The Old-Timer: LMS Ventures
I think in terms of educational ventures, the last few decades the headlines have been dominated by the big corporations that held the LMS market. These “big edu companies” were usually in two fields: LMS systems or student management systems. Their products were aimed at large institutions (like universities and colleges) and the field was held by few players, maybe a dozen or so? They included the usual suspects (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, OpenX, Sakai, D2L and a handful more) or customized versions of large ERP (Enterprise) software, (What do our institution use? The usual suspects: SAP PeopleSoft, Oracle, or similar.) (Gartner, 2022a).
The New Kid On the Block: Corporate Learning
However, over the past 5 years and especially since the pandemic, the education market and in particular the for-profit education market, has really shifted its sights to corporate learning and individual professionals investing in up-skilling and earning informal credentials. This can be anything from profile badges to certificates of completion.
There are a combination of demographic, socio-political and pandemic-induced factors that are leading to a need to rapidly re-train workers for new and emerging fields, or to replace retiring workers in other fields, so this market will continue to grow. Below are a few examples of my own.
- Demographic: retiring workers, declining birthrates.
- Socio-political: countries setting up international barriers to education (e.g. China is a closed market)
- Pandemic induced: pandemic death tolls affecting specific job fields (health care workers, agricultural workers, first reponders), job burnout/fatigue that leads to career switches, early retirement, etc.
From what I can read, the Corporate Learning market is a much richer, more diverse and earlier-stage educational space. Gartner defines Corporate Learning as:
“Corporate learning solutions include applications that help organizations train, develop and engage their learners. These applications continue to expand the functionality and robustness of their components. Furthermore, they help organizations with compliance, certifications, onboarding, talent development, upskilling, collaboration, coaching and mentoring, sales training, partner education, and customer training.” (2022b).
I think Gartner’s market projections really gave me a good place to start to get a sense of this emerging field.
Gartner. 2022a. Higher Education Learning Management Systems Reviews and Ratings. In Learning management system (LMS) reviews 2022: Gartner Peer insights. Gartner. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/higher-education-learning-management-systems
Gartner. 2022b. Corporate Learning Reviews and Ratings. In Learning management system (LMS) reviews 2022: Gartner Peer insights. Gartner. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/corporate-learning
