ETEC 522 – September 2012

Ambient Insight

I chose this report ( althought it is 50 pages long)because Ambient Insight claimed that they are specializing in learning technology.  After reading it, I found it to be very informative and a valuable report, especially in the area of e learning and language learning that I have always had a keen interest in.

How, and how much, is it useful and valuable to the  broader community of educators, as well as learning technologies specialists and venturers?

 It is useful for the broader community of educators from K-12 and higher education, and it is not only for the North American buyer, the report also aims at educators from all over the world.  Ambient Insight has divided their consumers into seven geographical regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

 Ambient Insight provides market forecast research for eight learning products.

1. Self-paced eLearning Courseware and Exam Products

2. Digital Media Reference Content

3. Collaboration-based Learning

4. Social Learning

5. Simulation-based Learning

6. Game-based Learning

7. Cognitive Learning

8. Mobile Learning

 Their report is based onQuantitative Evidence-based Research Methodology. They also explain the process of how they gather information, analyze it and how they come up with their forecast. For example the number of US kids taking extracurricular online classes is growing by a five-year annual growth rate of 30.3%. Ambient Insight forecasted that by 2016, over 15.7 million school-aged children will be taking online extracurricular classes outside the jurisdiction of the schools ( P.11).

I found their report to be believable.  It is not based on the opinion of individuals but came from  an analysis based on various reliable reports from reputable sources. They also mention how they tracked the report from each institution, for example many of the companies tracked by Ambient Insight are publicly traded on various international stock exchanges and their financial disclosures provide data for global sales, regional competitive pressures, and specific country-by-country business activity” (P.8).

 Do you expect to seek out future versions of this report to help drive your own professional success, and also to recommend it to others in this regard?

I have also looked at their report from 2009 and they seem to have discussed the same eight learning technologies products mentioned above. It seems that they didn’t forecast any new products, just reported on what happened from the tracked record  of these 8 learning technologies and forecast on what it will be like in the next 5 years. I will read their report again because they will probably discuss  e-learning and language training ventures again.