eLearning Guild Research: Do I Need to Know about HTML5?

One of the undisputed facts aboutworking in the eLearning field is that there’s a lot to learn, and what thereis to learn changes constantly. That certainly causes some frustration forpeople in our field, as a recent eLearning survey showed. We’re putting thefinal touches on the What’s Changing inYour (Work) World research report, which analyzes 674 responses to a surveytaken at the end of June and beginning of July 2012 that evaluated how thelearning and eLearning work world has been changing in the last five years. Thesurvey had many fascinating results, but one of the most interesting wasanswers to the following question:

Compared to five years ago,has the typical variety of your work tasks increased or decreased? (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Variety of work tasks compared to five years ago(source: The eLearning Guild, What’sChanging in Your (Work) World researchreport, in press)

The response to this question clearly showed that respondents saw an increase in the variety ofwork tasks over the last five years. Almost 71 percent answered either “Muchgreater” or “Greater.” Very few said “The same.” Less than 15 percent said “Less”or “Much less.” This means that almostall respondents agree that our jobs have increased in variety of work tasks.

Is this a problem? There has been a great deal of discussionon online boards and elsewhere about the increasing need to know abouteverything and anything when working in the eLearning world and how hard it isto meet that expectation.

So the answer to the question “Do I need to know aboutHTML5?” is yes. “But the good news is we’ve made it easier to understand,” saysJudy Unrein, the author of our latest eLearning Guild research report, HTML5 and eLearning: What Managers and Practitioners Must Know.

One of the primary reasons forknowing about HTML5 is that Flash isn’t supported on most mobile devices. Andmobile learning or mLearning is becoming a very big trend indeed.

Figure 2 shows a chart from The eLearningGuild’s 2012 Mobile Learning, The Time Is Now report, showing the large rise in mLearning plans by Guild members from 2009 to 2012. Clearly, mLearning is becoming increasinglyimportant.

Figure 2: mLearning Plans byYear, 2009 to 2012 (source: The eLearning Guild, Mobile Learning, The Time is Now research report)

As Judy explains in the HTML5 researchreport:

Apple has never supported Flash playbackon their very popular iOS devices (at first, the iPhone and iPod Touch, bothreleased in 2007). This was problematic for two main reasons: First, most ofthe video served on the Internet at that time was Flash-based video. Second,Flash powered much of the animated content, from games to banner ads toeLearning content. All of this Flash content required the use of the FlashPlayer plug-in, which was extremely prevalent on desktop computers but was not(and still is not) supported on iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system.

Cut to now. The iPad is still by far themost popular tablet on the market; iPads comprised about two-thirds of tabletsales in 2011 (Gartner). Dig a little deeper into mobile statistics, though,and you’ll find another interesting data point: even though iPads have “only”66 percent of the tablet market, a greatly disproportionate amount of the webbrowsing done on tablets is on iPads—over 90 percent, by some measures(Albanesius). In addition, iPad users buy more apps and pay more for them perapp (Elmer-DeWitt). This data seems to make it clear that while you may createfor a variety of platforms, at the very least you shouldn’t ignore the portionof your audience that uses iPads, as this market actively uses its devices.

There’s another fact, though, thatbroadens the concerns with delivering content in Flash for mobile and tabletcontent consumption. While Android devices have historically supported Flashcontent (or at least Flash Mobile, a “light” version of Flash playback thatAdobe created for tablets and mobile devices), Adobe announced in November 2011that it was halting further development of Flash Mobile (Stevens). Then theyannounced in June 2012 that they were no longer supporting Flash Mobile orcertifying it for use on new versions of Android (Fingas). Clearly the writingis on the wall for the future of Flash playback on tablets and mobile devices.

The move from Flash to HTML5 is certainly shaking up the eLearning world in a big way, but Unrein’s reportshows that there are actually quite a few advantages to this shake-up. Forexample, she cites the following among some of the advantages:

Accessibility: “HTMLcontent is more accessible, even when you make no special effort to develop foraccessibility.”

Editing: “Whencontent resides in a plug-in, it is difficult if not impossible to open it up,make edits, and repackage it. Content delivered as HTML is far easier to editas needed…”

Search: “In aworld of increasing reliance on search and increasing focus on easily findingjust-in-time content, HTML5 content has a clear advantage over content thatlives within a plug-in.”

Translation: “(You)can more easily translate content that exists within website code, even if you’vemade no effort to localize your content.”

Responsive Design:“Designing with HTML5, you are able to flow content to a certain width or haveit reflow wider or narrower based on the browser size. Responsive design is anew term coined to describe customizing your content delivery based on the sizeof the browser window… This isn’t an automatic feature of HTML, but somethingyou enable using code instead of plug-in-based content.”

In the rest of her report, Unrein discusses more of HTML5’scapabilities, how you can use it for eLearning, considerationsfor moving to HTML5, including delivery, development, and design, and whetheryou should be moving to HTML5. Italso offers some case studies to help you think through what others have done.

My What’s Changing in Your (Work) World research report will be available soon, so make sure you are apaid Guild member so you can download both it and the HTML5 report! If you haveany questions or comments about Guild research reports, don’t hesitate tocontact me at [email protected].

References:

Albanesius, Chloe. “iPad Makes Up 95 Percent of Tablet Web Traffic.” pcmag.com. Ziff Davis, 4 Mar. 2012. https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404009,00.asp

Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. “Apple Users Buying 61% More Apps, Paying 14% More Per App.” cnn.com. Cable News Network, 11 July 2011. https://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/11/apple-users-buying-61-more-apps-paying-14-more-per-app/

Fingas, Jon. “Adobe Confirms It Won’t Support Flash on Android 4.1, Stops New Flash Installs from Google Play on August 15th.” engadget.com. Aol Tech, 28 June 2012. https://www.engadget.com/2012/06/28/adobe-confirms-it-wont-support-flash-on-android-4-1/

“Gartner Says Worldwide Media Tablets Sales to Reach 119 Million Units in 2012.” gartner.com. Gartner, Inc., 10 Apr. 2012. https://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1980115

Stevens, Tim. “Adobe Confirms Flash Player Is Dead for Mobile Devices.” engadget.com. Aol Tech, 9 Nov. 2011. https://www.engadget.com/2011/11/09/adobe-confirms-flash-player-is-dead-for-mobile-devices/