I’m back after visiting the Learning Solutions national e-learning conference at Orlando, Florida. While the highlight was, of course, when we were honoured at the general assembly of over 1000 participants, and got to demo the course we’ve developed for the Global Giveback contest, there were a lot of other benefits.

The key goody was the interaction with this large set of e-learning developers and users. The US  is possibly the most mature in terms of both e-learning  usage and development.Also, when I  got to compare the work we do, with an international audience, it was a big jolt of “Wow! We’re pretty good!” Based in India where e-learning usage is pretty low, we didn’t have validation of quality. But it’s clear that we can absolutely hold our own among the best!

It’s expanded my thought horizons in terms of what we can do and how we can do it, how to address our (Indian) audience and excite them about e-learning. If we need to expand usage, we need to show them how great it is to learn this way. Americans are masters in packaging, communicating and selling.

Americans cannot think of an e-learning course without audio (which is bandwidth heavy). Video is also pretty common, but audio is a given. Bandwidth is a non-issue, with cable modems giving 1MBPs upwards. When I explained during my demo that we don’t use audio, as we, and the NGO we developed the course for, have bandwidth issues, they blinked at me with non-comprehension.  We use engaging script, animations and interactivities instead. Indians, who are used to cramming dull books filled with jargon, find this great! Audio can be, in fact, a barrier to a person on a dial up or cyber café connection.

So,  it’s given much food for thought on using lots of ideas derived from an American audience and modifying them for Indian usage.