No self-respecting columnist could pass up the opportunity to use a January issue to pontificate about the year ahead, and I'm no different. But as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a lot of the same themes now that I did a year ago. That's probably a good thing given the weak market, lack of vendor R&D spending and continued state of buyer confusion. But none-the-less here is a briefing that will get you ready for the year ahead, or at the very least, will make you popular around the water cooler conversation.

Industry Consolidation Continues
Last January we saw Microsoft acquire Placeware and by the fourth quarter we were inundated with TV advertisements for the "new" Microsoft Office Live Meeting. Throughout that time many LMS companies continued their struggle towards illusive profits and many content companies - most notably CognitiveArts - were sold to stronger competitors. 2004 will bring more Darwinian times as the strong get stronger and the weak disappear. Advice to CLOs: make sure your financial due diligence is up to date on your key suppliers and escrow the source code of your critical applications.

Off-shore E-Learning Development Becomes Common
With new demands for cost cutting and a high-speed global network in place, off-shoring white collar jobs to lower-wage countries has become a hot topic in executive circles. This job shift is impacting architects, radiologists, software engineers, call center professionals, and, yes, e-learning developers. Five years ago vendors and training executives alike dismissed off-shore development over perceptions of quality and management problems. Today, many 20-person content developers have off-shore partnerships in place and e-learning RFP's now routinely solicit services from companies in India, Ireland, and elsewhere. Advice to CLOs: keep and open mind and read "The New Global Job Shift" from the Feb 3, 2003 issue of Business Week.

Instructional Design gets worse (but cheaper)
Death by PowerPoint is becoming even more common as it gets easier and cheaper to create and deliver talking slideshows with limited interactivity over the Internet. Sending your workshop content to e-learning developers in India will in some cases produce asynchronous online training for as little $5,000 per finished hour, and a variety of tools are now available that enable subject matter experts to convert their PowerPoint presentations into narrated online modules. Advice to CLOs: don't confuse information with instruction. Show and tell definitely has its place in the toolbox for performance improvement, but don't let it be the only tool you use.

Instructional Design gets better (but more expensive)
Think simulations. Almost a corollary to the trend above, the industry will begin to value the difference between tell-and-test design models and often more effective, but costly, simulations and instructional games. When lives are on the line simulations have long been a staple in the training curriculum (e.g., training commercial pilots, or military personnel). Advice to CLOs: read Simulations and the Future of Learning by Clark Aldrich and spend an afternoon with your teenager playing PlayStation® 2.

M-Learning (i.e., mobile learning)
I hate the phrase (who needs more jargon and differentiation at a time like this?) but it's the term now used to describe e-learning designed for those on the go. Though the term itself has been around for a few years now, it is only recently that the reality has begun to catch up to the hype as with the introduction of smaller and more powerful computer devices (e.g., Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, web-enabled phones) and the rapid spread of wireless access points (Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G). Advice to CLOs: invest $150 and 4 hours on a Saturday to install a WiFi network in your home; see how it changes how you use the Internet.

Workflow-based E-Learning
E-learning will get smaller, timelier and more perishable. The first wave of e-learning consisted of a lot of big, static catalogs. We bought it, nobody came. Now the attention is finally shifting to job performance where it belongs. The characteristics of workflow e-learning include the real-time access to information, tutorials, tools or other knowledge objects, truly at the time and place of need. With advances in mobile technologies (see above) instructional design methods need to shift toward rapid-authoring of bite size modules. Advice to CLOs: shadow your mobile workers for a few days and see where they get stuck. Look for opportunities for task support not knowledge transfer.

All of these topics live on different phases of the technology hype cycle and will no doubt be replaced before year's end with the new "new thing." The most valuable advice I have to offer to CLOs is: don't follow trends or listen to guru's too closely. If you keep your focus on the business challenge and the learner, then the design and technology will follow from there.

Kevin Kruse is the e-learning columnist for CLO, Chief Learning Officer magazine, author of Technology-based Training (Jossey-Bass), and President of AXIOM Professional Health Learning. He can be reached at kkruse@e-learningguru.com