Economic Times - Impact on Distance Learning

Has the economic struggle had a positive or negative impact on online learning?

This question has been posed a lot on the e-learning blogs, for example.

The Boston Globe just published an article titled Where the Jobs are in Anxious Times. Distance learning and a few related fields are noted as being areas where there are jobs

Here are quotes from the article that pertain to distance learning, social media, cloud computing, and mobile technology.

Government stimulus funding has been creating new opportunities in education and energy, says Clark Waterfall, a partner at Boston Search Group. "We're seeing activity in for-profit education companies, and companies geared to distance learning and corporate learning,"

A new role at many companies is a social media expert, who can help the company communicate with customers and prospects using new channels like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. "Sometimes that job is called 'community manager' or 'community rep,' " says Tom Summit of Rowley-based Catalyst Recruiting Corp. "But the people who can get hired are the ones who can relate online activities to quantifiable metrics. What are you doing for the company, aside from just starting a blog?"

Cloud computing - technology services that can be accessed over the Internet - is another area of increasing activity. "I also see a lot of interest in search engine marketing" - making websites more prominent in search results - "and engineers who know how to design websites with that in mind," Summit says.

Keith Cline of Dissero LLC says one position that can be hard to fill at the moment is a mobile application developer. "If a company is trying to build an app for the iPhone, there aren't a lot of people who have that experience," he says.

Where the jobs are in anxious times
By Scott Kirsner
Globe Columnist / June 14, 2009

It is good to hear that there are opportunities out there in the fore-mentioned fields and probably more to come. From my own glances at job boards it appears companies are still hiring people in the distance learning field.