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This paper examines learning‐on‐demand (LOD) ‐ the knowledge‐based learning model; forces for change; early adopters and implementation barriers. According to the authors, LOD reduces knowledge acquisition time, cuts travel costs for both students and teachers, lowers off‐the‐job related expenses, reduces classroom overheads and lowers materials expenses. Through LOD higher‐quality learning improves organizational performance and increases employees’ breadth of knowledge and ability to deploy skills in the service of strategic objectives.

Describes how chemical company ICI has expanded the scope and coverage of e‐learning, to open up learning opportunities to more of its 34,000 employees and their families worldwide.

Sketches the history of e‐learning at ICI and describes some of the options currently available. Highlights the value of Search Now, a learn‐on‐demand system that enables learners to type in a training query and receive an instant learning activity.

Shows that there are still only 4,700 registered e‐learning users at ICI, although the number is steadily expanding. Emphasises the importance of e‐learning in preparing employees for instructor‐led training.

Provides companies with ideas for gaining extra value from their e‐learning systems.

Cites e‐learning in the context of family‐friendly policies and of learning‐on‐demand.

The main argument behind this paper is learning in the digital age should not be restricted to creating digital infrastructures for supporting current forms of learning nor taking schools in their current form as God-given, natural entities, but changing current forms of education by developing new frameworks and socio-technical environments for making learning an integral part of life. The authors provide a framework for this argumentation as well as a call-to-action for research on the co-evolution of learning, media, and learning organizations.

This paper theoretically and argumentatively explores the core assumption that the digitalization of society results in challenges and opportunities for learning and education based on fundamental transformations (Collins and Halverson, 2009; Fischer et al., 2020).

The digital age greatly enhances the opportunities and supports the necessity for “making learning a part of life”. But while the growth of technology is certain, the inevitability of any particular future is not. The impact of schooling goes beyond that new information about computers, the Internet, and social media are integrated into the schools of today. The transformation of schools needs to be informed by an understanding of the impact of mindset formation that will determine people's approach to learning for the rest of their lives. The authors’ framework is focused on moving “beyond gift-wrapping” by not only fixing and existing systems but to change them and not only reforming but transforming them.

It is the authors’ hope that this article will be of interest to many stakeholders (including learners, teachers, curriculum designers, technology experts, parents, and politicians) and provide a foundation for an ongoing debate and informed actions for “Making Learning a Part of Life” in the digital age.

Fischer et al. (2022) present a framework for rethinking education, including broad design components such as learning-on-demand or learning takes place in the context of authentic problems. How can we bring those design components into practice? I argue that the design of innovative learning approaches for the digital age requires rigor in design and evaluation methods to understand what works and how and why it works.

This case study applies the research to improve approach with iterative steps of design, development, and formative evaluation. Methods to be used are borrowed from user and learning experience fields, such as usability studies and pre/posttests for learning growth.

The design of digital learning experiences rests on the three dimensions of how learners interact with (a) the digital tool, space, or service; (b) the pedagogical elements of goals, activities, and assessments (e.g. sense-making); and (c) other peers or instructors.

This study provides useful insights on how to conduct research to improve versus research to prove and indicates the importance of data analysis related to the effectiveness, efficiency, and attractiveness of digital learning experiences. Learning experience design and research provides sufficient rigor and could play an important role in new ways of learning in the digital age with the goal “making learning a part of life” as pointed out by Fischer et al. (2022).

Explains how Thomson NETg has partnered Scottish Water to provide a wide range of online courses, accessible from home, in professional and information technology skills.

Presents information from interviews with employees of Thomson NETg and Scottish Water.

Describes the range of bespoke content that has been created for Scottish Water's contact centre staff using Thomson NETg's course‐authoring tool, Lectora. Highlights the marketing campaign that helped to drive usage, so that learning time rose from 136 hours per month in December 2004 to 306 hours in March 2005.

Advances the view that the ease of access to learning means everyone has the potential to learn and increase efficiency and productivity, from office staff to those working in the treatment works, depots and field locations.

Demonstrates that the learning solution helped Scottish Water to reduce its need for tutor‐led IT courses by approximately 70 percent.

Technology‐based learning (TBL) provides a flexible learning approach to support the knowledge and skills base within an organisation. TBL also creates an interesting learning environment to motivate continuous learning. Emphasis is on the engineering design environment due to the continuous need for engineers to keep updated with current engineering information, knowledge and technologies. With the greater work demands placed on the engineer and less time to learn in, a more self‐directed learning approach is required. TBL tackles the increasing need for immediate learning and self‐directed learning. By establishing an effective learning environment, the engineers can use their own initiative and take responsibility for their own training and learning requirements. This is beneficial to organisational learning as well as the individual’s self‐development. The effects of TBL on the design engineer and the organisation are investigated.

In this paper we present a CDN‐based system, namely the COMODIN system, which is a media on‐demand platform for synchronous cooperative work which supports an explicitly‐formed cooperative group of distributed users with the following integrated functionalities: request of an archived multimedia session, sharing of its playback, and collaboration through questioning. The server‐side architecture of the COMODIN system is organized into two integrated planes: the Base plane, which consists of a streaming CDN providing media streaming, and the Collaborative plane, which provides the collaborative playback service. At the client‐side, the system centers on a Java‐based application which interfaces the cooperative group of users.

During the past decade, fast-paced changes created a new environment organisations need to adapt to in an agile way. To support their transformation, organisations are rethinking their approach to learning. They are moving away from traditional instructor-centred, standardised classroom-based learning settings. Instead, learning needs to be tailored to the individuals’ needs, available anywhere at any time and needs to enable learners to build their network. The development of digital tools, specifically network technology and social collaboration platforms, has enabled these new learning concepts.

The use of these new learning concepts in organisations also has implications for higher education. The present case study, therefore, investigates how universities can best prepare future employees and leaders for these new working environments, both on a content level and a methodological level. It also investigates if these new learning concepts can support universities in dealing with a changing environment.

The investigated case is a traditional face-to-face leadership lecture for a heterogeneous group of students. It was reconceptualised as a personalised and social collaborative learning setting, delivered through a social collaboration platform as the primary learning environment. Initial evaluation results indicate positive motivational effects, experience sharing and changes in perception of the student − lecturer relationship. The findings also supported previous challenges of computer-supported collaborative learning settings, such as the perception of a higher cognitive load. The implications of these results for the future teaching and business models of higher education are discussed. In addition, the potential of these computer-supported social collaborative learning settings is outlined.

The convergence of multimedia, virtual reality and the Internet is promoting low‐cost multimedia virtual environments which are easily accessible to large network communities. These environments, which facilitate usability and enhance user experience, are very suitable for supporting user‐oriented application domains such as e‐learning and entertainment. This paper presents a multimedia virtual environment, namely the Virtual Video Gallery, an advanced, distributed media on‐demand system which is browsable through a virtual world. By taking a virtual walk inside the gallery, the user can interactively select, preview, watch and control multimedia sessions. While the user‐centred design of the system relies on UML‐based modelling techniques, system implementation is obtained by the integration of Java, VRML and Web‐based technologies. In order to evaluate the user‐oriented effectiveness of the Virtual Video Gallery and compare it to currently available Internet‐based MoD systems, the usability testing of the system was established for deriving both summative and formative usability data.