There are quite a few interesting surprises in the eLearning Guild's Snapshot Report on Learning Modalities released yesterday. The report looks at the take-up of various forms of elearning as reported by an ongoing survey of Guild members. Of the 1744 respondents, 77% were located in the USA and 6% in Europe.

Traditional e-learning

Asynchronous (self-paced) elearning is used sometimes or often in 83% of organisations, but more so in bigger organisations. Take-up is consistent across regions.

Synchronous (live) elearning is used sometimes or often in 63% of organisations, and again more so in bigger organisations. Take-up is highest in the US but lower than average in Europe.

Web 2.0 learning

Blogs are used sometimes or often in 22% of organisations, podcasts in 20%, and wikis/communities of practice in 31%. What's interesting is that:

• usage is higher in smaller organisations (<500 people);
• usage is much higher outside the US, particularly Asia Pacific / Central and Latin America - even Europe;
• usage is higher in public sector and academic institutions.

Sims and games

Simulations are used sometimes or often in 56% of organisations, and learning games in 31%. Again the breakdown is interesting:

• the biggest use of learning games is in Asia Pacific;
• the most likely sector to use both simulations and learning games is finance, banking and insurance.

As we all know, statistics are like a bikini - what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. Given that respondents are self-selecting elearning enthusiasts, heavily US, and that some of the terminology used to describe modalities is open to misinterpretation (what's a game? what's a simulation?), it would be wrong to make any sweeping generalisations from this data. However, we must congratulate Steve Wexler and the crew at eLearning Guild for feeding us with plenty of food for debate.