Global E-Warming - Scandinavia has potential to become leader in distance education - Statistical Data Included - Brief Article

Training & Development, May, 2001 by Donna J. Abernathy

E-learning is a decidedly American phenomenon. And if you believe that, I have some really cool 2.4 Kbps external modems stacked up in my garage for sale. Call now, operators are waiting.

Seriously, many industry innovators have U.S. addresses, but the global training community is proving to be a vital partner in refining and promoting the technology and techniques that propel learning past manmade borders. Scandinavian and UK countries, in particular, are standout leaders. And though Internet use is relatively low in other areas-notably, Africa and parts of Latin America-international improvements in telecom infrastructure and recent movements to make PCs and Net access affordable to more people promise to help minimize the gap between the training haves and have-nots.

Revenge of the Nords

Corporate e-learning in Scandinavia has the potential to become a sizable portion of the training and education market, according to IDC. Says IDC Nordic Services analyst Esa Peltonen, "Sweden has already seen rapid growth in this delivery method in the past few years. Norway and Denmark are catching up quickly. Interest has been a bit slower to catch on in Finland."

Scandinavian countries claim a trio of factors that peg it a natural hotbed of e-learning activity. One, Internet and broadband penetration levels are high, so Scandinavian countries are built-in markets for e-learning. Two, a high proportion of the population is used to conducting business in English, making the countries attractive to international e-learning companies. Three, Nordic governments traditionally have been big supporters of interactive learning.

IDC expects a US$890 million e-learning opportunity to develop in Scandinavia by 2005, representing a 71 percent combined annual growth rate from 2000 through 2005. According to Peltonen, "Swedish e-learning vendors Academedia, Enlight Interactive, M2S, and LUVIT have already floated on the Stockholm stock exchange." She adds that other Nordic e-learning suppliers have expressed an interest in doing the same thing.

Web Rage

A new survey from Roper Starch Worldwide finds that it takes an average of 12 minutes for Web users to become noticeably frustrated when they can't find what they're looking for online; 7 percent of respondents hit the roof after only three minutes of searching.

You might want to keep that in mind when designing your next online learning course.