

been surprisingly little innovation in why and how companies use it.

SCORM, the prevailing inter-operability course standard, hasnt changed in a meaningful way

since its introduction in 1999. As a result of this, course authors and learners see e-learning as

PowerPoint with questions.

The reputation of e-learning amongst different stakeholders reflects both its lack of effectiveness

and its poor user experience:

managers see it as ineffective, unpopular with staff, but cheap; thus, it is seen as mostly suitable

for mandatory training (box-ticking exercise)

learners associate e-learning with a presentation with 10 questions at the end, and generally

talk about it as being boring, often cringy, and almost always ineffective

course authors are often frustrated with the tools at their disposal, unable to express more

complex instruction methods, and having to spend too much time on making courses look

OK

This generally negative perception of e-learning has a corresponding impact on when and how

companies choose to use it over other instructions methods:

Mandatory training continues being delivered using e-learning.Anecdotally, however,

regulators are beginning to voice concerns about the lack of effectiveness and rigour, given

how courses are structured and tested. Companies have, therefore, had to supplement

e-learning with classroom-based sessions .

Voluntary training sometimes includes e-learning components, but adoption by

employees remains limited. Companies have invested considerable resources into building

internal course libraries, but these often remain largely unused.

In the next section, we consider the obvious question: why is it that legacy e-learning has

performed so poorly on most metrics, be it ROI, user engagement, or subjective feedback?

For the last two years, online education fatigue has been leading ethics and compliance education challenges..over the years,

however, the number of hours of online education assigned to employees has decreased., LRN 2013 Ethics & Compliance

Leadership Survey Report

Delivery of mandatory training: 75% online, 20% classroom, 8% experiential learning, 3% other, 3% mobile, LRN 2013 Ethics &

Compliance Leadership Survey Report


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To put it simply in

its current form,

e-learning is acontent distribution

tool, not a teaching

tool.

Why does legacy e-learning not work?Why hasnt corporate e-learning delivered on its early promises? We believe its because

its fundamental design principles have practically nothing to do with learning.

To put it simply in its current form, e-learning is a content distribution tool, not a teaching tool.

To see why, compare e-learning to the most effective teaching method we know today: 1-on-1

instruction by human tutors.

Great human tutors use, implicitly or explicitly, the following teaching process:

1) Take an explicit goal for what the student should eventually know.

2) Estimate her current level.

3) Apply experience to figure out what to do now in order to move the student from the current

level closer towards the goal. Ask a question? Give her something to read? Work through a

problem together? Take a break?

4) Go back to 2, and continue, until the goal has been reached.

Contrast this with legacy e-learning, which uses a method that looks something like this:

1) Show the student a presentation (videos, images, text).

2) Ask 10 questions.

3) If the student doesnt get 8/10 correct, go back to 2 and ask the same questions again. Continue

until 8 questions get answered correctly.

Learning and teaching are some of the most complex cognitive processes humans perform. Whyis it hard to learn something on your own? Because you have to play both roles: the student and

the teacher!

You need to decide what to read, how often, what exercises to do, how to mark them, how often

to repeat, when to go back, etc thats a lot to do in itself, even before you try to understand

something, connect it to other things you know, and remember it all.

This is why 1-on-1 instruction is so effective the tutor takes care of the instruction, allowing

the student to focus 100% on acquiring new skills and knowledge. No wonder then, that legacy

e-learning doesnt work: it has absolutely nothing in common with how a good tutor operates.

E-learning systems we use today are not teaching tools they are just cheap ways of

pushing content over the internet and tracking some basic metrics around that.

Of course, there is value in distributing content faster and cheaper than sending paper textbooks.

We shouldnt be surprised, however, that except for those time/money savings, the results are

limited.

We cant expect the current generation of e-learning tools to simplify learning or to make it more

effective. After all, what were doing is cheaper and faster, but otherwise equivalent to shipping

textbooks to employees with instructions to do exercises 13-23, and if you fail, do them again.

To dramatically improve learning outcomes, a different approach is needed.


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Adaptive learning

refers to building

learning softwarethat emulates

the best teaching

method we know:

1-on-1 instruction

by human tutors.

Enter adaptive learningWikipedia defines adaptive learning as an educational method which uses computers as interactive

teaching devices. Computers adapt the presentation of educational material according to students

learning needs, as indicated by their responses to questions and tasks.

It then goes on to say that This model originates in the radical behaviourist movement of the 1950s

and the unrealized promise of B.F. Skinners teaching machines and programmed instruction. The

motivation is to allow electronic education to incorporate the value of the interactivity a fforded to

a student by an actual human teacher or tutor. The technology encompasses aspects derived from

various fields of study including computer science, education, and psychology.

To put it differently, adaptive learning refers to building learning software that emulates the best

teaching method we know: 1-on-1 instruction by human tutors. What is it about human tutors

that makes them so effective in teaching someone?

Fundamentally, their effectiveness comes down to two things:

First, a specific (implicit or explicit) goal for where the tutor wants to get the student.A good tutor

has an idea of what it means to know something. What evidence would the tutor expect from

the student to say that yes, she now understands this topic? Tutors understand such knowledge

definitions. Legacy e-learning courses dont they may have 10 questions at the end, but these

arent used in any way to improve the teaching outcome.

Of course, descriptions of e-learning courses often include some specification of the related

learning goals. Unless integrated in a proper, evidence-driven way into the course itself, however,these goals are of limited use in improving the teaching process itself.

Second, a dynamic, continously updated student model.A good tutor forms a picture in their

mind of what the student knows, how he or she learns, and what their strengths and weaknesses

are.

Legacy e-learning software cant model knowledge on even the simplest basis. Yes, sometimes

we record correct and incorrect answers, but these are used for reporting, not for improving how

each particular student gets taught.

By emulating many of the things that great human tutors do, adaptive learning takes onlineeducation away from the widely disliked PowerPoint with questions, and closer towards how a

human tutor works.

Adaptive courses come with a well defined, explicit goalthat specifies what is required for

someone to pass the course.

Adaptive learning systems include inference algorithmsthat, similarly to good tutors, try

to continuously estimate what a student knows or doesnt know.

Adaptive learning systems constantly re-assess the students progressand generate the

optimal learning path for the student, until the student reaches the goal.


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Despite the

ongoing technology

revolution, of the$135bn spent on

corporate training

globally, only about

$2bn is spent on

e-learning thats

about 1.5%!

Of course, this may sound too good to be true and until recently, it has been. Although the

ideas underlying adaptive learning have been around since 1950s or even earlier, the industry

itself is only a few years old. Similar to other big data industries, it is only the recent technological

advances that have enabled adaptive learning to emerge as an industry.

This means that its still early days in adaptive learning after all, there are probably at most

twenty serious adaptive learning companies in the world. And although most of them focus on

building adaptive learning products for schools and universities, there is no doubt that adaptive

learning will have at least an equally profound impact on e-learning in the business world .

Adaptive learning in enterprise

The enterprise training problem

Similarly to schools and universities, practically all challenges companies face in their training fall

under one general problem: it takes too much resources (money or time) to ensure that staffhave

a given level of knowledge and skills at a given point in time. This general problem can be broken

down into its individual components using different criteria, for example:

Learners need to spend too much timestudying something to get to the required level.

Once learnt, knowledge or skills are forgottentoo quickly and/or not applied in daily work.

It is too expensive to manage and run the entire learning process, i.e. ensure that the

planning, communication, administration, oversight, analysis etc. around training is done well.

The teaching method works but is too expensive (trainer time, travel costs, special

equipment).

Of course, an extremely common, but underappreciated case is the one where companies just

cant get their staffproficient in certain areas at all because they dont have a method of doing

so that has a positive return on investment.

E-learning vs. other methods

Before applying this framework to e-learning, lets consider the following statistic: despite the

ongoing technology revolution, of the $135bn spent on corporate training globally, only about

$2bn is spent on e-learning thats about 1.5%! .

This can mean one of two things: either e-learning delivers worse ROI than other methods

in 98.5% of the things that companies train their staffin, or companies should invest more

of their training resources into e-learning.

Jumpstarting Adaptive Learning, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 13 March 2013

2013: The Year of Adaptive Learning, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 10 April 2013

2013 Corporate Learning Factbook, Bersin by Deloitte


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Adaptive learning

has the potential

to dramaticallyimprove ROI and

significantly improve

how e-learning is

perceived by all

stakeholders.

As is usually the case, we believe the truth is somewhere in the middle, meaning that: firstly,

e-learning tools need to get better and deliver a higher ROI, and secondly, e-learning needs to fix

its reputation within companies to be perceived as a truly valuable option.

We believe that adaptive learning, and a new generation of learning tools focused on user

experience that comes with it, have the potential to fix both of these problems dramatically

improve ROI and significantly improve how e-learning is perceived by all stakeholders.

Problems solved by adaptive learning

To understand what problems adaptive learning can help to solve in the enterprise context, lets

look again at what makes human tutors effective.

As discussed before, tutors understand two fundamental concepts: a student model and a goal.

Because of this, they can do a number of things that, compared to other methods, dramaticallyimprove learning and teaching effectiveness.

Of course, these improvements directly address the problems encountered when running large

scale corporate training programs.

Tailor instruction methods to how each individual student learns.A great trainer modifies

his teaching style to fit with how a student learns best.

Benefit: dramatically improves the learning experience, thereby changing attitudes

of stafftowards e-learning.

Dont waste the students time.If the trainer is reasonably confident that the students knows

something, he can skip such areas unless evidence is seen to the contrary.

Benefit: reduces time spent on training, saving money.

Ensure the student doesnt suffer from knowledge gaps.A good trainer will wait to see

evidence that the student understands something before moving onto the next thing.

Benefit: prevents waste of time and stafffrustration with being taught something without the

required foundations.

Provide intelligent hints.One of the hardest things in teaching is getting the student over

challenging points where the student gets stuck. A good trainer knows how to do this by

providing intelligent hints and alternative explanations.

Benefit: increases the chances that the learner actually acquires the right skills and knowledge.

Deal with forgetting. A trainer has an idea what the student knows and how quickly she

might be forgetting. He can thus time repetition accordingly and make sure concepts are

revised before they are forgotten.

Benefit: ensures that the skills and knowledge are retained for longer, thereby increasing the

chance they are applied on the job.


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Practically anything

taught today

through legacye-learning can

be taught better

by moving these

courses to an

adaptive learning

system.

Impact on corporate training

What does all of this mean for how adaptive learning will change corporate training? In essence,

we believe that adaptive learning will do the following two things:

Replace current e-learning infrastructure.

Practically anything taught today through legacy e-learning can be taught better by moving these

courses to an adaptive learning system. In some cases, the difference in return on investment is

extremely high already; in others, it is less pronounced. These considerations will influence the

timing of adoption, i.e. when companies start upgrading their systems.

Drastically increase the proportion of training done online.

As adaptive learning moves online training away from PowerPoint with questions towards a

human trainer, the proportion of training done online will grow dramatically.

This corresponds to trends were seeing in other industries and functions where an increasing

share of the work is moved online.

Timing of adoption by enterprise

The final question wed like to consider in this white paper is one of timing. In an August 2011

essay published in the Wall Street Journal, Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and one

of the partners at Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm, famously argued thatsoftware is eating the world.

In the essay, Andreessen argued that whatever industry we look at from agriculture to logistics

to national defense improvements in technology have begun a once in a generation change in

how the industry operates.

The result of this change is always the same a significantly higher share of work of that industry

ends up being performed by technology, and software in particular.

We said earlier that of the $135bn spent on corporate training globally, only 1.5%, an extremely

small proportion, is spent on e-learning. Considering the problems with legacy e-learning, this

makes sense.

Things are likely to change fast, however, as the adaptive learning revolution gets underway.

As we start building tools that are actually designed for teaching and learning, rather than for

distributing content, the case for leveraging technology to improve training becomes clear.

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Why Software is Eating the World, Marc Andreessen, Wall Street Journal, 20 August 2011


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New learning

technologies will

make a majorcontribution to

permanently

solving many of the

current challenges

with training:

cost, reliability,

scalability,

consistency, and

availability.

One can argue about when will learning software become good enough, but one thing is clear:

when they do, these technologies will make a major contribution to permanently solving many

of the current challenges with training: cost, reliability, scalability, consistency, and availability.

Automating instruction is and will remain a challenging technological problem. Building great

products in this area requires a coordinated effort of experts from multiple domains, from

mathematics and statistics to computer science to instructional design to psychology. Progress,

thus, will be incremental. We must not forget, however, that, similarly to other areas of technology,

this progress will also compound.

Of course, the definition of good enough depends on the next best option. Thus, in some areas,

a clear case already exists for introducing adaptive learning right now. Some are nearly there.

For others, the right time will come in the next few years, but if we were to venture a guess

probably no later than 2020 for most.

The developments of the last two years leave little doubt about the validity of Andreessens

prediction and there is no reason to believe that training is any different.

At Erudify, were excited to be building learning infrastructure that helps all of us get better in our

jobs in the future. I f youd like to talk to us about any of this, wed love to hear from you: hello@

erudify.com.


ERUDIFY

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Erudify AG | Grungasse 19, 8004 Zurich, Switzerland | +41-435-083-020 | [email protected] | erudify.com

Documents

Introducing Adaptive Learning for Enterprise