Elearning Trends for 2018

At the end of last year, Bryan Jones from eLearningArt reached out to me for my predictions on the top 3 eLearning trends for 2018.

He then took the responses from me and 56 other experts and put together a summary video of the top trends here and an article of the top eLearning trends here.

Here are the top 3 trends that I picked, as well as some commentary:

Mobile (#5 on the overall list)

Mobile learning has been happening for over 10 years, and this trend will continue in 2018. Now that mobile learning has been around for a while, we’re learning how to do mobile more effectively than to just put long courses on a smaller screen. The impending demise of Flash will require significant effort in the next few years converting and upgrading old Flash courses to HTML5, which also makes content accessible on more devices.

Microlearning (#1 on the overall list)

Microlearning will continue to be a buzzword for 2018, although I predict we’ll still be hammering out what we actually mean by the term. As we move to more mobile learning, shorter learning and performance support will be more prevalent.

Science-based learning (#8 on the overall list)

Maybe this is my wishful thinking rather than my prediction, but I do see an increasing trend toward science-based and evidence-based learning. While plenty of myths are still perpetuated by the unscrupulous and unaware, I see backlash against pseudoscience. We are fortunate in our field to have folks like Will Thalheimer, Patti Shank, and Julie Dirksen who are working to debunk myths and make research more accessible to practitioners.