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Salon ran an article this past week about the growth of online education and some of the things that growth has brought with it. Some of the issues highlighted included:

• the general commercialization of higher education
• a transformation in the power structure in many academic institutions
• a change in the way courses are taught

One thing is for certain — online learning, as the article points out, is no longer just a fad. It is a 5 billion+ market that is experiencing rapid growth. As colleges and universities compete for students, they are expanding their online degree programs and searching for new ways to do so quickly.

Okay, so far nothing new. The Salon article merely gives more examples of what most of us already know. The cat is out of the bag and we have to figure out smarter ways to deal with the new situation.

The challenge moving forward is to determine what strategies and technologies make the most sense for providing and distributing content to all of the present and future online learners.

Earlier this month, I mentioned distributed media models and mentioned that distributed media would have a big impact on content providers of all kinds in the near future. Here, I want to focus specifically on publishing and take a look at how media distribution opportunities will likely develop over the coming months and years.

First, it seems readily apparent that educational content distribution will travel the same path as the television and music industries. Each of these models started out as a content distribution model in which several large distributors created the content and broadcast that content over a controlled number of channels. The people paying for and receiving that content were limited both in terms of the time and the format in which they were allowed to receive and enjoy this content.

Television moved from a broadcast to narrowcast model with the advent of cable. To that, more recently, was added new "reception" technologies like VCR, PVR (TiVo), and HDTV, all of which have continued to shift the power from distributor to receiver.

The same is true of the music industry. Originally, music recording and distribution was controlled by a handful of powerful companies. As technology developed, however, these companies lost the ability to control the mainstream tastes, the timing, and the format of the content they were trafficking. The arrival of copying technologies, the Internet, alternative distribution companies and, finally, MP3 and P2P technologies have created a shift in power from distributor to receiver.

Educational publishing, like the television and music industries, has long enjoyed a firm grip on the commercial variables related to the industry. Recent technological and societal developments, however, are changing that. The proliferation of for-profit school and the growth of distant learning challenge publishers from a marketing and sales perspective. An onslaught of new technologies is making it easier for customers to create and distribute their own materials, while making it more more expensive for publishers to deal with the different formats in which their content must be packaged. And all the while, customers are complaining about price. They are demanding greater flexibility, more content, and at a lower price point.

Publishers, however, unlike television and music companies, can actually take advantage of these trends by leveraging the technology that is driving them. For example, we know that education is shifting away from the broadcast model to more of a narrowcast paradigm. One introductory text doesn’t fit all anymore. Not even two or three. In some disciplines, publishers must carry at least six or seven different introductory texts to compete — one of reach of the different teaching styles related to that discipline. This is a normal trend and one publisher have been dealing with for the last couple of decades.

But narrowcasting, as television and music leaders understand, is more that having different flavors of content — it is about providing them in as flexible a format and over as many possible distribution channels as possible. And, with regards to those channels, the choices for distribution are increasingly determined by the customer.

One example of a new distribution channel controlled by the customer is MP3 players, specifically the iPod. A four-year old product, the iPod has passed the fad test and is now a veritable broadcasting (podcasting) force. Add to this technology channel the fact that more and more Americans are spending significant amounts of time commuting, and you have a distribution opportunity. All existing and new audio content for a course, as well as photos and graphics, could be distributed to adopters to play on their iPods while traveling (the commuters are going to listen to something anyway). Even better, publishers could create "commuter-specific" content packages as a bundled option with their textbooks.

The best part is that addressing new narrowcast channels doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money for publishers. It does mean tagging and organizing content properly and it means breaking up textbook and media content into the appropriate chunks at the time of creation. Most important, it means keeping up with new technologies. To date, publishers have spent too much money trying to deal with technology problems as opposed to rethinking their content and its organization.

There will be new distribution channels and new technologies. These technologies and at least some of the channels will be controlled by the end users. In order to survive and thrive, publishers will need to keep their eyes on the horizon of change and create content that is as flexible as possible so that they can meet the demands for more narrow versions of education.