Towards Maturity’s recent benchmarking report – Driving Business Benefits – has found:

• Strengthening induction training, improving the quality of learning and developing a better qualified workforce are the main reasons why 64 per cent of organisations plan to increase their learning technologies budgets in 2009. Two years ago, the main reasons for using learning technologies were to improve access to learning and reduce costs.
• Development tools that have enjoyed the greatest increase since 2007 are podcasting (+ 195%), rapid development tools (+ 43%) and virtual classrooms (+ 23%)
• ‘People factors’ – especially reluctance by staff to adopt new technology – are now the greatest barrier to successful implementation of learning technologies (for over 50% of respondents). The next most significant barriers are cost restrictions (47%) and poor IT infrastructure (41%).

The full report can by downloaded from www.towardsmaturity.org and www.elearningnetwork.org

Comment: This report offers some encouraging signs for the learning technologies sector – notably more sophisticated and business goal-orientated reasons for their uptake. However, lack of relevant knowledge and skills combined with a reluctance to adopt new technology seems to be the main reason for holding back progress in this sector. Ah! If only we didn’t need people, then e-learning would be a doddle!