Drum roll please, the results of the first EC SIG survey are now in. When asked what would be the “hot topics for the domain in 2008″, increased use of web 2.0, mash-ups, social networking etc was the resounding winner with almost half (48%) of the votes.

The full results are shown in the graph and pie chart below and are as follows:

*increasing use of web 2.0, mash-ups, social networking etc 48% (16 votes)
*learning design (in its widest sense) 21% (7 votes)
*the development and use of open content (e.g. OpenLearn) 12% (4 votes)
*standards such as IMS Common Cartridge;OAI-ORE 9% (3 votes)
*virtual worlds and games 6% (2 votes)
*other 3% (1 comment – “increasing uptake of all e-learning technologies across the board”

Now, I realise that this has been not the most scientific/rigorous of studies – more really a case of me just trying out a free service and hoping that I would get some response:-) and I c/should probably have spent a bit more time thinking of categories and not just used the ones that were top of my list that morning. However I do think the results are interesting. I can’t help wondering if I had named Second Life in the virtual worlds category would that have influenced the results. Learning design (in it’s widest sense, not just the IMS specification) is still creating a lot of interest (hopefully this is due in part to the excellent work of all the projects on the JISC Design for Learning Programme which the SIG has been involved in); but newer standards developments such as IMS Common Cartridge don’t seem to be areas that the SIG members feel will be very important in 2008.

So with the resounding vote for web 2.0 etc does that mean that our community are now really committed to web service approaches? Does the seemingly lacklustre interest in developing standards just show that people feel that there are enough standards/specs out there already and we have cracked the content packaging problem and have moved on to more exciting ways of sharing and re-using content? I’d be interested to hear any other views on this.

The other main outcome for me from the survey has been the opportunity get such quick feedback from the community and I would like to thank everyone who voted. As someone who is commonly referred to as “the one that sends out all those emails” I hope that it has added a bit more (relevant) interactivity to the mailing list. It certainly is very useful for me for planning the next set of SIG meetings.