eLearning Guild Research: Blog and Survey

I know that there are a lot of good people and organizations out there doing research around elearning topics right now, but I have to say that from the corporate standpoint - the eLearning Guild is really doing some great work. I also wanted to call attention to two items - first is the Guild's Research Blog  - curently manned by the Director of Reseearch himself - Steve Wexler.

The nice thing about the blog is that the posts are usually centered around one or some data points from ongoing research that the Guild is doing - so they're backed by real albeit incomplete data or the posts concern possible future directions/questions for the research to address. So when Steve posts something like "I’m toying with the idea of building a mechanism to determine which industries are the "best" in terms of opportunities for e-Learning professionals" - and asks people to post what kind of data points should be in that kind of assessment - there is a very real chance that those data points could end up in the next Guild survey and could be answered by real survey data.

See that eye chart to the right there? That's a great example of the real data I'm talking about. The data there is based on the responses to the question "If your organization plans to incorporate eLearning 2.0 approaches, who and/or what in your organization is driving this?" The "n" is currently over 1,00 - which in my mind is getting into the decent sample size range.  One thing that interests me about this chart is that it indicates that the majority (52%) of respondents see themselves as the folks who will be driving this forward and only 24% of the respondents say that other parts of their organization are bringing Web 2.0 tools in house. This contradicts my sense that other departments, notably KM, are leading the way in bringing 2.0 in house.

I also wanted to add that the basic level membership in the Guild is free and as soon as you sign up, you could add your thoughts to the eLearning 2.0 Survey. I'd also encourage you to follow and comment on Steve's blog. You really can help shape the way research is being targeted.

Comments

[Steve Wexler]

Mark,

Thanks for stoking what I hope will be on ongoing discussion.

So far we've received 1,140 responses to the e-Learning 2.0 survey. For the record, the Guild won't publish a report unless we've received a statistically-significant number of responses to a survey. Indeed, our goal (which so far we are meeting) is to have surveys that are self-sustaining so that every survey has been updated by enough Guild members in the past 365 days. This means that on any given day and at any given time we can look at a data visualization and know that we have an up-to-the-minute accurate view of *member* tendencies and preferences.

I highlight the word "member" as we do not claim our results represent the industry as a whole. I strongly suspect they do, but we're not going to extend our reach without having proof.

I'll be "snapshotting" the data over the next few days so there's still time for people to weigh in on the e-Learning 2.0 survey and have their responses recorded in the printed report. Guild members can access the survey at http://www.elearningguild.com/profiles/surveys/?sid=113.

And yes, I want to know what people think about how to measure whether a particular industry is e-Learning friendly or not.