Predicting the future of online learning

Predicting the future is tough business because often times unpredictable things happen, which change the course of life. [i.e. Movable Type, The Internet, Google (the search), etc.].

So the question is: What is the future of online learning?

The following are ideas that surfaced at the Sloan-C Conference from a presentation on this topic. I don't endorse all these ideas, however many of them make sense and are worthy of discussion. What are your thoughts?

• More mobile
  
• More modular
  
• Student expectations will rise
  
• More inter-insitutional collaboration
  
• Expansion of informal learning context
  
• Faculty development will be on demand
  
• People will aggregate there own learning spaces
  
• People will learn through YouTube (and other video web-sites)
  
• Re-evaluation about what it means to be an expert
  
• The rise of open source learning
  
• More visualization
  
• Everyone will be teaching with tech
  
• Learning will be more ad-hoc
  
• More fantasy-based learning
  
• Things will be more un-bundled just like in banking, publishing, music, dvd’s.
  

More terms associated with the future of online learning (some were repeated)

• modular
  
• synchronous
  
• asynchronous
  
• collaborative
  
• consumer driven
  
• media rich
  
• competency based
  
• visual
  
• networked
  
• accountable
  
• flexible
  
• audio enabled
  
• learning on the go
  
• gaming
  
• social networking
  
• student-created content
  
• blogs
  
• podcasting
  
• cross platform learning
  
• bricolage
  
• diverse organization and delivery
  
• just in time learning
  
• external certification
  
• more faculty issues
  
• second life