In the Age of SaaS: Platform Choices for eLearning

With a worldwide annual growth rate between 15 and 30 percent, the eLearning market is hot — $17.5 billion in 2007 with expectations to exceed $50 billion by 2010.

Shrinking budgets, attracting and retaining students, providing tools for students and instructors, expanding education’s reach, and delivering a quality education experience are all driving institutions of higher learning onto the Internet to deliver their offerings. A recent survey of higher education conducted by The Sloan Consortium found that nearly 70 percent of academic leaders believe student demand for online learning is still growing, and more than 80 percent of institutions that offer eLearning expect their online enrollments to increase during the coming year.

The choice for most institutions is not whether to join the eLearning movement, but the best way to do it. This paper explores where the market is heading with eLearning tools and provides a contextual timeline of technology service delivery, including the traditional “do it yourself” method and the newer, more efficient “stick to our core competency and let someone else do it” approach.