We believe that the largest opportunity in the area of self-directed learning is an open source set of standards to be adopted by self-directed eLearning platform developers.  We predict that both for-profit, non-profit as well as social enterprise organizations will benefit from adopting a seat of standards that are recognized across industries and or/ geographical boundaries.  The primary focus should be on encouraging the use of these standards by that corporate training focused eLearning developers, and government agencies.     

The offering being made by this opportunity is the use of an open standard (infrastructure) which content developers and organizations developing self-directed learning products will adopt.

Buyers, or in this case, "adopters" of the standard, will be for-profit (e.g. Pearsons), non-profit (e.g. Moodle), and social enterprise organizations (e.g. Duolingo) that develop self directed eLearning products (e.g. Health and safety or leadership training modules etc) to be used by the public or to employees of a corporation or government agency.

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The Network Effect plays a crucial role in the adoption of the eLearning standards.  As the number of adopters increases, the value of the standard becomes more valuable for all stakeholders.      

We project that the global picture of Self-Directed learning would be North American focused based on following research data. 

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USA:

According to the Global Market Insights report The U.S. e-learning market is expected to lead the global industry, owing to the rising penetration of corporate training programs in the region. The high application of advanced technologies, video content, and gamification is anticipated to drive the demand.

In a Docebo elearning market trends and forecast report for 2017-2021, the 2016 revenue for the North American market was 23, 337.4 million dollars.  The next closest geographical market is Asia with revenues of 10, 936 million dollars.  (Source: https://learningnews.com/media/30885/docebo-elearning-trends-report-2017-short.pdf). 

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Evolving Target Market

Beyond the most immediate North American adoption the following Global Markets show market conditions lining up for the adoptions of a self directed learning standard.

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China:

In 2016 China was ranked 2nd by Ambient Insight between the top-buying countries for self-paced eLearning.

The majority of online education users in China are professionals (77.2%), followed by junior college students (15.9%) and other users (6.9%). According to the EU SME Centre’s survey, companies that already adopt online tools in China are using them primarily for employees’ skill development (35%) and recruitment (20%).

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Europe:

According to Ambient Insight, the self-paced eLearning market size in Western Europe eLearning market was around USD 8billion in 2016, while Eastern Europe market was around $1billion.

Market research analysts at Technavio have predicted that the corporate training market in Europe will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of close to 9% between 2016 and 2020. However, the rise for self-directed learning is not that evident. 

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India:

India is investing huge in Mobile eLearning. According to Ambient Insight, by 2019 India will be the third top-buying country for mobile learning. However, majority of the population is below 25 years of age and the government is planning to invest in employable -skills for employment. India’s current education system that does not adequately provide for vocational and employment-ready skills, a significant portion of organizational training budgets, even at leading IT services companies, goes towards entry-level skill building. Infosys, for example, has vast resources and an entire campus in Mysore, dedicated to training 25,000+ fresh recruits for 3-6 months every year.

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 Current SDL development and measurement systems lack a the infrastructure to track and record outcomes of Self-directed learning.   We believe that the market is ready to adopt a standard to take advantage of the benefits that using the xAPI standard will bring.  

Some statistics indicating the eLearning market readiness to adopt xAPI standardization:

• Rustici Software lists over 100 LMS vendors who are adopting the xAPI standard (Source: https://xapi.com/adopters/) 

• HT2 Labs sees xAPI moving towards the Early Majority stage on the adoption curve.  (Source: https://www.ht2labs.com/xapi-adoption-curve/) 

• HT2 Labs notes that there has been increased venture capital in xAPI businesses: Watershet LRS raised $3m, Rustici was sold for $30m and Yet Analytics raised $2m (Source: https://www.ht2labs.com/xapi-where-from-where-next/) 

• Adoption by large organization such as Visa (Source: https://www.watershedlrs.com/visa-university-client-story) 

• xAPI was ranked as the #6 eLearning tend of 2018, up 4 spots from #10 in 2017.  (Source: https://elearningart.com/blog/elearning-trends/#xapi)

• xAPI is looking to receive standardization from IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Elecronics Engineers) (Source: https://elearninfo247.com/2015/01/12/xapi-lrs-the-interview/) 

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The main competitors in this segment are other competing open standards as well as closed proprietary standards. 

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Competing open standards include past versions of SCROM and AICC and xAPI

• SCORM remains the most popular technical standard in the eLearning industry because of its compatibility with LMS and simplicity.   

  • SCORM 1.0: Negligible market share

  • SCORM 1.1: Very low market share in legacy implementations.

  • SCORM 1.2: 65 percent of SCORM implementations (as of 2018) 

  • SCORM 2004: 35 percent of SCORM implementations (as of 2018)

 (Source: A Software Advice survey of 150 corporate LMS users and https://rusticisoftware.com/wp-content/assets/scormstats/stats.php)

• AICC captures 23% of the market and one of the it key features when compered to SCROM is - Security.  AICC supports highly secure HTTPS data transfers between the content and the LMS.

• xAPI: Currently 15% of the business use xAPI for their training courses in their LMS.  The reason for low adoption rates is because it is still relativity new.  However, it has the most potential to lead the market in future because of its advanced features.  

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