STARTUP PLANS EDUCATION MARKETPLACE - EduPoint.com is trying to aggregate most of the educational courses offered by North American institutions, both public and private. The startup intends to create an Internet marketplace for education, and EduPoint.com already claims over 1.5 million courses available at roughly 3,000 institutions. The company is offering free access to corporations for their employees. EduPoint President Jeff Creighton says that educational providers are happy to pay the commission of 6 percent to 12 percent of the course fee because they get access to thousands of potential students, without spending more on marketing. EduPoint.com is also offering course providers tools that will permit them to upload their course catalogs to EduPoint.com's database more easily. The company is also offering course providers and companies data capabilities so companies can discover what courses their workers are taking and how they are doing. (Interactive Week, 24 Jan 2000 - Edupage 28 Jan 00)

LEARNING MERGERS - Are Classes the Unit of Learning? At a recent meeting of learning managers from major corporations the topic of units of learning was raised. A number of the managers expressed a concern that the unit of measurement in most Learning Management Systems was the class. However, the interest in the group was to build additional experiences beyond classes, including informal learning, action learning projects and smaller chunks of content. They wanted to see the developers of Learning Management System recognize that vector in their plans for development. (TechLearn Trends #156 20 Jan 00)

SHAPE OF TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PREDICTED - At the beginning of this new millennium, we may well wonder what changes our counterparts in the corporate university sector perceive on the horizon. With the preliminary caution never to take anyone's advice, Jeanne Meister, President of Corporate University Xchange, has gazed into her crystal ball and ventured to make ten predictions about the coming shape of training and professional development. Among her forecasts: learners themselves, along with corporations, will assume increasing financial responsibility for re-skilling the country's workforce; training will become a commodity with customer service the chief value added; and many traditional universities will be "Delled" (sidelined by more efficient and flexible competitors). Read more at: http://www.nucea.edu/Meister.htm. Hear Jeanne Meister in person at UCEA's Marketing Seminar in Savannah, Georgia, February 17-19, 2000. (E-News from UCEA 14 Jan 00)