If the development of learning solutions has seen disappointingly little innovation over the past few decades, the delivery of them – the methods and media that we use to deliver and transmit what we want people to learn – is changing at a bewildering pace. Go to any learning conference, and the talk is all about a swathe of new technologies and the opportunities they offer: social networking, virtual worlds and serious games are the headline buzzwords of the day. Case studies showcasing the latest Next Big Thing seem to adorn every journal and magazine. And then there are the endless acronyms. CMS, LMS, KMS, LCMS, LKMS and – of course – LOKMS, MLE, PLE and VLE: the list goes on. Many of them seem to mean the same thing, and some don’t seem to mean much at all.

This confusion of terminologies reflects the state of development of learning technologies: it is still early days, in which options proliferate and the best ways forward are still unclear. This is partly why, despite all the talk and hype, organisations for the moment appear to remain cautious in the uptake of these new delivery methods. ‘We’re just not ready’ is the phrase I hear most often. Other reasons are that it feels too risky: many of the new learning technologies are not proven and the pace of change is so fast that an investment in a particular technology today may be superseded tomorrow. As we will see, these concerns are not unfounded. They also appear to be widespread, with one recent survey showing only 12 per cent of corporate learning respondents reporting a preference for innovation. For the moment, then, tried and trusted methods remain the reality of learning delivery. Yet change is coming, and in a big way. Some of the new technologies will almost certainly turn out to be passing fads, but others are here to stay and they promise to bring with them nothing short of a complete reconceptualisation of how learning is delivered. For they hold the promise of changing not only how learning looks and feels but also what it can do. The times, to borrow from the Bob Dylan song, really do seem to be a-changin’.