Is eLearning passé?

I found this item on Corporate PR about how learning is now going mobile (m-Learning). Elizabeth Albrycht's comments on "the old brick and mortar college/universities need to break down the walls, admitting learners from elsewhere via cyberspace" is right on the money. She points to TheFeature where the original interview with Bryan Alexander exists. m-Learning is mobile learning, or put another way continual learning via online communities where participants are active not just passive consumers of information.

While both seem to be referring to learning in a formal institutional context the same holds true within corporations, and will become even more relevant with the growth in Gen-Y's in the workforce. Howard Rheingold refers to the backchannel being used by the students that encompasses IM, chat, SMS and other items in cyberspace. All of these technologies have appeared in the workplace already and are disruptive to the traditional organisation. Many IT departments have been working to remove access from their workers for many reasons, which I will not cover.

But what would happen if our corporate learning groups started to embrace m-Learning in the manner referred to by Bryan? Would we be able to get closer to "the learning organisation" and be more competitive in the "knowledge economy". Courses and content continually updated via blogs, wikis, podcasts, moblogs, supported by IM, SMS for participants anywhere in the workplace?

Would the organisation see bottom line impacts? I think so.

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