eLearning is a training method that is becoming more and more prevalent worldwide. Many companies, institutions, and universities are always looking to digitize portions of their training programs. The remote learning market continues its growth across all fields and industries.

Here is a look at the most telling numbers as they pertain to this market, the reasons behind its success and the current trends in order to get an overall vision of it globally speaking.

The world market for eLearning hit $107 billion in 2015. Almost half of this total was devoted to self-training methods. The eLearning market remains in constant progression and studies have shown an annual growth of 9%.

It really has permeated globally, but the nations that seen the greatest growth are India, China and Malaysia.

According to forecasts in a report in the 2015-2020 Worldwide Self-paced eLearning market by Ambient Insight, Africa has seen the highest growth at 16.3% where the revenues of eLearning will also reach $1 billion by 2020.

As part of this forecast, the countries that should be buying the most eLearning products should be the United States, China, Canada, South Korea and India. The United States by far boast the largest eLearning market in the world, but for the first time its growth is now slightly negative at -0.9%.

What reasons can be behind the overall success of this type of training program? The competition among companies is one factor given how they are always looking to increase the competency of its employees via training. To that end, many turn to the integration of online training programs into their overall training strategy. This method paves the way to reducing training costs, improving efficiency and the quality of the training received all while offering innovative options in comparison to more traditional methods thanks to the use of emerging technology.

These advances in the eLearning industry have existed for some time but have experienced a surge thanks to companies’ development of their social media channels. In fact, companies today are more inclined to turn to new technologies to train their employees. Among those most used are mobile learning, social learning, COOCs, adaptive learning, augmented learning and even micro learning.

There is no denying the meteoric growth of remote learning over the past several years. This learning technique is enticing to users and can also be integrated into the training processes of companies that value innovative support options. This industry is booming through new developments that will emerge in the years to come. The future of eLearning is very bright indeed.

Caroline Irrmann, web editor