A poll of visitors to the stand of Omniplex, at this year’s Learning Technologies exhibition, held in London’s Olympia, revealed that they were primarily preoccupied with two ‘hot topics’.
“One priority was people looking to migrate from an existing learning management system (LMS) to a system that is easier to use,” revealed Matthew Lloyd, managing director of Omniplex.
“This reflects the trend towards organisations taking control of their LMS in-house – along with the trend to develop their own e-learning materials in-house, which has boosted demand for such things as rapid authoring tools which can be used by in-house subject matter experts rather than by professional e-learning designers and developers.
“Providing systems and opportunities for mobile learning was the other hot topic,” he added. “In particular, the announcement of the iPad by Apple was seen to be of great importance to the mobile learning space.
“As ‘virtual working’ becomes increasingly popular, so more organisations’ workforces not only tend to be more widely distributed but also need to access learning and performance support materials remotely, on a just-in-time and just-enough basis. We’re finding that this is encouraging more organisations to investigate – and develop – mobile learning options.
“While ‘desktop PC-delivered e-learning’ is far from outdated, increasingly we are seeing it being augmented by mobile learning applications which make these learning materials available – via a range of delivery devices - to users wherever they are.”
According to the Learning Technologies event’s organisers, this year’s event - held at the end of January - attracted more exhibitors and visitors than ever before, highlighting growing confidence within the e-learning industry.
“We certainly had our busiest show ever this year,” commented Lloyd, who added that Omniplex received 20 per cent more ‘serious’ enquiries on its stand at this year’s Learning Technologies exhibition than it did at last year’s event.
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